He had long distinguished gray hair upon his head. His beard was
elaborately curled every morning on a carefully heated rod of iron
which was always cleaned and tested first with the judicious
application of a wet thumb by his personal man servant, who kept it
meticulously polished and free of rust with a dash of virgin olive oil
and a cursory, daily polishing.
Rababull had hard, no-nonsense eyes and speech, and he always drove a
hard bargain, whether it be something of as little consequence as the
selling-off of an old slave or animal too advanced in years to be of
proper use to him anymore, or the buying and selling of great tracts of
land. He also saw to the scourging of slaves and the torture and
questioning of thieves and miscreants, not infrequently even unto pain
of death itself. Life could be cheap, depending on who you were, or who
your father was.
Master Rababull was more than six hundred and fifty years old, although
by the standards of the moderns, more than four thousand years in his
future, he would have been described as an exceeding fit fifty-five.
His life experience, like his age, was vast.
He was not afflicted by an old man's failings of the mind. He was
missing no teeth, neither smitten by cavities.
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