Eyes Like Sky And Coal And Moonlight (18 page)

As we went north, the weather became more and more winter-like. We all found the cold and damp excruciating. Clothing and blankets were at a premium, and many traded favors or begged bits of clothing from the sailors. Petro gave me his second-best jacket, which he said he had grown too paunchy for. It hung loose on me, but I was glad of the overabundance of the fabric.

We did not sit out on the deck any more, and so I did not witness our approach to the port of Tabat. Waiting in the darkness, I strained my ears to make out what I could: the cries of gulls, echoed by the shouts of Humans, the creak of the ship’s timbers and the swish of water, the slap of waves.

When I left the ship, Petro had tears in his eyes as he waved to me, but I did not think much of him. All my worries were engaged by what was to come. Under the watchful eye of the Captain, we made our way down the gangplank that led from the ship to the dock, shivering in the bitter sea wind, uncertain of our fate.

Part V

We arrive in Tabat—the fate of the dragon—I am sold—my new mistress—I am taken to Piper Hill

We were driven to a vast marketplace, a single roof stretched across hundreds of feet, and six raised platforms where the Beasts and each platform’s Human auctioneer stood. Inside the walls, among the press of the crowd, it was much warmer, so warm that I felt in danger of fainting. The crowd pressed on every side, and the smells were oppressive.

I saw the Sphinx and others of my fellow captives sold. Then came the Dragon, which they hauled up onto the block in chains. The great iron muzzle was clamped around its jaws so it still could not speak, but it rolled its eyes in fury and tried to flap its wings.

Alas! It had been denuded of those members and only stumps remained, treated with cautery and tar bandages. At the time I wondered at the savagery of such a gesture and later learned it is customary with Beasts that possess the power of flight, lest they come loose, since in such cases they invariably fly away as quickly as they can.

The bidding for the Dragon came fast and furious. At length it was sold and dragged away. The bidding was shorter in my case, and after a quick interchange, I was shoved in line behind my purchaser.

She was a lean woman with dark hair worn in an ornate braid wrapped around her head. Her skin was darker than my own and she was significantly shorter. She gestured at me to follow her, flanked by her guard, a shaggy-headed Minotaur who eyed me wordlessly. His arms were as big around as my chest, or so it seemed to me.

She bought another Beast, a Dog-man. He and I walked in new sets of chains behind a cart heaped with produce and other goods. I did not speak his language, nor he mine, and so we did not communicate much as we progressed along. At noon, we stopped to rest, and the woman and minotaur ate lunch, although only drinks from a water skin were given to the dog-man and me.

We arrived at our destination by early evening. A series of white-washed buildings sat atop a cliffside overlooking a small river. The houses seemed quite grand to me at the time, but after I had lived there for some time, I came to see that it was older, and had not been well tended. The bushes in the once lavish garden were overgrown, and in places the faster-growing ones had choked back the shyer, less-assuming plants. The garden grew all manner of medicinal herbs—some outright, others hidden between tree roots or in the shadows of the crumbling rock wall. The outer walls were shaggy with peeling paint, and the gutters drooped as though unable to bear the slightest thought of rain. This was Piper Hill, my new home, which it has remained until now.

Part VI

Jolietta begins my training—I am broken to harness—Brutus and Caesar—the dwarf dragons—I am sent out to work—I fall ill—I speak my feelings and am punished

I soon settled into life at Piper Hill. I set about learning the language as quickly as I could, stung by both Jolietta’s scorn and her lash when she did not think I was applying myself as hard as I could. Jolietta showed me how to work in tandem with another Centaur that she had in her stables, named Michael.

You would think that an intelligent creature would have little trouble with the concept of the harness, but the truth is that it required strength and dexterity that had not been developed in me by all my confined days aboard the slave ship.

My physical dexterity was also hampered by my injuries. The day after we arrived at the estate, Jolietta had me tied and whipped until the blood flowed. She told me that we should begin as we meant to go on and that to disobey her would be to get whipped again.

She demanded to know if I understood her. By now I could make out what she said, for it was the same language many of the sailors had spoken. She went on to tell me my name would continue to be Phillip, as that was the name written on my papers of ownership, but that if I dissatisfied her, she was quite capable of changing my name to something much more degrading.

By way of example, she was in the process of training an oracular pig, and she called that unfortunate being “Thing” and insisted that we all do the same, although the information quickly passed among us that the pig’s birth name was Tirza.

I watched Tirza’s training in tandem with my own, and found her sullen example a warning sign of my fate should I rebel too overtly. Like most of her kind, Tirza could speak aloud, as though she were Human, a clear soprano which I had the pleasure of hearing sing on several occasions. She was a good enough soul when one spoke to her outside of Jolietta’s training, but few of us dared hold such conversations, for fear of the beatings that we would be given if we were caught offering the miserable creature solace, either spoken or material.

I respected the two Minotaur guards that Jolietta had with her almost constantly as she went about the estate on her daily business: Brutus and Cassius. It had been Cassius who had gone with her on her buying trip. Neither of them deigned to speak to the other household Beasts, other than to pass along their mistress’s orders or reprimand us if we mis-served them in some way. They had been with Jolietta, I was told, since they were calves.

Other members of the household were an orangutan, two Dryads belonging to nearby trees, a Satyr, two Dog-men who worked in the stable, an old Troll who served as cook, and Bebe, a fat old Centaur mare who oversaw the household and was greatly trusted by Jolietta. She was a sly creature, and I quickly learned to confide nothing in her, for she was fond of earning treats and favors from Jolietta by paying with small betrayals—or sometimes much larger—of the other servants.

