Algardis Series Boxed Set

by Terah Edun

  “How so?” Donna Marie asked curtly, clearly tired of this line of thought already.

  Mae shrugged. “Well, I used to resent being so compliant. Now I don’t anymore.”

  Donna Marie nodded, “Because in restrictions, in uniformity, there is conformity. And within the striking push to have everyone be the same, it makes you all agree on a lot of things.”

  “Like on what it means to be right…and to be wrong,” Mae almost whispered to herself. She wasn’t really talking to Donna Marie at that point.

  She was thinking about the cloaked figures standing around that sickroom in a circle and doing what Mae knew in her gut was something too horrible for words. If there was anything that could convince her that her family was walking down a terrible path, it was that memory. She had seen it for herself and she couldn’t discount it as easily as she would the foreign woman’s wild theory connecting the blight on the children with the cages on the women.

  It was all coming together so quickly and Mae had to wonder if the foreigners were right all along. She knew just who she could ask who would give her a frank assessment of the matter and probably side with the Donna Marie all the same.

  But her sister was as silent as the forest around them and Mae had to just move on.

  Letting out a deep sigh, Mae said “Let’s get on with it then.”

  Donna Marie eyed her sharply for a moment as if even she hesitated to move on when she could clearly see that Mae was conflicted. But in the end her desire for access to the coveted tattoos outweighed any concern for Mae’s mental well-being. Or at least Mae assumed it did because Donna Marie clasped her hands together in studied excitement and stepped forward with eyes gleaming with interest.

  Then Dot, who until now had been no more than a whisper in the background, walked over from where he’d been leaning against a stump almost without a care in the world. He’d occasionally glared at Mae but he hadn’t said anything, which is why she hadn’t seen him until he made his presence known.

  Now that he was moving though, not so much. He was big and brutish, and his arms swung out almost to his knees. The muscles that bulged told the story of a man who worked hard for his living. But even the men who tilled the greater holding’s fields didn’t look like that in Mae’s estimation. So whatever he’d done to gain his bulk, it had been far more strenuous. Which told Mae that even if she should change her mind, there wasn’t much she could do to physically overpower a man who was three of her in one.

  And what was even worse?

  The only emotion that she had seen in his eyes was resentment.

  It was plain as day which was odd. She’d never met the man before, and beyond him presumably carrying her into the forest like a heathen…had never interacted with him either. Which begged the question then—what did he have against her?

  Even Donna Marie waffled back and forth between hot-and-cold, whatever it was she needed it seemed to get Mae on her side. And Rivan? He was more silent than not and when his glares of reproach weren’t latched onto her with determined focus from where he perched almost within the grasp of the tree-line so that it seemed that his eyes glowed from the shadows, well, then he was being extremely reasonable and even helpful.

  At his mistress’s request of course, but again, dual natures.

  But the outright, constant dislike from Dot? This was unfamiliar territory for Mae.

  She may have been on the outs with her family at the moment but growing up everyone had been precisely who they vouchered themselves to be.

  Especially her oldest sister. The nosey, know-it-all sister who had a penchant for ruining anything Mae had a mind to enjoy. The fact she lay unconscious not feet away didn’t sit well with Mae and now the resentment she’d long felt for Ember was gone and, in its place, resided panic.

  “Ma’am?” Dot said while trying to get Donna Marie’s attention.

  Donna Marie hissed over her shoulder, “Not now.”

  “But ma’am?” he continued with a physical prod.

  He meant it to be gentle. Or as gentle as he could get. But his one finger used to lightly push Donna Marie actually made her stumble a bit. Face flushed with anger, Donna Marie yelled over her shoulder, “I said ‘not now’ you incompetent oaf.”

  The insult didn’t go down well with Dot, Mae could tell, but instead of lodging back an insult at his mistress, he just aggressively poked her again. From the look of pinched resentment on Donna Marie’s face, she didn’t think anything he could say to her would be worth her making an effort to acknowledge him. But that was because her back was to what Dot wanted to show her while Mae’s was not.

  As her eyes strained to pierce the gloom beyond them all, Mae’s mind tried to understand what it was that Dot was so frantically trying to point out to all of them.

  Well, frantically for him. The man has the emotional range of a cow and doesn’t move much faster either, Mae thought with bemusement as she gave him a cursory glance before she retrained her focus on the mysteries coming forth.

  As such she didn’t miss the reveal and boy was Mae grateful for that as her eyes widened as out of the forest figures materialized in the shadows of the tree canopy and even Rivan began to back away toward the center of the clearing and relative safety.

  “I think you should see this,” Mae said in a voice struggling for calm.

  She wasn’t sure yet if she should follow Dot into panic…or perhaps even be excited. She needed to see more. They were definitely people. Not her people though. Strangers in fact.

  Yet they weren’t foreigners. Which made this possibly a rescue attempt…or a second kidnapping.

  Mae was no fool and although her kingdom had united, the city-states still warred together. Which left holdings like her family’s own on the outskirts, teetering between alliances and on the edge of potential escalation if the wrong person crossed their borders.

