by B A Simmons
“Patrizia! Thank Ayday!”
The crowd, taken aback at what they saw, now shouted at the Falcon girl also. She took Edwin’s hand and after exchanging a few sharp words with the men, led him down the street to her home; finding safety within its walls.
“Edwin, what were you doing here? It’s not safe for foreigners,” Patrizia said.
“I can see that now, but I was in fact on my way to see you. Well… and your grandfather. I’ve brought more of my elixir.”
Patrizia smiled, though her eyes still showed worry. “My grandfather will be pleased. I will tell him to send porters to the docks to fetch your supply and provide you with payment. You must leave Porto Profundo as soon as possible.”
“Why? What is going on?”
Her green eyes stared into his for a moment before speaking. “I am sorry. I would have you stay longer, but there are problems in the royal court. A man named Cerare, he is a nephew to the emperor, he makes accusations against foreigners. He says you are… what is the word? Indebolendo... ah, making weak our government.”
“He says that foreigners are making your government weak? How are we supposed to be doing that?” Edwin asked.
“That is not important. There are many who believe him. The fight out there was between those and the few merchants who rely on business with foreigners. They recognized you as a foreign merchant and will kill you if they can. You must leave.”
“Patrizia, I will go. Though... I wish...”
She smiled again at him. “Perhaps in another day. Perhaps in a different place.”
“Have you ever considered leaving King’s Isle? I could take you to another island.”
She shook her head. “I cannot leave. There is too much to do here.”
Edwin could not hide the disappointment he felt. Patrizia leaned forward and gave him a quick kiss. He blushed and grinned, but had no time for embarrassement. She took his hands and led him through the house to a room where she searched through garments as though she were choosing a gown for a ball. These were not women’s clothing. Rather, she selected from the room a loud green and white tunic with a matching hoop-shaped hat.
“Put these on,” she commanded.
Edwin hesitated. “Um... here, in front of you?”
She laughed and Edwin decided he could listen to that sound for the rest of his life.
“No, just put them on over your clothes.”
He did so and felt rather ridiculous for not realizing what she meant. She turned him so that he could see himself in a gilded mirror on the opposite wall. Edwin grimaced and felt even more ridiculous at the sight of himself in the courtiers outfit.
“I look like a meecher.”
“You look like a Falcon merchant. Just be sure to smile and nod to whatever anyone says to you. Do not speak a word or you will be beaten to death.”
Edwin took her words to heart and kept his mouth shut as they left the d’Benicia house and again took to the streets of the capital. The fight had ended, or perhaps moved on to another part of the city. They saw a wounded man being attended by women wearing the silver and black robes of the Servi while city guards watched over them. Patrizia wound her arm through Edwins and kept a smile on her own face. They walked toward alien town showing neither haste nor leisure in their pace.
Just past the university, a voice called out, “Patrizia!”
They both turned to see a young man in a guard’s uniform approaching at a quick pace. He stood taller than Edwin and his shoulders, perhaps augmented by the armor he wore, displayed muscles that Edwin lacked. His eyes smiled as he looked at Patrizia and darkened somewhat when they shifted to him.
“Patrizia, che ci fai qui?” he asked.
Patrizia held out an admonishing finger. “In Engle, Ludo.”
The young man called Ludo again cast a quizzical glance at Edwin and said, “There are men fighting in the streets. You should not be here. And why do I need to speak Engle? Is it because of him?”
“Ludo, this is Edwin Johnson. He is the merchant from Isle de James that works with my grandfather.”
“Oh yes, I remember when you came to our Engle class at the university.”
“You were there, were you? Wonderful.”
Ludo’s skepticism melted into humor and he grinned at Edwin.
“I am escorting him back to his ship, can you come with us? It would help ensure he is not harmed.”
“I am sorry, but I must stay with my unit. You cannot go through the gate into alien town. They have closed it to keep rioters out and the alien merchants in.”
“How will I get back?” Edwin asked.
