The Valiant (The Valiant #1)(29)
I curled my fingers into fists at my sides to keep from clawing at the iron circle. She might have been content to live life as a slave, but I was the daughter of a king. And I would find that warrior girl inside me again and find a way to set her free.
“We could try to find a scarf to cover it.”
“No!” I shook my head. “No. I would prefer whoever buys me to know exactly what it is they’re getting.”
I saw a glimmer of respect in the woman’s gaze as she reached out and patted a stray lock of my hair into place. “Then you’re ready to go.”
XIII
THE FORUM. The marketplace of Rome. Except it wasn’t so much a place as it was a violent assault on the senses. The crush of people and animals was terrifying—so loud, I thought my eardrums would burst—and that was while I was still hidden away in one of the covered wagons Charon transported his slaves to market in.
The men and women I’d traveled with for weeks, while not all given the same kind of elaborately costumed treatment as Elka and me, had at least been polished up to some degree. One or two of the handsomer lads wore only loincloths with wide, ornamented belts, and they had been oiled so that their muscles gleamed. I saw that the girl with dark hair who had given me her slippers was wrapped in a sheath so sheer that the sunlight shone through it. I was happy to see that she also had new leather sandals that laced up her calves.
As the wagon rattled along, the wheels clattering over the paving stones of Roman streets, I could hear the wagon drivers shouting at the buyers and sellers crowding the Forum to make way. The tumbled strains of many different kinds of music floated over the general chaos—bells and drums and flutes, voices raised in song—and, again, I was torn between fear and curiosity. I peeked out between the curtains and saw what awaited us.
Market day.
The wagon rumbled to a stop, and I could see that a raised wooden stage and temporary wooden seating had been built along one side of the plaza. The stands were already full to capacity. In the back row, people were shaded from the morning sun beneath colorful fabric awnings suspended on long poles held by slaves. The whole scene boasted a kind of festival air that reminded me of Lughnasa and made me long for home. I could feel waves of anticipation surging off the crowd, as if they waited for a troupe of performers.
Gruoch shouldered me aside so she could also peer through the gap in the curtains. She made a little noise in the back of her throat and muttered, “Huh. The Collector is here. That should make for an interesting bit of bidding.”
“The Collector?” I asked. “What’s that?”
“Not what. Who. His name is Pontius Aquila.” She pointed with one gnarled finger at a man with sharp features and silvering hair seated in the second row of the stands. He sat beneath a fringed shade, tended to by an oiled, muscular slave. Aquila’s robes were also fringed and banded with a purple stripe. He glared above the heads of the audience as if their presence were not worth acknowledging.
“He’s a politician with a fancy title, the so-called Tribune of the Plebs, but he’s as base as they come.” She snorted. “No manners, and rich off other people’s money. But he knows a valuable piece of flesh when he sees it. And he’ll stop at nothing to add to his collection once he does. I’ve seen his bullyboys start brawls at the auctions if he’s outbid.”
I only understood half of what she was saying and couldn’t tell if it was truth or just gossip. But my stomach turned queasy at the thought of a man like that haggling over the price of my life. Not that there was anything I could do about it in that moment. As the audience settled themselves, a portly man wearing an outlandish wig of bright orange curls and a voluminous robe stepped forward onto the stage.
“Citizens!” he boomed. “Gather and feast your eyes on this banquet of flesh and fancies! Premium lads and lasses from all corners of the known world.”
He prattled on and on, his speech flowery and rapid-fire as he luridly described his wares—us. Eventually, I tuned out the auctioneer and concentrated instead on watching the parade of slaves and the crowd of wealthy Romans who sought to buy them.
The orange-wigged auctioneer skillfully badgered and cajoled the crowd into bidding higher and higher sums for each new slave as Charon himself wandered among the patrons, chatting amiably, extolling the virtues of his wares alongside the whistles and bids from buyers and catcalls from onlookers standing at the fringes of the crowd. If Gruoch’s satisfied muttering was to be believed, they all sold for more than the asking price. Charon had clearly seen something in each one of us that I hadn’t.
I wondered what he’d seen in me.
The dark-haired girl—the one who’d told me she’d been a slave all her life and preferred it to a life of uncertainty—surprised me most of all. She’d been kind to me, and I don’t know why, but that made it a shock to discover that, according to the auctioneer’s leering patter, she’d actually been raised in a preeminent whorehouse in western Gaul.
The Cantii, like most of the tribes of Prydain, had always kept slaves. We bought and sold them the same way as we did our cattle. Slaves had meant swept floors and lit fires and clean water carried in heavy clay pots. I was ashamed to admit I had never given them much thought. They just . . . were. I had been so very blind. And stupid. And now I was learning what it was like to have someone else decide my fate.