  Heart flipping intensely, Mae wondered if these were the wrong people.

  At this point, she’d take any option if the person would conceivably help her.

  But she wasn’t hopeful enough to believe they’d come deep into the woods on a lark…and her family hadn’t sent these outsiders either. Which left a lot of possibilities she wasn’t sure she liked.

  In the meantime, Mae didn’t know if it was the surprise on her own face or the fact that Rivan actually bumped into Donna Marie as he backpedaled but whatever it was, it forced the woman to finally acknowledge what Dot had been trying to show her all along.

  Not before Mae saw a cloud of irritation settle on her face and a look that said that she was going to give whatever or whomever had halted her momentous step toward progress a tongue-lashing they’d never forget.

  The trouble for Donna Marie was…she was one woman, a mage granted, with a hulking brigand for a guard and a young man who seemed more like a straggler attached to her than anything useful. But they were no match for those that melted out of the cover of the forest trees like they were sent from the soul of darkness itself.

  The first thing Mae could definitely make out other than their humanoid shapes was shiny metal.

  Glimmers against tree trunks and in the middle of the shadows where no light could pierce. She had thought she was imagining it at first. The metal that is. Maybe because she hadn’t eaten anything but the scones that she’d scrapped together in the last day…and only drunk moonshine from that hermit in the woods.

  An empty stomach was a surefire way to start getting light-headed and dizzy. Just as she was feeling right this moment. Although that could be chalked up to over-excitement as much as it was the stresses of hunger. In any case, Mae was certain though that her mind wasn’t playing tricks on her now and hadn’t then.

  They were coming.

  Through the darkness between the trees they emerged into the clearing, still overcast but far more revealing with the pool of light unhindered by forest limbs and foliage.

  Quickly she realized they were wearing hoods though. Deep ones. So even th
ough their attire and stealth made it clear they weren’t from her holding, that was all she knew. She couldn’t search their faces or look for any other signs to point out the obvious, where these strangers were actually from. But that didn’t stop Mae’s eyes from searching the forest further back, trying to see what else it would reveal while the hooded strangers kept their secrets to themselves.

  But the shadows between the trees were even deeper as they stepped between the trunks. Avoiding any light coming down on their bare faces. Which meant that the only thing she had to go by were their clothes.

  She saw some interested bits as they moved. Nothing to pin a certain identity on but enough to confirm her guess that they weren’t from a foreign land like Donna Marie or Rivan. They were from Nardes down to their bones. It was in the way they moved. In the rows of buttons they used to attach capes and cowls to their upper arms instead of latches like the foreigners. It was a sense about their presence that she recognized.

  Oh, they weren’t her blood that was for sure, but the same land that had born her had born them.

  Which begged the question what were Nardien strangers doing on her holding land.

  They had no reason to be here.

  Not these men who moved like dancers on the wind, skipping between foliage like the mythical faeries of old. But these were no imps. They were bigger than her and blessed with weapons far greater. That she could tell from a mile off.

  Those glimpses of metal she’d seen occasionally could be nothing else.

  Mae bit her lip as she thought it through.

  Her perspectives were racing through her head.

  Foremost among them, if they are this well-armed, they have to be from one of the great city-states. No one else could afford to outfit them with weapons such as these.

  Which was a disappointment.

  Mae was no fool but she had held out hope…that someone in that large holding had thought to go looking for her. Someone would have noticed she hadn’t been seen since the dawn of the day and wondered where she was. If she was lost or worse, fell ill herself.

  But whoever these men were, they weren’t that. Their guard didn’t carry weapons like that and the only other option would have been the family’s foragers sent into the wood to collect tree sap.

  Mae bit her lip as she wondered who they were. But as they folded out of the woods with silent footfalls, she knew they wouldn’t be wondering long.

  Every bit of their bodies that was revealed pointed to a distinct group of people she’d never hoped to see in her woods or near her holding in her lifetime.

  “It can’t be,” she said as her heart began to pound.

  She’d never seen them in person before but there was no mistaking the warrior’s braid at their crown. Or the emblems on their breast. This was the fabled Cross Guard.

  They’d been sent by the king-elect and their presence had only one purpose.

  Conscription.

  6

  Whoever they’d sent here to bring back to the great city-states for service, she wasn’t about to stick around and find out.

  Mae had to warn her family. Tell them what was coming.

  But how do I slip away? She thought frantically as her eyes darted around and she tried to be as unseen as possible behind the bigger girth of Dot and Donna Marie’s spread hands-on-waist posturing. She didn’t see Rivan but maybe he was smarter than he looked and had gotten away while the focus was on everyone else.

  It was what she was planning to do, he’d just done it first.

  Biting her lip, Mae started to edge back toward her exit.

  That is until someone grabbed her about the waist and she almost jumped in fright, wondering if the group somehow had slipped around and flanked them.

  Again, without anyone noticing.

  But no, the person who spoke next was familiar to her.

  Unwelcome but familiar.

  “Don’t move,” Rivan whispered harshly. “Those are not people whose attention you want to draw to yourself.”

