"Katherine Kerr - Deverry 04 - Dragonspell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Kerr Katherine)

Of course, all this splendour was paid for dearly in human lives, because Myleton was the centre of
the slave trade in the northern islands. With enough money and a little patience a buyer could find any
sort of person there, from a scribe to a midwife to a labourer - even, on occasion, a barbarian from
Deverry, though they were rare. The laws were very strict on such matters: Deverrians could be sold into
slavery only for certain limited offences against the state, such as non-payment of very large debts,
destruction of public property on a grand scale, or cold-blooded, premeditated murder. The archons of
the various city-states had no desire to see a war fleet of blood-thirsty barbarians sailing their way on the
excuse of rescuing some unjustly treated kinsman.

Thus, such exotic purchases were best made not in the public slave markets down near the harbour,
where prisoners of war, criminals, and the offspring of state-owned slaves were auctioned off according
to a registered bidding schedule, but in the smaller, private establishments scattered around Myleton.
There was one such not far from the harbour, on the other side of the Plaza of Government, where a
narrow, treeless alley twisted between back garden walls. As it went along, the walls grew lower until
they disappeared altogether, and the houses, smaller and poorer until they degenerated into a maze of
huts and kitchen gardens, with here and there pigsties, each home to a clutch of small grey-haired pigs.

Finally the alley gave a last twist and debouched into an open square where weeds pushed aside
sparse cobbles and chickens scratched, squawking every now and then at the small children who played
among them. On the other side was a high wall, striped in blue and red and obviously part of a
compound, with an iron-bound door in the middle. Although there was no sign or name carved into the
soft wood, those who knew about such things would recognize the place as BrindemoтАЩs market. Those
who didnтАЩt know were best off leaving it alone.

Yet, on the inside the compound was no dark and sinister house of horrors. There was an open yard
with scruffy grass and ill-tended flowers where during the day the slaves could take the sun, and clean if
somewhat shabby dormitories where each piece of valuable property had his or her own bed, and a
wash-house where anyone who wanted could bathe at his or her leisure. Although the food was by no
means of the same high quality as would grace a rich manтАЩs table, there was plenty of it, and Brindemo
and his family ate from the same batch as the merchandise. It was just that Brindemo was known in
certain circles for buying slaves that other traders would refuse, slaves whose bills of sale were perhaps
not quite in order, slaves who came to him drugged and unable to protest their condition - that sort of
thing, perhaps legal, most likely not. Occasionally some unsuspecting beggar lad with no family to miss
him had gone into BrindemoтАЩs for a hand-out of bread and never been seen again.

It was, then, a good measure of the strictness of the laws governing the sale of barbarians that when
one came his way with a bill of sale that was less than perfect, Brindemo hesitated to sell him. Ordinarily
he would have shopped such a prize around to the great houses of Myleton straightaway and asked a
good high price for him, too. The barbarian was in his early twenties, extremely handsome with
raven-dark hair and cornflower-blue eyes, courteous with a grace that bespoke some contact with the
aristocracy, and best of all, he already knew a fair amount of Bardekian and was learning more with a
speed that indicated a rare facility for languages. He would make, in short, a splendid footman with a
chance to work his way up to majordomo someday, a valued member of the household who would
eventually be given his freedom and adopted into the clan.

Unfortunately, there was that bill of sale, and the profoundly uncomfortable fact that the slave couldnтАЩt
even remember his own name. Taliaesyn, his previous owners had called him, but he readily admitted that
the name meant nothing to him. He could remember nothing at all, not his family, not his home city -
indeed, no more than a few scraps about his life beyond the day heтАЩd been sold. Since his previous