The ladies gasped and fled into the door of a shop that sold small silver-and-crystal bowls. Scandal leered at them through the window for a moment.
As they had walked away, Tull asked quietly, “Why did you do that? Those women were obviously rich—rich enough to buy both of us a thousand times over. You had better sober up before you get us in trouble.”
Scandal gave Tull a sidelong look. “I’m not drunk. Don’t you see? They’re the enemy. They’re Crawlies. And here we get into Denai, and see factory after factory filled with Thralls, see thousands of Blade Kin, and all of them are Thralls who don’t have the balls or the brains to kill their masters, and when we do see a human, they are just fat people dressed like peacocks and owls and butterflies. My God, I’m disgusted. Let them be afraid of me for once.”
Scandal led him to a clothier and bought himself some new clothes, a red sequin jacket with black britches and a dazzling white shirt—until he was dressed as fancy as any other strutting lout they’d seen in town, and then they went back down to the docks to and found some inns that were much more homey than the Crystal Palace.
In civilized towns, every inn had a balcony, and if the women wore short enough dresses, the patrons could stand down on the street and glimpse half of what they were bargaining for, and if the women leaned over the balcony, the patron could view the rest.
Scandal said, “When shopping for a whore, wait until they lean over the balcony. If you can climb up to the second story by hooking onto the girl’s bra strap, you’ve found a good one.”
It wasn’t long until Scandal found a huge busty human woman in middle age, and he shouted up at her, “There’s one! Definitely mammalian, definitely mammalian!”
The woman laughed uproariously, then shouted, “I’ll show you mammalian.”
To Tull’s astonishment, she pulled out a full breast and squeezed it, teasing dribbles of milk out.
Scandal laughed and danced beneath her, his tongue out, trying to catch a drop. All of the other whores roared with laughter as it were a great show, but Tull stood aside, and suddenly felt an infinite sadness.
He’d seldom witnessed such perversity.
A few moments earlier, he’d seen innocent Neanderthal children playing by the roadside, much as they might have in his own hometown at Smilodon Bay, and he had almost imagined that he could live here among them.
Yet the people were so garish, so unrestrained. They reveled in savagery, and if they behaved this way in public, he wondered what they might do in private.
How did they become this way? he wondered.
A dozen orange-haired Thralls watched Scandal, and one young man whispered softly, “Disgusting. He acts like a Roughian.”
Tull glanced at them, mildly annoyed. Their own society was so corrupt, how could they criticize the folk of the Rough? How had they even guessed?
Tull tried to deflect their suspicions. “Please, Friend, think no ill of him. It is only drink that makes him act like this.
“He is the kindest master I have ever known. Why, you can search Craal and never find a man his equal. Every male Thrall in his service—even the dimwit who can only peel parsnips in the kitchens and drool—he loves them as if they were his sons. He treats every wench as if she were his own daughter. If the laws allowed, he would free us in a moment. Why, every night I pray that the gods let him live for another hour, another day. I would lay down my life for him.
“Please, Friends, your words are … so unjust.”
The Thralls eyed Scandal with new respect. “Forgive me,” one begged. “We meant no harm. I’ve never heard of so kindly a master.”
Up on the balcony, Scandal tried to climb a trellis to reach the whore, but the lattices snapped. She laughed in delight at Scandal’s antics, ran into her room, and grabbed a leather whip and threw one end over the balcony for Scandal to climb.
He grunted and sweated a moment, trying to pull his bulk up, and finally yelled, “I’ll be up shortly, My Sweet Mammal.” He hiked up his britches, then trudged into the inn with Tull following behind.
Tull squinted in the gloom. The place was old, and all the wood had grown dark with age. A plaque over one table claimed it had been built six centuries earlier. Scandal called to the innkeeper for his finest brew. The innkeeper brought it, and watched as Scandal tasted a sip.
Scandal sat back and drank. “Why, sir, how marvelous! Who’d have thought one could perfect the art of fermenting dog urine.”
