Red Sister

Broad streets and narrow, cut like canyons through the neck-craning height of Verity’s houses, brought the wagon in time to a tall timber door. A legend set in iron letters above the door declared a name, but recognizing that the shapes were letters took Nona to the borders of her education.

‘The Caltess, boys and girls.’ Giljohn pushed back his hood. ‘Time to meet Partnis Reeve.’

Giljohn pulled up in the courtyard that waited behind the high walls and ordered them out. Saida and Nona clambered down, stiff and sore. Before them a many-windowed hall rose to three times the height of any building that Nona had seen until she reached the city. The yard was largely deserted, lit by the flames guttering in a brazier set at the centre. Peculiar equipment lay abandoned in corners, including pieces of leather-bound wood the size and shape of men, set on round-bottomed bases. A few young men sat on benches beneath the lanterns, all of them polishing pieces of leatherwork, save one who was mending a net as if he were a fisherman.

Partnis Reeve kept the children lined up for more than an hour before he emerged from his hall. Long enough for dawn to infiltrate the yard and surprise Nona with the knowledge that a whole night had passed in travel.

Saida fidgeted and pulled her shawl about her. Nona watched as the sun edged the ridge of the hall’s black-tiled roof with crimson. Beyond the walls the city woke, creaking and groaning like an old man leaving his bed, though it had hardly slept.

Partnis came down the steps, always taking the next with the same leg. A heavy-featured man, tall and well fed, with iron-grey hair, dark eyes promising no kindness, wrapped against the cold in a thick velvet robe.

‘Partnis!’ Giljohn held his arms wide and Partnis Reeve copied the gesture, though neither man stepped forward into the promised embrace. ‘Celia well? And little Merra?’

‘Celia is … Celia.’ Partnis lowered his arms with a wry grin. ‘And Merra is living in Darrins Town, married to a cloth merchant’s boy.’

‘How did we get so old?’ Giljohn returned his arms to his sides. ‘Yesterday we were young.’

‘Yesterday was a long time ago.’ Partnis turned his attention to the merchandise. ‘Too small.’ He walked past Nona without further comment. ‘Too timid.’ He passed Saida. ‘Too fat. Too young. Too ill. Too lazy. Too clumsy. Too much trouble.’ He turned at the end of the line and looked at Giljohn. They were of a height, though Partnis looked soft where Giljohn looked hard. ‘I’ll give you two crowns for the lot.’

‘I 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.