by Karen Chance
“That’s for him to decide, though, isn’t it?”
“It’s for him to decide after he buys you—”
“And my magic doesn’t work without him,” I added quickly. “You won’t be able to prove I’m worth the extra money.”
The meaty fist loosened slightly.
“He’s harmless,” I added, and we both looked at Rosier.
Who did a pretty good job of looking harmless, all things considered.
The merchant made a sound that went with the disgust on his face. “Just keep it out of sight! If it bites anyone—”
“He doesn’t have any teeth. See?” I started to pull up Rosier’s gums, but the man stopped me with a retching sound.
“I don’t want to see! Get it—no, put it in the bag!” He threw my pack at me. “And keep it there!” He looked up. “Boy!”
I stuffed Rosier into the pack and stowed it under my arm as a kid came running out of the makeshift fort.
“Make sure she’s put with the magic workers—under guard!” the merchant called after him as the boy started towing me toward the gate. “And get me an ale!”
And then the great gates were opening, and we were inside.
The cheery irreverence of the road camp was nowhere to be seen. Instead, hundreds, maybe thousands of women were milling around corrals, like cattle. Most of them were dirtier than the ones in the cage outside, the rain having mostly missed this place, and a good number looked haunted, like they’d been there too long. Which would have been five minutes for me, because the place stank like a sewer.
I gasped, eyes watering, as I was towed forward. Past pens of bleating sheep and screaming goats, past a mass of camp followers around tables and cauldrons, trying to turn the animals into dinner, past a bunch of servants scurrying around with armloads of firewood, past wagons piled high with barrels or vegetables, past a tent filled with gray-clad fey doing something I couldn’t see because I was pulled by too fast. Past a hundred other sights, smells, and sounds that slapped me in the face, like the billowing smoke from a passing cook fire.
And into a corridor made up of two long rows of tables, one on either side, where new arrivals were being processed.
At least, it looked like that was the idea. But there was only a narrow space in the middle, which was completely filled with screaming, crying, desperate women. And struggling guards, who were attempting to organize the new arrivals, strip them of their possessions, and get them into outfits similar to mine.
It might have been going better, except the women’s possessions apparently included their children. Who were being separated from their mothers and passed over the backs of the tables, to waiting carts. I doubted they were going to be hurt, considering how much the fey prized kids.
But the women obviously didn’t know that.
One screamed as her daughter was ripped from her arms, and then leapt after her, scrambling frantically onto one of the tables. And sending baskets of runes and amulets, wands and rings, scattering everywhere in the process. And kicking and screaming, and calling the girl’s name over and over, when one of the guards grabbed her and tried dragging her back.
Until she clawed his face with her nails, drawing long lines of blood, and he took out a batonlike club and punched her in the temple. Causing her to collapse like a dropped rag doll, her flame red hair brilliant in the torchlight. Almost as much as the blood seeping onto the ground around her probably fractured skull.
“What are you doing?” Rosier whispered as I realized that I’d unconsciously started toward the woman.
The boy was tugging at my hand. “Come on! Come on!”
But I didn’t come on. I just stood there, my fist clenched on the pack rope, as several guards converged on the fallen woman. Only someone else reached her first.
There was a sudden commotion, loud enough to be heard over the din, and a small form shot out from under the table. “Mama! Mama!”
I didn’t have to ask whose child it was; the hair was bright as flame. As bright as her mother’s when she threw herself on the body, sobbing and repeating that same word over and over, while the two spills blended together. Impossible to tell the difference.
“Listen to me,” Rosier said, his voice low and urgent. “There’s nothing you can do. If she’s dead, she died fifteen centuries ago—do you understand? You can’t help her. You can only hurt us!”
“I understand.”
“Then why are you still moving?”
I wasn’t sure. A male fey in gray had just knelt beside the fallen woman, holding off the guard with a raised hand. Another fey, female this time, ducked under the table and put the child to sleep with a touch to her cheek. She carried her away while the slaver’s boy practically pulled my arm off, yelling, “You come! You come!” loud enough to draw the attention of two nearby guards.
There was suddenly nothing left for me to do.
Except the obvious.
I knelt and picked a bundle off the ground and then got to my feet, just as the guards reached us.
They seemed more interested in the ongoing scene beyond me, where the fey in gray was saying something the spell couldn’t translate to the red-faced guard, who didn’t seem to like it. His hand tightened on his weapon, causing an audible gasp to run through the nearby crowd. But he hadn’t raised it before what looked like an officer caught his arm, his grip as fierce as his expression. And all but threw him at the two guards in front of me.
One of them grabbed him while the other reached for me. “What did you pick up?”
“What?”
He grabbed my wrist. “Show me what’s in your hand!”
I spread my hands open, both of them, palms up. “I stumbled,” I said. “No shoes.”
He looked down at my feet, and then back up at me, eyes narrowed. But the impatience—and fearlessness—of an eight-year-old saved me. “She been checked already,” the boy told him, tugging on me. “She Budic’s girl!”
