Viland is a cold, brutal place, yet I grew there and loved it as much as it would allow. Cruel seas batter rocky harbours through winters that last a good nine months of the year, months when all crowd about fires amid the cheerful belchings of onion and ale fumes, and tell endless stories of adventure at the end of the harpoon. In the brief flowering of summer the Vilanders hurriedly eke their living from the whales that throng the icy coastal waters, selling the great fish's meat, oil, hide and bones to any who care to pay coin for it. Not many, some years. Yet even whalers appreciate fine goblets to sip from, and those years when the whale sold well, my father gained enough in commissions to feed us through the leaner seasons.

But there wasn't much to spare, as we both found out to our sorrow.

Despite the ice and the ever-threatening poverty my father and I were happy. Content ... until the day my father's thoughtlessness and poorly buried heartache matured into the sour fruit that destroyed us both.

Mam had died early, before I was two, and my earliest memories are of the fascinating world encompassed by the shadowed spaces beneath my father's work table. Here I played happily all day amid the shavings of glass and globs of discarded enamel, scraping these bright shards into piles and sifting them through hands too small and fat to be of practical use to my father. The table protected me from the worst of the furnace heat and from most of the problems of the outside world, and when the workday was over my father lifted me into strong arms and carried me back to our cold, motherless home.

Always I yearned for the morning, and the workshop.

When I was five, and too large and curious to fit comfortably beneath the table, my father decided to teach me his craft. Along with the techniques of mixing, firing and working the glass, I had to learn the common trading tongue of nations, as well several other languages; all craft workers needed to converse with those merchants who might bring them the one commission to keep starvation at bay for another month or two.

I was young and quick-witted, and I learned both languages and craft easily. By ten my hands were slim and capable enough to take on some of the fine work my father increasingly found too difficult, and my tongue was agile enough to chatter to the occasional merchant from Geshardi or Alaric who passed by the workshop. I did not mind spending my days at the work table, learning a trade when I could have been imbibing the raucous street games of my contemporaries. My father and the glass formed the boundaries of the only world I needed, and if my father was more often silent than talkative, then I found all the conversation and company I desired in the shifting colours of the glass.

The glass told me of many things.

When I was eighteen my father often left me working contentedly on the final engraving of a goblet or, increasingly, the finishing work for cage lace, and wandered the streets in search of old friends with whom to pass an hour or two. At least, that's what I thought until the bailiffs came. I did not know that my father's long festering grief for my mother had found outlet in the quest for luck at fate. Luck deserted him as completely as my mother had. My thoughtless, loving father lost our freedom on the spin of a coin and the sorry futility of a fighting cock with a broken wing.

I was at the table in the workshop when they came.

The vase I had in my hands was four weeks' old and approaching its final beauty. My father had fashioned the mould, mixed the glass (and only he could add such deft flurries of base metals and gold that produced the exquisite marbled walls) and sat over the kiln as the fires patiently birthed his creation. It was his finest effort for six months, and he could hardly bear to hand it over to me to cage.

But caging would produced a work guaranteed to feed us for the next year, and his hands could no longer be trusted with the required touch.

It was one of my best works. I had caged to create one of the Vilander's favourite myths - Gorenfer escaping the maddened jungles of Bustian-Halle - when the workroom door burst in.

I spun around on my stool, the vase in my hands.

My broken-spirited father stumbled in, followed by five men I knew by sight and reputation. Instantly, intuitively, I understood the reason for this ungracious entrance.

One of the debt-collectors shouted my name, his face red and sweaty, his hand outstretched and demanding.

Shocked, and frightened beyond anything I'd experienced previously, I dropped the vase-its death cry adding to the terror about me.

That vase could have saved us, it could have paid my father's debts, but I let it shatter uselessly on the floor.

After that I could blame my father for nothing. If he had temporarily impoverished us, then he had also created the beauty that would have saved us.

Except that I dropped it ... and condemned us to slavery.

