A pull on her restrained hands. Sounds of movement from up ahead.
The scrape of sand against her arms made her scramble to her feet. Must keep up. Several large shadows blotted out the light above, a circle of them closing in. Cries erupted from innumerable mouths. Chains clattered. No magic. No sight. No energy. She kept her arms tightly wrapped around herself.
Large, callused hands seized her, prying her arms away from her chest, pulling at her filthy clothes with a savage roughness.
Every inch of her quivered, and she couldn’t stop. She resisted, clutching the rags to herself, tears bursting from her eyes to soak the blindfold. Her head bobbed with vertigo. One of her captors shook her—a violent, unyielding tremor—until the unmistakable chill of nakedness.
She hadn’t spoken out of turn—
The inevitable crack of the whip never came. The shadows moved down the line. To someone else.
Sometimes the overseers came into the stable and left with a crying, screaming woman or two, then returned them later, sobbing, weeping. Every creak of the door had been the sign of her turn, but it never came, never came, never came.
She cradled herself, the tiniest amount of disgusting joy springing in her heart even as she stood in utter nudity. The trembling wouldn’t stop, racking her bones. She curled her head toward her shoulder, rubbed her cheek against it.
The line was in motion again. Splashing sounded ahead. Her feet moved of their own volition, and when they finally stopped, she was plunged into warm water, the tender skin of her days-old whipped back burning, her blindfold torn away.
Light. Blinding light.
Her sensitive eyes adjusted poorly. Hurried hands soaped and scrubbed her body with all the care of a merciless farmhand washing a tool. She gasped as her head was pushed under the water, then pulled back up. Soap stung as some coarse brush scoured her head. Then it was back under the water, a rough shake beneath it to rinse out most of the lather.
Released, she surfaced, gulping deep breaths, assessing her blurry surroundings. Hundreds of people bound by chains were linked to hers—all unclothed and half-submerged in the massive body of water. Numerous workers darted from person to person with ruthless efficiency, all the while supervised by grim-faced overseers with sharp eyes and whips.
She glanced down at her hands and the arcanir cuffs binding her. The constant, penetrating sting of arcanir had become familiar, almost a comfort, a reminder that she had not gone numb, had not died in the long stretch of darkness and loneliness since Courdeval. Even the thought of that battle her last night there, of being with Jon, Brennan, Olivia, and Leigh, was too much to bear.
Jon.
It’s very simple, he’d said, his breath warm against her lips. Do you love me, Rielle? She reached for him, but chains weighed down her hands. He wasn’t here.
Her eyes ached, squeezed, watered. Her chest caved inward.
Return to me, he’d said, eyes never leaving hers. Never leaving. Never left.
The last words he’d spoken to her. Return to me.
Return… She wanted to return. To Jon, a reflection in his Shining Sea eyes. Home.
She wanted to be home.
Jon… Her heart cracked and crumbled, her eyes aching with pressure. She had to get to him.
After fighting the Black Mountain Brigands at the Mor Bluffs, she’d defeated fureur. Let love, fear, rage—all of it—back into her heart. Allowed herself to feel.
And here, cuffed in arcanir and far from home, all she did was feel. Fear the overseers, love Jon, rage at Drina, Sincuore, all of them. Feeling it all, she’d never felt so whole, and yet—
The people around her moved. As she looked ahead, one by one, they stepped out of the bath. Her feet soon followed, bringing her up broad steps and dripping onto the flagstones. They were led outside once more, where guards approached them and unlinked the chains binding the line. They formed new groups, separating people based on age and sex.
The groups were taken in divergent directions. Although she, grouped with the young women, had been taken away from the other groups, they all approached the same place from different sides. A sea of tall wooden posts.
Time after time after time, it unfolded before her eyes, and then it was her turn. Her arms were pulled away from her body, and she had a fleeting taste of freedom as her chains were unfastened, but not the arcanir cuffs. Her arms were yanked back around the rough post and secured tightly along with her feet, forcing her in an upright position—chained to the numbered post, on display, a ware at the souk, along with everyone else.
