At her whining about sleeping the morning away, Lukos frowned. “The sun is up and so should you be,” he chided, glancing over at her. Her hair was a riotous mess and she lay splayed out on the bed with no shame whatsoever, which was how he preferred women to be. The shy ones were irksome. Some men liked their girls to be blushing and either pretend to be too innocent, or truly be that bashful. Lukos did not. He had little patience for affectations or virginal ignorance. Skylla was none of those things and was as common and baseborn as anyone could be. This suited him, since he was the same.

While she looked him over, he pulled on his trousers, lacing them up in the front while she agreed to buy breakfast. He glanced at her once she offered lunch as well and arched a dark brow. “Someone’s feeling generous,” he said and then pulled his shirt over his head, effectively cutting off her ability to look him over as freely as she had been. Lukos sat down on the bed, pulling on one boot and then the other while Skylla asked if she could tag along with him. He hadn’t missed her pointed mention that she had nothing to do for days.

“I won’t stand it if you’re constantly underfoot,” he twisted to level her with a serious look. “I have things to see to, today. Actual work. I’m not going to lay in bed with you all day long. We’re not at home.” Not that lazing the day away on the island was common either. Lukos liked to move way too much to spend his time cooped up in a room during daylight hours. That was for the night when it was too dark to work. As much as he enjoyed himself while he was with a girl, passion wasn’t the ruling factor in his life. He liked power and gold too much to ignore them.

“Come on,” he got off the bed and bent down, fishing her dress off the floor and flinging it at her. “Get dressed. We’re already going to have to eat on the way.” Could he have been gentler with her? Yes. He didn’t need to treat her with as callousness as he did but it was habit and he wasn’t going to alter his behavior. That might give her false ideas because, as much as she liked to pretend that she was immune to feelings, he knew that wasn’t the case and he didn’t want her attached to him like that. It made things complicated and the last thing that Lukos wanted from Skylla was complications.

He fixed his belt around his hips while she dressed and then he checked the window, looking down into the still empty streets below. The sky was still barely gray and the general populace of Vasiliadon would not quite be awake yet. The merchants and sailors and slaves - they were awake. This was the time to set up before the first of the customers drifted in. If she was going to come with him, they still had plenty to do before the sky gained more color.

“Be a good girl and hurry,” he drew near to the bed, ready to do the clasps to her dress for her if necessary. His body buzzed with energy, already anticipating the rest of the day.

"You speak like I am lazy, Lukos. Contrary to how you remember me, I do know what work is," she said tartly and he rolled his eyes. Being on her knees and her back didn’t count as work. He watched her sweep her hair up into a ponytail, interested in the way that her dark locks slid through her fingers in silky tendrils. Sometimes women were interesting in their differences to men. He never gave two thoughts to his hair and it showed. His own was wild and unkempt and usually only tamed when other people ran their fingers through it. The ribbon twisted around her hair, fixing it in place and then she crawled off the bed, dressing again and he looked at her anew. Last night he’d barely noticed what she was wearing. Now that there was proper light and he was much more himself and a lot less drunk, he raised his eyebrows.

The woman before him was an entirely foreign entity. He did not like the change. It did not matter that the dress was made precisely for her, and hugged her curves. It did not matter that she looked almost regal, with the tilt of her head and her hair catching the light just so. It did not matter that she moved with a fluid grace, the fabric of the dress fluttering around her feet, and her hips swaying in precisely a way designed to turn his head. This was not who he thought of if he ever even though of her at all. The image he had in his head was of a barefoot girl, legs exposed, hair wild, with sand clinging to her skin, smelling faintly of lentisk, juniper, and pomegranate.

When she was dressed like this, she was pretending to be something and someone else. An artifice, of sorts, of sorts. Lukos preferred people to act like what they really were, which was why he didn’t change for anyone or anything. Or pretended he didn’t, at least. But no one called him on his bullshit, and that was the difference. Eyeing her backside again, he caught his shirt as she tossed it at him and rolled his eyes when she left the room.