And to my surprise, we were waved on through.
It wasn’t much calmer on the other side as we fought our way through the crowd outside the pens. Fey were wandering about, sizing up the merchandise on offer, while a small army of humans rushed around, putting smears of paint on the women’s tunics in various colors. Both groups ignored the weeping, traumatized chattel desperately asking after missing family members, insisting they shouldn’t be here, or begging for help. Or, in more than one case, rocking mindlessly in the mud, with vacant looks on their faces.
“What’s going on?” I asked Rosier, my lips numb.
He had climbed partway out of the pack and onto my shoulder and was staring around with big eyes. “This can’t be happening—”
“Well, it looks like it’s happening to me!”
“You don’t understand. There’s a treaty. It governs how many women the fey can take at one time. There are strict limits—”
“This is limited?”
“No.” He stared around some more. “No.”
And then we were dragged up to a harassed-looking man in the middle of the concourse, who pointed the boy toward a tent. One like all the others crowded into the back half of the enclosure, except that this one had a cluster of guards standing in front. And was pitch-dark inside.
At least to me. The torches burning outside the entrance had blinded me as we passed through, but I guess that wasn’t true for everyone. Because I’d no sooner come through the door than somebody swore.
“What the hell is that?”
“The hell indeed,” someone else said as the boy dropped my hand.
“You stay here,” he told me as I looked around blindly. “You go out, the guards kill you. You understand? They kill you dead!”
“I understand,” I said, my eyes straining to identify some gray blotches scattered here and there, in between pulsing afterimages.
“They kill you dead!” he repeated, just to be sure we were clear. Then he left me alone with the blotches. A few of which were starting to drift closer.
Judging by the sounds they were making, they weren’t happy to see me. Maybe because I still had Rosier on my shoulder, like the world’s ugliest parrot. I opened my mouth to tell them he was harmless, and then shut it again.
Because I wasn’t sure that they were.
“That’s demonkind,” one of the blotches hissed, from closer than I’d like. Almost close enough to touch.
“My demon,” I said, skipping back. “Mine.”
“And who are you?”
I swallowed. “Someone who’s wondering why a bunch of witches—you are witches, right?” I asked as the blotches started to resolve into a semicircle of halter-clad women.
“Aye, we’re witches. But not the kind that consort wi’ demons!”
The speaker was an older woman, who frankly looked a lot like a witch. Or the common perception of one. She was missing the pointy hat and broom, but the hooknose, the wild black and gray hair, and the eye patch were perfect. Which made me wonder what the heck she was doing here.
I wasn’t trying to be unkind, but “sex slave” was not the first description that came to mind.
Of course, that went for the rest of them, too. There didn’t look to be one of childbearing age. Although I might be misjudging, since there also wasn’t one without what looked like battle scars: a missing eye, a chipped front tooth, a literal scar bisecting a cheek, deep enough that it must have hit bone—twenty years ago.
“Well, maybe that’s why you’re still locked up,” I said, continuing to evade the advancing throng. There were seven, maybe eight of them—it was still hard to see, especially in the corners—and I didn’t like those odds. Not when the kindest-looking one also looked like she could take on a pro wrestler—and win.
“You watch your tongue, girl!” That was from a large woman with faded red hair and a belligerent expression.
“That might be prudent,” Rosier said softly, into my ear.
“There’s a time and place for prudence,” I said. “I don’t think this is it.”
“Listen to your creature, girl,” the redhead advised.
“Or what? You’ll hurt me? Maybe kill me? And then what?”
“Then ye’ll be dead! And your creature wi’ ye!”
“And you’ll still be stuck here, half-naked and defenseless—”
Someone hissed.
“—about to be auctioned off like cattle—”
“Have a care!”
“—or no, not like cattle,” I amended. “Like sheep. Cattle at least try to escape—”
“And if we don’t kill you, how does that change?” someone asked quietly, from behind me.
I whirled, because I hadn’t noticed anyone there.
My vision was a little clearer now, probably as much as it was going to get, considering that the only light came from small rips in the tent fabric. They sent tiny fingers of dust-filled firelight stabbing across the space, one of which bisected the face of the first young woman I’d seen. And the first who didn’t look like a witch.
She was pretty, with delicate features and a cascade of pale blond hair that almost reached her knees. And what might have been dark gray eyes that were leveled calmly on me. She didn’t look like someone who was about to be auction fodder. She also didn’t look like she was planning to stab me in the back the first chance she got, especially since she’d just had it.
“Give me a moment,” I said to her, and closed my eyes.
I only had one question, since there was only one option I could see. But before I did anything, it would be nice to know if I was about to screw up the timeline.
You know, again.
But my power was doing the metaphysical equivalent of humming absently, with no apparent opinion one way or another. There was no sense of doom and gloom, but also no enthusiasm. If I had to use a word to describe the overall response, it would have been “meh.”