It had been shocking once, but over the past several weeks, privacy had become a faded memory.
As soon as their work concluded, the overseers moved on to the next post, securing another woman, and another, then another until all were displayed. Left to thirst, to hunger, to bake in the hot sun, and to wonder what misfortune would arrive.
The binding done, her mind wandered. Blindfolded into darkness, bound into stillness, she’d achieved a morbid and peculiar clarity of vision in this Divine-forsaken place. Aboard the ship, the drug-induced haze had left her numbly fantasizing about destroying the crew and its malevolent captain, her only respite the sight of the stars through the porthole every night. The sight of the same stars Jon saw, her only remaining link to him. Drenched in heartache and delirium, she’d been a mess aboard the ship.
But here, ignored like so much cargo, she’d had time to refocus.
Someday, whether tomorrow or years from now, she would be free, no matter the blood and the bodies required. On that day, that fateful day, there would be one name, above all others, demanding her attention. Her gruesome attention.
Shadow.
Even the name sent fury coiling around every part of her body. Shadow’s suffering would be limited only by her imagination, and for weeks, she’d had nothing but time to do just that.
Fire. It would end in fire. Always fire.
Jon would be safe.
And then there was the matter of the serpent… Who had the captain so feared to cross?
Her shoulders ached. Everything ached.
No one came for nearly an hour, and her arms, back, and shoulders were ready to give out. Soon well-dressed people trickled in, meandering through the rows of posts, pausing to scrutinize the offerings.
The boot of the ship’s captain pressed against her face anew; she lowered her chin, avoiding too direct a look at the eyes of passersby. She, like the rest, might have been no more than a rug or a goat or a shovel, on display, powerless, and for sale. Shoppers searched for bargains, for defects, for novelty—and murmured comparisons to one another.
They disgusted her. They outraged her. They terrified her.
She’d almost managed to avoid looking at them altogether until the sun had nearly set.
A rough hand grabbed her jaw, forcing her to look upon the face of a man. Tall and dark-skinned, his severe features were pronounced under his black cotton scarf-like headdress, a kaffa, worn to protect against sunburn, dust, and sand in this land, secured by a rope circlet. Beneath a matching warrior-caste black ankle-length thiyawb, his trained body was obvious, even if by contrast he had a merchant’s face.
His discerning brown eyes searched hers for a long moment, and then he spared a brief glance over her before nodding to the woman accompanying him, the one with unequivocal intelligence in her dark gaze.
Although she too wore an ankle-length thiyawb, its heavily embroidered front panel, billowy back, and fine cloth dyed with an expensive violet spoke to her noble caste. Wrapped around her head and face was a halla, a cotton headdress similar to the kaffa but worn without a rope circlet; she wore hers tied below her neck, covering but not hiding the shape of her delicate nose and angular chin.
The smooth summer of youth still glowed around her dark, kohl-rimmed eyes—she could be little older than three decades. With keen evaluation in her gaze, the woman approached, reaching out to examine her.
It was clear that t
he woman’s evaluation was the one that mattered. Being bought by a woman… Perhaps she wouldn’t be treated so harshly. And beyond the stable, traveling and maybe in a different compound, she might be under lighter guard. Perhaps this auction was the change of fortune she needed.
A flowing probe into her anima from the woman—the unmistakable reach of resonance.
An unnatural wall within her ached. Arcanir’s doing. The inability to use magic throbbed as intensely now as it had face to face on the Kezani ship with Shadow. Arcanir’s consequences, like its sting, didn’t fade while in contact.
“Tala’anti hadir a Nad’i?” the woman asked, referring to the language widely spoken in Sonbahar.
High Nad’i? Here? The languages she’d been hearing for weeks likely included some dialects, but High Nad’i was only spoken by Sonbahar’s upper class and scholars.
The woman maintained eye contact, waiting for an answer. Did this woman offer a better fate than the stable? Precious seconds were quickly slipping away.
