With a huff and a swing of her quirt, Maggi hurried Demon and the two of them galloped out to the southeast. Away from us.
Three. Three. Three. I might not know anything of what the rest of the Oracle’s riddle meant, but that much I understood and could do.
As soon as Maggi was out of earshot, Marsum burst out laughing. “You think that we’ll be able to get a stone and draw the magic out of you in under twelve hours? You have no idea how difficult this is! It took Merlin and the others months to do it the first time.”
“You mean with Ishtar?” I arched a brow. “Let me guess, she fought you on taking her magic?”
“No, she didn’t. She wanted the Emperor caged,” he said, his eyes thoughtful. “He’d been—amongst other things—unfaithful and cruel to her.”
“Did she? Was he? Or was that what she told you?” I wasn’t sure I wanted to tell him what I’d seen in my dreams, of Ishtar working to free her husband. Why, I’m not sure, only it felt like the wrong time.
“What do you know?” His question was sharp and I held the answer in. Not the time.
I turned my back to him so he wouldn’t see the doubt in my face. “We have to do this, and quickly, or we’ll miss our chances at the crossroads. I don’t think we can trust what Ishtar told you any more than we can trust what Maggi has been telling me.”
The crossroads were where I would find a way to break a curse or curses. Maybe the place to deal with Marsum, freeing Maks. A place where we would displace the Emperor. Of course, that was assuming everything the Oracle had said was true.
My throat tightened and tears wobbled at the edges of my eyes. Lila tapped on my thigh and whispered, “What is it?”
“I’m feeling all jittery, like too much coffee and not enough food,” I said. My arms tingled and every part of me was on super high alert.
Marsum rode Batman closer to me, Balder, and Lila. “That is the inherent danger you are picking up on. This place is not for the faint or weak of heart. Nor for the weak of body.”
Lila shook a fist at him. “She is none of those things, you shit.”
He flicked a blast of a spell at her with one finger, and I shot a hand out, catching it in my palm without a thought. The black mist crawled over my arm, giving me a bit of a tingle, like a mild electric shock. I held it and then flipped it back at him. “Don’t you so much as think about hurting her.”
Marsum eyed me as the black mist danced across his fingers. “You felt it. Would it have hurt her?”
“Maybe it didn’t hurt me because of who I am.” I pointed a finger at him. “Knock that garbage off.”
“Davin’s words got to you, didn’t they?” He snorted. “Damn him, he always was a shit disturber.”
I moved Balder into a trot. Marsum and Batman caught up easily. “You can’t go in like this, ahead of me on your own horse.”
Slowing Balder a second time, I found myself staring at Marsum and what he’d materialized in his hands.
I glared at him. “You are crazy if you think I’m putting that on.”
“Women are property here. And if you aren’t my property, you can be taken. This is not a nice place, Zam.” He held the end of the thin chain to me, the collar from it hanging loosely.
“No, no, that’s a whole lot of nope.” Lila shot into the air. “She’s not putting on a freaking leash!”
He glared at her. “Then we aren’t going in there. You don’t understand, Lila. There is no other way to get in there with as little notice as possible. This is a place of monsters, and people who will slit your throat for looking at them wrong. They don’t respect women, even women of power.”
“There is a better way.” I drew a breath and shifted down to my cat form. I hopped across to him and climbed up to his shoulder. “You see? In the saddlebags is a long cloak. We’ll use that.”
“And what about me?” Lila all but paced the air in front of us. “I need to come too.”
“I know,” he said and then crooked his finger. “Promise you won’t throw up on me.”
“Promise you’ll give us back our Toad?” she said as she landed on the front of the saddle.
His eyes closed and a shiver went through him. From his saddlebag, he pulled out a long tan-colored cloak and slid it over his shoulders. “Get under the back of it.”
Lila and I pinned ourselves to his back and clutched at the saddle, and he took Balder by the reins, leading him along. His magic whispered down the leather lines and turned the bridle into a halter. Better for leading, but not so good for a quick escape.