***

None of my father's entreaties, none of my tears, could move these five hard-souled men. There were debts, and they must be paid. Now. Nothing in our poor house (save the once beautiful vase lying in useless shards at my feet) could be sold to pay recompense ... except us.

We were handed directly to the local slaver who dusted us down, inspected us from head to toe, and stood back, considering.

I had learned my father's craft well, and for that the slaver kept us together, even though, at nineteen and fair enough, I would have fetched a reasonable price hawked to some tired bureaucrat or lordling bored with his wife. My father had a lifetime of skills and the reputation to go with them, I had the ability to finish the fine work his ageing stiff fingers found difficult. I was saved the bed of some paunch-bellied magnate, he kept his tools and the last living reminder of his wife. After the initial tears and protests, both of us resigned ourselves to our fate; we had once been free but now debt had forced us into slavery. It was regrettable but not unknown; over past years I had seen three other craftsmen sell themselves and their families to escape starvation. We would still practice our craft, if to the dictates of a master rather than to the satisfactions of free choice.

And we would still be together.

***

We did not stay in Viland long. The slaver, Skarp-Hedin, an unimportant man save for this one decision that would change so many lives, decided we'd fetch the best price in the strange, hot realms to the south.

"They have fine sand a-plenty for you to melt," Skarp-Hedin said, "and the nobility to buy what you craft of it. You'll fetch five times what you will here in this sorry land."

My father bowed his head, but I stared indignantly at the slaver. "But Viland is our -"

"You have no home!" the man shouted. "And no country, save that of the market place!"

***

Within the day we were bundled into the belly of a whaler for cheap transport south. For six weeks we rolled and pitched in that loathsome cavern, my father clutching his tools, I retching over whatever stale food the crew thought to provide us. We were chained, he and I, although where the crew thought we would escape to in the glassy grey waters of the northern seas I do not know, and the chains ate at our ankles until they festered and screamed. The pain drowned out the soft whisperings of the metal links. Finally, gratefully, the whaler docked. My father and I sat in the hold, trying to ignore the bright pain of our ankles, listening to the muted sounds of a bustling port. Over the past ten days the weather had warmed until the interior of the hold sweltered day and night. The whale meat stunk with putrefaction, and I wondered to what possible use it could now be put. After an hour the crew swarmed into the hold to begin the loathsome task of forking the meat into cargo nets to be swung ashore. On the fourth load one of them remembered we were confined somewhere in the dim hold as well, and caused us to be netted along with the rotting meat, and we were unceremoniously swung ashore.

The instant the ropes lifted the net above the rim of the hold intense sunlight seared my eyes, and I squeezed them shut, unable to bear the sting. I cried out in pain, and my father tried to comfort me, but his mumblings did nothing to ease my terror. I felt the net swing high in the air, and I almost vomited, clutching at the rough rope, trying to gain any handhold that might serve to save me should the net break. Beside me I heard the bag of tools rattle as my father clutched it closer to his chest.

The next instant there was a sickening jolt as the net landed on the wharf. I lost my grip, and my father and I slid unceremoniously down the pile of sweating whale meat to land in a tangle of chains and rope and greasy, rotting fish flesh on the splintery boards of the pier.

There was a voice, rough with disgust. "Kus! Is this what you have brought me, you god-cursed whaleman? Look at them!" He spoke in the common trading tongue of nations.

I squinted into the sunlight, able to make out only vague shapes through the cargo net.

A man was bending down, a robe of simmering green weave drifting free and cool about him. A hand grasped the net and shook it free as men hurried to unhook the loading chains. Then it caught my upper arm and hauled me to my feet.

I stumbled, my ankle chains snagging amid the rope and fish.

There was a harsh intake of breath from the man, then he helped my father to his feet. His hands, quick and sure, ran over our bodies, gauging the amount of damage done.

He turned aside momentarily. "Strike these chains from their ankles. Now!" And men hurried to do his bidding.

I wept as those hateful metal bars and links fell free, and the tears cleared what blurriness remained.

