With a pleasant buzz from the booze and the high of a successful trade, I was feeling pretty good about myself. I decided to take my time getting back to the sea-cow. The next few hours were spent exploring the walled-town and developing my new trade skill.

There wasn’t much to explore. The warehouse district crowded the water and ranks of barracks filled half the remaining space.

The chapel at the center of the town sported elaborate stained glass windows. Most of these portrayed epic struggles of good versus evil. One glowing character was prominent in most of the windows, leading gleaming knights against shadowy forces.

An entire street of workshops was devoted to the maintenance of the garrison. They filled the air with enough bitter smoke and noise to make sure the area was nearly deserted. The few groups hurrying about their business didn’t bother trying to talk to each other over the clangor of pre-industrial metalworking. Some of the workshops specialized in repairing and maintaining gear. With a bit of pantomime, a smile, and a palm holding 3 coppers, I managed to convince one of the smiths to repair my speargun bolt. He couldn’t sell me anything, however. Apparently everyone working here was under contract and all their products belonged to the empire.

Buying a grave-robber’s buttons was one thing but I wasn’t about to try and bribe a sword off of a contracted merchant in the middle of a military town. That seemed like a little too much risk for a reward I don’t really need and probably can’t afford anyway.

Once I made it out the other side of the smith’s street, I was greeted by a very welcome smell. The unmistakable aroma of roasting meat filled the air along with the rich and hearty undertones of stew.

There was an entire compound dedicated to feeding the garrison and a hundred soldiers were currently wolfing down their dinner in an open square lined with long tables and benches. I tried to buy some hot food but was turned away without an active commission in the military.

After that, I wandered through the mining quarter hoping for a chance to buy a little metal but the stern-looking guards made me reconsider that idea. A couple of dingy taverns with overpriced ale gave the miners a place to spend their wages though and I stopped at each of these to play a couple of songs. After collecting another handful of coppers for my trouble, I learned about a shop that caters to the contracted miners.

From the outside, the small shack was no different from the other cots the miners lived in. It wasn’t too different on the inside either. The walls were festooned with a bit more equipment than was usual but that was all. Either the guard didn’t care about such a small operation or it’s humble nature and word-of-mouth advertising strategy kept it from notice. The bent and wrinkled old miner who lived there was happy to trade with outsiders too.

A lantern with flint and steel, a small pickaxe and seven whetstones only set me back 39 coppers. I wasn’t planning on doing any mining but the pickaxe was the closest thing to a melee weapon I had access to and I jumped at the opportunity.

All in all, My inventory was satisfyingly heavy with goods while I still had a respectable 26 coppers in my pocket but my high spirits came crashing back down when I got in view of the ship. It wasn’t because my short vacation was coming to an end. It was because I could see a line of chained rag-wearing people trudging up the gang-plank to the Sea-Cow’s deck.

No less than 13 slaves were led onto the ship and chained around the mainmast. There was enough play in their bonds for them to shuffle along but they would be completely unable to run, swim, or fight. I wanted to throw up.

I spent the next two days trying my best not to stare at the huddled mass of wretches while simultaneously working around them. I stared at the ceiling of the hold at night instead of sleeping. Dark thoughts and an overwhelming feeling of helplessness kept me awake.

Was I a slaver now? Could I do anything to help them? Duncan doesn’t really deserve any loyalty but even if I pulled off a mutiny, what could I do next? I don’t know enough about navigation to make it back to land on my own. I’d just be condemning my crewmates to a quick death and the slaves to a slower one.

Even if I lucked out and made landfall, We’d be stuck trying to scrape a living off of whatever rock we landed on and there would be the constant threat of bounty hunters finding us as well.

Do the slaves even deserve freedom? I don’t know anything about them. They could have been anything from debtors to rapists. I didn’t have any time when I could talk to them alone and find out either. The few small kindnesses I extended were met with suspicion, hollow eyes, or in a few cases, complete unresponsiveness.

