A New Business

A motel in Damascus.

I left the truck in the empty lot behind the building and went in alone. Past the deserted counter I climbed to the room, threw the window open, and stepped out.

I eased down, caught one man in each hand, and hauled them up into the motel room. Twelve in all, counting the wounded.

Time to go back.

I opened a dimensional gate and returned to Gaia. I locked a Submission Collar around each of their necks and roped them together in a line. Pass through the strange knot of light in the motel room, and the familiar wasteland lay before us.

Dragged into Gaia in my wake, every one of them stood with his face gone slack.

"Wh-what is this?"

"Where are we?"

"N-no—we were in a room just a second ago."

"Allah..."

Thrown into something beyond imagining, they wore the looks of frightened men. They had still been resisting when the Submission Collars went on. The collar itself had a function that stirred fear in its wearer, and being dropped without warning into another world seemed to have doubled the effect.

I hauled on the rope binding men who looked thoroughly cowed.

"What are you standing around for? Walk. You slave bastards."

A few of them flared at the word slave—then ducked their heads and dropped their eyes.

The power of the collars? Or the memory of watching a man fried alive? I'd have to test it later.

Even so, seeing them strung out in a long line left me feeling pleasantly full. I dragged the bound file of them off toward Ballad.

Early morning.

Caravan Master Modric was in the middle of breakfast when an employee brought him word.

"What? The trading house under that baron's name got a stall?"

"Yes, sir. The spot at the very end of the slave quarter."

"Did it, now?"

Modric called to mind the baron who went by apprentice mage. A peculiar man. He had the look of someone who knew nothing of how the world worked, and he didn't appear to have much money—yet the things he carried made it plain he was no ordinary noble. The self-moving carriage he rode about in, especially, was a rarity even in the royal capital. It had followed them for days on end and never once needed fodder. Extraordinary magical gear, without a doubt.

And the slaves he had brought were of remarkable ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠quality. To keep an appearance that clean and a condition that well nourished, you would have to feed them diligently from childhood and hardly work them at all. Surely he wasn't running a farm that raised slaves for a profession.

Such people existed, here and there—specialized slave farms that bought children, or snatched them, raised them for years, and sold them once they came of age.

But he shook his head almost at once. The ones who operated farms like that were great nobles, or the great slave merchants. It didn't square with the clumsy way this man had been carrying himself. The location of the stall he had supposedly been granted by the merchants' association said as much. It sat in a corner of the market where no one would come looking. Choosing your ground was the foundation of trade. In a spot like that, you might go a whole day without laying eyes on a single customer.

He set the thought aside and went back to his meal. Then a question surfaced.

But that noble—where had he even had slaves to sell, that they'd give him a stall? He'd clearly come along alone.

"No matter how I look at it, this spot is awful."

Even at a glance, it was shoved too far into the corner. ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠I'd taken the stall in a rush, but anyone could see that customers would never come. It was so out of the way that the neighborhood children had gathered there to play. Damn it. I could open a shop here and no one would even know I was selling anything.

Over in the center, by contrast, cheers and a constant din kept rolling in. I envied them. I wanted the center too.

A central spot cost dear, and you had to move fast—but more than anything, connections mattered. A fly-by-night novice house like mine had no chance of that. Still, I'd started, so I needed a method.

I worked the problem backward. The result I wanted was customers packed in front of my shop. For that, a great many people first had to learn that slaves were being sold out here. No. Simply knowing wasn't enough. There had to be a reason worth coming all this way.

If only I could advertise.

Then something occurred to me.

I hurried into the market and bought wooden boards, nails, and a heap of cord. I joined the boards into a four-sided frame—front, back, and both flanks—and drove shoulder straps through it, and a simple sandwich board was done. I wrote a line on each of the four faces, dropped the frames over four of the ISIS slaves, and tied pull-ropes to the front and the back.

This alone was a little thin.

So I called in the children playing in front of my shop.

"Hey. You commoner brats. Get over here."

What counted as proper treatment changed with the civilization and the age. In a world where rank and slavery sat entrenched to the ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠bone, fussing over children's rights was scripture read into a cow's ear. The children, who had already heard the rumor that I was a noble, came closer with fear on their faces.

"You lot are going to do some work. I'll pay you handsomely for the day."

High children's voices spread across the sky over the market. Noisy to begin with, the place grew noisier still.

