"Fly this way, birdie," she said, pulling him out of the cavern.
They emerged into the night. The bone-raiders didn't follow. Maya could hear them still weeping inside the cave. She raced downstairs, dragging Leven with her until they stood on the sand again. The cliff loomed behind them, and the camels slept ahead—fourteen of them, all bound together with rope.
On the camels, she found the bone-raiders' treasures: decorative blades with jeweled hilts, sacks of coins, amulets and bracelets, gilded vessels, statuettes with gemstone eyes, and countless other pretty things that shone in the saddle bags. There was food here too—dry figs and salted meat—and water and wine. Her own belongings—the dagger Atalia had given her, the horn from Epher, the scarf from Father—were here too. Maya drew her dagger and cut Leven free from his bonds.
"Onto the camel," she said, pulling him toward one of the seated animals.
He flapped his arms, tears still on his cheeks. "But I can fly!"
"Good, so fly right onto that camel." She shoved him into the saddle, then mounted another camel, the one at the front of the line.
For days now, she had heard the bone-raiders issue their commands to the animals. She knew how to ride him.
"Hasha!" she said. "Hasha! Hasha!"
The camels grunted and rose to their feet. Maya and Leven swayed in their saddles.
"Hasha!" she said. "Go, go!"
The caravan of camels began to walk through the night, tied together in a line. When Maya turned toward the fortress in the cliff, she saw the bone-raiders emerge. They blinked and rubbed their eyes as if roused from a dream. Slowly they came to their senses, their eyes widened, and they drew their swords.
Maya cringed.
"Hasha!" she shouted. "Faster, faster!" She dug her heels into the camel. "Hasha!"
The camels began to run.
The bone-raiders ran in pursuit, roaring.
Maya cringed. "Faster!" she said. "Hasha! Go, go!"
The camels picked up speed, thundering across the desert. The bone-raiders cried out in rage. One tossed his saber, and the blade spun, flying past Maya, nearly cutting her. She kept kneeing her camel, driving him onward. Riding his own camel, Leven was busy flapping his arms and cawing. A dozen other camels ran with them, tied to one another, raising clouds of sand.
The bone-raiders began to fall back. The distance widened between hunters and prey.
Maya allowed herself a little bit of hope.
Atalia fights with her sword, she thought, but I fight with Luminosity.
Finally the sounds of pursuit faded, and she slowed her camels to a comfortable walk. The animals walked single file, still roped together. The clouds of dust settled, the stars spread across the sky, and the moon shone. Maya climbed off her camel and walked beside the animals.
Leven hopped off his own camel and approached her. "You know, those raiders back there . . . we took their rides, their food, their water. They'll die back there."
Maya shook her head, looking back toward the cliff, but she could no longer see it. "No. As they said, a caravan will be passing through at dawn, men looking for slaves." She allowed herself a thin smile. "Maybe they'll find eleven of them."
She looked up at the stars. She had been watching these stars every night. The Lodestar shone in the north, the tip of the Lion's Claw constellation. The Evening Star, brightest in the night, shone a pale blue, marking the west. In the east shone the Dancer, swaying across the sky, and in her hand shone the Dancer's Coin, the fairest among her stars. As children, Ofeer had always adored the eastern Dancer, while Maya had preferred the Lion's Claw in the north. This night Maya felt a kinship with that celestial dancer of darkness and light.
"We left the cliffs of Aken," she said. "That means that the city of Sekur is north from here. We're close, Leven." Her eyes shone. "Close to Sekur, the great city in the heart of Sekadia. We can find more maps there. And a road to the eastern sea, and . . ." She bit her lip. "I mean, I can. You're going back to Zohar. Once you take me there. Like you promised."
He tucked an errant strand of her hair behind her ear. "Do you remember when the bone-raiders captured us?"
She nodded. Of course she did. "We were in the tent, and—"
"And they rudely interrupted me."
She remembered his story of the frog and the scorpion. She stopped walking and stood on the warm sand. "You were about to sting me."
He kept stroking her hair, leaned down, and kissed her lips. "Something like that."
He kissed her again, and Maya closed her eyes and kissed him back. They stood in the desert, the stars above, kissing for a long time. The camels grunted around them.