I was happy to see them get off at the next stop, and it made me hate myself. The slaves joined a well-whipped workforce building a tower on a lonely spit of rock. All the stones in our hold were removed, one at a time in a procession of misery. The sailors mostly looked right through them, treating them like just another load of cargo. The one exception was Hank. I noticed his eyes lingering on the slaves on more than one occasion.

“What’s on your mind?” I asked him, interrupting a pensive stare at the construction. He blinked and took a moment to come back to his senses before responding.

“It’s just so sad. Look at how underfed they are. They barely have the strength to carry a single stone” He said. My heart leaped. Did Hank actually qualify as a decent human being?

I agreed with him eagerly. It was good to have someone to talk about it with.

“Yeah! They won’t even take off their manacles when they’re working. Did you see the blood around their ankles?”

Hank shook his head

“It’s a damned shame. I just hate watching an inefficient operation.”

That put a whole different tone on the conversation. I went quiet but Hank picked up steam.

“Just a pair of hand carts or even a rough gravel pathway would increase the speed of construction considerably. Instead, they’re working their slaves to death which means they need to bring in more. Construction is delayed and they’re trying to cut corners on rations but that’s just making matters worse. A single crane would save them a bucket of gold but whoever is in charge here is an utter dolt.” He shook his head sadly “Sometimes I think the gods are laughing at us, letting such incompetents thrive while I’ve been reduced to a simple deckhand.”

I went back to brooding after that.

There wasn’t anything on the small island besides the incomplete tower and the slave colony. We moved on without taking on any goods, just another slip of paper confirming our delivery.

The empty merchant ship rode high in the water as we headed south and west. We practically skipped across the ocean swells on our way to warmer waters.

Despite my newly lowered opinion of the crew, it was hard to live and work in such close proximity for so long without learning about each other. Hank, in particular, was eager to chat. He told me all about his sad story. How he had started as an apprentice to a merchant house and worked his way up to owning his own merchant ship. He was personally seeing a shipment to an important new client when a storm foundered his ship and all of his goods. Finding himself in a strange land with no capital forced him to lean on his meager sailing skills and he was eager to get back to trading his own goods once his contract was up.

Jerry wouldn’t shut up about his lady love who was waiting for him to return with pockets overflowing with silver.

Harry was the only one of them to consider sailing as a serious career. He had grown up under the docks, assuming that he was a whoreson like most of the others wharf-rats. Sailing was about the best profession he could have hoped to aspire to. He was a gentle giant but from time to time I glimpsed something hard and cold in his eyes.

William and Theodore weren’t brothers like I had first assumed. Instead, they were long-time friends with a shared zest for life and enthusiasm for adventure that had seen them traveling the world together for years. They were consistently delighted by my ability to tell stories that even they hadn’t heard of before.

There were all sorts of rumors about Duncan’s origins but he held himself aloof from his crew and stayed mysterious as a result.

For my part, I explained my origin with a generic shipwreck. I stayed vague about the land I came from and if they started prying for details, I distracted them with seemingly fanciful stories about flying carriages and magic boxes. They were so outlandish that none of them ever suspected I was being even a little bit honest.

The strenuous physical activity and plentiful sunlight kept me from getting depressed about the slaves we had just transported but their faces kept appearing in my mind. It threw my own predicament into perspective. After listening to Hank gripe about his misfortune in front of actual slaves I felt like a complete heel.

My short-term goal of amassing wealth seemed incredibly shallow now. I could tell myself that once I got the money, the training, and the gear I needed, I could become a champion of justice, but that fantasy is really just rooted in my desire to be cool. It never had much to do with actually helping other people. I just wanted to be popular and strong.

While I was bound by contract and refusal might have just meant that I was left at the construction site as an extra slave, I had personally profited from the trade. One silver coin was my cut of the vile operation. That was less than ten coppers per person I had helped condemn to a short life of hard labor. If we were paid on landfall instead of on the completion of our contracts, I might have thrown the coin into the ocean. Instead, it was sitting in Duncan’s pay-chest, jingling merrily with the rest of his wealth as the rolling waves shifted the contents from one side to the other and back.