Barkley lifted her onto Fallion's back before she could figure out how to mount the horse without the pants getting in the way. He'd warned her the night before that Harley was in a dangerous mood—he'd invested most of his money in the bandaged girl, planning to sell her for a small fortune in Boradol and was now desperate to make his money back on K'lrsa. One misstep, one hint that K'lrsa wouldn't be the prize he wanted her to be, and Harley might just cut his losses and turn back to the desert before his creditors discovered he'd returned.
As she sat in the saddle, K'lrsa tugged at the pants, rolling them so they didn't hang between her feet and the stirrups.
"Don't do that." Barkley tugged the fabric back down.
"How am I supposed to ride a horse if I can't even put my feet in the stirrups?"
Barkley glanced over at Harley. "You really shouldn't be."
"What do you mean?" She was so tired of not knowing things.
"Women in the Daliphate don't ride."
"Ever? How do they get anywhere?"
He shrugged. "They walk. Or they ride in carriages or wagons. But they definitely don't ride."
K'lrsa rolled her eyes.
"And they don't roll their eyes like that either."
K'lrsa bit back the comment she wanted to make. "Is there anything I am allowed to do?"
Barkley's lips quirked upward in a slight smile. "Honestly?"
She nodded.
"No."
She thought he was joking, but she soon saw that he wasn't.
Chapter 34
Riding through the Daliphate was like riding through a completely different world. Everything was strange to K'lrsa.
First it was the roads. On the plains there were no permanent roads. Maybe a game trail that was traveled often enough to be semi-permanent, but those changed with the seasons, washed away with each spring flood.
Over the course of the week they traveled from Crossroads into the Daliphate, the roads changed from bare patches of dust weaving between farmed lands into broad, dirt-packed paths that moved straight as an arrow into the distance. And then, as they journeyed deeper and deeper into the Daliphate, the dirt roads gave way to broad roads covered with paving stones that cut straight through hills instead of skirting around them.
K'lrsa tried to imagine the number of people who would have to work to create something like that. The number of days they'd have to spend on thwarting nature. And then to maintain it, to keep those paving stones free of cracks and weeds…
She couldn't imagine it even though she saw the evidence beneath Fallion's hooves.
If that wasn't enough, there were the animals. Cows and pigs kept in pens for the convenience of their owners, ready to provide the next meal. Each of the tribes kept a few chickens around, but they ran loose through camp, never the property of one person or family. And never enough to provide a steady source of food.
She stopped the third day to stare at a fenced area full of baru, grazing on soft green grass. When she rode Fallion closer, one of the baru came right up to the fence and nuzzled at her hand as if looking for a treat.
She laughed. All those days she'd tracked the baru herd hoping to kill one single baru and here were too many to count, just waiting to be slaughtered.
It was too strange.
And the food. On the fourth day they rode through rolling green hills covered with fruit trees. She couldn't imagine what it must be like to walk outside your door and be able to pluck an apple—all round and golden yellow—from a tree whenever you pleased.
Not that she'd ever had a fresh apple before. Not until they stopped for a rest and a young girl ran up to her, eyes wide with awe, and offered her an apple straight from the tree. K'lrsa bit into its hard, crispy flesh and smiled, the sweet juice dribbling down her chin.
She finally understood in that moment why all the traders who'd visited them in the desert complained about the tasteless food.
And of course there were the people.
Before K'lrsa could thank the girl for the fruit, her father screamed at her to get away from the devil spawn on a horse. He beat the girl about the shoulders as he chased her back inside, screaming and cursing the whole way.
K'lrsa grabbed her reins, ready to go to the girl's rescue, but Barkley stopped her. "Leave it."
K'lrsa bit her lip as she heard the girl cry out. Why had the man reacted so strongly? She was just a woman on a horse. What was the harm in that?
But Barkley had been right. No women rode horses in the Daliphate. Most didn't even travel.
Almost everyone they passed on the road was a man. The few women she did see rode in the backs of wagons or walked along the side of the road, eyes downcast. Not once did a woman meet her eyes.
And, after the first day or two of seeing what was in the eyes of the men she passed, K'lrsa found herself looking away, too. She refused to look down—she was a Rider of the tribes and she wouldn't cast her eyes to the ground for anyone—but she did focus her gaze on the horizon as she shut out the men's comments and whispers.
Day by day she felt the poison of the Daliphate spreading through her mind and soul, changing her. She felt disconnected from the land, abandoned by her gods, shamed for who she was. She was scared and frightened and with each day her goal seemed that much farther away.
At night she dreamed of the young man with the blue eyes. He was her only refuge. Him and the desert where they met. They danced beneath a full moon each night, held in the Lady Moon's embrace, moving together, touching and kissing, their connection so powerful it felt more real than this twisted world she journeyed through by day.
Those dreams tempted her away from her true path, so each morning before she rose, she pictured her father. Pictured his last moments—the empty eyes, the torn hands, the wound in his belly.
Each morning she reminded herself why she was doing this. Why she was riding farther and farther into such a corrupt and ugly place and farther and farther away from the world of her dreams.