Lila and I shared a look. We’d been in worse situations before. At least, that was what I thought in that moment.
Fewer than twenty minutes later, we rode into the outskirts of the market. The noise had been steadily growing, the sound of a multitude of male voices, drums, shouts, catcalls, a woman shrieking, the clang of metal on metal, the bellow of a blacksmith’s furnace, the distant boom of a gun. I peeked out from under the cloak, grateful for my small form and dark fur that helped me stay unseen.
How long since I’d been in any sort of a city or town other than the Stockyards? I could barely remember the last time. It had easily been years, and I found myself unable to look away despite the danger that sneaking a peek represented.
“Wow,” I whispered as the merchants came into view.
A row of wooden, three-sided roofed stalls were set up on either side of what had to be the main street with tiny side roads here and there. Houses were crammed against one another, mostly near the merchant street, their rooftop edges touching as they leaned precariously every which way. The stones below the horses’ hooves clanked sharply on their iron shoes and the smell of unwashed bodies cut through it all. I crinkled my nose.
None of these goods in front of us were taken honorably. More than that, though, I found myself staring at the people. Each merchant was dressed sharply, clean, as if they were upstanding businessmen and not the thugs and thieves that we all knew them to be. There wasn’t a hair out of place, or a smudge of dirt anywhere I could see. And yet they still stunk.
It took us a few more feet for me to put two and two together.
“Slaves,” Marsum said softly as we passed by the first section of stalls. That was who I was smelling. Women and children mostly, and a few younger men—primarily humans, but a few that had some magic too, though they were weak if the way they stood waiting was any indication. No older people were held as slaves. My heart sank as I saw the resignation on their faces. There wasn’t even any fear, nothing. They’d given up, and the smell of defeat rolled off them.
My jaw ticked side to side as I ground my teeth. I hated walking by, doing nothing—just seeing the pain in their eyes, smelling their loss of hope as if it were a wound on their bodies.
“Animals,” Marsum said. It took me a second to realize he was looking for a specific vendor, and we had to pass by these others first. He wasn’t speaking to tell us; he was talking to himself, ticking off each merchant as we passed.
The animals consisted of birds, hunting hyenas, and . . . shifters. I tensed, staring into the golden eyes of a lion. He stared back at me, not an ounce of humanity in him. Who was he? The cage around him was small enough that he couldn’t even stand up. My magic in me rose a little and I could see that the cage was not just a cage but magical in nature. His eyes locked on mine, following us as we passed him by. A shifter for sure, I could smell that much on him, but nothing else. I should have been able to peg which pride he was from, but it was as if he were a normal lion.
Lila choked on a cry, and I twisted to see the other side of the street.
“No.” I couldn’t believe what I was seeing, and yet I knew I couldn’t let Lila go.
The vendor held up an oval, pale white, blue-speckled egg in both arms, filling them. “Fresh off the nests! Fertilized, ready to be chained and trained!”
I grabbed Lila as she moved to lunge out at him. “Not now, not yet!” I hissed the words at her, dragging her under
the cover of Marsum’s cloak. He swept an arm back, helping me block her.
“Quiet,” he growled.
Lila sobbed. “The babies.”
“I know. I know.” I wrapped her in my front legs as best I could and found myself still staring out at the vendors. I had not forgotten my promise to find the dragons’ babies, to return those I could to their mothers. Not in the least. But I knew that now was not the time. We had more on our plate.
And the eggs here, this was not where they were remaining. We’d have to find where they went to next. “We will deal with this, not now, but we will come back,” I whispered the words with an urgency I knew she would hear and feel. Slowly, Lila relaxed, nodding and wiping away tears.
The next few merchants and their items were less horrible. Kind of. Jewelry. Food. Whores. Weapons. That one, I tugged on Marsum’s shirt.
“No” was his only reply. I tugged again.
“You don’t have a weapon,” I pointed out.