Breathing out in a long sigh, he eyed the balls of linen she’d carelessly left on the floor and scooped them up, rewrapping them into a manageable ball. Obviously in her new life, she forgot what waste looked like. These would need to be laundered and he certainly wasn’t going to do it. Neither was she. This meant that he would find a washer woman for her, drop these off to be cleaned, then return them to Skylla and rub it in her face that she couldn’t even take care of herself without someone reminding her of the little necessities that needed to be done.

With that bit of self arrogance restored, he left the room, fully dressed, and drummed down the stairs of the inn in time to see her putting food in her bag. He put his hand on the small of her back and gave her a little shove forward, sweeping her with him towards the doors. In his free hand, he still held the ball of soiled linen strips and he’d toss it to her in due course.

"You'll have to lead me. I did little exploring once I saw the Aceton in the bay."

“Stick with me. This city’s pretty easy to navigate once you get used to it. Unlike some.” They moved across the well made roads through the city. Vasiliadon was definitely the most aesthetically pleasing city in Greece. Special care and attention had been dedicated to making it a pleasure to walk through, from the uniform white of the buildings to the periodic statues of the gods, to the trellises that held curling vines. Fountains were set up here and there, sculptures decorated public spaces and the roads had been specially laid with flat stones that made walking simple. There was almost nothing not to like about this city and as far as it went on its own, it lived up to its reputation as the ‘Jewel of the Aegean’. What Lukos didn’t overly love about it, was that it wasn’t made with the common people in mind. It was a testament to the rich and powerful. Common people were allowed to live here, but not actively encouraged. At least, that’s how he felt about it.

“Here,” he said, handing her the ball of linens. “We’ll find a washer woman later. Unless you’ve got all the money in the world to just buy more bandages?” he eyed her, toying with the idea of stripping her of said coin, if she was indeed that loaded. They were not overly far from the docks. Lukos almost never went too far inland unless business called him there.

As they walked, he dug in her bag, taking out his portion of cheese and bread and occasionally fishing about for a cluster of grapes. “Don’t get underfoot today,” he said around a mouthful. “I have more to do than look after you.” And then he added as an afterthought, “I am not nannying you. If you get lost, you get lost.” She wasn’t his responsibility. She’d made herself her own responsibility and he considered himself a little too kind to be leading her right to the docks, past the whores who were counting up their earnings from the night and just heading to their own lodgings to sleep the day away. Sailors just like himself were turning back up to start offloading their ships. The dock was packed with crates, people, and fishermen, who were returning from being out on the water while it was still dark. The whole place smelled of fish and sweat and salt.

Leading her straight up the gangway of the Aceton, Lukos was mostly done with his food, but was snacking on Olives when Catos met him on deck. “You’re late captain,” he said and eyed Skylla.

“Maybe you’re early, old man,” Lukos said easily and drummed down the stairs to the bowels of the ship where the slaves were stowed. He did not look to see if Skylla followed him or not, but it was time to get these people off his hands.

Catos gave a ‘humph’ to Skylla, despite her brilliant smile and gave her a little shove with the tips of his fingers as she walked toward the stairs leading down into the ship’s underbelly. ”You’re still a scamp,” he chided and turned away to continue on with his preparations for the morning. Though Catos had known both of them since their childhood, and Skylla since her birth, he’d never spent much time with her. She was one of the many island brats, with the distinction of happening to belong to the old captain. On the island, Catos had his own affairs to deal with and paid no mind to other people’s children.

Down in the hold, Lukos stood with his back to the stairs. Light slanted into the hold through the doorway, and from the flickering candle sitting on the table his scribe used in the far corner. Bookshelves and the table were all bolted down to a makeshift raised platform that had been added specifically for Bianor. It was over there that the man slept, ate, and worked, but he’d abandoned the station now in order to have his fun in town like everyone else. It was Lukos who’d lit the candle.

