He looked at her.
She was still clasped.
Both hands pressed together, the specific, prayer-geometry of a woman who had found someone to pray to and was praying to them directly.
"My lord."
The two words sat in the square's gone-quiet air.
He looked at her.
He looked at the square.
At the crowd on its knees.
At the slave traders.
At the fat man with the undone belt still fumbling at his waist with the specific, frozen, I-cannot-move-but-my-hands-haven"t-gotten-the-message quality of a man whose voluntary motor functions had stalled at approximately the same moment the thunder had arrived.
He looked at the woman.
At the finger marks.
At the whip mark across her back — the flat, red, present, raised-line evidence of the taller slave trader's specific, mean, product-management decision.
He noted the mark.
He filed it.
He looked at her face.
