Purchase
The damp, musty reek of mold that had somehow seeped in between the dryness, the tobacco leaf, and the alcohol — a humidity whose origin I couldn't place.
A cold wasteland, long after the sun had gone down. Through the swirling sand and dust that blurred everything, a murky light was faintly visible from afar.
And an old wagon drawing closer to that light.
Perhaps it was the creaking from the wagon's frame, but before I'd even drawn near, a bolt was racked and the light shouted out.
"Hey! You got business here? Turn off onto the side road right now!"
Nothing strange about that. A chance encounter with strangers in the dead of night was never a welcome thing. I just needed to state my business, and once both our purposes were served, that would be that.
"Are you the Westwood brothers?"
No answer came back to my words, but the threat eased down a notch into tension. The distance gradually closed, and their figures came into view.
Hooves and snorts. Reins and yawns. Shackles and sighs.
Six people in all, their hands bound in a line by a single rope, with one rider on horseback before them and one behind.
Still aiming his gun at me, the man at the front of the line spoke.
"What's your business?"
"I understand you sell slaves. Those people, I take it?"
Only then did the muzzle that had been pointed at me drop toward the ground, and the heavily lowered voice changed.
"A customer, was it! Yeah, those are them. Take your pick! Spotty, Lump, Dummy, Idiot…. Males are a hundred thirty, females a hundred, so take your time looking — one of 'em's bound to catch your fancy!"
I looked over the ones who were bound. Three with rabbit ears, two with dog ears, and then—
"What are you staring at so hard? That's a black cat! There's plenty of better ones."
Black hair and black ears, a black tail. In contrast, porcelain-white skin and turquoise eyes that shone even in the dark.
That girl, draped in clothes little better than rags, breathing white puffs high into the air, quietly yet sharply cast that green light toward me.
"No, I'm not looking to buy anything just yet. You're coming from the Rotten plantation, correct?"
"Yeah, Checo and us are pretty close. He always picks out the good ones for us!"
"You've come a long way. Riding horses like that, dragging those people along."
He seemed to feel a small displeasure toward me, but not so much that he lacked the salesman's talent to keep it off his face.
"Haha, as you know, beastfolk are specialized from birth for being dragged around! Which one do you want?"
"Hold on a moment. …Is there anyone here who knows Terrace?"
The beastfolk looked forward and back, gauging each other's reactions. They might have been weighing whether my question would benefit their own situation, or simply wondering if anyone among them knew.
"Hey, what's Terrace?"
"That's why I'm looking for someone who knows. Does anyone know? Hmm?"
Even when I raised my own hand and met the glowing eyes of the beastfolk with mine, there was still no reaction.
"Seems not. Sorry for the trouble. Carry on."
Was the information wrong? A wasted trip. Should I go all the way to Rotten myself? That would burn too much time, and where to head next would become uncertain.
Just then, someone raised their bound wrists upward.
"Ah, yes. Who is… ah."
It was the black cat. The one who had been quietly staring at me, looking as if she had no will to live, no purpose at all.
I walked over to her, standing at the very back, to confirm.
"What is it?"
"People."
She seemed to know. She wasn't lying, either.
"Do you know how many?"
"…Two."
It was a beautiful voice. One from which all emotion seemed stripped away, simply sliding flatly across ice — and yet for that very reason, somehow incomplete.
"Their names?"
"Cafe Terrace, Alma Terrace."
"Then do you know where they are now, and what they look like?"
At this question, something smoldering flickered for an instant in her otherwise dry eyes.
"…Yes. I could never, ever forget."
Excellent. Rather than simply reducing the labor of the job, it would be fair to say I'd started an entirely new task with so much less work ahead.
Still, I needed to be careful, so I asked the man in front.
"May I check for a brand?"
"Suit yourself. Starting from the front one, let's see… belly, leg, leg, arm, back, butt."
"No, Clint! Belly, arm, neck, leg, back, butt!"
"Was it, Bill? That's what he says. Check carefully — if a non-slave's mixed in, we're in trouble too."
The butt, huh. I felt a bit apologetic, but—
"Sorry."
When I lightly lifted the rags she had wrapped around her back and shone the lantern, a smooth body wearing nothing underneath was revealed.
Skin far too clean for a slave, and a decent amount of flesh on her. And on the lower left buttock, a brand of two arrowheads intertwined top and bottom.
That pattern meant Tomb-born. Now I was certain.
"I'll take this one. What's the price?"
"What? You're only buying that one? No, that won't do."
Up front, Clint even waved a hand in refusal.
"What's the problem?"
