Silverlight

by Jesberger, S. L.

  The man grunted. “Please. Please don’t kill me. We meant no harm.”

  “No harm?” I shook my head in disbelief. “You were taking these girls to be sold as slaves.”

  “It’s good money. I have a family to feed.”

  I sputtered for a moment, unable to think of a response to his heartless statement. “Do you have daughters?” I finally asked.

  “I have three.”

  “Perhaps someday they’ll be stripped naked and forced to walk across a mountain in bare feet when it’s cold. Maybe they’ll be sold to a man just like you,” Magnus said. “Would you like that?”

  The man rubbed his forehead into the dirt, as though he were trying to scrub that image from his mind.

  “See, that’s how it works, Magnus. It’s perfectly fine to take another man’s daughter, as long as yours are safe at home.” I delivered a brutal kick to the man’s temple. I then knelt beside him, twisted my fingers into his braided black hair, and lifted his head. “Where do these girls come from?”

  “A . . . a small village. At the base of the mountain. Yasri. The goat herders. Their women are beautiful and sturdy. They make good wives. Have healthy babies.”

  “Wrong answer.” I slammed his head against the ground two . . . three . . . four times before jerking it up. “Did you sack their village?”

  “Yes.” The man began to weep piteously. “I’m sorry. We didn’t mean . . . I’m sorry.”

  “Sorry.” I snorted. “You’re sorry we caught you. These girls would’ve disappeared into homes and brothels all over Calari and you wouldn’t have batted an eye. Make yourself right with whatever gods you follow, if in fact you follow any. You won’t be doing this again.”

  “Please, mistress. Please! My wife –”

  I rose and jammed Promise into the man’s back, severing his spine and cutting off his words. It was a quick death, more mercy than he deserved, but the night was cold, and Magnus and I had approximately forty naked and hungry girls to care for.

  I asked Magnus to wait behind the wagon while I walked among the Yasri girls, cutting their bonds with a small dagger. “If I’ve freed you, help those beside you,” I instructed. “Then line up behind the wagon to get your clothes. Make haste! The sooner we’re done here, the sooner I can get you home.”

  “We don’t have a home to go back to,” one of the girls said. She looked to be no more than ten. Dried blood and filth covered her face, her brown hair a tangle of knots on her head. “They burned the village. They killed my parents.”

  I stared at her. Gods, I hadn’t thought of that. They’d probably killed all the Yasri men. I’d be taking them back to nothing.

  This would happen again.

  An older girl stepped forward and presented her bound wrists to me. I cut her loose. “Our village is gone, but there is another tribe of Yasri not far from the mountain. My da’s mother and several uncles live with them. They’ll take us in when they hear what happened.”

  “Are you sure?” I asked.

  She nodded. “We are family. They will help us.”

  “What’s your name?”

  “Malina Blackhorn, mistress.”

  “Malina, you’re in charge of these girls until we get you back to your grandmother. Have everyone line up behind the cart in an orderly manner. I know it’s cold, but no crowding or pushing. I’ll hand the garments out to you. Perhaps you’ll help the others dress, especially the youngest.”

  “Yes, mistress.” Malina began to speak in a language I didn’t understand. I turned to look for Magnus.

  I found him crouched on the ground where I’d left him, absentmindedly carving a small piece of wood with his dagger. “What are we going to do with them?”

  “Not sure. I’d like to take them home, but the slavers destroyed their village. I imagine they killed all the men, and probably most of the women. That’s what they do. They slaughter anyone – man or woman – who tries to protect their loved ones.” I kicked dirt at the dead bodies along the road. “Anyway, we’ll check for survivors at the burnt village, but we’ll probably have to take them to another tribe of Yasri goat herders not far from the mountain. I don’t want this to happen again.”

  Magnus glanced up, his eyes bleak. “It will, Kymber. Maybe not to these girls, but this happens all over Calari. You can’t save them all.”

  I clenched my jaw so tightly I felt something pop. “No, we can’t, but we can help some of them.” I jerked my thumb over my shoulder. “We saved these girls. Now they have a future. I’ll do for them what no one did for me. If you don’t wish to accompany me, we can part ways tonight.”

