The Imperial Capital, Harpeon
Once we were inside the Zahed Empire, we deliberately avoided the so-called Imperial Road that cut across the world and kept instead to the little-traveled provincial routes.
It had been Marco's idea. Part of it was simply that we didn't want to catch anyone's eye. The larger reason, though, was something else entirely.
"The Zahed Empire once threatened every kingdom on the Europa continent, but these days its strength has fallen off badly. That's how the four great kingdoms of the south managed to break free in the first place. Anyway, that decline has dragged on for a hundred years now, and the economy out on the empire's fringes is in a miserable state. And where things are that bad, there are plenty of chances to pick up slave stock cheap."
The mountain village we stopped at in the central Zahed Empire was one such place.
The wrinkled villager kept turning the silver coins I'd handed him over and over in his fingers, checking them again and again. The woman he led out by the hand looked as if she had only just shed the last traces of girlhood.
"Better she go into some noble house as a maid and at least keep food in her mouth than starve to death out here, wouldn't you say?"
The man sold his daughters. I bought the two virgins, both only just past twenty, for a mere thirty silver. Virgins or not, a hard country upbringing had left their skin rough and their faces plain. Still, they were young enough that they wouldn't be difficult to sell on as housemaids somewhere.
Just as Marco had said, the moment word spread that a caravan had arrived, every household came dragging children too young to work, women too weak for labor, and family members laid up with illness. With nothing to live on, they were thinking only of cutting one more mouth to feed—and if they could get even a few silver for the trouble, so much the better.
I sorted through the candidates hauled out before me and paid for the ones I wanted. The men, women, and children whose price had been settled had Submission Collars locked around their necks. The families who took the money turned their backs without a second glance and left with the coins. A few wiped at their eyes, but they knew well enough that a life of eating one day and starving the next two was hardly better than slavery.
In that fashion I bought thirty more men and women. Twenty of them were children still around ten. At first Marco tried to refuse, saying they'd be hard to sell right away, but I ordered him to buy every last one. Maybe a flicker of pity had stirred in me. Coming to this other world, I had never once meant to change its systems or its rules, or to lay modern notions over them. Even so, I didn't want to send back the little children whose own parents had dragged them out and sold them.
As we passed through the villages, I kept buying. In the process, the economic condition of the Zahed Empire lay bare. In a word, it was the very image of a failing, underdeveloped African state. Marco, who had visited the empire several times in the course of merchant work, knew the situation well.
"In the last hundred years the Zahed Empire has fought more than ten wars and hasn't won a single one. Men were dragged off to the battlefields again and again, the farmland went to waste, and the imperial treasuries were emptied on war expenses. To fill them back up they levied crushing taxes, and once the emperor's authority weakened, the provincial nobles ignored imperial law and bled the freemen and the serfs dry. Citizens and serfs fled in droves, and to stop them the empire answered with mass executions, over and over. A vicious cycle feeding a vicious cycle, feeding another vicious cycle, on and on without end."
Along the road to the imperial capital—commonly called the Imperial City—we stopped at six villages and bought a hundred and twenty more people. The gold we paid didn't even reach thirty. The land was barren, and the prices weren't half of what they were in Drail, itself a poor kingdom. Fifty of the hundred and twenty were young children. At this rate I was well on my way to opening an orphanage, but for now I decided to do as much as I could. Call it an investment for later, and think of it kindly.
We numbered as many as three hundred and thirty, but fortunately, packed tight into the double-decker Space-Expanded Trucks, everyone could be loaded and moved. Before we set out, and again once the day's travel was done and camp was made, we ate twice. Even the smallest children found work for themselves and ran about at it. Part of that, of course, came from the monstrous physique and the grim face of Maximus, who had appointed himself drill sergeant—but underneath it all sat the fear of being cast out.
As on any other day, we waited until the sun was down and then set about making camp. The trucks were unloaded, tents went up, and fires were lit. The noblewomen and the maids, all of them my personal slaves, prepared my quarters. The rest, under Maximus and Marco, saw to the meal and the sleeping places.
After dinner I called Enne in, the same as every other night. Lately, besides Enne, I had also been summoning a slave who had once been a maid. Enne made no secret of her distaste at having to roll around with a woman who had served her. But faced with the sight of that maid prostrate before me, licking my balls like a dog, she could no longer afford her pride. In the end, feeling the threat, she quickly understood that the only road left to her was to burn even hotter for my favor—and she clung to me all the more competitively, shaking her hips and spilling out moans. I enjoyed the two of them together all night and slept in until morning.
Morning. I stretched, got up, and stepped outside. The female slaves waiting there came forward to greet me.
"You're awake, Master?"
"Shall I prepare the wash water?"
"Fresh water for the morning, Master."
Four pretty slaves crowded in, set a chair before me, put down a cup of water, and waited with basin and towel. I lifted the cup and drank the cool water, savoring the satisfying sense of having become a king. I was sitting at ease in the camping chair, enjoying the mood, when a training shout carried from far off.
"Hah! Hah! Hah!"
