Amber waited for a few seconds, but the frenetic hush of all this work made it impossible to just stand there. She began to walk around, randomly at first, glancing back at the door every few steps, and then with more of an eye for what she was seeing.

None of it was work she knew how to do. After spending the whole winter in a cave doing one menial thing after another, that surprised her. Amber could put a pretty good cure on a hide, render fat into soap, draw sinews and turn them into strong cord, and countless other useful things, but she didn’t know what half these women were doing.

Most of it was plant-related. Not cooking—that, at least, Amber could do—but other stuff. The plants in question were long, bulbous roots terminating in two wide, rubbery leaves with serrated edges as sharp as knives. Lizardladies with wrapped hands stripped these dangerous looking leaves; others split the stalks, pried them open, and scraped out the whitish meat; this was pounded into a flat, fibrous substance, which was in turn briskly combed out into fluff. Huge rough-woven bags of this fluff were positioned throughout the room, and when one got too full, someone took it into one of the adjoining chambers where more lizardladies and half a dozen pale-scaled children hip-high or smaller spun it into thick thread using nothing more than hooked sticks and spools. From there, the thread went on to be made into rope, cloth or who knew what in one of the other rooms.

It was a lot of work and should have made a lot of noise. Amber had worked line jobs of some kind or another all her adult life, and the eerie silence with which all these people went about their various tasks put an honest-to-God chill in her spine. She found herself thinking of Zru’itak’s tongueless mouth more and more as she studied the faces around her, all of whom pointedly refused to study her in return. Only the children were at all animated—whispering and coughing quiet laughter, throwing fluff or spools at each other if they thought no one was looking, staring at Amber even as their little hands kept busy, and scuttling away if she got close enough for their courage to fail.

When Amber finally made her way back into the first room, Zhuqa was back, with a line of shivering, naked, dull-eyed lizardladies. His newest acquisitions. Standing beside them was another raider, a big one. Easily a head taller than even Zhuqa and built as solid as a coffin, with stocky limbs that bulged with so much muscle, he surpassed mere strength and seemed grotesque. He was missing two fingers on one hand, as well as an eye and most of the knobby ridges that should be above it. Several of his spines were either broken short or missing entirely and his snout had a wedge-shaped hole through it that looked like it had been on the wrong end of an axe years ago.

Zhuqa and the stranger exchanged a few low words as they looked over the women, then Zhuqa paused, noticing Amber’s stare. He gave the broad, scarred chest a slap and said, “This is Hruuzk, my slave-master.”

Hruuzk looked startled, then perplexed. He scanned the room as what remained of his spines flexed. “Who are you talking to?”

“Eshiqi. Come here and give your man a greeting.”

Unsure how demonstrative he wanted her to be, she obeyed. Hruuzk grunted as he watched her ease up against Zhuqa’s side. His gaze held nothing but the purest academic interest. “I heard about that. What is it?”

“Something new.”

“Nothing new in Gann’s land,” the slave-master said. A philosopher. He bent his head in a distracted, deferential manner and held up his mutilated hand, scarred palm to heaven. When Zhuqa grunted approval, Hruuzk reached out and rubbed some of Amber’s hair between his two remaining fingers. “Can you fuck it?”

“Yes. Shift your skirts, Eshiqi.”

She looked at him, alarmed.

He brushed the back of his hand along her cheek, then gripped her chin and lightly squeezed. “You are Zhuqa’s woman, never fear. Now shift your skirts.”

As comfort went, it was a cold puddle of piss indeed, but it wasn’t like she had any real choice. She lifted her dress up to her waist, shifting uneasily as Hruuzk hunkered down to get a better look at her pubis. He grunted, then raised his hand and gave Zhuqa a second inquiring nod.

Zhuqa’s approval was a long time coming, but it came. “Hold still, Eshiqi.”

But she couldn’t, quite. Hruuzk’s hand was huge and abrasive, repulsive in every touch no matter how impartially he prodded at her. She shuddered, twisting the fabric of her shift to keep from slapping him away, and shut her eyes as he wedged one thick finger inside her.

“She’s open,” Hruuzk said, amused.

“I’m beginning to think she’s always open.”

“Oh, that’s a seller, if it’s true.”

“Isn’t it.”

Hruuzk got his finger up as deep as it would go, rubbing at her in a clinical fashion, then withdrew to clasp both hands between his bulging thighs and study her some more. “If you ever decide to sell that, I want it,” he said at last.

“Vek has my promise of first refusal. She took his hand off.”

“So I heard, but there’s good coin in this thing. Let me have it for one year,” he said, rising to his feet again. “Vek can have it back in just this condition and if I pour less than fifty thousand strips in your hand, you can have my other eye. Not points. Not rounds. Strips.”

“Take it up with Vek, but for now, she’s mine. Put your clothes right, Eshiqi.”

Hruuzk grunted and shifted his gaze to the other lizardladies, the matter closed to him. While Amber adjusted her clothes, he moved out to get a better look, catching at their heads to examine their teeth or eyes, turning them around to pass a hand down their spines, and stopping at every one of them to pry their slits open and test at their insides.

“Weak batch,” was his ultimate judgment. “Were you told these were virgins?”

“No,” said Zhuqa, flexing his spines in a careless, shrugging gesture. “But they must be fresher than the ones we have, surely.”

“Those two,” he said, pointing, “are the pick of the lot. Virgin, or close enough, since I guess you let your runners go at them. If you put them up for bidding, they might go for as much as two hundred rounds each, maybe more. But with respect, sir, if you want me to stable them under you, I’ll only send you back a quarter of their coin until I see for myself that they don’t come with cargo.” He gave the slave nearest him a pat on the belly. “They don’t turn a dip this pretty out of Praxas on a whim.”

“A point, but I’m bidding them all out. If there’s cargo, it’ll fall in the hands of the man who buys the cart.”

“Please yourself.” The slave-master turned his good eye back on the ladies. “This one’s not as fresh, but she might go for as much as a hundred rounds. Slant-Eyes is the tightest of the lot, but she has a good case of the twist coming on—”

“Yes, I saw that on the run.”

“—and Black-Stripe’s mouth isn’t right. Could just be bad feeding, coming from Praxas.” Hruuzk shrugged again. “But I think it’s the juun.”

“Piss,” said Zhuqa disgustedly, his spines going flat.

“Won’t hurt for fucking.”

“I am not selling a dip with the juun to my men.” Zhuqa thought about it, stroking at his throat, where faint streaks of yellow were beginning to show. They faded while he pondered the matter, and at last he said, “Catch her up with Shu’ir and Ila, see if Ghelip wants to buy them. I don’t mind cheating him.”

“He might not be feeling very receptive. You know we killed three of his patrollers while you were gone.”

“Throw Salahkthu in with them and call it an apology.”

Hruuzk snorted laughter. “Done. The rest of them ought to go straight to the stables in my opinion, and if I see fifty points by year’s end for the lot of them, I’ll pay you back in rounds. They’re worn loose already and two of them have been cut.”