  “I didn’t say I didn’t want to help you. I just want you to think about this first. It’s a brutal industry. You were lucky tonight. These slavers . . . well, they didn’t seem too bright. Most of them will fight to the death to protect their livelihood. They hold a grudge forever, and they’ve been known to hunt their rivals.”

  “So we shouldn’t try? Because we’re afraid?” I crossed my arms. “Who are you? Who am I? Who will do it if we don’t?”

  He gathered his lip between his teeth. I saw the exact moment he understood. “I’ll always be on your side. I’ll help any way I can.” He spun his dagger around, jammed it in the sheath, and rose to his feet. “This will slow our travel to Pentorus.”

  “I am not on a schedule. Right now, we must help those who cannot help themselves.” I shivered as the frosty night air penetrated my bones. “Why don’t you start a fire, maybe go hunting for a dalbuck or something? I know it’s dark, but they’ll be hungry. I’ll help them get dressed.”

  “You’re such an enigma.” Magnus shook his head and chuckled. “Nothing can stop you now.”

  “Meaning?”

  “You’re a deadly combination of kind heart and wicked sword. You’ve conquered your fears, Kymber. Watching you save these girls was a joy to behold. They don’t know it yet, but they’re the luckiest girls in Calari.”

  “Get out of here, Tyrix.” I fisted my hands. “If you make me cry, I’ll kill you.”

  44: MAGNUS

  It took some doing, but I finally convinced Kymber I couldn’t hunt in the dark. She helped the girls dress while I rummaged through the slavers’ saddlebags, relieved to find them full of cheese and dried meat, bread and apples. There wasn’t nearly enough food to feed all the girls though.

  I carried what I’d found to Kymber. “This is it, and you can bet it was reserved for the men. They obviously didn’t plan on feeding the girls until they got them to market.”

  “Not much, is there?” Kymber scowled. “But it’s better than nothing. We’ll feed the youngest first.”

  “How old is the youngest?”

  “Four.”

  “Four.” I was unable to stop the chill that crawled my spine. “What were they going to do with a girl that young?”

  “I don’t want to know.” Kymber grimaced and pushed past me.

  I stopped her with a hand on her shoulder. “How old is the oldest?”

  “Twenty. And there are thirty-four girls total.” She disengaged her arm and sighed. “Would you mind starting a fire? Right here in the middle of the trail.”

  “It’ll be seen.”

  “I’m not sure I care at this point. Those poor girls are tired and scared, and they’ve walked far enough on empty stomachs. I’m not going to ask them to climb up to the ridge. I’ll go get Lady Gray and fill the water skins.” Kymber closed her eyes and ran a hand over her face. Dried blood flaked off onto her tunic. She was tired and scared too, but she gave orders as though she were born to do it. “I’ll leave you to feed them.”

  She turned and walked away, disappearing into the darkness.

  “Ladies,” I called out. “Gather ‘round and we’ll eat.”

  The older girls graciously agreed to give their meager portions to the younger ones. Every time I heard a whispered “Thank you, sir,” it put another crack in my heart.

  My heart was smashed to dust when a wai
flike blonde with round brown eyes steered a smaller child toward me. The little one was clutching her hand to her chest and sniffling. Given the tear tracks through the dirt on her cheeks, she’d been crying quite hard.

  “Mister, my name is Tori. This is my little sister Mia.” Tori’s eyes were dull, no doubt from shock and lack of sleep.

  “What’s wrong?” I rose from tending the fire. “Didn’t Mia get anything to eat?” I hoped she had; there was nothing left.

  Tori opened her hand to reveal a filthy piece of bread. “She did, but her hand got hurt when the men took us. She can’t pull it apart to eat it, and she won’t let me feed her. Our da could always get her to eat, but . . . he isn’t here. You’re the closest we got. Thought maybe you wouldn’t mind giving it a try.”

  I stared at little Mia. Her eyes were a much darker brown than her sister’s. Mia’s nose, a small button in the center of her round face, was running like a spring stream. This was surely the four-year-old Kymber had mentioned.

