"So part of it is that everyone agrees that if I hurt you for not obeying me I'm being reasonable, that makes sense. But -"

"...everyone agrees that you bought me and now I'm yours," she says. "I'm an everyone."

"But you do want to be free? Right?"

"That'd be swell! But I'm not."

"What would be, uh, swell about it, specifically?"

"If I had more kids they'd be born free and I could go wherever without worrying about it and stuff."

Nod. "Okay. Well. I want you to occasionally summon dishware so that day can come sooner."

"Sure thing."

Hug. Sigh.

Hug!

Someone backs out from their vote on the literacy thing. She's one vote short.

Malare's two make a hundred seventy nine. 

Amait paces. When her pacing takes her marketwards she is not entirely surprised.

There's a new shipment from abroad. The shipping lanes between this continent and the next are getting busier and one way to get a translator on the cheap is to ship a reasonably bright slave from point A to point B and wait.

...dumping slaves in foreign countries and hoping they pick up the language doesn't seem like it can possibly be the actual cheapest way to get translation. Maybe people like Amait's mother are rare. 

Amait paces for another two hours.

Slaves continue to be around, with signs advertising their attributes. The ones from abroad are marked by heel tattoos instead of helix piercings and some of these haven't been redone yet. Somebody's going around with a needle.

She doesn't watch. She reads the signs.

This one is literate and also reads Ancient Sudre, apparently. Used to be a housegirl.

Maybe she will appreciate being purchased to enable a literacy campaign. Probably not. Amait wouldn't.

Amait asks the price on that one.

She is stared at (by the slave) and told 2,500 (by the seller).

"She doesn't speak the language. I don't care if she's a genius, she can't be useful for anything you can't communicate by pointing and grunting. Maybe she'll be worth more in six months, if she's really so quick, but maybe she's a moron they thought they could get away with marketing as 'clever in a different language', who's going to check if she reads Ancient Sudre? And maybe she dies of the climate. Eight hundred."

"If you want one who speaks the language I have some over here," says the seller. "On the way over they were taught 'stop' -"

(The slave's face says 'but I'm not even doing anything what the fuck'.)

"- and 'come' and 'do what he's doing' -"

"That's adequate for basic work. The kind of thing you pay eight hundred for."

"Ma'am, if you want one who speaks the local language for basic work they're over there and even they're priced as marked. If you don't want one that speaks Esevi I don't know what to tell you."

"They're going to be hard to move until they have more than three phrases and demonstrate some ability to not die of the weather. Fifteen hundred."

"They're fine in the weather as long as you don't try to keep them in an unheated barn," says the seller. "Two thou."

"I'm just taking your word for that. I brought eighteen, you can have it now."