“There is another way,” Patrizia said. “Thank you, Ludo. I will see you at the next meeting?”
“Yes. Ciao Edwin Johnson.”
Ludo kissed Patrizia’s hand before rejoining the other guards. Patrizia wasted no time in changing course to another street. Edwin became lost on the unfamiliar roads and forced himself to trust Patrizia’s sense of direction. They passed by more city guards, who Edwin guessed had been called out in force to quell the violence. A few more signs of the turmoil appeared on their way. An upturned wagon spilled its cargo of fruit all over the street. Guards were doing all they could to keep ragged-looking children from making off with the produce while the frantic merchant and his wife scrambled to salvage it. Several barrels of vinegar had been broken open on the pavement, sending an acrid scent through the town.
After turning a few corners, Edwin saw the harbor and recognized the facades of the warehouses. He continued to follow Patrizia, though with more assurance that they were headed in the right direction. He saw the alien harbor ahead and knew that the Anna Louisa would be there waiting for him.
They had one more obstacle to pass through. A crowd of people gathered in a square situated between warehouses. It did not take long for Edwin to surmise the purpose for the gathering. A wooden platform, like a stage, stood in the middle of the square and on that platform stood people. However, these were no actors. The men stood in a line on one side of the platform while the women stood in a similar line on the other. All were stripped to the waist and wore bronze chains on their wrists and ankles. Other men, clothed in merchant’s garb and standing with batons, pointed to the wretched slaves on display. Members of the crowd raised their hands and called out numbers.
Edwin stopped. The scene brought to his mind the memory of the native Alimians being taken aboard Falcon ships in the small east bay of that island. He remembered the former sheriff’s deputy on Isle de Joc. He remembered and anger swelled inside him.
Patrizia pulled at him; she urged him to continue with her toward his ship. Yet something made Edwin stand and stare with the rest of them. A new group of slaves were brought onto the platform. A group of four men took up a position on the side facing Edwin, their bodies still gleaming from the cold seawater bath they’d been given before being sold. Edwin’s eyes focused on one of their faces. He was unshaven, though the beard was patchy and did nothing to hide his youthful features. His hair covered his brow and his lean body showed more muscle than Edwin would have figured, but he knew the man.
“Patrizia, that’s Rob. That’s Rob Engleman!”
* * *
It was not the architecture nor the landscape that awed Rob when he first saw Porto Profundo. It was the size of the city. Buildings, houses, walls and gates spanned the panorama before him. Even with its depressed mood, shrouded by rain, the city was impressive. In the few moments he had to take it all in before the boatswain commanded him down into the dinghy, he wondered if Doctor Morris had felt the same way when he first came to King’s Isle.
The dinghy took him to a wharf where other Falcon military ships were docked. There he was escorted by the boatswain and a young sailor to the warehouse district. The smell of fish mixed with spices and sweat as dock workers toiled to bring in and take out cargo. The business made the docks of Isle de James look like tiny Port John by comparison.
Up to this point,
Rob had put little concern into what they were going to do with him. He figured he be taken to a military office and turned in for the bounty on him. However, as the boatswain motioned for Rob to follow him into a large odorous warehouse, he realized that these men had no idea who he was. The warehouse’s stench came from the number of live bodies were inside. Men, women and even some adolescent aged children crowded the space. Many laid on cots while others sat upon the straw-strewn floor. Men in armor, carrying thick wooden batons guarded the doors and on occasion harassed a few of the slaves they stood over.
The boatswain showed Rob to a man sitting at a table whose clothes did not fit well in the setting. He examined Rob from the table, asking for him to turn in a circle so as to see all sides. He then negotiated a price; which Rob observed when the peacock of a man counted out ten gold florins into the boatswain’s hand. A guard came and wrote a number on Rob’s arm with a piece of charcoal and he was pushed into the crowd.
