The sheer noise of the marketplace was overwhelming, all the more so because

Kotus couldn't understand a word of what the hundreds of people around her were saying.

She was nine years old, and she had never left the vicinity of her home village in Thrace

until the day the soldiers came. Now, three months and two boat rides later, Kotos had little

idea where she was, what languages the people spoke, or where her father and stepmother were,

even whether they were alive or dead. She had no idea what would happen to her now, whether death would

claim her tomorrow, or she would someday be able to return home. All of those questions frightened

Kotus, but nothing chilled her so much as the knowledge that she was now a slave. The ropes

binding her wrists and around her neck, tying her to the middle-aged woman ahead and the

teenage boy behind,

told her that. It was also the way the people looked at her appraisingly while she stood in place

on the raised platform. Cotus knew she was being sold. She had seen it happen back in her home village,

when her father had come back from fighting for their king with a pair of girls only a few years

older than Cotus was now. The villagers had looked at those two girls the same way the men in the market

were looking at Kossis now. She could hear the silver jingling in their purses. They were

buyers. Bad things happened to slaves, Kotis knew. One of those two girls had run away into the hills,

where bandits from the neighboring tribe surely picked her up if the wolves hadn't gotten her

first. The other died in childbirth the next year, and Kotas doubted that she had even been

15 years old. Would that be her fate as well, she wondered? Maybe the gods would smile on

Kotus and give her a good master. She could hope for

that much, at least. There were a few women among the men in the market, but only one looked like a buyer.

Her face was angular, her eyes darkened with makeup, and she wore a bright red tunic and jewelry

...