The innkeeper shook his head at Scandal in outrage. Scandal said, “I’ll want a room for the night, with a woman—the big one with the chestnut hair.”
“That will be three steel eagles.”
Scandal smiled, drew out three steel eagles. The fellow gestured for them to wait at a stool, then said, “I’ll inform that madam that her lover awaits.…” He trudged up a staircase.
Tull was left to wait and wonder where he might sleep for the night. As they stood there alone, a young Thrall boy crept into the bar, a child of nine or ten with orange hair and a furrowed brow. He’d been among those who had been watching Scandal’s antics outside.
He wore rags, yet the child looked familiar to Tull, and Tull wondered if the boy were someone taken slave from Smilodon Bay.
The boy addressed Scandal in a thick Pwi accent, avoiding long vowels, “Friend, see you outside. Friend buy girl whore?”
“Ayaah,” Scandal drawled, furrowing his brow. “I’m buying me a whore.”
“For the price you will spend on her, Friend could buy me. Friend could have me every …”
“You mean buy you from your master?” Scandal asked.
The boy nodded, his yellow eyes wide with fear.
“No, I don’t sleep with little boys,” Scandal said.
“Please,” the boy said, “Me good slave. Make Friend happy!” He reached down and stroked the inside of Scandal’s thigh.
“No,” Scandal said, shaking his head firmly. Scandal slapped his hand away.
The boy grabbed Scandal’s coat. “Master beat me bad. Please buy me.”
“No!” Scandal said, shoving the boy back.
The young boy turned and fled from the inn, but as he stepped into the doorway, a Blade Kin blocked his path, caught him by the arm, and held the child as he struggled to escape.
Tull realized that he should have known that a Blade Kin would be watching. Everywhere in this town, someone was watching.
“Was this child annoying you?” the man asked.
“No,” Scandal said.
“I saw him touch you,” the Blade Kin said. “Did he have your permission?”
Scandal shook his head in confusion. “Yes, I suppose. Look, he’s a nice kid. Let him go. He’s got a rough master who beats him. He just wanted me to buy him.”
The Blade Kin frowned. “He told you this?”
“Yes,” Scandal said.
Tull stiffened. Scandal’s frankness just might get the child killed. Was he too drunk to see this?
“He asked you to buy him, because his master beats him?” the Blade Kin clarified.
“Well … not exactly,” Scandal said, eyes widening as he began to realize the danger.
The Blade Kin grabbed the child’s shoulders, shook him like a terrier with a rat. “This one will be taken for correction!”
“Now, wait a minute,” Scandal said. The Blade Kin stopped dead, as if Scandal had just given him an order. “He didn’t do anything wrong.”
“He slandered his master. He touched you,” the Blade Kin answered. “I must take him for correction.”
“What will you do with him?” Scandal asked.
“His master will decide the punishment for slander.”
The man’s tone said that this was a matter too important for him to decide, yet something in the man’s stance said that any punishment was possible—including death.
“You’re going to let someone who beats the boy and buggers him decide his fate? What is this boy worth?”
“Not much,
” the Blade Kin answered. “Ten platinum eagles.”
“Then tell his master that I’m looking for scullery slaves. I’ll pay him double that for the boy—a hundred silver eagles. Cash.”
The Blade Kin’s nostrils flared, as if he did not believe it. “I will tell him,” the Blade Kin answered, almost as if he wanted to believe it.
Scandal nodded, dismissing them. “See that you do.”
The Blade Kin marched the boy out the door, but held me more gently.
When they’d left, Tull warned, “You can’t buy a slave. You’d never get your registration papers!”
“I know,” Scandal said, and that quick wit shone in his eyes, as if he’d never been drunk. “But his master is hardly likely to beat the boy if he thinks I’ll buy him.”
When the master of the house returned, Scandal ordered dinner and the whore sent up to his room, and excused himself from Tull’s company for the night, leaving Tull to fend for himself.
