She began to cry, but silently, as slaves learned to do. Old Sushad slid into view from around the corner. He said nothing to Kesh, just a look with that half-frozen face and his little finger flicked up. Kesh turned his back. He counted the water skins and satchels hanging along the wagon on either side. He took two days' worth of the remaining flatbread and smoked meat, not at all tasty. The rest he left for Tebedir, who must make a return journey south over the pass to the empire, a good long way even if he got a hire. By the time he looked around, Nasia and Sushad had vanished away into the courtyard, where the ordinary noises of folk at their labor sounded again. Not one person, people he had known many years, came to greet him. Nasia was better-loved than he would ever be. No doubt they hated him for her sake, but he did not care.
By the time Tebedir returned, Kesh had unloaded the two chests, leaving only the treasure inside. Tebedir remained behind to guard the wagon, and Kesh hauled the chests to the wing door. It was a struggle to get them inside, as the door had been weighted so it easily swung shut if not being held. His fellow slaves passed him, going in and out. Not one stopped to help. No one looked him in the eye; not one person said a single word to him.
Aui! News of Nasia had traveled quickly.
But they were only bodies, moving in the monotonous dance of servitude. Their feet shuffled along a wood floor smoothed by generations of barefoot slaves walking quietly, as they must. They grunted, or coughed, or cleared their throats, and if they wept, they wept silently, as Nasia had. The men walked with heads bent. They went mostly bearded, trimmed tight along the jaw, and in general without the luxury of a mustache. Their hair was cut close to the head, easy to care for, nothing to get in the way of work. The women, depending on their station and age and what labor they were set, wore their hair shorn or pulled back in a ring and bound with slender iron chains so that the length of captive hair swayed along their back and buttocks.
He was well rid of them all.
He dragged the chests, one with each hand, and halted panting beside the rear door into the lesser exchange room, the only one he was permitted to enter without permission. He propped open the door and got the chests in, closed and locked himself in, and unrolled a colorless silk viewing cloth over the larger table. Dust motes spun where light poured through windows not yet closed for Shade Hour. It was hot, and getting hotter, but Master Feden would not quite be done for the day, not if his routine had remained unaltered in the last many months. Not if these windows were still open.
On the silk he arranged combs and mirrors and oil and saffron and shell dice, the handsome little items that he had picked up in southern markets on his journey. When he had all arranged to his liking, he rang the bell three times, twice two, and thrice again.
He was too unsettled to sit. He paced, wiped his brow, and rearranged the combs, liking the new pattern better, liking how it set off the richest among the lesser. Feden would want the best for his own family, to show off their long, glossy black hair, the pride of every man and woman who was neither hireling nor slave.
The master's door opened, and the man himself walked through with a shaven-headed clerk in attendance. He was a man made powerful by wealth, stout but not flabby, with his uncut hair braided and looped back in a man's threefold at his neck and shoulders.
Master Feden made no greeting, but walked slowly around the table while the clerk made a running tally and checked it against Keshad's accounts book. The pen scraped in the silence. Outside, the sun's light baked the stone plaza, seen beyond the thick posts where, soon, the slaves would unroll the cloth awnings over the wooden porch. So had Keshad done twelve years ago, when he was a lad sold into Master Feden's service. Unroll the awnings; close the windows; haul water; beat carpets; sweep and rake and look away when some clumsy soul got a hard cuff on the cheek for moving too slowly or simply for looking at a customer the wrong way or any way. Watch the massage girl you fancied be traded away for a mare. Listen as your young friend cried when he discovered he had missed the debt payment and was indentured for another year, during which new debts for food, drink, oil, pallet space, training costs, and interest would accrue, with more added on if you got sick or injured and a healer had to be brought in from the temple.
Pride, swallowed so many times, became a rock in the chest, and it had filled him with stone.
"Impressive," said Master Feden, with a contemptuous smile that made Kesh want to slap him because Feden never began his haggling with a compliment. "I congratulate you, Keshad. You have the gift. We need only set a price."
"As I carried all my possessions with me, no holding space was required for my goods while I was gone, which means the debt set against my freedom in addition to interest accruing on the regulated basis during my absence stands at five hundred and eighty-seven leya," said Kesh immediately. "Am I correct?"
Master Feden nodded at the clerk.
She tallied. "Yes, that's right."
"The goods you see before you are easily worth twice that on the market. But I offer them, to you, in exchange for the rest of my debt. Which is a bargain for you, Master Feden."
The master picked up a comb studded with whitestone and walked to the windows to peer at the subtle wash of colors that, Kesh knew, played beneath the surface of the stones. With his broad back to Kesh, he spoke. "I'm surprised you act in such haste. I wish to offer you a post in my firm."
The clerk actually gasped.
"You have promise. You've shown it time and again. I'll free the massage girl-what is her name?-the one you show particular attention to, although we had to have the herb woman in a month or two after you left to rid her of what she caught in her belly. I've been thinking of trading her debt to Mistress Bettia, who has a pair of fine embroidered couches my dear wife has been coveting, but I'll reconsider if you'll take her in marriage-both of you free-and sign a contract to trade for my firm-fifty-fifty percentages, we'll say-for ten years."
The clerk's mouth had dropped open, and this time she looked at Kesh and then at the master's back. She ceased writing, waiting for his response.
He rested his hands on the rim of the table. All that restless energy fell away. He was clear and sharp and clean and perfect in his clarity.
"The rest of my debt. Which is a bargain for you, Master Feden."
"Stubborn until the end." He returned to the table. He had fleshy hands and sausage fingers, but a delicate touch as he set the comb down into its nest of silk. "Very well. Settled."
The clerk stood stunned, gaping at Kesh as though he had been revealed as a deadly lilu.
"Record it!" Feden snapped with a burst of impatient fury that made the poor clerk flinch. "I have a meeting to attend. I must leave now!"
She spattered ink, blotted it up, and began scratching with her head bent in concentration and her shoulders hunched in case a blow came. But she was Sapanasu's hierophant, not Feden's slave. If he hit her, he would have to pay a fine to the temple.
Kesh lowered his hands to his side and tried not to twitch. Outside, a pair of lads stumped past; the awning creaked and dropped as they unrolled it. At once, the light through the windows muted to a less intense gold.
The clerk set down the accounts book. Feden glanced over the final entry, then made his mark. She turned it, and Kesh counted up the merchandise, saw that everything displayed on the table was accounted for, and with the pen marked the quartered moon that served as his seal.
"Sapanasu gives her blessing," said the clerk. "And her curse to any who turn their backs on what they have sworn in her name. Let it be marked and sealed."
"Let it be marked and sealed," said Feden with a smirk.
"Let it be marked and sealed." Keshad extended a hand. "My accounts book. It's mine now, free and clear."