I was careful when we went into town. Without Ishqa, I couldn’t glamor myself—nor would I waste one on this—but I could still take care to
make my appearance less obvious. I put on a jacket and buttoned my shirt up to my throat to hide as much of my unusual skin as possible, then wrapped my hair up beneath a hood. It wasn’t uncommon for people in Threll to cover up like this—protection from the sun in the middle of the day—so I blended in well enough as Sammerin and I went to the marketplace together.
In any other circumstance, I might have enjoyed the trip. The marketplace reminded me of the ones my mother would take me to when I was young—rows and rows of open-air stalls set up along twisting pathways, peddling anything and everything that one might think to want, some of it useful, and most of it junk. Where else in the world could you go if you wanted to pick up paintings, toys, scarves, shoes, weapons, seventeen different types of fruit, and questionable meat from an unidentified source?
Sammerin and I wandered the stalls, collecting ingredients for dinner tonight and enough supplies to keep us going for the rest of the journey to Orasiev.
“Should we get meat, too?” Sammerin asked, carefully.
I thought of Max and Brayan, and sighed. “Yes. Probably.” I suspected hunting would not happen today.
My chest ached at the thought. I should have found a way to get Max out of going with his brother. I couldn’t imagine how agonizing that must be for him.
Sammerin read my face. “He’ll be alright.”
“I know he will be.”
It wasn’t the future I was worried about. It was the past, and no one could do anything about that.
“I think it’s a good sign that he went,” Sammerin said. “For years I watched him avoid so much as acknowledging Brayan’s existence. Even in the early years, when Brayan was trying hardest to find him.” He lifted a shoulder in a faint shrug. “Perhaps this is… growth?”
Surely it was, by some measure. But what was the cost of that? “I think their grief is bad for each other,” I said, quietly.
Sammerin was silent for a long moment before responding. “Maybe.
Fire and oil.”
We moved on to the next booth—beautiful skirts that, despite myself and the direness of our situation, I found myself a little transfixed by. I had a crimson shade of red between my fingers when I heard a sound that stopped my heart.
I froze. Suddenly, I was thirteen years old again. “What’s wrong?” Sammerin asked.
I abandoned the skirt and pushed through the market streets. There, up ahead, I saw them: wide-brimmed black hats. Long black leather jackets. Behind them, bars. Behind those bars, people.
Sammerin let out a low curse under his breath.
The slave marketplace was small, much smaller than the one that Esmaris had plucked me out of when I was fourteen years old, but all these places looked the same in the ways that mattered. The cages—the pen, really—were as large as a full block of the merchant stalls, the people within chained to the bars so that potential buyers could easily inspect them. They were divided by sex, age, specialty. The unskilled women here. The children there. The skilled workers and artisans at the end. The beautiful women over there. The only exception was the young, strong men, who were separated, to prevent the possibility that they might be able to physically overpower their captors if kept close enough to work together.
I remembered all these things from my time in a place like this, too. I remember that they debated whether to put me with the women or the children. Look at those breasts, one of them had said. She goes with the women. That’s what they’ll want her for. An interesting, exotic fuck.
“Someone you’d like to see, lovely?” a rough voice said, far too close to me, and I glanced over my shoulder and then looked away.
The man in the wide-brimmed black hat smiled at me like a person, not a product, which was more than they ever did back then.
“No,” I said. “Thank you.”
I almost choked on that “Thank you.”
I walked up and down the bars, around the edges. Many of these people were clearly ill, some potentially drugged. They barely acknowledged me. Only one of them did, a little girl that couldn’t have been older than eight, who leapt to her feet with a gasp.
“You,” she breathed. “I heard of you!”
Her face split into an enormous grin, the kind that children make when presented with an incredible surprise gift, and my heart snapped in two.
Sammerin put a hand on my shoulder. “Tisaanah—” “I can do something.”
He looked at me hopelessly. I pulled away from his grasp and walked the length of the enclosure again, this time down the next row this time to avoid suspicion, though I could feel that little girl’s eyes boring into me the entire time. Surely there had to be something. A weakness in the gate I could exploit with a bit of magic. A poorly guarded exit that I could open with a single, quietly killed guard.
“We can’t,” Sammerin whispered in my ear. “We can,” I hissed back.
I’d just turned a gods-damned city to rubble. It seemed ridiculous to think I couldn’t save this one little girl.