"We don't sell black cats at night — that's our unwritten rule. Bad things happen if you do."
From the back, Bill chimed in.
"Cotton sold a black cat at night and fell off his horse, broke his neck, and Allie supposedly ended up in a mental hospital? And Brett…"
"Shut up, Bill! Anyway, so. Either buy something else, or wait until tomorrow morning to buy."
"If I buy everyone else here as well, would you sell right now?"
"Clint, did you hear that? He says he'll buy them all! We wouldn't even have to go all the way to Greenhill!"
"No, Bill! You don't sell black cats at night! It's an omen of misfortune — how many times do I have to tell you before it sinks in? Did I tell you about David?"
"I'm short on time. Would about five hundred Ludd for the black cat alone work?"
"Clint! Five hundred Ludd is five times the price! Ask if he'll buy all six for five hundred Ludd, hurry!"
"What do you take my words for! Not at night! We've got more than enough money as it is! And have you forgotten how that one got sold? …Hey!"
Clint Westwood. The one on horseback up front aimed his gun at me once more.
There was no other emotion in it. An act filled with pure anxiety and tension, closer to self-defense than threat.
"We're not selling anything. I'll count to three. Raise those hands and get back to your saddle right now."
Bill in the back was feeling the opposite. Regret and incomprehension, and even a bit of irritation.
"I want that black cat—"
In an instant my ears went numb. The bullet that had slid down the rifling punched through the air and was swallowed by the darkness, and by the time I understood what had happened, the sound of a bolt being racked again entered my ringing ears.
Even so, it was only his heart that remained filled with a fog-like fear — not mine.
"I understand. Until morning—"
"No need! Morning or night, even if we run into each other again at a slave market, I won't sell you a single thing! Slowly, slowly raise your hands. Now!"
Confirming this near-obsessive policy of never handing over a cat at night no matter what, I knew there was no other way.
"No need to go so far as shooting to threaten me. Fine. We'll do it your way."
I slowly raised the hand holding the lantern from my waist upward.
As the rising hand passed my chest, I snuffed the lantern in an instant, and in the darkened gap drew a loaded pistol from my inner pocket and pulled the trigger.
A single cry. Even as he fell from his horse, the horse itself was quiet, and instead the man in the back shouted.
"Clint!"
He reached for his gun belt, but it was already far too late.
Two more gunshots rang out, and this time a horse screamed.
"My— my hand! What the hell are you doing!"
One shot to his hand, one to the horse's neck. The gun he'd been holding tumbled to the ground, the staggering horse soon toppled sideways with him still on it, and pinned beneath the horse he began to yell.
"Attacking an innocent merchant! You think you'll get away with this!"
An unexpected situation, so the reaction wasn't strange. It didn't particularly matter — I just needed to finish what I'd set out to do.
"Shall we check. Black cat. A hundred Ludd, correct?"
"What are you going to do to me! Don't think nobody knows — those six pieces of merchandise over there are watching you right now!"
A hundred Ludd. I took out my wallet and tossed it toward his face. Buying a person's entire life with money that could sustain someone for about a month and a half — did that even make sense?
"Where's the paperwork? In the saddle, maybe?"
"Heaven is watching! Bushin will not forget your evil deeds!"
As if he couldn't even hear my voice, he was spitting out whatever words came to mind. Was seeking cooperation a lost cause? I turned my head toward the line of shackles.
The sudden downfall of two transporters. The beastfolk, humanity's slaves, looked at each other as before without understanding, and flinched their shoulders every time I drew near.
"Does anyone know where the documents are?"
Only after I asked that did someone speak to me with an expression as if wondering whether they'd misheard.
"Clint. Check the saddle."
As they said. Rummaging through the luggage bag, I found the documents along with the key to the shackles. If I didn't make a receipt just in case, it might become a hassle later.
"Black cat miss, what's your name?"
"…Annie."
Finding a pile of documents and receipts, I picked up Clint's lantern rolling on the ground and slowly scanned through them. Annie, Annie, Annie….
As was typical of those captured as slaves, there was no surname, no middle name. There was a yellowed receipt with only the letters Annie stamped on it, and the previous owner's signature written.
After melting the ink pad in the luggage bag with Clint's lantern, I tore a page from my notebook and pressed it firmly on the bottom right.
Then I filled in the items in order with a pen: Annie, January 23rd, Eastlend Greenhill, from Clint Westwood to Jack U., one hundred Ludd.
"So, Bill? Would you mind stamping a seal here?"
"Filthy plunderer! Highway robber! Scum like you should get their heads blown off by a stray bullet and be dumped deep in some forest where nobody knows!"
