All sounds had fallen silent; it was the dead of night.
In a corner of Ten Crows' royal capital stood a slave market.
It had been specifically set aside for the buying and selling of slaves. As the political center of all Ten Crows, the capital's nobles had an enormous demand for slaves. The slaves were sorted into different categories according to such standards as age, sex, physique, and appearance.
For example, young and beautiful ones were bought as female servants, while young, strong men were bought as laborers.
Other slaves were thrown into beast fights, pushed into arenas to battle beasts to the death while the powerful placed bets for entertainment. The more depraved nobles had slaves use their bodies to serve and tame ferocious beasts, then sat on high platforms enjoying the slaves' heart-rending screams below.
Slaves were the lowest of the low in Ten Crows.
They did not count as human.
Killing them naturally did not count as murder.
Killing a slave was as casual as smashing a bowl one did not like. Once it died, they only had to buy another to replace it.
Thus, the slaves here were replaced at an astonishing rate.
Aside from the slaves, the people who guarded and purchased them, and the occasional outsider, few people usually came here. For one thing, the place was remote and desolate; for another, the surrounding environment was filthy and reeked to high heaven. Wherever one looked, one could see the slaves' piss and shit.
Fortunately, it was still the dead of winter.
Had it been the height of summer, with the weather hot and dry and the blazing sun beating down, those excrement and urine would ferment and drift into the air...
They could be smelled from fifteen or twenty yards away, enough to