A dozen or so neighborhood children hauled the roped line of slaves all through the market, gripping the lead ropes front and back as they walked and shouting the lines they had been given. The ISIS slaves in their Submission Collars, terrified by surroundings that might have come out of the Middle Ages, followed meekly wherever the children led. Dragging them along, the children marched the market thoroughfare and bellowed the advertisements for all they were worth.

The reactions I had hoped for began to spill out.

"Odd slaves. Black hair."

"Condition's decent, though. Tall, and they've got size on them. All of them carrying a fair bit of flesh. The owner must've fed them well."

"What? Buy one and they give you another?"

"For real? They say buy one and one's free."

"Where is that?"

On some of the advertising boards the ISIS men were wearing, I had sketched a map to the shop. A rough drawing, but these people knew the ground. A few landmarks were enough for them to place it.

"In front of the tower at the back of the market."

"There was a shop in that corner too?"

"Must've been."

"Where are you going?"

"We've got to go look. Buy one, get one free, they said. While supplies last. Once they're gone, you can't buy them."

"Hey—come with me. You! I said let's go together!"

Drawn by the words on the boards and the children's cries—by curiosity, or simply bewitched by the promise of something free—people began pouring toward the corner of the market, toward the Sahara Merchant Group and the first stall it had opened.

The crowd gathered, and the auction began.

I sorted the nine intact men by build and age. Two high-grade, three mid-grade, four low-grade. I opened with the high-grade and moved on to the mid. The first lot was one high-grade with a low-grade thrown in beside him. Their condition was better than expected, and even if the extra man was older and smaller, he was still a free man tossed into the bargain—so the bidding caught fire at once.

"Seven gold!"

"Seven gold is bid—seven gold and ten!"

"Seven gold and thirty!"

When the hammer fell, the high-and-low pair, one plus one, brought eight gold and seventy silver. Once that bait auction had the mood running hot, I sold a high-grade together with a mid-grade. Last of all I bundled the low-grades and sold them among themselves. Low-grade or not, the one-plus-one sale had already whipped the crowd into a fever, and they went for more than seven gold.

All nine sold, and the take came to forty-five gold and thirty silver. Strip out the ten percent fee, and it was forty-one gold even. One gold coin was fifty grams of gold, so I had earned 2,050 grams in all. At a hundred and ten thousand won a gram, that was more than two ‍‍‌‌⁠​​⁠‌​​‍​​‍​‌​⁠‍‌‍⁠⁠‌⁠‌‍‌‍‌‌‌‍⁠​‌​‌​‌‍‌‌‌⁠‍​​‌‍⁠‌‌⁠⁠hundred and twenty million won.

For a first opening, it wasn't a bad take.

I had half a mind to dump the three wounded men for whatever I could get, then changed the plan. I wouldn't sell them yet. Treat them first, and sell them once their bodies had recovered.

They were men with arms, legs, and facial bones broken and smashed. Broken bones would knit in time, since I'd already given them first aid; feed them well in the meantime and don't work them too hard, and later I ought to get a proper price. The one whose face had caved in, though, wasn't likely to recover his looks on his own. Taking him back to Earth for treatment looked as if it would cost even more. I had the feeling I was going to have to keep that one and work him myself.

While I was settling the thought, an idea flashed.

With the ISIS sales finished, I made the rounds of the other houses' slave stalls, and I confirmed that what I was looking for would not be hard to find. Slaves with something broken somewhere on the body, or with wounds gone foul, burning up with fever.

The world of Gaia had no concept of a hospital. The ways to treat the sick were to receive healing from the priests at a temple, or to take a mage's healing magic. There was also the holy water of healing they produced, or a recovery potion. Beyond that, one could buy herbs from an herbalist, or turn to folk remedies.

Using any method that involved a mage or a priest to treat a slave cost far too much. One might spend it on an expensive beastkin, an elf, or a dwarf—but there was no reason to spend it on a cheap human slave.

The method that came to me as I looked at the wounded ISIS men was simple. Buy slaves who were injured or ill for a pittance, treat them, and sell them again at a high price. If the humans of Earth and the humans of Gaia were the same kind of being, then antibiotics and the like could be bought and fed to them without limit. A reconditioning business, of a sort.

Then I ought to see whether the right slaves were out there.

With a hawk's eye, I began to comb every corner of the slave market.