Conversation wasn't happening. In that case—
I approached Bill, who could only shout without moving, pinned under the horse, found the seal in the saddle, and took it out.
"Better to do it before the ink dries, right? Saves us both the trouble."
"Get lost! Disappear from my sight! Shooting and killing an innocent person — you'll be wanted, your neck will hang from the gallows, and the horse that carries your body will run far away! Wolves will tear your flesh, and your bones will weather until not a trace remains!"
"Why are you like this. Give me your hand."
"One of your mothers was a lunatic! Your fathers, no better than sperm counts, don't even know you were born! …Aaaargh!"
I forced the seal into his resisting hand, gripped the wrist with the bullet lodged in it, and made him press the seal onto the torn notebook page.
"Thank you for your trouble. Enjoy the rest of your life, and what was it you said… consider it the misfortune that comes from selling a black cat."
I stuffed the completed receipt into my pocket and stood before the beastfolk whose name I now knew.
"Mind if I drop the formalities?"
"…Yes."
"Well then — sorry once more."
I lifted the rags again. The brand was glittering with a blue light, and that meant everything had gone through successfully.
When I cut Annie's shackles and rope, her leg twitched once. The flesh of the legs that had been bound in irons was raw and stripped, stained a deep red.
Annie lifted her legs up and down a few times, stretched both arms out to the sides, and opened and closed her hands.
Strangely, even while doing so, she felt nothing at all. No bewilderment or surprise, no joy or fear, no expectation or liberation or hostility — none of it.
She simply kept those glowing green eyes wide open, staring at me hard enough that you could call it a glare.
"Shall we go?"
Without taking her eyes off mine, she said,
"Yes."
"Where do you think you're going! Five hundred Ludd — you said you'd give that money! This isn't a deal! That swindler is running off! Catch him, catch him! Doggy, Lump, Spotty! What are you doing!"
"Five hundred? You were holding that in your heart, were you?"
I tossed four more bills, and thanks to his thrashing I was finally able to escape Annie's gaze.
"Blackie. You really are looking out for me! The rest of them were rotten from birth. You can't trust those mutts! There's no animal better than a cat. Hurry up and get this horse off me, and pick up that gun that fell over there!"
Annie looked at me again. It was a face asking what she should do, and a signal that she had accepted the change of ownership.
"Do as you like."
Annie walked a few steps, picked up the gun, and went over to Bill.
"Yeah, that's it. Haha, you idiot over there! Our Blackie likes me better! There are things in this world money can't—"
Click.
Bill's face went rigid in an instant.
"…Blackie?"
When his own gun was turned on him by a slave who had once been his property, his voice changed so completely it might have belonged to someone else.
"D-do you really need to point a gun like that? Think about it, Blackie. We had good times. We spent two years on the same plantation, walked eight hours together up to now, passed through fine forests and deep wetlands, and… you know, Blackie. Give that gun to me first."
"What's my name?"
A simple question whose answer was clearly written even on her own documents, from a companion who had lived with him for two years and walked with him for eight hours. Unable to answer it, a long silence stretched on.
"…Don't do this. Just a moment ago I was trying not to sell you off, and I gave you that… churr stuff I brought from far away a few times…"
"I'm a person. …Not livestock that takes animal feed."
"Ah, right! Think about last week, when you ran away! I gathered your father and the one sibling left—"
A gunshot rang out, and that was the end of it.
"Don't speak of my family."
Yes. That was the end of it. On this vast stretch of land, two people whose very disappearance no one would even notice would be buried in the sand.
"Annie, shall we go?"
Annie nodded — small, but clear.
I jerked my chin toward the horse Clint had been riding.
"Can you ride?"
She shook her head.
"Get in the cargo bed. There's nothing loaded, so you'll have plenty of room."
As Annie climbed into the cargo bed and I walked toward the horse, the remaining five called me to a stop.
"What should we do?"
Right. I'd almost forgotten.
"You've got a few options. Carry those two to a nearby village and earnestly explain what happened, or walk the eight hours back to the original plantation."
A sigh full of despair. Seeing their faces darken, I tossed the shackle key toward the person at the very front of the line — a common solution to the problem they all shared — and continued.
"Or take the documents from that bag, stamp them, burn them, and blend into nature or a town and live as free people. …Oh, and look at that — five hundred Ludd and a key just happen to be lying on the ground."
Another sigh rose, but the cause was different. They weren't even aware they were exhaling.
Before any nonsense about following me could come out, I left the remaining five behind and took the reins. The night was late — time to find a place to sleep.