There he stayed for three days. By the end of the third day he began to wonder if he would ever see the light of day again. Not only had the storm continued the entire time, drizzling a constant barrage of rain upon tile roof, but the only windows to the warehouse were small and placed high up the walls. Rob began to debate whether the warehouse was worse than the cargo hold.
Early on the morning of the fourth day, a guard roused Rob from sleep with a rude shove while shouting in his face. He was taken to the back of the warehouse where fellow slaves (obeying the commands of the guards) doused him and other prisoners with buckets of seawater. They rubbed him down with rags dipped in lye and then doused again. Rob scratched at the long, thin hair growing on his chin and pushed his hair back out of his face. However, there was no time to preen. More guards arrived and chained Rob to the other men before ushering them out into the street.
A short distance away, a crowd of people gathered in the open area between warehouses. The skies looked clearer with only the occasional drop of rain landing on anyone’s head. The heads of all present tilted up to see the slaves displayed on a large wooden platform at the center of the square. Auctioneers used their own wooden batons to point at a slave while taking bids on him or her. It seemed the day was all about single men and women, or at least those whose families were not enslaved with them.
Rob marched through the crowd to the platform, doing his best to keep in step with the man in front of him while not having to drag the man behind him. Once on the platform, an auctioneer spread them out and addressed the crowd. Doing his best to keep up with the rapid paced talking, Rob figured that he and the men chained to him were all prisoners taken from ‘civilized’ areas. The auctioneer guaranteed that none of them were from Longbeard Isle, nor were they pirates.
Rob had to hide a smirk at the thought that he was about to be sold for far less than he was worth to these people. If they but knew that it was he who had organized the mercenaries and plotted with their enemies at Fallen Dome to fight on Alimia, the bids for him would fly in as these Falcon citizens would all want to exact their revenge upon him. He imagined them storming the platform to lynch him and throw his body to the harbor fish.
Two men were sold before the auctioneer came to Rob. He prodded Rob with the baton, showing off his muscled torso and legs. He grabbed Rob’s hand in his own and made a pitch to the crowd about the callouses there. These proved Rob to be a hard worker, perfect for a farm or perhaps work in the mines.
The bidding started at fifteen florins. A hand went up. It belonged to a young man wearing what Rob thought was an absurd-looking green and white tunic. However, a second hand rose with the word venti. This came from a woman surrounded by uniformed attendants and body guards. Rob wondered how long he could stand it if he was to be turned into one of those.
“Venticinque!” said the young woman standing with the green and white tunic. Were they together? Rob couldn’t be sure.
“Trenta!” said the older woman.
“Trentacinque!”
The two women, one young and beautiful, the other mature and terrible bid against each other until Rob’s price sat at sixty-five florins. The mature woman, her face red with frustration at having to continue bidding on the prize she had claimed, shouted out settanta and glared at the younger woman. However, the younger woman was no longer paying attention. She and her absurdly dressed companion argued in quiet tones while the auctioneer called out for more bids. Hearing none, he shouted “venduto!” and moved on.
A guard pulled Rob away from his chain companions and unlocked the manacles. He was escorted from the platform and taken to a table underneath where one of the woman’s attendants paid the gold for Rob with a bank note. Rob was close enough to see the name Frederic d’Silva written on it.
“Parli Iyty?” the attendant asked Rob.
Rob gave him a scrutinizing look, not intending to seem clueless, but trying to ascertain the most appropriate response. The attendant assumed that no answer mean ‘no’ and began speaking in Engle. His accent was not Falcon, but not of the isles Rob knew.
“You are now the property of Signora Gloria d’Silva and her noble husband. Follow me and do everything I say. If you attempt to run, it will mean death. If you refuse to work, you will be sold again, but to hard labor in the mines. You seem to have pleased our mistress enough that she continued bidding on you, so don’t spoil that. Better to serve the d’Silva family than die painfully and slowly somewhere else.”
“Who are you?” Rob asked.
“I’m the head butler for Signora d’Silva. My name is Corey.”