We’re going to have to work on our communication, I told it grimly.
“I have an idea,” I said to them, opening my eyes. And found the witches looking at each other, like they thought I might be nuts. “But it depends.”
“On what?” the blonde asked warily.
I pulled the items I’d picked up off the ground, and that my little chameleon had hidden for me, out of a fold in my skirts. “On whether these wands belong to you.”
Chapter Twenty-two
A minute later, I found out what was behind the tent: more tents. Along with a surprised guard who was cursed through the fabric before he even realized he was a target. And then ended up a lump hidden behind the little movie the witches provided for anybody checking in.
It was supposed to be us, huddled in a circle, talking softly. And for an on-the-fly illusion, it wasn’t bad, although it wasn’t likely to fool anyone for long. But then, we didn’t have long.
The auction was about to start.
From what I could see past a couple of barrels, it looked like the marking up had finished and the sorting had commenced. Sobbing young women were being pulled away from their older relations, who I guessed were being sold as generic slaves. And then further divided based on age or looks. Groups were being assembled by dealers who frequently changed their minds, unifying and then jerking apart families as they tried to form the best lots.
My hand clenched as I watched two sisters, judging by their identical long auburn hair, be stripped and examined by a grizzled man with the impersonal touch of a horse trader. The girl with the prettiest face was kept; the other was dragged off, sobbing, to another group, without even being allowed to get dressed first. Her shift was knocked from her hand by a passing servant and trampled in the mud, leaving her to try to cover herself with only her hair as she waited, alone and terrified, to be sold with a group of strangers.
I told myself that Rosier had been right. I couldn’t stop what was happening, what had already happened. However this had played out, it was over, long ago. But my job wasn’t.
I had to get out of here.
But that was easier said than done. The camp was crawling with guards, both the official ones and the flashier, shiny-armor-and-etched-weapon type some of the slavers had brought. And even if we somehow got through all that, and through the warded palisade wall, an army was camped on the other side.
I bit my lip. I could use the potion, try to shift away. But even if I succeeded, that might make things worse instead of better. Because Gertie was still out there. And although she was currently unable to kick my ass, her acolytes had almost certainly rescued her by now. I doubted they were powerful enough to get her home, but they could definitely get her to her present-day counterpart, the Byzantine Pythia I’d seen with her last time.
And then she could kick my ass.
I was going to have to find another way.
“They’re auctioning the people in lots?” I asked the blonde, who had crouched down beside me.
She nodded. “Human traders aren’t allowed in Faerie. They sell the women in quantity to the fey, who take them back, clean them up, and auction them off individually.”
“So each fey slaver will be leaving with a fairly big group?” I asked, to be sure I understood. “A group he doesn’t know too well?”
“Not tonight,” the redhead said, before the blonde could answer. She crouched down beside us. “Not wi’ our people using the darkness to make them pay for every life they steal!”
“Your people?” I frowned at her. “You mean the crazy women who almost killed us coming in?”
She shot me a sardonic look. “They weren’t tryin’ t’ kill ye, girl, else ye’d be dead. They were tryin’ to save ye.”
“Aye,” Hooknose agreed, joining the party. “Let’s see how much Nimue p
rofits from her crimes!”
“Nimue? Then the Green Fey are behind this?” I asked, suddenly noticing a few green tabards in the crowd. Most of the guards hadn’t bothered with them, probably because of the weather. But the waterworks coming in should have been enough of a clue. Water was the Green Fey’s element and they could do amazing things with it. If I hadn’t been preoccupied—
I suddenly noticed that everyone had turned to stare at me, in various degrees of incredulity. “I’m . . . not from around here,” I added weakly.
“Your home must be far if you don’t know that Nimue considers this her personal fiefdom,” the blonde said. “She thinks she can do whatever she likes with it.”
“And what she likes is to renegotiate the treaty,” the redhead commented heatedly. “And it was bad enough already!”
“A recent war with the Dark Fey depleted her numbers,” the blonde explained. “She’s insisting on doubling the levy.”
“But the king refused, and damn right, too!” Hooknose muttered. “But now she’s come in force, rounding up not only what she asked for, but every woman she can find!”
“They’re even taking the children,” a thin brunette despaired, her eyes on the camp.
“She’s just trying to put pressure on the king,” the blonde told her. “Nimue has a hard enough time feeding her own children—she can’t want to feed ours, too.”
“So she’ll take them and the food!” the redhead said. “Leaving us just enough to raise a new generation. So they can come and pick them over, taking who they like, raping and plundering—no! This ends now!”
“How?” the thin brunette asked bitterly. “She has the leaders, and also the princess. And without them—”
“That’s why we’re here,” the blonde said, seeing my confusion. “Nimue called the coven leaders to a conference, only to take them captive. We came on a rescue mission.” Her lips twisted. “And soon thereafter needed rescuing ourselves.”
“Would these coven leaders be able to help us get out?” I asked.
“Aye,” the redhead said. “If we could find them!”