“I don’t need one,” he said, keeping his voice low. I snorted.
“Too much ego. Get one, just in case.”
Lila sniffed and lifted her head. “That could be the Toad. He was always full of himself.”
“I was not,” he grumped. But he did slow, and the vendor smiled up at him. Lean as a whip, with corded muscles in his arms. I had no doubt he’d made most of the weapons himself, if the smell of coal fire lingering around him was any indication. A shimmer to his eyes whispered of magic and I wondered . . . “See if he has anything special. Magical like the flail.”
Marsum grunted, but otherwise couldn’t acknowledge me.
The vendor gave a partial bow at the waist. “Hello, hello! I have all the weapons you could ever desire for killing, mayhem, thievery and general destruction.”
“One imbued for absorbing magic?” Marsum asked. “I have heard of some like that.”
“Costly, very costly,” the vendor purred as he held up a finger. “Wait here, I have just the thing.”
“I don’t need this,” Marsum said, but he held still.
“Trust me. I have good instincts,” I replied as quietly as I could.
The merchant came back with a staff, the end of it curved with a wicked blade that had been inset with gold and silver swirls reminiscent of flames. “A beauty, a true beauty and has a few tricks up its sleeve. I made it myself, of course.”
I couldn’t see him, but I imagined him winking at Marsum, which made me smile. Marsum shifted in the saddle and held out an arm. Lila and I edged closer to him as he hefted the spear.
“Light, well balanced. How much?”
“Three thousand.”
“Bullshit.” Marsum threw the weapon back at the merchant and rode away.
I let out a low hiss and he hushed me. “That’s how it works here. Trust me, Zam, we know what we are doing.”
We. As in him and Marsum? I had to still the intake of breath that would have given my surprise away. The last thing I wanted was for Marsum to realize how often Maks was slipping through. Maybe slipping through enough to take over control of his body?
“Stones. This is what we are here for,” Marsum said and adjusted in his seat. Lila and I slid down tight against his ass, pinned between him and the back of the saddle.
“Gross. You might like his butt, I do not,” she grumbled.
I pulled myself around the side of his hip to look out once more. This was the one we were waiting for.
The stall all but glittered with stones of varying colors, catching the light of the desert sun. They hung from strings I couldn’t see so they looked as though they were floating in midair. So many stones, all shapes, and yet I couldn’t pick out one resembling the one I’d broken.
The vendor approached Marsum, bowing repeatedly. He was rotund, dressed in traditional loose tan-and-white-colored desert clothing to fend off the heat. But no hat. That seemed stupid, especially with that bald spot he had showing on the top. His eyes were narrow and close-set over a too-large nose that had a bulging mass on the tip.
“Good master, what kind of stone do you have an interest in? Let Jiango help you find exactly what—”
“Clear-cut, black-lightning-kissed,” Marsum said without any preamble.
The vendor froze in mid bow, straightened and shook his head. “I have nothing for you like that.”
With no more than that, he turned and walked back to his stall.
“You do not wish to try to ply me with another stone?” Marsum asked.
“I have nothing for you.” Jiango shook his head and dropped the cover on his stall, hiding all the stones that dangled there only a moment before.
“That can’t be good,” I said.
“No, it can’t be. It likely means there is another buyer. Or at least someone else has been asking after the stone.” Marsum turned Batman away from the stall.
“Wait!”
He shushed me again and I bit at my lips to keep them from opening and asking the flood of questions that ran through my head.
All the way to the center of the Blackened Market, I was quiet, all the way to the stable where he waved away the young stable hand. He dismounted, then motioned for Lila and me to get down. I leapt across to his shoulder and slid my ass into the hood of the cloak. He snapped his fingers and Balder’s halter turned back into a bridle. Handy indeed.
Lila did the same and he grunted. “I should have known there would be another buyer for a stone like that.”
He bent and picked up a handful of pebbles, tossed them once in the air and ended up catching coins instead of stones. “Nifty,” Lila said.