  Mia drew in a breath and hiccupped. “Hurts,” she mumbled as she cradled her arm.

  “I’m sure it does. Will you let me see it, Mia?” I extended a hand and smiled, trying to recall my own father and his soothing ways. “I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  The appraising eyes of someone much older stared back at me. I got the feeling Mia had seen a lot in her four years. Whimpering, she stepped away from her sister and lifted her arm toward me.

  The top of the child’s head barely came to my knee. I had to kneel for a better look. I took her small hand in mine, gently guiding her toward the light of the fire.

  I immediately wished I hadn’t.

  Mia’s hand was a solid blue-purple bruise from the wrist up, so swollen the folds of her knuckles had smoothed into the skin. I looked at the tiny hand in my palm and felt the first stirrings of white-hot rage.

  Broken. The bastards had broken the little girl’s hand.

  I caught my breath, trying to squelch the anger. It wouldn’t do any good, not now, but it was a moment of perfect clarity for me.

  No wonder slavery was such a sore spot for Kymber. She’d lived it. It was easy to think of something like this in the abstract, but to see it up close was beyond sickening. If this was how she felt the day she faced my friend and his daughter at Seacrest, we were lucky she hadn’t killed us all.

  I beckoned Tori forward. “How did this happen?”

  “Mia hid behind my da when the bad men came.” Tori gazed into the fire. “They knocked him down. He wouldn’t wake up, but Mia wouldn’t let go of his tunic, so the man who was after her stomped on her hand. Twice.”

  Nausea nearly drove me to my knees. “Your mother?”

  “She died when Mia was born.”

  “I see.”

  “I didn’t want them to bind her. I tried to carry her, but she was too heavy for me. I think they might have tied her extra tight. Mia threw up a couple of times on the trail. She made such a fuss the bad men wanted to kill her, so we took turns carrying her on our backs.” Tori gave me a fearful look. “She’s my only sister. I want her to eat something.”

  I allowed myself a closer look at the girls. Tori was no more than twelve, so thin her cheekbones protruded like knife blades. They both wore feed sacks cut with holes to accommodate their head and arms.

  Just children, babies, dirt poor and hungry to begin with. The gods had seen fit to give them another kick.

  I couldn’t do anything for Mia’s hand, at least not then, but I was determined to see that the child got something to eat. I scooped her up in my arms. “Follow me, Tori, and bring the bread. We’ll sit by the fire together and see if we can’t get something into your sister’s stomach.”

  Tori gave me a heartbreakingly hopeful smile. “Thank you, sir.”

  45: KYMBER

  I can’t begin to describe the strange things that happened in my heart when I saw Magnus cradling that little girl in his lap. As I drew closer, I could see he was feeding her, tearing bite-sized pieces of bread from the heel and popping them into her mouth as he sang a lullaby.

  She dutifully opened her mouth every time, like a famished baby bird. I laughed aloud when she reached up to feel the stubble on his jaw, ending her exploration by sticking her finger into his left nostril.

  Everyone had gathered around the fire to listen to Magnus sing. They sat quietly, holding each other for extra warmth and a bit of courage.

  If I’d been ambivalent before, I wasn’t now. I loved this man. Loved him with everything I was and would ever be. As soon as the dust settled on our lives, I would marry him.

  I stopped Lady Gray behind the circle of girls facing the fire. “Who’s thirsty?” All eyes turned toward me as I loosened a water skin from the saddle. “One or two swallows apiece is all for now, until day breaks and I can take you to the spring I found.”

  “Line up.” Malina rose and began to sort the girls out. “Youngest first. Remember, only a swallow or two, enough to wet your throat.”

  I handed the water skin to her. “Will you do this for me?”

  “Thank you, mistress.” She took the water skin from me. “I will.”

  I unloaded a second skin and headed for Magnus sitting against a tree on the far side of the fire. The child cuddling in his lap surely needed more than a swallow or two. Even from this distance, I could see she was emaciated and pale, as I’d been when Magnus rescued me from certain death all those months ago.

