Felintarks are a strange people, especially when it comes to their laws. They ban all drugs but tobacco and alcohol in the Empire, punishment fer getting caught with pipeherb is a stiff fine and a week locked up in jail. Any amount of pipeherb, even if it’s just the resin in an empty pipe. The brothels there are all legally run – whores have these ironclad contracts that strip them of their ability to do anything but sit there and take what comes, but it’s all by the books. Still, though, legally speaking the only folks who can take advantage of the services of a girl whore are the men and the only ones who can take advantage of the services of a boy whore are the women. Not to say that these lines don’t get crossed in practice, but that’s the way the law stands. And even though felintarks talk a big game about how they’re all equal to each other and the Emperor’s not worthy of any more respect than your local cat-eared baker, they’ll take anyone within their borders without citizenship papers as goods to be bartered in their perfectly legal slave markets.
I didn’t actually know that was the case until they dragged me to Shalakesh and stuck me up on a podium out there in broad daylight, right in the middle of the market district. I’d assumed that it was an illegal trade, given the way they rushed me out of Essala as soon as I’d gotten there. Turns out, that’s just standard practice to keep the slaves themselves disoriented and cut off and therefore less likely to escape. They had us locked up in a pen, what seemed to be a converted stable or summat, the lot of us shackled to the door posts of the stalls. We were uniformly a young group, a lot of us not yet full grown. Besides myself and a handful of gold elves and one lone silver elf, the rest were mixes. None of them were full Felin. I wanted to ask them who they were, how they’d gotten into such a situation, but I couldn’t talk to them. It wasn’t permitted fer us to speak, I’d learned that the hard way on the road to Shalakesh. We could hear the bustle of the market outside, the calls of the barkers and the clatter of goods being moved, and every few minutes a trader came in and unlocked another of us and led us to the auction. Sometimes they came back with the unsold in tow, sometimes they came back alone.
When it was my turn, I was blindfolded before they unlocked me. I think they did that ‘cause I’m tall and ropy and look like I could’ve put up a better fight than the rest of us. They tied my hands behind my back, slipped a noose over my neck attached to a long pole the traders use to drag us around without ever being close enough for us to be a danger to them, and was pushed forward. “Do you know Felin?” the trader asked. I nodded. “Semadran?” I shook my head. We made the rest of the walk in silence.
Once he had me up on the podium, shackled to it by the ankles, the auction started and my blindfold was pulled off. A throng of mildly curious felintarks stood in front of me. Out on the street past them, crowds of less curious felintarks and the odd Semadran passed by without even casting so much as a cursory glance my way. “This one’s young and fit, fluent in Felin. Opening bid is 50 marks.”
The felintarks ahead were quiet. A couple peered at me fer a moment and then raised their eyebrows and muttered to each other, pointing at my marks. The trader sighed and jabbed at me until I stood up a bit straighter. “He was in and out of the life faster than you can spit. He was only on one ship.”
“On one ship for how long?” someone asked.
I grinned in spite of myself and leaned forward as much as the restraints allowed. “Long enough to learn your language, start to finish, and I’m not good with tongues,” I yelled out. Just as I suspected, two big fellas came out of nowhere and slammed me to the floor, and another gave me a set of lashes right there in front of the crowd. But the pain of it seemed worth taking if it meant causing such a ruckus made me unsellable and got me sent further west.
“He’s not house material,” the trader yelled out over my screams, “but look at him! Look how much he can take! Any builders out there? This one, he’s perfect for you – just make sure you shackle him and ignore the noise. 40 marks, he’s a steal.” But they saw me now as dangerous and disobedient. One flaw could be overlooked, but not both. “Come on, he’s as mundayne as they come. No tricks with this one, and the trouble that’s there can be beat out of him. 35 marks.” Still, no one seemed interested. The trader frowned and leaned over to one of the ones holding me down. “Show them his teeth.”
The other traders pulled me upright again. One of them took a handful of my hair and jerked my head back with one hand and forced my mouth open with the other. I snapped at him and got a solid punch to the jaw fer my troubles. “Fine condition this one, just needs training. 30 marks.” And then, a few seconds later, “25 marks! Last offer!”
No one took the offer. They half-walked, half-dragged me back to the stables, tossed me in the stall and locked me up. A foot or two managed to lodge itself in my ribs while they did it, and I lay there bruised and bleeding but on the whole feeling rather vindicated. The way I saw it, the worst case scenario was getting moved north instead of west and disappearing into the Empire forever. But if that was the case, at the very least I would’ve made the trader’s lives that much more difficult and that was a comforting enough thought to get me through the night.
The march from Shalakesh to Tarquintia is a lot longer than the march from Essala to Shalakesh, and where the road to Shalakesh sticks close to the coast and can be traveled quickly a lot of the route to Tarquintia is through the dunes of the San-Kesh. It’s slow-going. It’s a blank, empty place and by a day out of Shalakesh I couldn’t have said which way was north or could have found my way out of it on my own again. Walking through it was like being out on the ocean– nothing but nature anywhere you looked – but worse, since there wasn’t even a ship to hold us. It was just us. Me and the other slaves walking through the sand, flanked on the sides by the traders on their horses, just little specks in the wasteland.