Skylla’s shadow momentarily cast itself over her in a long, thin, impossibly dark version of herself before sliding down the hull of the ship, shrinking from the cage, and draping onto Lukos’s back. He tapped his lips in thought as he looked at the neat row of cages, each with occupants in them. The smell of bilge water and unwashed body threatened to make his eyes water if he stood too close, and so he kept to the doorway and the occasional gusts of fresh air, for now.

"How many of them do you have to sell?" Skylla asked. Her voice cut through the thick air and Lukos gestured to the captives. None of them were lively. Very little water and the bare minimum of food rations tended to make people docile and meek on market day. If he was heading to Athenia with the gladiator pits, he’d have wanted some of these people amped up and to show their spirit. But Vasiliadon was different and had a more sedate pace of life. Horrible animals were not what people wanted to buy. They wanted quiet, discreet, and dependable.

“An even dozen,” he said blandly and left the doorway to walk up the row. "We’ll haul them out to the deck, chain them, then take them to the slave pits." Crossing his arms, he glanced down at her, wondering if this bothered her at all. Some people didn’t like it, some people were ambivalent, and some people liked it a little too much. The latter two groups were the ones he hired for crew members. People who hated slaving didn’t belong on a slave ship, and they were definitely in the minority, since Greece needed slaves almost as much as Egypt.

He put his hand on the back of Skylla’s neck and turned to give a loud whistle. Then he used his hold on her to drag her to the side with him as Catos and a few other men who’d just come back to the ship tromped down the stairs. Lukos pushed Skylla towards the stairs that would take her to the middle deck in the ship and said, “Be a good girl and bring me the chains,” meaning for her to go and fetch them from their place on the deck above, and to come back down with them. Then the slaves would be taken up to the deck and they could get this show on the road.

While Skylla was gone getting the chains, Apollos came down into the hold. “She staying?” he asked, not really aware of who Skylla was. He hadn’t been at the tavern last night and was one of the sailors that was a newer addition than Skylla’s leaving. Lukos turned and leveled him with a look, but he knew what the man was subtly getting at. There was a hard and fast rule that Lukos had about whores on the ship. Wives and girlfriends were also usually not allowed. This wasn’t a pleasure cruise. This was a dangerous job that women usually had no stomach for and tended to get underfoot. Lukos was willing to bet that Skylla didn’t have the stomach for human suffering either. Whatever she liked to pretend, she didn’t love seeing people in cages, crying and reaching through the bars. Nor, he thought, would she like to have bodily fluids slung at her, or be cursed at. It was an ugly job, but lucrative in the extreme.

“She’s not a whore,” he said and this left Apollos even more confused.

”So...she is or isn’t staying, captain?”

Lukos frowned and turned to fully face him. “No, she’s not staying. Why?”

Apollos shifted. “I dunno. I thought, if she was a whore and you were done-”

Lukos laughed, just as Skylla came back into view with the chains. Her mere presence on this ship betrayed she was no one high up in society and with her going to and fro doing what she was ordered to do, he could see why Apollos had the thought. She looked pretty, holding the mess of metal and Lukos laughed some more because there was no way in this life or the next that he would pass Skylla around on this ship. That wasn’t her purpose. She was more of a ‘person’ to him than other people tended to be and that lent to her relative safety in his presence, though even she wasn’t immune to everything if he was in a temper.

“Get these people out and stop thinking with the wrong end of your body,” Lukos said, still laughing and took some chains from Skylla to shove at Apollos. The other man wasn’t overly offended and now that it had been established that Skylla wasn’t to be shared, though Lukos had offered no actual explanation about her presence, the man went about his duties, treating Skylla like he wasn’t there. More men were joining them now and Lukos and Apollos worked quickly to get the slaves manacled and ready to open the doors.

He formed them into a long line, all linked together by the time they were done. As he’d promised her earlier, he didn’t really mess around with her anymore and, like Apollos, acted as though she wasn’t present. With this many people to manage, including his crew, he didn’t have time for her to ask questions or get in the way. Leading the twelve slaves up into the new morning sun, Lukos and around seven of his crewmates walked them down the gangway and into the stirring streets of Vasiliadon.