The sooner she found the Daliph and killed him, the better.
Chapter 35
On the seventh day, they approached a large city sprawled between the banks of two giant rivers. K'lrsa stared at the water raging through the narrow banks as it frothed and foamed, white-peaked and so deep she couldn't see the bottom.
So much water in one place…
The traders had mentioned rivers, but she'd never understood until now.
"Move it, Princess." Reginald slapped Fallion's rump.
Fallion bit at him, but missed. Too bad. The man made her skin crawl with the way he was always watching her, fiddling with his sharp little knife, eyes narrowed. He rarely said anything. He didn't have to.
As she rode Fallion across the bridge into the city, she stared at the water rushing beneath them and felt an odd urge to jump.
Barkley rode his horse between her and the edge of the bridge. "Easy there, Princess. You jump, Harley'd make me go in after you. And I'm not much of a swimmer."
"A swimmer?"
He shook his head as they continued across the bridge. "I forget how little you know. Yes. A swimmer. When water is deep enough, people sink beneath the surface and they die. You have to swim to stay on the surface."
"You can die from too much water?"
Barkley laughed. "You can die from many things, Princess. Don't worry. The water is probably the least of your worries."
As they reached the end of the bridge, he urged his horse forward. K'lrsa stared past him to the city. She'd been a fool to think Crossroads was big. It was a speck of dust next to this place.
More buildings than she could possibly count crawled their way up the hillside. The stench was overwhelming—like a giant privy pit. She covered her mouth and resisted the urge to gag. Even the horse smell from her head wrap was preferable to the odor of so many people packed so close together.
The first houses they passed were made of wood and raised on stilts so that their entrances were above K'lrsa's head. Barkley
rode back to show her the water line—it was almost to the top of the stilts—where the rivers flooded each spring.
The buildings they passed were gray with dirt and age, sagging and heavy. So were the people who trudged in from the fields outside the city.
Their group rode up the hill until they reached a wall of stones twice the height of Fallion with men standing across the road holding long metal weapons.
"Everyone off your horses." The man on the right approached Harley as the rest of the party dismounted. The man on the left started poking at the wagons.
K'lrsa stepped to the side and ran her hand along the stone wall, fascinated by how they had managed to stack so many stones so high without having them fall over.
Barkley came to stand beside her. "Secret is in the grout."
"The what?"
"The grout. See this white substance spread between the stones? When they build the wall, the grout's wet. As it dries, it sticks to the stones and keeps them together. A wall like this, if built right, can last ten generations or more."
She stared up at him. "How do you know this?"
"My father is a stone mason. He builds walls like this." He turned away, his face shadowed.
"Why aren't you one then? Isn't that how it works normally?"
Barkley crossed his arms tight across his chest. "Not possible."
"Why not?"
"My father didn't want me around."
She reached a hand to his shoulder. "Why?"
Barkley was her only friend, the only one who'd shown her any compassion since Crossroads. He was honest and hard-working. How could his own father not want him around?
"He just didn't." He walked away, his shoulders stiff with suppressed emotion.
K'lrsa watched him go, her brow furrowed with concern. There was so much she didn't understand about this world. How was she possibly going to succeed?
She didn't know, but she'd come too far to turn back.
She had no choice but to continue forward.
Chapter 36
Harley led them through a series of twisty streets, the shops and houses so close together that they walked in shadow even though the sun was still shining somewhere above them. She shivered, imagining a life where you never saw the sun, never felt its warmth caress your skin.
The people they passed were dressed in such a variety of clothing that K'lrsa couldn't help but stare. Some wore black from head to toe, the women even wearing veils across their faces so that only their eyes showed. Others wore clothing with bright yellow, red, and blue stripes, the colors so bold and bright they were almost painful to look at. And others wore plain brown clothes, not a trace of color anywhere in their wardrobe.
She'd never seen so many people in one place, and they all seemed to know what they were doing and where they were going, shoving past their small group without even noticing them.
When K'lrsa asked about the clothes, Barkley shrugged. "This far from Toreem people wear what they want. Some flaunt it. Some don't."
Before K'lrsa could ask what he meant, she was distracted by a skinny little girl dressed in the tattered remnants of others' clothing—a too-big black shirt, too-short bright yellow and red striped pants, and brown cloth wrapped around her feet.
The girl held out her hand as people passed, but they all ignored her, keeping a careful distance as they passed by on their way to whatever important destination awaited them. "Just a penny. That's all I ask, you pompous prats," the girl shouted.
As people momentarily paused to stare at her, a young boy made his way through the crowd, quickly grabbing a loaf of bread from one man's bag, an apple from another, and a coin purse from a third.
The man with the missing coin purse shouted and chased after the boy while the girl disappeared down a narrow alley.
"Where are their parents?" K'lrsa asked, thinking that no one in the tribes would act that way or steal from others like that.
Barkley stepped between her and a man who reached out to touch her. "Probably don't have any."
"Then their relatives. They have to have family of some sort."
"Don't want the extra mouths to feed or don't exist."
