Charpon smiled dismissively. My days of possessing servants were obviously numbered.
“Where do you come from?”
I said, “Northward, and something westward.”
“Beyond the wall of rock?”
I remembered the great cliffs across the sea. Probably the traders had heard of northlands, but had not gone so far for centuries.
“Yes, The shore of ancient cities.”
“Ah.” He seemed to recognize it, contemptuously. No
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doubt he knew little of it, poor trading land, a jumble of barbaric tribes and ruins.
I could smell his rough cunning, his shrewd greed, foresaw, with no recourse to magic, that he would use me where and how he reckoned most profitable. And I wondered briefly if I could read his mind-I did not know my limits, my power might stretch to anything. Yet I shrank from that ultimate intrusion, that floundering among the swamps and sewers of another’s brain, and did not attempt the feat. Reluctant as I was, I hardly think I could have managed it in any case.
Charpon did not seem inclined to question my grasp of the Masrian language. Probably he believed the whole world should speak it, to the greater glory of his illegitimate sires. He tapped with the whip handle, and a sailor brought me a pot of water with some bitter alcohol mixed hi it. No offering was given Long-Eye; when I shared the ration with him, Charpon seemed tickled.
“We can’t conduct you home,” he said to me. “We make for the Sun’s Road, the way to the capital of the south. You’d best come with us. It will broaden your experience, sir.” He was attempting polite, sarcastic humor. His four seconds, well-dressed bullies, one missing an eye, grunted.
“I agree to that, but I can’t pay you,” I said. “Perhaps I can work my passage?”
“Oh, indeed you shall. But first, come to the ship-house, sir, and share my dinner.”
His smiling and unlikely courtesy would have warned the slowest fool of tricks in the offing. Yet, in the capacity of intimidated flotsam, everything lost, adrift on his clemency, I thanked him and followed him, companioned by his bully boys, Long-Eye a pace behind me.
The ship-house lay aft, constructed of iron-wood and painted indigo, but the door was pure wrought iron with brass fitments. I could hardly resist the idea such a door had mutiny in mind. Inside was a great beamed room with plush couches built in along the walls, and piled with spotted and striped pelts, and cushions and drapes better suited to a brothel. A luxurious twist to Charpon’s granite. I could picture the master lolling at his leisure, the incense burners smoking and his whip to hand, ready for action of one kind or another.
The obligatory statuette of Masrimas, gilded bronze, fine work, stood in an alcove looking on with eyes of nacre shell, a flame fluttering before it.
We sat at Charpon’s table, I and the four seconds; Long-
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Eye he let crouch near my chair on the rugs. Three youths brought the food. Conscripted in childhood for this hell of a life, they were bound to it for ten years by Masrian law unless they were sharp and desperate enough to run away in some port. Two were handsome under their dirt, and one knew his luck. He flirted a little, surreptitiously, with the Lauw-yess, brushing the master’s arm with his body as he set down the platters in then” scoops. Charpon pushed him aside, as if irritated by the proximity, but he was taking note. The boy was clever, if he could make it last. Though small and slight, of the old Hessek blood to judge by his sour-pale complexion, he had already got a Masrian name: Melkir. He looked at me with cultivated scorn, the precariously safe dissociating himself from the damned.
Birds had fallen part-dead on the ship’s deck when the vessel entered the storm’s eye. The sailors had wrung their necks and now served them up stewed. The worshipers of the Flame did not sully fire by putting carcasses in it to cook; only meat boiled in water in a pot, or baked in a container, was allowed, thus keeping it the required distance from the god.
Charpon urged me to gorge, for, as ever, I ate sparingly; he told me I must get back my strength. Yet, he remarked, I was certainly no weakling to have survived; my servant, too. How long had I been in the water? I told him some lie of the boat’s capsizing later than it had. Still he marveled. Most men, this much in the sea, would be spoiled for anything. Masrimas had blessed me and preserved me for the ship.
I asked him, casually, what work I might do about the galley to recompense him. He supposed me scared, no doubt, trying to learn my destiny by degrees. He said I should not do common crew work. Then I knew for sure he meant me for the rowers’ deck.
I turned and said to Long-Eye in the tongue of the Dark People, “He intends us to embrace the oar. Watch him.”
Charpon said decidedly, “You will speak Masrian.”
“My servant speaks only his own language.”
“No matter. It’s better you do as I say.”
His bullies laughed. One said to me, “You must have been a fine prince among the barbarians. Did you save any jewels from your skiff?”
I told the man I had nothing. Another put a hand into my hair.
“There’s always this. If the young barbarian lord were to
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shear his fleece, there’s many an old whore in Bar-Ibithni would pay a gold chain for a wig of it.”
I moved slightly to look at this man-his name was Kochus-as he fondled me. His eyes widened. He snatched his hand off as if he had been burned and his face went gray. The rest were drinking and never noticed it.
Since the miracle in the sea, my abilities seemed loosened in the sheath, more ready. I was confronted by choices. I could mesmerize the roomful of villains, kill or stun them with a white energy of my brain, or perform some other magician’s trick of terror to set them gaping with fear.
Feeling myself omnipotent, with leisure to spare, was my foolishness. A sudden scuffle from behind alerted me, but too late. Something struck me on the skull, hard enough to jar my brains.
I was sufficiently aware, however, to realize I was going to the below-decks after all, a substitute for some storm-death.
I was dragged. A hatch was pulled up, some words were exchanged regarding new flesh for dead flesh. I was lowered and left to lie in a stinking dark, the anus of despair. The oarsmen stretched in corpse-sleep, groaning and mewing as they rowed in their dreams. Long-Eye tumbled close to me. The hatch slammed shut.
After a while, lamplight shone through my lids. The Overseer of Oars was bending above me, together with the Drummer-the man whose task it was to beat out time for the oar-strokes. A pace behind them stood one of the two “Comforters,” those essentials of any slave galley, their work being to patrol the ramp between the rowing benches, and “comfort,” with their flails, any who fell behind in the labor. Compared to those flails, Charpon’s whip was a velvet ribbon. Every instrument had three strings to it of corded leather toothed with iron spikes. My eyes were shut and my head clamored; I formed a cerebral rather than a physical picture of these men through their mutterings and movements, and later from my own experience. It was partly disappointing to me to find them so exactly predictable. Like a child’s drawing of a monster, each was inevitably what one would expect, barely human, a perfect prototype of depraved viciousness and myopic ignorance.
“This one is very strong,” the Overseer remarked, kneading me like a hard dough.
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The Drummer said indifferently, “They don’t always last, Overseer, even the strong ones.”
Somewhere, one of the rowers called out indistinctly for water, in a dream. There was the crack of a flail. The nearest Comforter laughed.
Long-Eye was examined next, and the same words were brought out. Presented with a line of fifty unconscious potential rowers, no doubt they would have mouthed the inanities over and over: This one strong. Even strong ones don’t last.
Two Comforters picked me up. They handled me indifferently, without interest since I was not yet properly aware, alive, receptive, the love affair not yet begun between us. The tough, stubborn slaves they liked the best, the men who flung around snarling at the flails, struggling in their shackles, furious to get free and kill the tormentor, to no avail.
Soon enough, they found an empty place for me.
A man was lying under the bench in his chains, his chest rustily heaving and creaking as he slept. His dead mate had been unbolted and got rid of some hours ago.