***
Chapter 28: A Clockmaker’s Hands
Tull strode out in the afternoon sun and began wandering the streets of Denai aimlessly. After an hour, he found the ghettos of the city down by the docks, where the more worthless Thralls, those who were stupid or insane or deformed but who still could provide a minimal amount of service, lived in packing crates without walls. Old blanket, tarpaulins, or bits of tar paper were all that served as roofs for the crates.
Dully, he realized that what he had first thought were packing crates weren’t even that. They were cages, old cages, that had probably once been used to transport slaves.
It had grown cold outside as the wind blew. Tull thought, People will freeze here this winter.
Anger began to burn inside him. He had spent his whole life afraid of these people.
He wandered among a crowd of hungry children who had despair in their faces, and realized that here in Denai he had found a city that was, in many ways, just like Smilodon Bay.
There was wealth here, greater wealth than he had ever seen. And there was despair here, greater despair than he had ever seen.
Darkness began to fall, and with it came a rain so cold it fell as slush. The Thralls that he passed looked at the sky and hissed in dismay at the unseasonable weather.
The rich humans began turning out more often, as if they were creatures of the night who only stirred now that darkness had fallen.
Up on Painted Mountain, the hill turned dark and black. As the humans descended from their homes in the hills, lines of Thralls walked before them carrying torches. Women glittering with gems paced between armed guards—beautiful Thrall warriors in crisp black uniforms whose eyes held the confident gleam that belongs only to elite killers.
Tull retreated from the brightly lit inns where the humans gathered and sought out darker corners of town. In the heart of the ghettos, Tull found Thrall men who gambled around a ring on the ground in the rain, trying to toss coins into a single bottle. The first to hit the bottle collected all the coins on the ground.
Tull wondered at this, for the Thralls could not own property, but he found that they were buying “favor.” Any man with enough money could purchase a female whose ownership would then be transferred to his master. It was perhaps the nearest thing to taking a wife, and any children born to such a union would be raised as slaves.
Among the gamblers, he saw avarice and poverty at their cruelest. The whole section of town smelled of stale urine and sweat, and was brimming with brutish Thralls, whores and gamblers, cutthroats and dreamers.
Tull walked the streets for hours in amazement, for Denai was a hellhole and he did not see any chains. Surely no sane person would stay here for a day, he reasoned, unless they were forced.
But there were no humans with guns, no one but the Thralls themselves—their fearsome Blade Kin—to keep the people caged.
Tull worried about finding a place to sleep, but he did not know where a Thrall would sleep. Surely, one’s owner provided such things, yet Scandal had neglected to get a room for Tull.
In the dark, as slush turned to snow, Tull walked down the street in the merchant’s quarter and came upon a clock shop.
Tull had only seen two clocks in his life, so he peered in the windows, staring at a small but intricate timepiece with a crystal on the front that allowed him to see the hundreds of tiny gears and springs.
Tull stared. It was a marvelous thing—the kind of contraption that only a human could make, using his clever little hands with thumbs and fingers that could grip small objects.
The window displayed marvelous little gold clocks shaped like daisies, with petals that unfolded to reveal the clock face. He saw a clock made of wood, the kind you would hang upon a wall, with bushes and trees all carved from a single slab of redwood. While he watched it, two wooden trees separated, and a sabertooth jumped out from behind the bushes to roar, and when it went back behind the bushes, a mastodon stepped out from behind some other bushes to trumpet, followed by a tyrant bird that leapt up from some trees to flap its wings and croak.
Tull laughed aloud, for it would have easily taken him six months to carve the wooden pieces for the forest, and he had no idea how the creatures had made their sound.
In the back of the shop, he spotted a Thrall working under the light of a lantern. At first, Tull assumed he was cleaning up, but the Thrall had an instrument made of two pieces of curved metal, hooked at the center with a hinge, and he was using this instrument to manipulate tiny gears and springs as he placed them onto a clock frame that was clamped to a board. A Neanderthal was making clocks!
Tull stood watching the Thrall for a moment, and tears began to stream down his eyes. He became aware that his own big clumsy hands were on the window glass, and he held them out and looked at them. I could make a clock using these hands, Tull thought. I could hold a human needle, and use it to sew an arm or a shirt.