When finally their kiss ended, she poked him. "Sting."
They walked on through the desert, taking the camels and treasure with them. After so long slung across the camels, they needed to walk. They needed to feel the sand beneath their feet, to feel the desert around them.
As they walked, Maya felt joy, relief, hope . . . but a demon still coiled inside her. She would not forget the beatings, the thirst, the ropes cutting into her limbs. She would not forget the eyes of the men upon her, the terror in her heart. She had hurt too much, and knew this pain would not soon leave her.
But I still have the light of Zohar inside me, she thought. And I have Leven.
She looked at him, that stupid thief, that scorpion of the desert. Perhaps he too was like a masked man, a fortress on a cliff, and beneath his smirk there was a soul as hurt as hers. She slipped her hand into his, and they walked through the desert together, leading their camels toward the northern star.
OFEER
It was a long cold night in the hall of slaves. The chamber wasn't much larger than the deck of a ship, yet a thousand slaves or more crowded here.
Ofeer huddled on the floor, knees pulled to her chest, unable to sleep. There was barely any room here to even lie down. Bats fluttered in the rafters, and three legionaries stood at the door, armed and armored. The slaves spread around her, some lying on the floor, others curled into balls. Many were Zoharites, most of them from Gefen, a few from the forces of Yohanan. But other slaves here came from across the world. Ofeer saw Nurians huddled in the corner, their dark skin nearly invisible in the shadows, and Gaelian captives of war, their skin pale and hair blond, and many people from nations she did not recognize: some with brown skin and large eyes, others with wide faces and slanted eyes, and a few with flaming red hair and freckled skin. Captives from around the Encircled Sea and far beyond filled the hall, the daily catch to bolster Aelar's population of slaves.
And I'm one of them.
Ofeer lowered her head to her knees, letting her hair curtain the view.
"How has this happened?" she whispered.
Koren shifted at her side, joints creaking. Chains still hobbled his ankles. "What, hitting puberty?" he said. "Well, Ofeer, when a girl grows up, she begins to see changes in her body and—"
She elbowed him hard in the ribs. "Quiet. I'm trying to sleep."
He cracked his neck, staring around at the thousand slaves covering the floor. "No you weren't. You were moping. Very different thing from sleep. Sleep is when you travel to wonderful lands full of honey cakes with wings and dancing elephants playing harps."
"Maybe those are your dreams," Ofeer said. "But my dreams are always about, well . . ." She sighed. "About what happened yesterday. Sailing on a beautiful ship into Aelar—a city of magic, the center of the world, my father's homeland. Of traveling in a golden chariot with a prince, the crowds cheering around me. It's what I've dreamed of for years, what finally came true. But the dream has become a nightmare."
Koren frowned. "Are you sure you never dreamed of winged honey cakes?" He winced when Ofeer elbowed him again. "All right, all right. Look, Ofeer old girl, this was never my plan for life either."
She scoffed. "You never had any plans for your life."
He bristled. "Of course I did! I was going to marry Queen Imani of Nur. You know, the fabled beauty of the sout
h, the one the poets sing of? And I was going to discover hidden treasure buried undersea, tame a demon using a magical ring, and raise a golem out of clay to fight our enemies. Lots of big plans."
"I think you'd have better luck raising a golem than having Queen Imani Koteeka marry you." Ofeer sighed and leaned against him. "Maybe my dreams were no more realistic than yours."
Koren was silent for a long time, staring at the shadowy mass of sleeping, praying, and shivering slaves that filled the dark hall. Finally he spoke softly. "Was it really that bad?"
She looked at him. "What?"
"Living in Zohar. With us."
Ofeer too was silent for a long time. Finally, "I don't know. I thought it was. I was in pain, Koren. Not because of you. Not because of Father or Mother or even Atalia, no matter how much she scorned me. The pain was inside me, a demon nobody else could see, nobody else could understand. It's why I always ran away from the villa, spent nights at the port in Gefen, gambling and drinking and dreaming of sailing here to Aelar. To a place where I could belong. I felt like an Aelarian in Zohar, and here in Aelar I feel like a Zoharite. I don't know who I am anymore."