"Louder! Strength in the gut! Put your voice into it!"
The voice was Maximus's.
"What's that noise?"
Yuriya, eldest daughter of House Malik, answered.
"Slave Overseer Maximus is training the children."
"Training?"
"Yes. He says they have to build their stamina—that if the time comes, they have to be able to throw their bodies in to protect you, Master. He drills them like that every morning, and children with a poor attitude get no food."
"Is that so?"
Maximus had thought of that? I really did pick the right man. Put children still too young for labor through physical conditioning, and they'd be useful later.
While I nodded, Enne came over properly dressed, carrying tea she had brewed. I drank what she poured and took the tablet from my bag, opened the map, and checked our position. At this point we ought to be somewhere in north-central Türkiye. The place they called the Imperial City was probably not far from Istanbul—and if so, that might actually make things easier. Istanbul sat at the crossroads linking Europe and Asia, which meant plenty of ships and flights to use.
We ate breakfast and set the slaves to packing. It was a column of three hundred and fifty on the move, but with that many hands the work finished quickly. The slaves climbed into their places. At the head, as always, sat the carriage Marco drove, and in it rode the IS trainers we had captured. One odd detail stood out: a single man stood behind the carriage, both hands bound in rope, his face rigid with fear.
Whenever there was time along the way, I hadn't forgotten to interrogate those trainers. What I wanted from them was the locations of IS's main branches and its people, the contacts and the methods of contact, the drug trade and the recruiters, and the inner circle of the leadership. Those who stayed stiff-necked under questioning were tied to the back of the carriage and dragged along all day. Even when the carriage went slowly, the pace was nearly a marathon runner's. The men being hauled came panting after it, and most of them couldn't last long before they went down. In that instant they were dragged, their whole bodies shredded, and they had to endure burns like fire as friction ground them raw. In the end the ones thrashing in agony didn't get far. They either screamed and confessed everything they knew, or else only the arms still bound in the rope were left behind while the rest of them was ground to pieces and scattered along the road. I made the remaining trainers sit at the back of the carriage and watch it all to the end.
Marco checked behind him and shouted.
"All right—move out!"
With the carriage in the lead, the Humvee, the trucks, and another carriage began to roll slowly forward.
The capital of the Zahed Empire. The Imperial City, Harpeon.
The first thing to meet the eye was the colossal wall encircling Harpeon, and beyond it the spires and the imperial palace rising high at the city's heart—and beside that palace, the sea. A city of a million souls with the sea at its side: faded, perhaps, and yet still holding the glory of its past intact.
What greeted our party as we entered were children rushing in to beg. They ran up alongside the carriage, hands spread, crying out like hungry swallows.
"Spare a coin!"
"Traveler! A little charity, please!"
"I haven't eaten since yesterday. Even a piece of rotten bread—please!"
"My little siblings are starving at home! Have some Zahed pity!"
Dozens of children swarmed the carriage, the Humvee, and the trucks, busy with nothing but begging. Marco, long used to this, didn't so much as glance their way and steadily drove the carriage on. Our party, under his repeated warnings, gave them neither a gesture nor a look.
"The children you can see aren't all of them. Behind them, in every alley, hundreds more are waiting. Give to one, and we won't be able to move an inch all day."
The swarm only fell back once the gate guard came running to drive them off.
"Get lost, you beggar brats!"
"I told you I'd kill you! Just try coming back—I'll split your skulls!"
We let the curses and the shouting slide past our ears and passed into the Imperial City.
Marco went first to the market association and registered us as a slave-trading caravan. Placement was decided by the caravan's size and the advance payment. Even without the children we had two hundred and seventy head of merchandise, and we had grown to the scale of a mid-sized caravan, so we were assigned a spot not far from the center.
Marco asked.
"What should we push as our main goods?"
"What sells well here?"
"I was already taking the mood of the place. Sure enough, the price on male slaves is decent. Last battle has something to do with it, but the Zahed Empire has always been famous for conflicts breaking out everywhere."
"Yeah? What's the going rate?"
"For an average male slave in his mid-twenties, deals seem to close around thirteen to fifteen gold."
"What? That much?"
"That's just ordinary. Drail is on the cheap side. That's why most caravans buy in Drail and go sell in other kingdoms."
"Yeah? Then if we took them on to Europa, couldn't we get even more?"
"There isn't a big difference. Even across in Europa, you won't get much more. Demand for male slaves is high here as it is. Over there, if anything, it's the women who are in demand. The soil is so fertile there's plenty of food and plenty of rich men—and with that, plenty of demand for maids, and for sex slaves too."
"So if we dispose of the male slaves here, buy women, and cross into Europa..."
"As expected of the Guildmaster's insight. Remarkable."
This bastard. One look at his eyes and I could tell he'd already been thinking exactly that.
"No need to flatter me. If you've got a thought or an opinion, say it freely."
"Yes, Guildmaster. Then let's dispose of the male slaves who've recovered their health here."
"Let's."
Once the direction was set, we hurried to put up the stall. It was time to recoup the investment.