She looked behind, but the children had long since disappeared. "So those kids are just on their own? No one to help them?"
Barkley nodded. "Yeah. That's the way it is. Your family dies or doesn't want you, you make your own way." He looked as if he would say more, but didn't.
K'lrsa cringed. She watched the indifferent people shoving past one another on the dirty streets and realized that none of them cared about any of the others. Up ahead she saw a man trip and fall. Instead of helping, people just stepped over him. One even stepped on the bag of food the man had dropped.
"How do all these people eat?"
"What do you mean?"
"There are so many people here. How do they eat every day? Our annual gathering is much smaller than this and only lasts for five days. All the tribes have to bring their own provisions with them because there isn't enough hunting to feed that many people. But these people live here. How do they eat every day?"
Barkley pushed a man in tattered rags out of the way. "Traders. They bring food into the city every day. You didn't think those farmers we passed ate all of that food themselves, did you?"
She turned away as the man Barkley had shoved aside held out a hand, begging for money, his right eye oozing pus. "I guess I didn't think about it."
There was so much she hadn't known about the world. So much she didn't want to know about the world. The tightness in her chest grew as they pressed farther into the city.
There were too many people, not enough sunlight, no fresh air. And no grass anywhere. Nothing green. The desert was dry and barren, but it was different. Natural. Life hid under the surface or lurked in small corners. This city was just dead, every plant or animal gone.
Even Fallion was restless, shaking his head and snorting as people brushed against him in the press of the crowds. She stroked his nose. "I know, micora. I'm so sorry. I wish I'd never brought you here."
Chapter 37
Harley stopped in front of a large building, its white exterior spotless and shining against the darkness of the rest of the city. Above the door, a wooden carving of a busty woman with a tankard of beer leered down at them. K'lrsa marveled that they could so casually use wood here and that there could be a tree so big that a person could carve a whole sign out of it.
They followed Harley around the back of the building to a large courtyard with horse stalls at one end. This too was spotlessly clean. The horses she could see were happily munching on fresh hay—a meal finer than anything Fallion had ever had before.
"We’re staying here tonight." Harley handed his reins to a young boy with a mop of dark black hair who appeared as if out of nowhere.
K'lrsa stared around the space. "Here?" She glanced at Barkley. "Where will we put the tents?" The ground was covered in stones joined together with grout, the surface entirely smooth.
Reginald laughed as he passed them. "We're sleeping inside, Princess." He turned to Barkley. "Does Harley really think we're going to pass this piece of tribal trash off as a princess? I doubt she's ever even slept indoors before." He shook his head as he followed Harley, calling back, "Should've sold her off in Crossroads and cut our losses."
"Ignore him." Barkley led her inside and up four flights of stairs. She stumbled on the first few, but quickly got the hang of it. K'lrsa trembled as they climbed higher and higher, catching glimpses out the window with each level. She'd never been so high above things before.
Finally, they walked through a small room to another room dominated by a large wooden frame covered in what looked like a gigantic seat cushion. She walked to the narrow window and looked out.
They were at the top of the hillside, the city scattered down the hill below them. The road they'd ridden that morning was just a narrow strip of paleness against the distant farms, the rivers that had seemed so frightening up c
lose now just narrow silver lines at the base of the hill.
"You'll sleep here. Reginald and I will sleep in the outer room."
K'lrsa glanced around; there was no room for her sleeping roll anywhere. The wooden frame almost touched both of the walls and the small space to the right of the door was filled by a wooden pedestal with a bowl and pitcher on it and a stool that had a wooden back on it.
Reginald shoved into the room, a nasty smile on his face. "This is a bed, Princess. And this is a mattress. You sleep on it. And this is a chair—you do know what a chair is, don't you? Not everyone spends their life sitting on the ground, you know."
He talked to her like she was a young child. She glared at him, hating the way he laughed at her, but she was secretly grateful because she hadn't known what they were. At home they slept on furs and pillows and used small stools that were easy to transport from camp to camp; with the caravan she'd slept in a tent each night on a densely-woven cloth sleeping mat. She'd never slept indoors before.
"Leave it, Reginald." Barkley shoved him back outside. "We'll be in the next room. Harley's orders. He doesn't want you to escape."
She almost laughed. Like she could find her way back through that labyrinth of people.
"You should probably wash up a bit." He gestured at the table in the corner with the bowl and pitcher before closing the door.
K'lrsa stared at the items on the table. She was used to sweat baths—a small enclosed space that was so hot it made everyone sweat so they could scrape the dirt from their skin with a carved baru bone. What was she supposed to do with an empty bowl and a pitcher of warm water?
She paced the room, feeling trapped for the first time since she'd been captured. Even though she'd been a slave for weeks now, she'd never actually felt like one. She'd always had Fallion and the sky above her. Even as the moon and sun became more distant and weak, she knew they were still there.
But now, locked in this tiny space, in the middle of a city with so many people and buildings between her and freedom…
Rider's Revenge (The Rider's Revenge Trilogy Book 1) Page 12