The slave market was at the far end of the other market and a testament to how dirty people could be. Lukos’s slaves were far and away better kept, but that was hardly difficult. He did not baby his slaves, nor wash them down except to sling buckets of water on them from time to time to keep the stench down. Everything he did was aimed at his own tolerance level and really had nothing to do with them as people, because they weren’t ‘people’. They were slaves. It didn’t matter to him that he’d been born into slavery and had been yanked out of it. He wasn’t a slave anymore. He’d risen in the world. He was better. Able. These people, with their hollow eyes and lifeless attitude were chattel. Already in service in their minds, where as he bowed to no one’s will unless it was beneficial in some way.

“Here,” he said, directing Catos towards their area. All they had to do now was await their turn at auction, but Lukos wasn’t going to do that part. Bianor was already here, squinting at the slaves, marking things down in his book, and ignoring Lukos’s presence entirely. Lukos did the same and folded his arms over his chest, watching the little crowd standing across the way at a platform where other slaves were being sold. Dust swirled in the air, people brayed like animals, and it stank to high heaven of urine and feces. How wonderful slave markets were.

Lukos stood off to the side, arms folded over his chest, resting most of his weight on one foot, and then shifting his weight to the other every so often as slaves were led up, shown, and either sold or shoved off the stage for another round later. Their place this morning would be third which wasn’t his ideal, but it wasn’t the tail end, either, when people were out of money. Some people in the markets had scruples about who bought their slaves and to what purpose the slaves were going to be used, but Lukos didn’t give two flying flips what happened to these people once they were out of his care. They weren’t his problem after today.

"I've always found this part either exceedingly boring or extremely exciting," Skylla mused at his side. Lukos didn’t take his eyes off the slaver who stood on the platform, touting the virtues of the skeletal man he was trying to pawn off on someone. The man looked like he was going to fall over for lack of food or water. Being bought would likely do that poor sod a world of good, except no one raised their hand for him. The crowd grew silent and the slaver’s voice rang out with no answering call.

“You come to slave auctions often?” Lukos asked dryly. “They’re fucking dull,” he announced and moved away to line up his slaves in the order he thought they’d sell best. At the end of his turn, all but two women were sold. These poor things were not ones Lukos would normally have taken; one was over large, and the other painfully ugly. However, he’d had more room on his ship at the time and they were closest at hand when he’d taken the rest of the lot from further abroad. Coming down off the platform, Lukos snapped at Catos.

“Take these two to the brothels. Someone will pay us for them and maybe we’ll break even for the food they ate,” he said into the larger woman’s face. She shied away from him, turning red. Due to being wiley, she’d somehow managed to get the lion’s share of food for the slaves on the way over. Talking her fellows out of their food because she didn’t like the rations Lukos had ordered for her.

”You’re a monster,” the ugly woman snapped at him. Lukos rolled his eyes but said nothing to her. He merely gestured for Catos to take them away and then turned to find out where Skylla had gotten off to. Once he found her, he folded his arms and tilted his head.

“Are you still tagging along to the market? I’m going to go hemorrhage the coins I just made.” There were barrels of fresh water to buy, sacks of grain, food stores to replenish for the ship itself, not to mention specific items he needed to buy for the people who lived on the island he’d called home for the last two and a half decades or so. “And there’s your linens to drop off to a washer woman, and my clothes,” he glanced skyward, counting out the list of errands they needed to run on his fingertips and mentally calculating how much all this was likely to cost. Then, of course, he still needed to pay wages to his crew.

For all her fear about him getting into some sort of brawl with her physician friend, it came to nothing. He’d heard the tail end of their conversation, had watched Skylla elbow the other man in the ribs which meant that if they weren’t already sleeping together, they soon would be. If Skylla had still been under his control, lived on his island, sailed on his ship, or was in any way beholden to him, then maybe he’d have gone after this man. But not here. Lukos liked a sure thing and he did not feel any sort of compulsion to play fair. Lysander would be dead by sundown if he’d had any kind of real issue with him. As it stood, Skylla was the only one who was bothered and Lukos found this funny.

