Crap, crap, crap. I looked down at my feet.
A pair of brown boots came into my view.
“Where did you get her?” The man had a quiet voice.
“My sister sent her to me from the countryside,” Darotha said. “Her late husband’s daughter from a previous wife. My sister’s got a house full of her own kids and a husband in the ground. They are bad off, and they need the money.”
“How old is she?”
“Twenty.”
“Too old.”
“She has the mind of a child,” the woman said. “She’s sweet, obedient, good with kids. She keeps herself clean.”
Thick calloused fingers grasped my chin and lifted my face. The man in front of me was large, with broad shoulders and the kind of seasoned strength you sometimes saw among the older MMA trainers, the guys who stood in the fighter’s corner and screamed incomprehensible advice and curses during the matches. He was in his fifties, with skin the color of sand and longish dark hair brushed back from his forehead. His face, with a sharp nose and dark hooded eyes, showed no emotion. Derog Olgren. The slavemonger.
His eyes studied me.
Like being caught in the claws of an old eagle.
Behind him, another man stood, holding a coin purse and a book with a quill in it. He was in his late thirties, pale, with short, dark blond hair. Lasa, the bookkeeper.
I tried to look oblivious and trusting.
Derog turned my head left, then right.
“She’s untouched,” Darotha told him. “Healthy. Not diseased.”
That first one was not strictly true. I wasn’t a virgin, but I doubted they would check. My value wasn’t between my legs, it was in my mouth.
Derog grimaced and let me go. “It’s supply and demand, Darotha. Customers who risk buying a fucktoy want something extraordinary.”
“She’s docile. She won’t run off, and she will do whatever you tell her to. Smile, Maggie.”
I produced a bright plastic smile.
Derog’s gaze sharpened. He reached over, pressed his thumb against my upper lip, and pulled it up, exposing my teeth. Ugh.
“Open your mouth.”
I opened and held still.
“Close it.”
I did.
“I’ll take her.”
Lasa stepped forward. “Two nomas.”
Darotha drew back in outrage. “Five!”
“Two nomas, ten dens.”
“Four nomas, forty dens.”
Telling Darotha that she could pocket whatever money she sold me for might have been a mistake.
