Excerpt from For Love of Their Children

      "Our work is increasingly urgent," the Gravetender said.  "We will require more Masters and more slaves."
     "Yes, Great One."  Lud bowed low, but it was hard to see the difference.  He was old and stooped already, his eyes naturally turned towards his own feet.  It was an effort these days to not bow.  "Where does the Great One propose I procure them?"
     "Put more pressure on the marketeers.  Try not to bring too many of the pale people.  Reserve them for the temples and the brothels.  We can increase our stock through procurement as well as longevity.  Increase food and water rations and institute breaks in the shade through the day, but lengthen the workday by half as much.  You will find more work done per slave per day."
     "Yes, Great One."  Lud had dealt with the kinder masters before.  In practice, their ideas about treating the slaves well never quite worked out.  
     He crossed the desert slowly on the back of an ass.  The ass wore the scars of long service, many whippings, but it carried him along briskly enough.  He hoped his own service would end soon, and he might be allowed to lay in some shady place while the last of his life leaked out into the sand.
     As he rode along towards the Gate of the Sun and the city beyond, he sang a song in a language older than the Overseers and older than almost all of the monuments gathering behind him.
     "A wild ass of the desert entered into a camp of men,
     "thinking there to find friends and be of service.  
     "The men who saw him enter their dwelling place,
     "were more interested in his service than in his friendship
     "and put him to work quickly.
     "Soon the ass found he had more work
     "than he had at first been willing to surrender.  
     "Therefore, to protest his exploitation,
     "one day he ceased in his labors and would not be moved.
     "The men were angry with the ass and they beat him.  
     "The ass, however, was used to the daily beatings of the desert sun, and did not yield.  
     "The men became angrier and whipped him;
     "but the ass was accustomed to the lash of his own loneliness, and did not yield.  
     "Moreover, now the ass found within himself a lesson for these men:
     "their beatings would avail them none of his gifts.
     "Eventually, the men tired of trying to force the ass to work;
     "it was more labor than the labor the ass would have done.  
     "Thus the ass found himself released from his burdens and free to go.
                 "Never again did the wild ass of the desert seek friendship with men."
     It was a long song, hardly music to the ears of modern folk.  A long, slow dirge really, meant for slaves to keep pace with slow and steady work such as dragging heavy blocks across the sand.  But Lud felt like a heavy block and the ass would probably agree, if it had the tongue for accusations.
     He stopped for water in one place, for shade-cool beer in another.  He could not race from place to place as he once had and the Gravetender's summons used up much of his day now.  Soon his body would be as cool as the beer, though, and he would be replaced with someone younger and stronger.
     At last he came to the Markets.  He rode his ass past the sellers of cooked food and fresh, past the leatherworkers and bronzemongers and one selling luxury goods made of iron.  It was the slavers he wanted, and they were furthest out along the riverbanks.  They liked to get the slaves off the boats as quickly as they could; their brothers in transportation were rarely gentle.  Too much product could be spoiled on long river voyages.
     Gorla was waiting for him.  He had sent messengers earlier in the day so she would be there when he finally arrived, a little past the time she would normally have left for the day.  Gorla had young children and liked to feed them their supper from her own hand.
     "At last comes Lud riding the ass.  Only which is the ass and which is Lud?  They both look old and broken to me."  She cackled, an ugly sound like an old witch in a story, though she was still young and hale and had all the beauty money could buy.
     "I'll have you flogged for your insolence one of these days," Lud told her as the ass crept up the last of the path to her tent.  "Just the moment you stop being of value."
     "Do it personally and I might enjoy it.  But come, come sit and have some wine.  Boy, bring wine.  Cold wine, from the river."  A slave boy jumped out of the shadows to do her bidding, knowing that if he was a moment too slow he would be off to the quarry to spend his life cutting stone.
     "I will, I will," Lud said.  The ass he left to its own devices.  Like him, it was too old to wander very far and not valuable enough for anyone to steal.  "Now, you must know I have come from the Gravetender."
     "Is it true the old one died?  I did not know they could die.  Did he see his own death?"
     "You ask questions more quickly than I can tell you I know not the answers.  He wandered off into the sand.  I may follow his example soon, only into some winesinks.  Too hot in the sand.  They say he has gone to join his mothers in the realm of abstractions, the ideal plane.  The plane of forms, some call it."
     "I don't know what that means," the woman said, a gold tooth gleaming as she smiled.
     "Nobody knows what that means.  Nothing, most likely.  Slaves, though.  We both know what slaves mean."
     "Profits?"
     "Work.  And profits.  Made for you, lost for me."  The boy came in bearing a copper flask full of sweet red wine.  It smelled vaguely of roses as he poured it, and Lud reflected on how few people had known the smell of roses.
     "How many, where and when?" Gorla asked.
     "No Northern folk this time.  The sun eats them too quickly.  Dries them out into prunes, like me, and gobbles them up.  No, no, don't offer them more cheaply.  The Gravetender is going to try the merciful approach for a time.  They always do when they are new.  It takes time for them to harden to hard truths.  Slaves need to be beaten.  We will take everyone else over twelve.  Use your best judgment.  If they die too soon I will be back for recompense, though.  The wine is good, I thank you.  Deliver them to the quarries as soon as you can without breaking them.  They need to arrive ready to work."
     "All I have amounts to one hundred and part of a second hundred.  Perhaps a third, perhaps a half depending on how young you will really take your twelve-year-olds."  Gorla tapped her teeth with a finger.  "We could get more, but there is a cost for quick service.  The hunters will be back from whoring and drinking in a few days."
     "Where will you send them?"
     "South, perhaps, into the Greenlands.  No, too bloody. The Greenlanders do fight back, do they not?  I will consider it.  The Lurkians are often happy to sell one another but such a long journey..."
     "Think, then," the Great Overseer said.  "But we don't pay for thinking, we pay for young bodies that can cut stone and carry it.  Write up your bill and send some bullies for your coin."
     "Make it gold this time," she said.  "Steel is so hard to pay out, make into smaller coins."
     "Done."
     He quaffed the last of the wine and climbed to his feet.  The wine made him sleepy but made his body hurt less.  Maybe this was what death would be like: painless but groggy, tired enough that nothing in the world signified.  The ass stood where he had left it, drinking water from a bucket some kind soul had placed before it.  Like him, it was too tired and ill-used even to run away.
     Lud mounted up and tugged the reins, snapped them, kicked.  The ass, though, went nowhere until it was done lapping water from the pail.  Then it turned slowly and plodded back towards the desert.