Neveryona by Samuel R. Delany Read Free Book Online Page B

looking after her narrow back – had only glimpsed her face. Two boys hurried by on the other side, arms around each other’s shoulders. One had shaved his head completely. Both, Pryn saw, wore the same dark eye-paint – before they, too, became just backs ahead of her.
    Sitting on steps leading up to another street, beggars argued loudly. One was missing an arm and an ear; among them a woman, with a crutch under one shoulder, its splintered end protruding over the stone step’s edge, complained about a jar of wine she had stolen from the dried-up earthworm of an innkeeper. It had been bad, but she had drunk it anyway and gotten sick and lain – sick – in the street three days. The stump of her missing leg was crusted with scab.
    Pryn hurried by.
    On Pryn’s right lay a littered yard between three cracked and yellow buildings. In the middle was a circular stone wall, waist high, long boards over its top. It was about three meters across. Pryn walked up to the enclosure and looked down through the strip of black betweenthe weathered planks. Belowa, a dark head moved to blot a strip of reflected sky.
    Again she turned down the street.
    Buildings ended; Pryn looked across to an embankment. The bridge entrance had waist-high stone walls either side. A tall woman at the corner newel was fastening a white damasked collar, sewn with metallic threads and set with jewels. It was one of the decorative collar-covers house slaves in wealthier families sometimes used to hide the ugly iron band all slaves wore by law. Having trouble with the clasp, however, the woman removed the cloth to shake it out. Her long neck was bare. She raised the collar-cover again.
    The clasp caught – as halfway over the bridge someone hailed her. Along the bridge’s walkway, in colorful robes and veils (many with painted eyes), young women and men stood, leaned, talked, stared, or ambled slowly.
    The woman with the collar-cover ran to grab the arm of the heavy, hairy man who’d called. He wore a helmet like the ones Pryn had seen outside the Liberator’s headquarters.
    Watching them stroll away, Pryn crossed to the bridge. She reached the post where the woman had stood, put her hand on it, and looked over the stone rail.
    Green water glimmered around moss-blotched rocks, clotted with wood, fruit rinds, broken pottery. Some barbarian children climbed out by the carved stanchion stones. Behind her she heard:
    ‘Twenty!’
    ‘Five –’
    ‘Nineteen!’
    ‘Five!’
    ‘Eighteen?’
    ‘Five
, I say!’
    ‘Seventeen!’
    ‘All right, eight!’
    Pryn looked up. Coming forward through the loiterers was a portly, middle-aged man in a smart toga with red ribbon woven about the white sleeves, neck, and hem. His hand held the shoulder of a naked, green-eyed, barbarian boy, a year or so younger than Pryn. The boy was arguing in his odd southern accent and gesticulating with one closed fist and one open hand: ‘You give me sixteen? I go with you and do it for sixteen! All right? You give me sixteen, then!’
    ‘Ten!’
    ‘Sixteen!’
    ‘Ten!’
    ‘Sixteen!’
    ‘Oh, eleven!’
    ‘No, sixteen!’
    ‘Sixteen
for a dirty little weasel like you?’ returned the man with a grin. ‘For sixteen, I should have you
and
your three brothers. I’ll give you twelve!’
    ‘You give
fifteen
!’ the barbarian said. ‘You want my brother? Maybe we go find him and he come too. But he don’t do anything, you know? He just watch. For fifteen I go get my brother and –’
    ‘Now what would I want with two of you!’ The man laughed. ‘One of you is bad enough. I’ll take you by yourself, and
maybe
I’ll give you twelve …’
    A black man in a long skirt led a camel up over the bridge. The high humps, rocking gait, and clopping hooves made the loiterers smile. The creature had just soiled herself and suddenly decided to switch her tail –
    Pryn herself flinched, though no drop struck.
    But the man snatched his hand from the boy’s shoulder and rubbed the