Then another guard brought around the water skin and cups and the clamour for water began. Each slave who could still speak announced his thirst, as if to remain silent was to chance being ignored.
Borric could barely move, and each motion brought waves of bright yellow and white light and red flashes behind his eyes. Yet, almost blindly, he pushed out his hand to take the metal cup. The water was warm and bitter, yet sweeter than the finest Natalese wine to Borric’s parched lips. He sipped the wine, forcing himself to hold it in his mouth as his father had taught him, letting the dark purple fluid course around his tongue, registering the subtle and complex components of the wine’s flavour. A hint of bitterness, perhaps from the stems and a few leaves left in the vat of must, while the winemaker attempted to bring his wine to just the proper peak of fermentation before barrelling the wine. Or perhaps it was a flaw. Borric didn’t recognize the wine; it lacked noticeable body and structure, and was deficient in acid to balance the fruit. It was not a very good wine. He would have to see if Papa was testing him and Erland by putting a poor local wine on the table, to see if they were paying attention.
Borric blinked and through eyes gummy from heat and dryness, he couldn’t see where the tip was. How was he to spit the wine if there was no tip bucket to spit into? He mustn’t drink it, or he would be very drunk, as he was only a small boy. Perhaps if he turned his head and spit behind the table, no one would notice.
‘Hey!’ shouted a voice. ‘That slave is spitting out his water!’
Hands ripped the cup from Borric’s hands and he fell over backwards. He lay on the floor of his father’s dining hall and wondered why the stones were so warm. They should be cool. They always were. How did they get so warm?
Then a pair of hands lifted him ungently from his sitting position, and another helped to hold him up. ‘What’s this? Trying to kill yourself by not drinking?’ Borric opened his eyes slightly and saw the vague outline of a face before his.
Weakly, he said, ‘I can’t name the wine, Father.’
‘He’s delirious,’ said the voice. Hands lifted him and carried him and then he was in a darker place. Water was daubed over his face and poured over his neck, wrists, and arms. A distant voice said, ‘I swear by the gods and demons, Salaya, you haven’t the brains of a three days’ dead cat. If I hadn’t ridden out to meet you, you’d have let this one die, too, wouldn’t you?’
Borric felt water course into his mouth and he drank. Instead of the bitter half-cup, this was a veritable stream of almost fresh water. He drank.
Salaya’s voice answered: ‘The weak ones fetch us nothing. It saves us money to let them die on the road and not feed them.’
‘You idiot!’ shouted the other. ‘This is a prime slave! Look at him. He’s young, not more than twenty years, if I know my business, and not bad looking under the sunburn, healthy, or at least he was a few days ago.’ There was a sound of disgust. ‘These fair-skinned northerners can’t take the heat like those of us born to the Jal-Pur. A little more water, and some covering, and he’d have been fit for next week’s block. Now, I’ll have to keep him an extra two weeks for the burns to heal and his strength to return.’
‘Master—’
‘Enough, keep him here under the wagon while I inspect the others. There may be more who will survive if I find them in time. I do not know what fate befell Kasim, but it was a sorry day for the Guild when you were left in charge.’
Borric found this exchange very odd. And what had happened to the wine? He let his mind wander as he lay in the relative cool, under the wagon, while a few feet away, a Master of the Guild of Durbin Slavers inspected the others who in a day’s time would be delivered to the slave pens.
‘Durbin!’ said Salman. His face of dark knots split in a wide grin. He drove the last wagon in the train, the one in which Borric rode. The two days since Borric was carried into the shade of the wagon had returned him from the edge of death. He now rode in the last wagon with three other slaves who were recovering from heat-stroke. Water was there for the taking, and their burned skins were dressed with a soft oil and herb poultice, which reduced the fiery pain to a dull itch.
Borric rose to his knees then stood upon shaky legs as the wagon lurched across the stones in the road. He saw little remarkable about the city, save the surrounding lands were now green rather than sandy. They had been passing small farms for about a half-day. He remembered what he had been taught about the infamous pirate stronghold as a boy.
Durbin commanded the only arable farm land between the Vale of Dreams and the foothills of the Trollhome Mountains, as well as the one safe harbour to be found from Land’s End to Ranom. Along the south coast of the Bitter Sea the treacherous reefs waited for ships and boats unfortunate enough to be caught in the unexpected northern winds that sprang up routinely. For centuries, Durbin had been home to pirates, wreckers and scavengers, and slavers.
Borric nodded to Salman. The happy little bandit had proved to be both friendly and garrulous. ‘I’ve lived there all my life,’ said the bandit, widening his grin. ‘My father was born there, too.’
When the desert men of the Jal-Pur had conquered Durbin hundreds of years before, they had found their gateway to the trade of the Bitter Sea, and when the Empire had conquered the desert men, Durbin was the capital city of the desert men. Now it was the home of an Imperial Governor, but nothing had changed. It was still Durbin.
‘Tell me,’ asked Borric, ‘do the Three Guilds still control the city?’
Salman laughed. ‘You’re a very educated fellow! Few outside Durbin know of this thing. The Guild of Slavers, the Wreckers Guild, and the Captains of the Coast. Yes, the Three still rule in Durbin. It is they, not the Imperial Governor, who decide who is to live and die, who is to work, who is to eat.’ He shrugged. ‘It is as it has always been. Before the Empire. Before the desert men. Always.’
Thinking of the power of the Mockers, the Guild of Thieves, in Krondor, he asked, ‘What of the beggars and thieves? Are they not a power?’
‘Ha!’ answered Salman. ‘Durbin is the most honest city in the world, my educated friend. We who live there lay at night with doors unlocked and may walk the streets in safety. For he who steals in Durbin is a fool, and either dead or a slave within days. So the Three have decreed, and who is foolish enough to question their wisdom? Certainly not I. And so it must be, for Durbin has no friends beyond the reefs and sands.’
Borric lightly patted Salman on the shoulder and sat down in the back of the wagon. Of the four sick slaves, he was the quickest to recover, as he was the youngest and fittest. The other three were older farmers, and none had shown any inclination to quick recovery. Despair robs you of strength faster than sickness, Borric thought.
He drank a little water and marvelled at the first hint of ocean breeze that came into the wagon as they headed down the road toward the city gate. One of his father’s advisors, and the man who had taught Borric and Erland how to sail, Amos Trask, had been a pirate in his youth, raiding the Free Cities, Queg, and the Kingdom under the name Captain Trenchard, the Dagger of the Sea. He had been a renowned member of the Captains of the Coast. But while he had told many tales of the high seas, he had said almost nothing of the politics of the Captains. Still, someone might remember Captain Trenchard and that might stand Borric in good stead.
Borric had decided to keep his identity hidden a while longer. While he had no doubt the slavers would send ransom demands to his father, he thought he might avoid the sort of international difficulties that would arise should it come to pass. Instead, he might bide his time in the slave pens a few days, regain his strength, then flee. While the desert was a formidable barrier, any small boat in the harbour would be his passage to freedom. It was nearly five hundred miles of sailing against prevailing winds to reach Land’s End, Baron Locklear’s father’s city, but it could be done. Borric considered all this with a confidence of one who, at the age of nineteen, did not know the meaning of defeat. His captivity was merely a setback, nothing more.
The slave pens were sheltered