Our rescuer was a man of middle age, dark-haired and ebony-eyed, and with swarthy skin stretched tight over a strong-boned face. His robe was of good linen, loose-fitting and hanging unbelted to his sandalled feet. He looked clean and cool and very sure of himself, and I had been none of those things for a long time.

He inspected my hands with more care, then those of my father.

"Well, at least your hands are undamaged, and that is all that counts." He caught at my chin with his fingers. "And you are youthful under that grime and stinking oil." Now his fingers lifted one of the lank strands of my hair. "Blonde, I'll wager, to go with your blue eyes."

His voice was softer now, thoughtful, and I could see him sifting the possibilities in his mind. "Skarp-Hedin sent word that you work glass. Is that true?"

My father nodded. "I have been a master craftsman for over twenty years," he said, "and my daughter has more talent than I." He hesitated. "None can mix the colours as I, nor carve the moulds or blow the glass. And my daughter cages as though blessed by the gods."

The man's eyes were very sharp now, and they swung back my way. "You are too young," he said.

"I have been working at my father's side since I was five," I replied tiredly. How much longer would he keep us standing in this frightful sun? "And caging since I was ten."

"Well," he said, "you have come from Skarp-Hedin, and I have never received anything but the best from him previously. I will trust him on this as well. See that cart?" He inclined his head to the side. "Then get in."

And turned and left us to clamber in as best we could.

As his driver slapped the mules into action, he told us his name was Hadone, and he worked in occasional partnership with the Vilander slaver who'd sent us south. They would share the proceeds of our sale, but Hadone had no intention of presenting us to the market in our current state. From the wharf his man drove us to quarters deep in the town - Adab, Hadone informed me as I peered over the rim of the cart, too unnerved to sit upright.

"And this is the realm of En-Dor." Again he ran his eyes over my face and hair as he twisted about on the seat next to the driver. "And though glass workers sell well here, I wonder if I might get yet a better price for you in Ashdod."

My father had noted both Hadone's tone and the direction of his eyes. "Skarp-Hedin said we'd be sold together. That's how we work. A team."

"Of course," Hadone said, swinging back to face the street before him. "That's how I intend to sell you. As a team."

My father and I exchanged a glance, then turned our eyes back to the strange sights around us.

The dirt-packed streets were crowded with men and women dressed much as Hadone was-loose, brightly coloured robes that swung loose to their feet. Many had lengths of fine white cloth wrapped about their heads, the tasselled ends drifting lazily about their shoulders. Behind them rose blocks of mud brick shops and houses, plastered either in white or pale pink, with flat roofs and canvas awnings that hung out into the street and shaded those passing by. Among all the people wound donkeys bearing loads on their backs or pulling carts like ours. An occasional rider on a finely-boned horse, always grey, pushed through the crowds; both horse and rider were invariably richly draped with silks and ropes of jewels.

About all hung the dust of the thousands of scuffling feet, and a rich heady odour of spices and fragrance that did nothing to soothe my stomach.

It was so strange, so unlike what I'd known in Viland, and every minute the sun beat down with increasing fierceness. I crept as close to the walls of the cart as I could, trying to escape both sun and strangeness, and prayed I would not vomit what little food I had eaten that morning.

On the other side of the cart my father huddled miserably about his sack of tools.

"We'll be there soon," Hadone said, and I closed my eyes and hid my face in my arms, almost undone by the kindness in his voice.

Within minutes we'd turned into a shaded side alley, and then turned again into a cool courtyard. I heard Hadone jump down from the cart, and I sat up, looking about. The spacious courtyard was bounded on two sides by what was obviously Hadone's own residence, and on the other two sides by stables, store houses and a slavery which looked as though it had quarters for several dozen inmates. All buildings were clean and in good repair, and the courtyard itself was paved and swept clean of any dung or dust.

Hadone's man - I never knew his name - helped us down from the cart, then Hadone handed us over to a man and a woman who escorted myself and my father to the separate men's and women's slave quarters.