Marsum flipped one solid gold coin at the stable boy. “Feed and water them well, rub them down and there’s a silver mark in it for you when I come back.”
“Yes, sir!” The boy ran to do as he was told, his eyes aglow with the thought of the coin, no doubt.
Marsum strode out of the stable and to the connecting building. It took all I had to remain quiet. Inside, he used another gold coin to procure a room, two platters of food and a jug of some sort of ale.
I kept low in the hood, hanging from my front claws and working hard to keep my back end from drooping too far in the hood of the cloak to give us away.
“Eh, you do be looking kinda like you is sort in the familiar way,” a gruff voice said, and then Marsum spun around, grabbed by the speaker. His hands were full of the food and he snarled as he turned.
“Take your hands off me unless you’d like me to rearrange where your limbs are attached to your body.”
There was a tingle under my claws as Marsum’s magic rose up. A collective gasp went through the room as the black mist whipped out around us.
“Sorry, I so sorry, master Jinn. My apologies.” That gruff voice shook with a fear so thick, it was evident that he was barely able to spit the words out.
Marsum moved with speed up a set of stairs, down a hall, and then a doorway clicked and he put the food down on a low table. With a quick move, he whipped the cloak off. Lila went to the food first, flying across the room. I leapt to the ground, shifting once I’d landed back to two feet.
“How bad is it that they know you’re a Jinn?” I asked, moving toward the stack of meat and pile of desert root vegetables that had been smothered in butter and cream. My mouth watered and I didn’t even think to ask him. I just took a platter and dug in.
“Not as bad as you being here. If they learn that you are a shifter, you will be tossed to the slave market. Worse for Lila too. She’d be a prize.” He ran his hands over his head, scrubbing at his scalp. “But that is not as bad as someone else wanting the same damn stone as us.”
I kept on shoveling food in as if it were to be my last meal, and maybe it was. I slowed enough to motion that I would share with him. He shook me off with a wave of his hand as he paced the room.
Damn, he cut a fine figure. I sighed and wiped my mouth on my sleeve. “You’re worrying about nothing. He has a stone like what we need, right?”
; Marsum stopped in the middle of the room. “I’m sure of it. I don’t know who else would want it, though.”
“Then I’ll get the stone.” I found myself grinning. “I’ve been stealing stones for years from much harder places, with far more dangerous guardians than a small desert-bred man with a large bald spot.”
Lila snickered. “Bald isn’t bad. But he was just—”
“He’s pieced together, an animation of another mage’s creation. He’s not even real. The mage looks through his eyes,” Marsum said. “But you are right. You have the best chance at getting in and out of there with the stone. And for now, they know me as a Jinn, but not which one. If they knew who I was, we would be in danger. Someone here would try to take my head to inherit my power.”
Interesting that Marsum was not well loved by anyone, even the bad guys. Though really, was it any surprise with how he’d massacred the other creatures around the desert? “All good, he won’t even see me; neither will the mage looking through his eyes. I’ll be in and out in a flash.” I stuffed another chunk of meat into my mouth, camel by the taste of it, and I smiled happily, thinking of Demon’s sour face. This was going to work. We were going to get the stone and then . . . well, then we would figure out the rest. Marsum, Maks, the Emperor. I had to believe this would work out.
The chunk of meat seemed to lose all taste, and I had to force myself to swallow it.
We finished eating—really, Lila finished because I was done, my last thought drying up my hunger. She chirped away happily as she filled her belly, licking up the last of the sauce. “Gods, I could sleep for a week.” She groaned and rolled to the side, her gut protruding, a perfect beer barrel in miniature.
I glanced at the window. “We wait until dark, and we’ll have the perfect cover.”
Lila yawned, and Marsum lifted a brow. “Tired?”
“Exhausted.” Lila rolled onto the table and promptly started snoring.
I glanced at her, stood and went to the window, standing to one side of it so I could peer out.
Wyvern's Lair (Desert Cursed Series Book 5) Page 19