Skylla gripped his hand and dragged him hard, nearly ripping him off his feet in her effort to gain as much distance as she could between them and whatever-his-name-was. Lukos didn’t look back and he didn’t pull to get out of her grasp until she slowed. Then he ripped his hand back and rubbed the flesh on the back of his hand between his thumb and index finger, smirking at her. When he’d first come up, she’d looked pale and then flushed an adorable crimson. Now her cheeks merely looked pink and would likely soon return to their natural bronze.

"If I send you with a gift for my mother, would you ensure that it gets to her?" she asked, clearly trying to change the subject.

“Depends on the gift,” he said lightly, folding his arms over his chest as they walked. “If you’re sending money, just go ahead and hand it to me, and then I’ll take my cut and we’ll make sure Bianor has it all down correctly in the book. It’ll give her a credit of sorts,” he mused. “Not like she needs to ever see the actual coins anyway.” It wasn’t like Billa ever left the island. She hadn’t, as far as he knew, since before he was born.

“But if you’re giving her a dress or something, I don’t think it would be too difficult to see that she gets.” He walked beside her for a few seconds and then looked down at her. “Why? Is it a dress? That old bag doesn’t need a dress. She needs-” He stopped just short of actually saying something useful, realizing that would help Billa and he didn’t actually feel like being charitable to the old woman. She’d been especially caustic to him when he’d left the island last.

“Before that, though, let’s go find the washer woman. It’ll take her a while to get our things clean.” Between the slave market and the square he knew the washerwomen to use, was a healthy stretch of city they needed to pass through. Lukos kept a hand on the small of Skylla’s back, alternately guiding her or shoving her on through as the situation demanded.

”For a sailor, you are the most finicky man I've ever met. Washing everything.”

Lukos twisted his mouth at her but he couldn’t deny what she said. It was perfectly true. He did not like to be dirty. A lot of men did not seem to mind. They went about their daily labor in the fields and came home coated in sticky sweat and gritty dirt. On the ship, sweat was a given, as was the salt clinging to his hair and body. It turned his clothes stiff and he liked to be rid of it as soon as possible. So while he was home, or while he was in port, he visited the bath houses daily and had all his clothes cleaned by the washerwomen. That would last him a week or so. After that it was back to washing the clothes with a bucket, a bar of soap, and salty water from the Aegean. Depending on the trip, he may not wash them at all and just deal with it. None of this did he say aloud, nor did he actually have to. Skylla traveled by ship and she’d grown up on an island full of pirate miscreants.

“You started to tell me something that my mother needs, Lukos,” she went on and he gave her a sidelong glance. The look she gave him, the big doe brown eyes with their pleading for her mother did not touch him. “What is it she needs? It'll save you the coin, will it not?”

“What she needs is a swift kick in the ass,” he retorted. That did not win him favors with his companion and luckily, he was saved from having to answer yet again by their arrival in a square positively covered with clothes. On every conceivable surface, garments lay out beneath the sun to dry, hung in the breeze along strings of rope crisscrossing the crowded space. Red faced women chittered and shouted at each other, as some stood with long poles over huge basins of boiling water, while others squatted beside them with their elbows deep in suds, scrubbing clothes down ribbed boards. Their hair came up in fine wisps about their faces and none of them were even remotely interested in the two people who’d just come up to potentially add to their workload.

“That one,” Lukos patted her on the ass. “Give her the bandages and our clothes. Give her my name and she won’t rip us off.” He didn’t haggle with this washwoman anymore. She knew better than to try and swindle him now. “Shoo, shoo,” he gave her an extra, much less patient swat and waited on the edge of the square for her to return.

When Lukos felt she was taking too long, he called across the plaza, “Move your ass, Skylla. I have other shit to buy.” Honestly. Women and their shopping. Loitering everywhere, gaggling with washmaids like they didn’t have barrels of water and food to secure. He squinted up at the sun, trying to gauge the time. Gods it was hot. “Skylla!” he shouted her name, this time, drawing a few irritated looks that he summarily ignored.