Tull went into the shop, and the Thrall hardly bothered to look up. Tull picked up a small silver daisy clock. Folded, it was no larger than his thumbnail, and it had a small fastener so that it could fit onto a chain. Tull pushed its button and watched the silver petals unfold to reveal a golden face. He walked over to the Thrall, who was putting a tiny gear in place.
From a back room, a human opened a curtain, a tall thin man who at once reminded Tull of Phylomon, except that this man looked old. He glanced at Tull, and then his eyes searched the room. “Did you come in here alone?” he asked. The Thrall clockmaker looked up at Tull in surprise. “What are you doing with that?” the human asked, snatching the clock from Tull’s hands.
“I …” Tull started.
The human backed away from Tull, as if Tull were some rabid dog ready to bite, and headed for the door. The Thrall behind the counter whispered quietly, “Run! Run!” but Tull was too flustered to think.
When the human got to the door, he opened it and shouted, “Watch! Watch! Help!” and Tull bolted. He rushed for the door and pushed the human. The old man staggered backward, crashing through a glass window. Tull hit the street sprinting.
The Blade Kin were already there, rushing from the shadows. In the darkness, they were as black as tarantulas. He heard shouts in the dark, but the frigid rain pelted his eyes and the streets were dark and he could not see well. Tull rushed blindly down the street until a black shadow rose up in front of him. The man reached to draw his broadsword, and Tull lunged past before the Blade Kin’s sword could clear its sheath. Tull heard a snapping sound, and something slapped his ankle, ripping his leg from under him.
Tull sprawled forward, and pain lanced through his left ankle. He sat up and found the end of the whip entwined around his legs. He tried to pull it off, but the whip had tiny barbs, like fishhooks, sewn into it, and dozens of them were embedded into his flesh. He succeeded only in breaking some of the barbs.
“You won’t get it off so easily,” the Blade Kin said. Tull looked into the Blade Kin’s face.
An electric light glowed down the street, and the man’s d
eadly eyes glittered in the reflected light. On his chest, the Blade Kin wore a badge with the emblem of a sword and a star above it. Six Blade Kin rushed up an circled them with drawn swords, and Tull didn’t dare move.
“What is your name? Who is your master?” someone asked.
“Pu Tchixila,” Tull said, hoping Scandal would remember the bogus name. “My master is Theron Scandal. He’s … he’s whoring.”
“Where?”
“At an inn, by the waterfront. I don’t know the name, but I can take you there.”
The Blake Kin who held the whip nodded to an inferior, “Xitah, notify Theron Scandal that we caught Pu Tchixila in a restricted area, and that he hit a human. Tell Lord Scandal he can pick up what’s left of his slave in the morning, at the docks.”
***
Chapter 29: The Trial
The Blade King named Xitah sheathed his sword and began to stroll leisurely toward the inns at the bay. Finding Scandal was a job that might take hours.
Tull almost asked the Blade Kin to hurry, but knew it was useless. The Blade Kin all watched Tull with morbid curiosity, and he sensed … eagerness in them. They were a pack of wild dogs, and he was a wild pig that they had cornered.
Down the street one Blade Kin helped dust glass from the shop owner’s shirt.
“You are lucky you did not hurt him,” the one with the whip said. “Trespass. Theft. Assault. Nothing more.”
“I stole nothing,” Tull said. “I meant to steal nothing. I only picked up a clock to look at it.”
“You had no business in a human shop,” the Blade Kin growled. “You must have been stealing.”
“I … I went in, because I saw a Thrall making clocks. I’ve always wanted to use my hands like that … to make small things, the way humans do. I didn’t know it was a restricted area.”
Tull watched the Blade Kin’s eyes and he saw them soften. “For saying that, you have saved your hands. We forgive the charge of theft.”
The Blade Kin touched a white disk around his neck. “Thrall Pu Tchixila arrested on charges of trespass, assault upon a human.”
Serpent Catch: Book Two of the Serpent Catch Series Page 17