Rob followed Corey back to the d’Silva entourage where he was chained to a couple of other household slaves. His eyes searched the crowd for the young man and woman who had bid against the Signora, but the crowd had grown and even the bright green and white tunic was nowhere to be seen. He couldn’t understand why, but the young couple looked familiar.
Rob looked past the bodies moving between him and wharf where a familiar looking ship bobbed up and down. Yet there was no way for him to know how close he was to freedom. Signora d’Silva grew tired of the auction and desired to return home. Corey called the servants to order. Four of them lifted their mistress as she sat in a litter, flanked by her guards while the rest followed behind.
“Corey, will you help me learn Iyty?” Rob asked as the group entered through a gate surrounding a spacious garden.
“Yes, the mistress will insist that you learn at least enough to accomplish your duties.”
Rob asked, “Are they cruel people?”
“Cruel?” Corey said.
“How well do they treat you and the other servants?”
“I was a farmer on Isabel Isle when the empire came. My crops had failed for the third season in a row. I lost my wife to child birth because she was not physically strong enough to bring the child out. My other children were gaunt, starving. My life here is better than that.”
“I’m sorry your life before this was so bad, but you didn’t answer my question.”
Corey shot a warning expression at Rob and turned to the other recent acquisitions. “Follow me to your quarters. You will bathe and shave before receiving your garments and duties.”
The garden opened to a courtyard which served as a large porch for the most exquisite house Rob had ever seen. The architecture displayed the wealth of the d’Silva family with external balconies along the alabaster walls and a white slate roof. Yet Rob noticed that the pitch of the roof channeled the rain into cisterns and all the balconies were higher up the walls with crenulated railings. None of the lower windows were wide enough for a man to fit through and the mid-level windows were guarded with iron bars, the value of which was greater than all the slate on the roof.
Corey led them around the house while Signora d’Silva and her guards entered the main door. Behind the house, separated by a flower-bordered lawn, was the servants’ barracks. The women and any children lived on the upper floors while single men were quartered in the basement level. Rob soon
came to understand that several of the single men were, in fact, married, but they either knew nothing of their wives’ whereabouts, or were separated by ownership. A man called Jerry, who had been in the service of the d’Silva family for more than seven years, was allowed to see his wife once a week. She and their two children served another family less than a mile away.
“After our servitude is over, we can become citizens of the empire.” He told Rob while waiting for him to finish shaving. “Perhaps we’ll go back to Isabel Isle. Alimia sounds nice, so I’m told. At least for farmers and miners.”
Rob questioned him on that. “You aren’t concerned about the pirates there? The Hellhound Consortium?”
“Pirates? I heard they were all defeated, ships sunk and the rest of them ran away.”
“Who told you that?”
Jerry gave a furtive look around before speaking in a hushed tone. “Once you get a grasp of Iyty, don’t let on about it. The master and mistress don’t think I understand them as well as I do. They talk about things while I’m waiting on them.”
Rob nodded in agreement for this was the plan he’d already decided upon. While he had no idea when, or even if, he would make his escape, he figured he might as well gather information while he was there.
Clean shaven, bathed and dressed in a new uniform bearing the d’Silva family crest, Rob was prepared to work. Jerry became his tutor in servitude and instructed him on the proper way to set the table and serve meals. It was strange to Rob that anyone, even royalty, put such emphasis on the pageantry of eating. Yet he was scolded by Corey when the butler found he’d placed the wrong knife next to each place.
“These are used for spreading jams or butter, not for cutting food! Fix this before the Signora sees it and sends our hides to the tanner.”
Rob couldn’t help but smirk a bit as he replaced the silverware at the four settings and then watched Jerry demonstrate the proper preparation of the platters and bowls. The shutters of a small window between the kitchen and the dining room opened and the savory smells of roasted meat, baking bread and boiled vegetables mixed together and wafted into Rob’s nostrils. His own hunger struck him like a stone from a sling. He heard his stomach growl as did Jerry also.