I watched my father being led away with some nervousness, for I was loathe to be parted from him, but I understood that we could hardly be housed together in this place, and I let the woman, Omarni, guide me to a cool room. There she bathed me, tended the festering sores about my ankles, and persuaded me to eat some fruits and drink some milk.

Despite my fears, I slept better that night than I had in weeks, and my sleep was dreamless.

We stayed there fifteen days while our sores closed over, our ankles thickened with scar tissue, and our faces plumped out from their gauntness. Hadone would sell us in the markets, but he would not do so until we looked reasonably healthy.

I saw my father from time to time, but not to speak to.

I saw Hadone more often and more intimately.

Eight days after we had arrived he called me to his house one evening, where he stood looking me up and down, and fingering my now clean and shining hair. "In a week or so I will take you and your father to market," he said, "and for the remaining nights you will spend an hour or two in my quarters. You will be sold for your talents at glass making, not for your virginity."

And so he proceeded to divest me of it.

He was vigorous and painful but not intentionally unkind and, to be frank, I had known that sooner or later rape would be an inevitability of my enslavement. Well, I should not have dropped that vase. For all pain, there comes pain repaid.

When it was done he sent me back to the slavery, and Omarni gave me a steaming cup of a thick herbal to drink.

"It will save your belly from swelling with child," she said practically, and I realised she must have served this brew to a score of slaves before me.

It was bitter, and it made my stomach churn, but I drank it down gratefully. The last thing I wanted was to walk into a lifetime of servitude encumbered with the squalling brat of a slaver.

***

A week later we went to market - I with a little more experience and a few more skills than I'd had when I'd landed amid the pile of stinking whale meat on the wharf.

Both my father and I were nervous. Who would buy us? Would he be a kind man, or a harsh taskmaster? And I wondered further, would he be a satisfied husband, or a man seeking diversion amid the trapped delights of his slavery?

Neither, as it turned out.

The market was crowded with vendors selling fruits, cloths, plate and lives. One corner was devoted exclusively to the trade in human flesh, and there Hadone directed us and the three other men he intended to sell this day. We were guarded, but only lightly. None of us had anywhere to run.

The guards took the three men directly to the open slave lines, where prospective buyers could prod the merchandise and inspect their teeth, but Hadone took my father and I to a stall at the back of the lines.

There a tall and painfully thin man, as dark as Hadone, unravelled himself from a stool and bowed slightly. His eyes were as sharp as his face was thin, and I decided instantly that I did not like him.

Hadone returned the bow with far greater obeisance than he had been afforded. When he spoke, he kept his hands clasped over his heart and his eyes fixed on the dirt. "Kamish. May your sons win renown and your daughters rich husbands."

Kamish's thin mouth twisted cynically. "I have no children, Hadone. You know that."

"I was merely trying to be polite," Hadone said, finally rising, and I realised he did not like Kamish very much either.

Kamish did not bother with further pleasantries. "These are those you wrote me about?"

His eyes were now bright and overeager and, nervous, I stepped closer to my father.

"Indeed," Hadone said. "The man has won renown over many nations with his skill at mixing and moulding, and his daughter," he paused slightly, "has been trained well. Among her many skills, she can also cage."

"She cages?" If possible, the gleam in Kamish's eyes increased. "My masters -"

"Would surely pay well for the skills these two carry. I believe your ... masters ... are scouring all living lands for such as these."

"And she cages," Kamish repeated in an undertone. I waited for the inevitable, "She's too young," but it never came.

"Cages," he said yet again.

Hadone's mouth drooped in imitation woe. "And with such skills, Kamish, I regret that I must ask a price to match."

Kamish had given too much of his eagerness away, and his bargaining power was severely curtailed. Within minutes, as my father and I stood uselessly by as our lives were haggled away, Hadone had won a price for himself and Skarp-Hedin that would not only pay our debts but leave the two slavers rich men. As Kamish bustled about, shouting for his men, Hadone turned to my father and myself. "I wish you well," he said briefly, and his eyes met mine. I was astounded to see a trace of regret there.

But then he jingled the coin in his purse, and the regret faded and he turned away.

I never saw him again.