Life would not improve here; it had been nothing but grim waiting, suffering, and starving, but what did these two strangers offer?
Of all the fates before her, here was the only one she could have some control over, if only by a mere answer.
The woman turned to leave.
“Tehazara’anti,” Rielle said, her heart pounding as she commanded the woman to wait. Had she remembered the words properly? Had she said it correctly? She’d learned it initially as part of the subjects the future duchess of Maerleth Tainn would need to know and then at the Tower to read and translate texts on magic.
The woman turned around, her eyes wide—whether it was surprise at Rielle’s knowledge of Nad’i, usage of the High Nad’i dialect, or her brazen command to wait, who knew? But it was a reaction.
“Ani hadir wa sihar kellah a Nad’i,” Rielle continued, communicating that she both spoke and wrote in Nad’i.
The woman’s eyes grew wider still before she finally narrowed them.
Had she smiled beneath the cloth of her halla?
She left with her companion.
No.
Please! She watched the two walk away before hanging her head once more. The woman had asked her if she spoke Nad’i and then had asked no further questions.
At least she’d tried.
Around her, the other slaves remained fixed to posts. Surely some had been bought? Were they all to be removed at the same time?
Overseers arrived and unchained the others from posts, dragging them off all in the same direction. Away.
Could it—
She breathed one tremulous breath after another, searched the horizon for answers. Am I actually hoping to be bought? She shook her head weakly. In a mere few weeks, the world had changed beyond recognition.
It was not long before she met the same fate as the others. Since her legs had long since gone numb, being dragged was her only option. Sand scraped against her bare skin.
One of her captors hoisted her up over his shoulder like a pack; he must have grown tired of dragging her. A whimper of protest formed in her throat and died as blood rushed to her head, building in pounding pressure.
Before the ship, before Shadow, the last person to carry her had been Jon. After dueling Brennan in Melain, despite his own injuries, he’d swept her up into his loving arms, carried her upstairs, let her rest her cheek against his chest. He’d been upset with her, but she’d never felt safer.
She smiled dumbly, weary tears escaping her eyes. Jon… Please find me. Please. I need you. Please…
No safety, warmth, or gentleness here. No love. Only pain and no pain.
The numbness in her feet and legs slowly receded. Too much—here, there was too much to bear, too much to feel. The wetness streaming from her eyes down her forehead and into her hairline—
They entered a building where dour-faced men waited with needles and ink; a steady hand pressed the back of her neck, keeping her cheek flat against a cold table, while another set of hands secured her legs. No, no, no—
A sharp point pricked against the small of her back. She clenched her teeth against the pain, but then the unmistakable tingle of magic came.
A rune.
She squeezed her eyes shut. A runic token of Sonbahar… linked to another rune that, when activated, would function like a tracking spell.
Then she had, indeed, been purchased.
Divine, had she done the right thing? What awaited?
At least she was leaving the stable. An opportunity to escape could present itself and, with it, the chance to kill Shadow and return to Jon.
Night had long fallen by the time she was brought to a caravan, acutely aware of the chill that nakedness magnified. Nearly a dozen others linked to her shivered and shook, just as she did. Soon, they were ushered into a covered wagon, a small mercy. Several cloaked guards awaited them inside, with distinctly curious eyes compared to the auction’s men, but a woman seemed to have authority.
A violet thiyawb.
The woman from before. She had removed her halla, revealing a thick bun of shining black hair secured at the nape of her neck, a pointed chin, and thin lips. She moved from one captive to another, conducting what looked like a thorough medical examination before offering a garment. A guard served bread, cheese, and water. Once she finished with the man next to Rielle, it was her turn.
Gentle hands, almost sympathetic. When she opened Rielle’s mouth to examine her teeth, some glimmer of hope flickered to life—the suffering would let up. It had to. She met the woman’s eyes and did not look away.
“My name is Ihsan,” the woman finally said in High Nad’i, her methodical hands roving quickly over Rielle with a sheen of magic. She finished at the belly, and then pulled out a book in which she jotted down a note. “You will henceforth be known as ‘Thahab,’ ” Ihsan said softly, continuing her inspection.