  “Will you introduce me to your friends?” I crouched beside the older girl leaning against him and ruffled her hair.

  Magnus nodded. “This is Tori.” He smiled at the little tidbit in his lap. “And this is her sister, Mia.”

  “Pleased to meet you both,” I said. “Would you like a drink?”

  Tori sat up. “Yes, please.”

  I heard Magnus grunt as I helped Tori hold the spout to her lips. “Something wrong?” I asked.

  He shot me a look of disgust and shifted the baby in his lap, extending her hand out to me. “Look what they did to this poor child.”

  That little hand was so bruised, it looked black in the firelight. A few of her fingers stuck out at an odd angle. I bit my lip and questioned him with my eyes.

  “You want to know if it’s broken?” he said in a tone that was both weary and irate. “I’d be shocked if it wasn’t.”

  “What happened?”

  “Tori said one of the slavers stomped on her, trying to break her grip on her father.” Magnus’s eyes glittered with tears. “And again, I feel as though I have to apologize to you.”

  “For what?”

  “For what I did to you back at Seacrest. I’ll never know exactly how you feel, or what you went through, but seeing this – how these girls were handled – gives me a bit of understanding. We are going to stop this wherever we find it.” He pressed a kiss to Mia’s cheek, eliciting a short giggle from the child. “If no one claims Mia and Tori, I’ll take them. Seacrest certainly has enough bedrooms, and I’ve always thought it would be a wonderful place to raise children. If we’re ever lucky enough to have our own . . . well, they’ll already have two big sisters.”

  I’d always known it, but my big man, my man of few words, had just proved there was a lot going on in that heart of his. “You wish to be their father, and I think that’s a fine idea. If you’re asking if I’ll be their mother, the answer is yes.” I gave him a long look. “Do you want to go home then?”

  “No.” Magnus shook his head. “We’ll go home when you have Silverlight strapped to your back, and not a moment sooner. In truth, my thoughts have gotten ahead of me. They may already have family waiting for them at the Yasri village. If not, maybe they’ll keep them until we come back.”

  “If you’re speaking of Mia and Tori,” Malina had walked up behind me with an empty water skin, “They have no family left. Neither at the ruined village nor, I think, with the larger tribe. I’ll make sure they’re looked after, sir.” She smiled at me. “Mistress. Until you return for t
hem.”

  Two? Just two? I wanted to take them all home with us.

  No one got much sleep that night. I’d never had to comfort a camp full of crying, frightened females before.

  Magnus and I did our best to guide them off the mountain at first light, with Malina and another girl named Tiseana driving the slavers’ cart. We decided to set the other horses free, as it would’ve been difficult to keep them fed and watered. I hoped we didn’t come to regret it.

  The horse and cart were a boon though, as it allowed the very young and injured to ride. There were whip marks, cuts, bruises, and blisters from walking barefoot, but none of them had been hurt quite like little Mia.

  She spent a fitful night cradled against Magnus’s chest, at times sobbing so hard I thought she’d stop breathing. He’d rubbed her back and crooned to her, but it didn’t help much. She needed a healer’s attention.

  As I watched him and the delicate child throughout the night, I thought of my own injury. Those first three or four days in Pentorus had seen me writhing on the floor of his dungeon, trying to convince myself my hand belonged to someone else, that it didn’t really hurt as much as I imagined. Alone in the belly of Garai’s castle, I screamed until my throat was raw. Each minute was an hour, each day a year. My mind finally shut down. I spent the next week or two nearly unconscious, doing my best to die.

  I was sure Mia’s hand hurt just like that. She didn’t understand what had happened to her. Just that she wanted to – and couldn’t – escape the pain.

  Magnus had seated the sisters on his horse and led us all down the trail, his head bent, shoulders tight. I almost wished he hadn’t seen this, yet it was good that he had.

  The depths of human depravity went deep. My tales of Pentorus were simply words in his ears. There is nothing quite like seeing, or experiencing, that kind of evil for one’s self.

  We reached the base of the mountain near mid-day. Tori pointed the way to their former home, on the other side.