spent two crowns feeding them!’ Giljohn spat on the grit floor.
The haggling took another hour and both men seemed to enjoy it. Giljohn enumerated the reasons why the children would become valuable fighters in Partnis’s contests, pointing out gerant or hunska traits.
‘This girl here is eight!’ Giljohn set a hand to Saida’s shoulder, making her flinch. ‘Eight years old! Tall as a tree. She’s a gerant prime for sure. A full-blood even!’
‘Even a full-blood’s only got labour value if there’s no fight in ’em.’ Partnis barked a wordless shout into Saida’s face. She stumbled back with a shriek of fear, raising both hands to her eyes. ‘Worthless.’
‘She’s eight, Partnis!’
‘So her father said. She looks fifteen to me.’
Giljohn grabbed Saida’s arm and pulled her forward. ‘Feel her wrists!’ He pushed her head forward and ran a finger over the vertebrae knobbling the back of her neck. ‘Look here!’ He straightened her by her hair. ‘Fathers lie, but bones don’t. This one’s a prime at the least. Ain’t seen a gerant to beat her this trip. Could be full-blood.’
Partnis took Saida’s wrist and squeezed until she whimpered. ‘She’s got a touch, I grant you.’
‘Touch? She’s no damn touch.’
‘Half-blood if you’re lucky.’
And so it went on, Partnis allowing some of the children might be a touch or even half-bloods, Giljohn insisting they were all primes or even full-bloods.
Nona and a boy named Tooram he claimed showed clear evidence of hunska bloodlines. He slapped Tooram, then tried again and the boy interposed his arm before the blow could land. When he tried it on Nona she let him slap her, the hard length of his hand impacting the side of her head, leaving her ear buzzing and her cheek one hot outrage of pain. He did it again, with a scowl, and she scowled back, making no effort to avoid the blow which took her off her feet and replaced the grey sky with bright and flashing lights.
‘… idiot.’
Nona found herself on her feet, her shoulder in Giljohn’s iron grip, blood filling her mouth. She remembered the force of the slap, how her teeth had seemed to rattle.
‘You saw how fast she turned towards me.’
It was true – Nona’s lips felt four times their size and white spears of pain lanced up her nose. She had faced into the blow at the last moment.
‘I must have missed that part,’ Partnis said.
Nona swallowed the blood. She let the pain run through her – the cost she paid for taking money from Giljohn’s pocket. Some of the children, sold by their own fathers, almost saw the child-taker as their replacement. Stern, certainly, but he fed them, kept them safe. Nona took a contrary view. Her father had died on the ice and what memories she kept of him warmed her in the cold, tasted sweet when the world ran sour. He would have known how to treat a man like Giljohn.
The gerants had no such choice to make, their size argued their case without need for demonstration. Though in Saida’s place Nona thought she might have agreed with Partnis when he accused her of being fifteen.
Partnis took them in exchange for ten crowns and two.
‘Be good.’ Giljohn, a father to them all for three long months, had no other words for them, climbing up behind Four-Foot without ceremony.
‘Goodbye.’ Saida was the only one to speak.
Giljohn glanced her way, stick half-raised for the off. ‘Goodbye,’ he said.
‘She meant the mule.’ Tooram didn’t turn his head, but he spoke loud enough for the words to reach.
A grin slanted across Giljohn’s face and, shaking his head, he flicked at Four-Foot’s haunches, encouraging him through the doors that Partnis’s man had set open once more.
Nona watched the wagon rattle off, Hessa, Markus, Willum and Chara staring back at her through the bars. She would miss Hessa and her stories. She wondered who Giljohn would sell her to and how a girl unable to walk would make her way in the world. She might miss Markus too, perhaps. The miles had worn away his sharp edges, the wheels had gone round and round … somehow turning him into someone she liked. In the next moment they were all gone.
‘And now you’re mine,’ Partnis said. He summoned the young man mending the net, lean but well-muscled under his woollen vest, hair dark, skin pale, but not so dark or so pale as Nona. ‘This is Jaymes. He’ll take you to Maya who is your mother now. The slapping kind.’ Partnis offered them a heavy smile. ‘I don’t expect to notice any of you until you’re this high.’ He held his hand to his chest. ‘And if I do, it will probably be bad news for you. Do what you’re told and you’ll be fine. You’re Caltess now. Bought and paid for.’
Maya stood more than a foot taller than Partnis, arms thick as a man’s thighs, her face red and blotched as if a constant rage held her in its jaws. To compensate for her complexion the Ancestor had given her thick blonde hair that she braided into heavy ropes. She stood on the attic ladder after shepherding the new arrivals up it, only her head and shoulders emerging into the gloom.
‘No lanterns up here. Ever. No candles. No lamps. Break that rule and I break you.’ She made the motion with heavy-knuckled hands. ‘When you’re not working you’re up here. Meals are in the kitchen. You’ll hear the bell when it’s time. Miss it and you won’t eat.’
Nona and the others crouched close to the trapdoor, watching the giant. The musty air reminded Nona of James Baker’s grain store at the village. Around them the shadows rustled. Cats most likely, rats and spiders of a certainty, but also other children watching the new arrivals.
Maya raised her voice. ‘Don’t pick on the new meat. There’s time enough for that down below.’ She stared at a patch of darkness seemingly no darker than any other. ‘I see any lumps and bumps on Partnis’s new purchases, Denam, Regol, and I’ll knock your heads together so hard you swap brains. Hear me?’ A pause. ‘Hear me?’ Loud enough to shake the roof.
‘I hear you.’ A snarl.
‘Heard.’ Chuckled in the distance.
The others emerged as soon as Maya withdrew. Two long-limbed boys dropped from the rafters into the midst of the newcomers. Nona hadn’t seen them lurking there. Others scampered in from the shadows, or strolled, or crept, each according to their nature. None of them as small or as young as Nona, but most of them not many years older. From the direction in which Maya had stared came a huge boy, a scowl beneath a thick shock of red hair, muscles heaped and shifting below his shapeless linen shift. Moments later a lad near as tall but willow-thin joined him, black hair sweeping down across his eyes, a crooked smile hung between the corners of his mouth.
A throng gathered, many more than Nona had anticipated. Huddled and watchful, waiting to be entertained.
The red-haired giant opened his mouth to threaten them. ‘You—’
‘Oh hush, Denam.’ The dark-haired boy stepped in front of him. ‘You’re newbies. I’m Regol. This is Denam, soon-to-be apprentice, and the toughest, fiercest warrior the Caltess attic has ever seen.