The traders gave us nothing to ease the journey. They drove us hard, lashed to a pole by our wrists, without anything to shield us from the blinding heat of the sun besides what we’d come to them already wearing. We stopped once, sometimes twice a day to rest and eat, but we were given just barely enough food and water to keep us going. The traders didn’t feel the need to give us any more than that, after all, every time one of us fell due to exhaustion or sunstroke, they got dragged along anyway by the rest of us who were still up and moving. A few days out of Shalakesh, a young fella got hit hard by the strain. He collapsed during the day and by nightfall he was shivering and feverish. The traders watched him but dragged him along the next day anyway. Two days after that, he was sliding through the sand, his eyes glazed, muttering under his breath. They had us stop marching, cut him free and looked him over, and cut his throat. There was some talk amongst the traders about what to do with the body and whether he’d cut much into their profits, but they decided it was easiest just to leave him there for the animals and that they’d just raise the prices of the rest of us to cover the cost of it.
The nights, though, they were the worst. At night, the traders set up their tents and took shifts standing guard over us while the others slept. There were three of them – one distinguished looking fella with a graying beard who watched everything around him like a hawk, one tall, lean man who was forever cracking jokes to the other two that he always found a good deal funnier than they did, and one young, cocky, lawless fella that was the worst. He made everyone uncomfortable, even the other two traders. He was brash and willful and rode around with his hair uncovered, which is against the tark’s religious teachings and marked him as a loose cannon of sorts. From the bits of conversation I picked up from them, it seemed this one had joined their ranks because he knew the routes, but the reasons he knew the routes were substantially less savory that moving slaves to and fro. They were careful not to say anything direct about it but if I had to guess, I’d say he was a reformed bandit, though how reformed was anybody’s guess.
But while he made the other traders a bit uneasy, he scared the living hell out of us slaves. His cruel streak went unchecked during his nightly shifts and when it was just us and him he took the opportunity to do whatever he wanted. A lot of his shifts he spent cutting one of the women free and dragging her off just out of sight but still within earshot of the rest of us and then tying her back up again before waking up whichever trader was set to relieve him.
At the start of that trip, I tried to keep myself separate and distant from everyone and everything else around me. After all, it had gotten me through the markets in Shalakesh. But watching that bastard making life so much more difficult fer those poor souls lashed just a little further down the pole and knowing that I was being spared because of nothing more than the luck of having been born a man chipped away at my resolve. Fer days I blocked it out as best I could. After all, I told myself, there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him that wouldn’t end with me left there bleeding in the desert myself. I was just as stuck as they were. But I couldn’t block it out when he took a particular shine to a fragile looking half-grown gold girl. She was tied just ahead of me on the line, and I spent all day staring at the fresh bruises that appeared there overnight, cataloguing them, counting them, keeping an eye on which ones were fading. One day, her shirt was torn when he tied her up again. The loose strip of fabric flapped uselessly in the still air, in time with the march, while the ruined neckline started sliding down her shoulder. A criss-cross of old lash marks peeked out at me. I walked for hours staring at them, wondering how old she was and who’d done that to her and what other sorts of transgressions were marked on her beneath her dusty clothes.
Every few steps, she’d twitch her shoulder up and back, trying to find some way to jerk her shirt back into place without the use of her hands. I watched the brown skin turn red and I remember thinking that of all that had been thrown at her the least she deserved was not to be sunburned any worse than she already was. I glanced up ahead at the traders, talking amongst themselves, and leaned forward, catching the edge of her shirt in my teeth and pulling it up high enough that it wouldn’t slip down again. She caught her breath and looked over her shoulder at me, terrified and confused, like she thought I was going to hurt her too. All it took was that one look and everything unraveled. In the wake of that look, me and my fears about fate and wars a thousand miles away didn’t seem so pressing, not when there was summat like that right in front of me.
In the days that followed, I paid a lot more attention to her than I did to myself. It seemed to me like she needed the attention more than I did, faced as she was with all that I wasn’t faced with myself. If she looked shaky during the march, I angled myself over and forward so she could walk in my shadow. At night, when it got cold and she’d shiver, I’d tap at her with my foot until she moved back enough fer my body heat to help stave off the cold. But still, when that bastard cut her free and dragged her off, there was nothing I could do but watch and pray he brought her back again in one piece.
I was the second one brought out from the holding pen in the markets in Tarquintia. They try and get rid of the less desirable goods first, lulling the buyers into a false sense of low prices before springing the better finds on them. And, when ones like me don’t sell, the traders use that as leverage to drive the prices of the one folks actually want to buy up higher, citing their own starving children and such things. This time, they didn’t bother blindfolding me or treating me any different than the rest. After all, I’d behaved myself on the walk out and the traders had begun to suspect that the fight had been driven out of me.
