the sea, being a Consort has few drawbacks. Well, there’s the possibility of being killed or scarred in a duel, but any farmer might be killed or scarred. The men I spoke with said Consort dueling can be avoided by a fast tongue and a ready wit, neither of which can help farmers avoid accidents. And, so far as I can tell, the shame that attaches to the candidate’s family goes away after a time. One grows used to saying, ‘My son? Oh, he’s gone to work for a contractor in the city.’ “ Papa sighed, having put the best face on it he could.
“How much will you get for me, Papa?”
“I won’t get it. Your Mama will. It’s twenty gold vobati, my boy, after deducting your annuity share, but Mama has agreed to use it on the farm. That’s the only way I’d give permission for her to sell you, you being my eldest.” Eldest sons, as everyone knew, were exempt from sale unless the father agreed, though younger ones, being supernumerary, could be sold by their mothers—if she could find a buyer—as soon as they turned seven. Su-pernumes were miners and haulers and sailors; they were the ones who worked as farmhands or wood cutters or ran away to become Wilderneers.
Still, twenty vobati was a large sum of money. More than he could make as a seaman in a long, long time. “Is it as much a daughter would bring in?” Mouche whispered.
“Not if she were a healthy, good-looking and intelligent girl, but it isn’t bad. It’s enough to guarantee Mama and Papa food for their age.”
Mouche took a deep breath and tried to be brave. He would have had to be brave to be a seaman, so let him be brave anyhow. “I would rather be a Consort than a playmate, Papa.”
“I thought you might,” said Papa with a weepy smile.
Papa had a tender heart. He was always shedding a tear for this thing or that thing. Every time the earth shook and the great fire mounts of the scarp belched into the sky, Papa worried about the people in the way of it. Not Mama, who just snorted that people who built in the path of pyroclastic flow must eat ashes and like it, and with all the old lava about, one could not mistake where that was likely to be.
Papa went on, “Tell you true, Mouche—but if you tell your Mama, I’ll say you lie—many a time when the work is hard and the sun is hot, and I’m covered with bites from jiggers and fleas, and my back hurts from loading hay … well, I’ve thought what it would be like, being a Hunk. Warm baths, boy. And veils light enough to really see through. It would be fun to see the city rather than mere shadows of it. And there’s wine. We had wine at our wedding, your mama and me. They tell me one gets to like it.” He sighed again, lost in his own foundered dream, then came to himself with a start.
“Well, words enough! If you are agreeable, we will go to Sendoph tomorrow, for the interview.”
Considering the choices, Mouche agreed. It was Papa who took him. Mama could not lower herself to go into House Genevois as a seller rather than a buyer. That would be shameful indeed.
Sendoph was as Sendoph always was, noisy and smelly and full of invisible people everywhere one looked. Though the city had sewers, they were always clogging up, particularly in the dry season when the streams were low, and the irregular cobbles magnified the sound of every hoof and every wooden or iron-rimmed wheel to make clattering canyons between the tall houses and under the overhanging balconies. The drivers were all supernumes who had to work at whatever was available, and they could not see clearly through their veils. The vendors were equally handicapped. Veils, as the men often said, were the very devil. They could not go without, however, or they’d be thought loose or promiscuous or, worse, disrespectful of women. There were always many Haggers standing about, servants of the Hags, who were servants of the Hagions, the Goddesses, and they were swift to punish bad behavior.
The town was split in two by ancient lava tubes, now eroded into troughs, that guided the northward flow of the River Giles. Genevois House stood on the street nearest west and parallel to the river, its proud western facade decked with tall shuttered windows