Yet all my fantasies dissolved with every lap I took around the block. The cage was sturdy. The slavers were everywhere. If it was them, and them alone, I would burn this place to the ground. But the marketplace was crowded. It was broad daylight. We were wanted.
No, no, no, a part of me still protested. You cannot just leave them.
Sammerin put his arm around me and abruptly steered me away from the cages.
“That slaver has been staring at you all the way down this street,” he muttered. “We need to go, right now. I’m sorry, Tisaanah. Truly.”
I glanced over my shoulder. Three of the men in black hats huddled together, whispering. At the same time, all of them looked at me.
I turned away fast, my heart sinking. Sammerin was right. It had been a mistake to come here at all. I was too easily recognized.
“Fine.” Gods, the word physically hurt.
We walked quickly through the streets. The marketplace was massive, nearly the size of a small village all on its own. I glanced to my left and saw a man in black keeping pace beside us in the next row over. Glanced over my shoulder to see another behind us, walking fast.
“They are definitely following us,” I muttered.
We needed to go left, but another slaver nearly collided with us that way, so we quickly changed route, heading in the opposite direction.
Ahead, the stone walls loomed. We were being cornered.
We needed to get out of the marketplace. The minute we were free from the throng of people, I could rip these animals apart.
As if in preparation, without my even needing to tell it to, magic tingled at the surface of my skin. My awareness spread out around me—I could taste the simmering emotions of the crowd, a buzz of thoughts and interest. I didn’t want to hurt these people, let alone the slaves so close by.
All we had to do was lead the slavers out of the market. We turned a corner, into a secluded alley—
The hair lifted at the back of my neck.
I sensed the blow coming a split second before it did. I managed to slip the man’s grip and dodge the full force of his strike, though the club still hit the side of my head with enough force to send the world spinning. My magic was ready. When the next one grabbed me, it was only briefly before he howled in pain and yanked his hands away, black with rot.
Sammerin and I fought like animals. Sammerin’s magic made him an incredible killer. He forced men to lurch to awkward stops, twisted their limbs, collapsed their lungs with the flick of his fingers.
Soon, bodies littered the ground around us. The shoppers at the marketplace gasped and reeled away, a wide-eyed crowd gathering to watch at a safe distance.
I whirled to kill another attacker, only to force myself to stop, too late, when I realized who my opponent actually was. There was no black jacket here, no wide-brimmed hat. The man who came after me next bore a standard-issue spear and a wolf sigil on his armband, matching the one tattooed on his throat.
A slave. He was a slave, performing the task he had been forced to do. Sammerin’s magic snaked out for him, but I shouted, “Stop!” and
Sammerin pulled away at the last minute, shooting me a confused look.
What’s wrong? it asked, though the words did not have time to leave his lips.
A horrific crack rang out as Sammerin went careening to the ground. Blood gushed from the wound at the back of his head, making crimson rivers through the cobblestones.
He didn’t move.
I fought back panic, barely managing to evade another blow. I was surrounded now. Not a single one of the men looked at Sammerin’s limp body, stepping over it as if it were nothing on their way to me.
My magic glowed at my hands, at the ready. It would be easy for me to kill them. I could fight my way out of this. But more than half of these men were slaves. One twist of fate and Serel would have become one of them.
I would not hurt these people.
So I let them grab me, let them force me to my knees. My eyes found Sammerin’s limp form, terror in my throat.
Don’t be dead. Please don’t be dead.
My magic reached for his mind. He was in pain, but he was alive.
I fought myself free long enough to throw myself over his body in what would have looked like a desperate show of concern. Grasped tight in my hand was a wad of fabric—an armband that I had ripped from one of the slaves during our fight. I stuffed it into his jacket pocket just before the slaves dragged me off of him.
I recognized the sigil on that armband. It was the same as the one that had been tattooed onto the hands left at my doorstop months ago. The Zorokovs.
There were worse things, I decided, than planting myself within the walls of my greatest enemy. I prayed my friends would understand that, too. One of the men in the black hats approached me—the others seemed too nervous—and tilted my face towards him. My hood had long ago fallen, my
hair free around my face.
He smiled. “What a prize. Do you have any idea how much Zorokov will pay for her?”
A blow to my head sent my world spinning. “Careful!” one of the slavers barked. “Don’t fucking damage her, you idiot!”
They dragged me away. Distantly, through flashes of darkening, blurry vision, I felt myself being loaded up into a cart. Heard the clatter of iron snap closed. Chained bodies surrounded me.
My consciousness was gone before I felt the cart begin to move.