I was pushed up onto a podium, aching all over. I was thirsty and sore and tired because they’d made us walk through the night to get there on time and I hadn’t had any sleep yet, just those few spare moments of rest in the pen before they dragged me out of it again. Frankly, I’d begun to suspect that the fight had been driven out of me, too. I heard the older trader start in on his pitch about me being young and strong (although I doubt that was all that convincing given the state I was in), but I wasn’t really listening. I kept looking over at the pen, at the rest of them. Every now and then, someone would jab me in the ribs and I’d look forward again, but a few seconds later, I’d get distracted and my head would turn of its own accord and I’d be staring once again at the pen.
That bandit bastard leaned forward and grabbed my hair, jerking my face forward again. And I just snapped. I lunged at him, screaming at him not to touch me and telling him just what I thought of him, about how if there was any justice in the world he’d get his soon enough and one day he’d be the one tied up and getting sold off. I stood there, straining against the chains, railing at him in my native tongue that no one there but me spoke, and not caring that he didn’t understand what I was saying. He ducked back, standing just out of my reach, smirking and telling the crowd not to worry, that I spoke Felin, too. “Go on,” he said, poking me with a pole, “show them you know a proper language, boy.”
“Don’t call me boy, you heartless bastard,” I spat back. And I hadn’t meant to, but I spat it back in Felin and the pleased look on his face was enough to set me struggling and snarling again. The ropes around my neck tightened, and I yielded, desperate fer another breath. The anger drained out of me, replaced by panic, and then finally hollow acceptance when I was able to breathe again. I dropped my face, burning with shame and weakness, and listened as the older trader listed the opening bid for 55 marks. There were no takers.
“Come on, this one’s a steal. He’s far enough away from the coast now that those marks don’t mean anything and he’s far enough away from Elothnin that there’s no danger of him running off and finding his way back. Look at him! He’s -- ”
“Elothnin? Did you say Elothnin?” someone out in the crowd asked.
“Yes. He got picked up by pirates in Opleneer.”
“When? When did they – move, damn it! I’m trying to get through! – when did they take him?”
“I can’t say, but I know it wasn’t long. Just the one ship, sir. Are you interested?”
My heart dropped. I shut my eyes and slumped, knowing it was the end of the road fer me. There was commotion up ahead, the sound of people shuffling and grumbling. Then, just a little in front of me, I heard someone take in a quick breath. “How much for him?”
“For you? 50 marks. It’s a fair deal -- ”
“Fine, 50 marks. Here, take it.”
There was a slight pause. “Anyone want to go up to 55?”
“Damn the auction! Here’s – here’s 20 more, just give him to me now!”
The trader let out a quiet laugh. “Alright, if you insist,” he said, unlocking the chains. I sighed and cast one last look over at the pen as I was shoved off the podium. Strong hands took me by the shoulders, and I flinched and stared back down at my feet. I wanted to believe that there was no way that whatever I’d just been sold into was worse than what I’d been put through to get to the market, but I knew it wasn’t true.
I waited for a rope around my neck that never came. I was gently pushed out of the market, onto the street, the man behind me muttering about luck and god’s grace and such things that just fell on deaf ears as far as I was concerned. Just past the gate, he sighed and turned me around to face him.
And the face was familiar. I was convinced I was dreaming. He looked me over, dusting the sand off my shoulders. “Jarthen, please tell me you’re alright,” he said very quietly.
I stared at him, left silent by the sound of my own name.
“Maybe – maybe you don’t recognize me? I’m Safir, I took you through the Dark Lands. The rebels, they’ve been looking for you.”
It had to be sunstroke. I was sure I’d fallen prey to the desert, that I’d gone mad with fever and that none of it was really happening. That really I was talking to myself and being pulled through the burning sand. But it seemed so real. “How did you find me?”
“I didn’t. I was buying fruit across the way and heard you yelling in Common.” He pulled an apple out of his pocket. “Here, eat. Do you need water? Are you hurt?”
I stared at the apple. A little boy ran into me and knocked it from my hand. He laughed, apologized and tossed it to me, where it hit me hard on the elbow. It stung. Safir picked it up and handed it to me again, frowning at the child’s retreating back. “Eat it.”
I held the apple close to me and glanced around, looking for the hidden seams between what was real and what wasn’t, and caught sight of the gold girl being led up to the podium. I grabbed the sleeve of Safir’s robe. “You’ve got to buy her.”
“What? Jarthen -- ”
“You’ve got to buy them all.”
Safir sighed and tried to lead me away, but I wouldn’t move. “I can’t. I spent everything on you.”
“You can’t just leave them here! I’ll pay you back, I swear I will. I don’t know how, but I’ll find a way, just please don’t leave them here.” Up ahead, the auction fer her broke out, prices got thrown out and topped and thrown out again.
“I’m sorry, I can’t.”
The shouting stopped and the trader pointed to a woman in the back, beckoning her forward. The pair of them exchanged words and shook hands and the girl was handed over to her. I went cold all over. I’d been spared again.
“Thank god I found you. It’s a miracle. I’ll get you back to them, I promise,” he said.
I watched the woman pull her away, watched her until her tiny form got swallowed up by the crowds. I fought back a wave of tears and let Safir lead me in the other direction. “It’s a lot of things, Safir, but it’s not a miracle.”
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