The Satyr, Hedonus, professed himself content in his role. He said when he had first been captured and sold, he had worked in the Southern Isles in a salt-making establishment. The Isles were not conducive to health. Hedonus said each year one out of every ten slaves died, and that this death rate, which was better than most, was reckoned to be due to a mixture of lime juice and sulfur that the overseer forced his workers to drink each morning. By contrast to the salt pond, Jolietta’s establishment was luxury indeed, he implied in conversation more than once, and Bebe seemed to feel the same.

There were others who might not have agreed. Workers served on the estate and a larger group was hired out as needed. These groups were somewhat fluid—servants out of favor might find themselves hired out and conversely a hired worker who did well might find themselves purchased as part of the household or estate workers. While the household servants lived within the house itself and ate in its kitchen, the others lived in small cabins erected at the back of the estate.

Although the household accommodations were severe, they were luxurious by contrast with these cabins, which were caulked ineffectually with mud and cloth against the severities of the wind. I have stood in one during a storm and heard the whole cabin singing, as though it were nothing but a musical instrument for the wind to sound as it would.

Mistress Jolietta also raised what are called dwarf dragons, though they are not properly Dragons. The wealthy in that area used them for sport hunting. A single one could kill a creature ten times its size, and a pack of them could bring down anything. These she set me to feeding each day, which meant that I must butcher two goats and several dozen chickens every morning. Tender-hearted, I wept whenever I killed the goats until Jolietta caught me at it and beat me for my tears. After that, I steeled my heart and killed each animal as though it were nothing more than wood made animate and bleating.

The dragons, of which there were a half dozen or so, were kept in a great pen set against the cliff face that also functioned as the rubbish heaps for the estate, for the dragons preferred to nest in such, and let the baking heat combined with the sun brood their eggs. The trees had been cut back so the sunlight could fully enter the pen, and it was a malodorous and noisome place where few cared to go. I took advantage of this to seek solitude in which to heal my injured spirit. I would sit thinking and listening to the rasp of the lizards’ lovemaking—a sandpaper rasp that never seemed to cease, even when eggs were being laid in the pits scraped atop each heap of trash and nightsoil.

The dragons were worth a deal of money, I gathered. There were two clutches ready to hatch, and Jolietta set me to watching over them at night, sitting up with a torch, waiting to see any motion on a mother dragon’s part that would betoken a hatching taking place.

The second day of the watch, I was so tired that I fell asleep and woke only when I heard the croaking from a female dragon that announced her progeny.

The tiny animals crawled out under their mother’s watchful eye and headed for the shelter of the bale of straw Jolietta had directed me to put within a few paces of the heap.

One crawled beneath me, and I raised my foot, thinking to crush it and thus deprive my owner of a fine sum of money. But it was such a pretty little thing, only a foot long, with fine mottled patterns distinct and new along its scaly sides, and so I stayed my hoof and let it crawl into the straw. Dwarf dragons are as unthinking as animals, so I did not speak to it, now or later.

Those eggs hatched fine, but the other batch did not, and when this became evident due to the length of time that had passed, Jolietta held me accountable and beat me. While she had me beneath the lash, I cried out, saying that she had no right to do such a thing to me, and that I would run away, as soon as I was able. She merely laughed at me. We both knew every hand would be against a runaway Beast.

It would not be the last time she beat me, or that I saw another servant beaten. A small hut crouched towards the back of the estate, a great hook set dangling from its blackened roof beams. She would suspend the unfortunate victim by the wrists from this hook and the rest of the household would be assembled in order to watch and learn from their unfortunate fellow’s example.

Under Jolietta’s tutelage, I learned the difference between the various methods of punishment: the searing flay of cat-tails, the bitter blow of a cow-hide whip, the thud of a rod against scarred flesh. Like other Humans I had met, she felt that the sooner examples were made, and the sooner a captive resigned to its life of servitude and toil, the better for all parties concerned.

Food was a constant worry among the Beasts of the household, although we did not live half so badly as the Beasts who were hired out to work on surrounding farms. They were given two pecks of corn and a pound of dried fish each week, and counted themselves better off than most. Nonetheless, they tried their best to be hired by the masters known for feeding their workers well, and the household Beasts smuggled out what they could of food. Most of the time, though, we ate the same mash and boiled vegetables that the Humans in the household, mainly Jolietta and her apprentices, consumed.

On the western edge of the estate there was a stand of apple trees. Jolietta allowed us to pick these as we would, for she disliked the taste of the fruit, and would watch one of us gobble a piece down, amazement evident on her face as she made loud remarks regarding how she did not understand how we might stomach such noisome provender. Despite this talk, we ate the apples with relish, for they were sweet and full of savor, and what was not eaten was dried and put aside against the winter.

We were severely punished if transgressions were discovered. At one point, directed to throw out some burned soup, I tried to scrape it into some sacking for transport to a work slave who was ailing. Jolietta found me at it and forced me to eat the cold, burned mass there and then before stringing me up for the lash. The food was the entirety of what I was given for the next three days.

I learned that in Tabat there were individuals known as Beast farmers—Humans who held the titles to Beasts by law but left the Beasts alone, to make their own way in the world or sometimes pay the farmer a weekly portion of their income.

Some did this out of the goodness of their hearts, while others chose to make their daily living in such a partnership, being too lazy or otherwise disinclined to keep the strict grasp that a slavekeeping arrangement would entail.