"A Sela," he said.
She raised an eyebrow. "But Jerael Sela was not my father."
"Of course he was. Not by blood, maybe. But he raised you from your birth, didn't he? And you grew up with us Sela children. And you bear the Sela surname. That's what matters. Not who planted the seed, but who raised the sapling. We're your real family, and I'm your real brother. Not that shit-stained Seneca."
Ofeer lowered her head. "Koren, do you think Atalia is still alive? I haven't seen her since . . . since the Gaelian attack. Do you think she drowned?"
"I think," Koren said, "that Atalia is the toughest hunk of meat in the Encircled Sea. If she had to swim back to Zohar, she did. If she had to wrestle a hundred sharks on the way back, she did. She's not that easy to kill."
Yet Ofeer heard the doubt in his voice. She wanted to believe that—that Atalia was alive somewhere, that she had clung to a shard of ship, maybe climbed into a landing craft, maybe even made her way onto another Aelarian ship and was somewhere here in this city right now. But it was hard to believe.
Please, Eloh, if you can hear me, protect Atalia. Let her be alive. Please.
Ofeer had often clashed with Atalia while growing up. The two were only a year apart, closest in age among the Sela children. Yet they couldn't have been more different. Atalia was tall, strong, brave, and crass. She cut her hair the length of her chin—not long and flowing like a proper woman's hair—wore armor even to the dinner table, and spat and cussed and dreamed of glory. Ofeer was shorter, daintier, far more frightened; she had always felt cowed in the presence of her bluff older sister. Many times, she had thought she hated Atalia.
But I love you, sister, Ofeer now thought. Please be alive. Please keep fighting.
She vowed that if she ever saw Atalia again, she would embrace her, tell her that she loved her, and never let go.
"Koren," Ofeer said, "do you remember that time we tried to bake fig cakes?"
Laughter snorted out from his nose. "Those things were half salt, half sand, what with you dropping them—twice."
She nodded, laughing too now. "But Father ate an entire cake, just to make us happy. Epher threw his out, and Atalia used hers for target practice."
Koren was laughing so hard he was waking up other slaves. "Maya tried to cobble our front pathway with them. Even the horses wouldn't touch them."
Ofeer leaned her head against his shoulder. "Mother could always cook so wonderfully. Those salads she made, the ones with flowers and pomegranate beads in them. Real flowers—in a salad! And fried fish with lemon and pepper." She licked her lips. "And the sweet bread with sesame seeds."
She found herself crying now. She had shed so many tears this spring she was surprised she hadn't lost half her weight. Koren began to tell another story—this one of the time Atalia had mistaken a roaming jackal for a barbarian assault—when a slave tossed a sandal at them.
"Hush and let us sleep!" said the man. "Bloody desert pups."
Koren and Ofeer fell silent. They struggled to find room to lie on the floor. Finally Ofeer managed to lie down, leaning her head on a sleeping woman's thighs, her legs across a slumbering man. Koren placed his head on her lap, his legs entangled with another slave's. For a few hours, they drifted in and out of sleep, waking every few moments, trapped between nightmare and reality.
Their second day in Aelar dawned stark and cold, streaming through an oculus in the coffered dome above. No sooner had the light roused Ofeer than the doors slammed open, and a group of men bustled inside, clad in gray togas. Five pushed wheelbarrows full of wooden slats, while five others carried scrolls and quills. Here were hard men, Ofeer saw at once, faces leathery, eyes stony, and rolled-up whips hung from their hips.
"Slaves, up, up!" one man cried, banging a rod against his wheelbarrow. "Stand, one slave per floor tile. Up!"
Glancing from side to side, the captives rose to their feet. Several of the men in togas set up a table at the back of the hall. One by one, the captives were herded toward the table. Tall men stood in front of Ofeer, and she couldn't see over their shoulders. The room was so crammed her elbows banged against the captives at her sides, her chest pressed against the back of a woman before her, and a man pressed up behind her. The room stank of sweat and human waste and blood.
"What's happening?" she said to Koren.
Her brother stood at her side. "By God, they're setting us all free! And giving us a gift of a horse and castle each."
"I want a white mare," Ofeer said. "And a castle by the sea. Do you think they're taking requests?"