“I already have a name,” she blurted. When Ihsan looked up at her, she flinched, but no slap came.
“Zahibi,” a guard scolded.
Master. She would have to use the word, lull those who meant to lord over her, placate them into thinking she would never rebel.
She swallowed her reluctance. “Zahibi.”
Ihsan regarded her with eyes like still waters, wise beyond her twenty-odd years. “It is useful for masters that slaves let go of their former lives, and it is useful for slaves that their masters do not look into them. We do not bargain. We do not ransom. Your former life is over.”
She opened her mouth to argue—Better not. If they underestimated her, killing them would be all the easier.
Ihsan offered her a loose-fitting garment—a loose term, too, as it was more like a bolt of gossamer with an opening for her head. A silken sash cinched in the waist. But it was relief from the chill, warmer than nothing, clean and soft. And no one was hurting anyone. Perhaps the whippings and beatings of the stable were over, too.
When the guard gave her a handful of bread and cheese and offered her a waterskin, she ripped it from his hands, drank, devoured.
The water’s cool, clean wetness seeped into her lips, tongue, and cheeks like life, blooming its essence as she gulped it down. Divine, it was as though she’d never tasted water before.
After nearly drinking herself sick, she dragged an arm across her mouth and handed the waterskin back. The dark bread and salty cheese she stuffed into her mouth, filling her belly as swiftly as possible. No hands pried the food from her, for once.
Away from the misery of the stable, with food and water in her belly, her few words of High Nad’i had earned her a better position from which to wrest her freedom, or survive until Jon could. So far, the price was a new name—a worthy trade.
“Thahab,” she repeated, the name foreign and unusual on her tongue. But its taste did not compare to a full belly.
Soon.
Chapter 6
Olivia shivered as a paladin guard escorted her through the darkness of Trèstellan’s dungeon, not from th
e biting winter chill but from bygone days spent frozen here. Too many. A left turn, two flights of stairs, a right turn, twenty-eight steps, a left turn…
She rubbed the Ring of the Archmage.
I’m free. I’m free. I’m free.
Whenever she visited Leigh, she had to convince herself she wasn’t going to her old cell. That she wasn’t a prisoner, but the Archmage.
And tonight, she wasn’t going to her old cell, or to Leigh’s. In this dungeon was a member of Gilles’s household, and with him, the chance to unmask the Swordsman.
The stench of filth and mold hung heavier the deeper they went. Disgusting. Familiar. The paladin guard took her to a crowded cell block, where nearly every cell contained a prisoner—or two—who, as she passed by, gasped, clung to the bars, begged.
The Order had made numerous arrests of Crag Company mercenaries after the Battle for Courdeval, as well as Gilles’s known associates. Hundreds of prisoners inhabited this dungeon.
“You’re not supposed lock more than one prisoner in each cell.” She glanced up from the list she held.
The paladin eyed her, his green gaze soft, sympathetic, beneath his raised visor, then looked straight ahead. “The dungeon’s full, Lady Archmage. And unless we pack two to a cell, we’ll have to start sentencing.”
Sentencing… He meant executions. Deaths.
She forced in the stagnant air, held it prisoner, then glanced at the list as she exhaled. “And no one’s questioned this… Benoit Donnet?” she read from the document. Donnet had been Gilles’s chamberlain, head of his household in Kirn.
“No, Lady Archmage, not since his arrest.” The young paladin sighed. “I know it seems as though we’ve neglected our duty, but there are 231 prisoners here, and we questioned them all when they were arrested, developed agreements with some in exchange for further testimony, cross-referenced that testimony, verified its authenticity, collected corroborating evidence—”
She nodded casually. If he tried to prove his competence, his efforts were wasted. The Order had held 231 prisoners here for nearly two months, and seemed to have no more answers than it had on Spiritseve.
By Dark Deeds (Blade and Rose Book 2) Page 5