Koren nodded. "Just bat your eyelashes and they'll give you the imperial palace, gorgeous."
The imperial palace that should be my home by right, Ofeer thought. The palace where my father lives.
As the crowd of slaves advanced toward the table at the back, one by one, her fear grew. What would happen to her? Would she be carted off to some quarry or mine? Or sent to a brothel? Maybe assigned to toil as a galley slave, or maybe just toil in the fields? Aelar was a city of a million people, and surely there were a million ways to torment a slave here.
As she inched closer across the hall, Ofeer could hear a ruckus from outside. Somebody was shouting, and a crowd was answering. They shuffled closer, and Ofeer caught sight of a naked man—a captive from Zohar!—being escorted out a back door. Her heart leaped in fear, and cold sweat trickled down her back. What was happening?
It took hours, but finally the crowd of captives cleared out before them, the hall slowly draining. Now Ofeer and Koren approached the oaken table, guided by legionaries with spears.
Two Aelarian men sat behind the table, togas gray.
"Name!" one said to Ofeer.
"Name!" another barked at Koren.
Ofeer told them. She used the surname Sela; saying "Octavius" would no doubt earn her a lashing. The gruff man nodded and wrote her name on a slat of wood—misspelling it, she noticed, but she dared not correct him.
"Languages?" the man snapped.
Ofeer glanced around, not sure what he meant.
"Languages!" The man frowned. "What languages do you speak, and which do you read and write?"
Ofeer spoke, read, and wrote both Zoharite and Aelarian. The man wrote it down on the wooden slat, adding that she knew basic arithmetic.
"Age?"
"Eighteen," she told him, surprised for a moment to realize how young she still was. She felt infinitely older, as if a decade had passed since leaving Zohar. The man wrote down her age too, then rose and measured her height and added that as well. At her side, Koren was answering the same questions, and his own clerk was writing on a separate wooden slat.
"Any artistic skill?" the man in the gray toga asked. "Music? Singing? Dancing?"
Ofeer nodded. "All of those things. I can play the lyre and timbrel, and I can sing and dance." A hint of hope, j
ust a small ray, filled her. Perhaps she could find work here as a musician or dancer. That wouldn't be too bad. It would be infinitely better than being sold to a brothel or mine.
The clerk nodded and scribbled it onto the slat.
"All right, off with your stola," he said.
Ofeer struggled to find her tongue. "My . . . what?"
The man behind the table groaned. "Off with it! You don't expect folk to buy what they can't see, do you? Would you buy a horse without examining its teeth? Would you buy a jug of olive oil without tasting it first? Go on."
Ofeer would have done both those things, but she dared not argue back. She glanced toward Koren, and she saw that he was pulling off his tunic. "I hope there are no ladies outside," Koren said, "or I might trigger a violent auction. I'm talking fistfights."
Koren joked, but Ofeer saw the pain and fear in his eyes, saw the scars that still covered his back. His voice shook.
Ofeer looked away from him, not wanting to see her brother's nakedness. Eyes damp, fingers trembling, she removed the fine, dyed fabrics Seneca had gifted her. Hundreds of people still stood around her, and Ofeer covered her breasts with her right arm, and she placed her left hand between her legs. Her cheeks burned with shame.
Another man, this one clad in a white toga, approached her. He sported a brooch shaped as two serpents circling a staff—a physician. He spent a while examining Ofeer's body, clucking his tongue and mumbling to himself. His hands explored her everywhere—the inside of her mouth, along her spine, along the wounds on her back, even between her legs. Finally he nodded, scrubbed her down with a wet sponge, and turned toward the man behind the desk.
"She's healthy. A few marks of the whip, but nothing that would leave much of a scar. Good teeth. Good skin. No sores in her mouth, no lice in her hair. This one was raised in luxury, never lacked for proper food. The daughter of nobility, she is."
The clerk behind the table raised his eyes, scrutinizing Ofeer. "Are you healthy, girl? Have you ever had the crabs? The warts? The sores? Ever fucked a man till it burned when you pissed? I won't be selling no diseased whores in my market."
Crowns of Rust (Kingdoms of Sand Book 2) Page 18