  “They’re not even looking over here,” Mae argued with him.

  “Look again,” he said in a hard whisper. “Those individuals aren’t to be played with because nothing slips past them.”

  She looked across the clearing and saw that he wasn’t wrong. Two pair of eyes out of the seven men she could see flowing out of the woods had centered on her. Just a few small steps had been enough to garner the attention of their interested-and-cruel gazes.

  Mae bit her lip as she thought to herself, I should have known that wouldn’t work.

  She had to be smarter than this but to be fair, she’d thought their attention had been momentarily drawn elsewhere. She’d been wrong. She wouldn’t make the same mistake again. But beyond realizing their renewed interest, Mae was surprised that Rivan knew of their background. At least enough to be wary of bringing that focus down on either of their heads.

  “You recognize them?” she asked, a bit surprised.

  He wasn’t from here. The rumors of the brutality of the conscription had spread far-and-wide through the rural communities of the Kingdom of Nardes, but for an outsider to know of the practice either meant they had become infamous beyond their borders, or Rivan was more well-informed than she had first suspected.

  He gave a dark laugh as he replied, “We had to come through the border gates just like everyone else. They levied a tax; one we couldn’t pay.”

  “What do you mean you couldn’t pay?” Mae asked, startled.

  Who was stupid enough to cross over their kingdom’s border and not be prepared for what would be demanded of them? She thought to herself.

  It wasn’t like there was a limit on what could be traded in turn for access. Her people weren’t barbarians. Gold, jewels, and all variety of valuable commodities were all accepted.

  “I mean we came with five riders. We left your border with three,” Rivan replied dryly.

  Mae shifted uncomfortably. “What happened to the other two?”

  “They were stripped of everything they owned in lieu of proper payment and sent back over the border with black eyes and a stern warning that the next time the cross-border shipments of cloth heading to the empire of Algardis came through, the wagons would be lighter,” Rivan said dryly.

  “What does this all have to do with Algardis?” Mae asked, genuinely confused.

  Rivan grunted. “Apparently your people’s tax assessors have the curious rule that punishments due to the traveler can be enacted on the state, regardless of negotiations previously discussed. Now those poor fools owe the Algardis empire recompense for the coming shortchange.”

  Mae blanched at the thought.

  “Practical,” she whispered. “I doubt they’ll be happy to see less merchandise coming across the border.”

  “Effective. If those fools don’t pay the state back, they’ll be in a debtor’s prison before the week is out,” Rivan said with a snort.

  Mae bit her cheek to keep a response about fools gloating from slipping out.

  Instead she said, “A sad story, but what’s that have to do with me?”

  “It’s a warning,” Rivan said with gloom in his voice. “Donna Marie could have traded some items she kept private to get them over the border but she didn’t. She let those men take the punishment which should have punitively been felt by all.”

  “And here we stand, all the more miserable for it,” Mae muttered in dejection.

  Rivan ignored her pointed quip if he heard it.

  Instead he said, “Make no mistake. If you tried to head off, it wouldn’t be just these newcomers that you’d have to worry about. Donna Marie would make sure that the punishment was taken out on your hide, someway, somehow.”

  Mae stirred for the first time. Looking over at the foreign woman’s cool face as she steered a conversation with the leader of the newcomers. Donna Marie’s expression was implacable at the moment but Mae had no doubt she would take the first chance she got to sell her out if it came to that.


  She could just look at Donna Marie and see that even if the woman wanted access to Mae’s inked tattoos more than anything…she wanted to ensure the safety of her own hide first.

  Shivering a bit as Donna Marie seemed to notice Mae staring at her side profile and turned to give her a single, searing glance. It was a look that said ‘Don’t forget what I’ve done for you here, because I will collect my worth before this ends.’

  The very thought of what that payment would entail made Mae apprehensive. The foreign woman had already made it quite clear she desired nothing from Mae but access to her body and the inked mystery on it. Having already given her that, there wasn’t much else to use as a bargaining chip.

  Except physical manipulation of the work, Mae thought to herself in a whisper before she hastily pushed the idea aside.

  It was forbidden to even contemplate. She had enough on her plate just hiding the fact that an outsider would soon know more than they should about her family’s generational emblem. She didn’t need the head of the Council of Elders learning that the same mage had done anything to manipulate them.

  Mae wouldn’t wish she was dead if her grandmother was informed of that particular heresy. She would be dead.

  Trying to shake off that particularly morbid direction of thought, Mae turned her curiosity on Rivan as she asked, “She’s already demanded more than I can give with conscience, what else could Donna Marie ask of me?”

  Softly Rivan replied, “Your life for starters and if that’s not enough, your sister who you so casually prepared to leave behind.”

  “No,” Mae moaned.

  Then as if his words and disgust really hit her then, she hastily added “I told you I wouldn’t have left her behind and I meant it…”

  “Oh, and what would you have done?” he asked as he interrupted her with a hiss of irritation. For a moment thin wisps of smoke emerge out of his nostrils. She turned to get a better look but the wisps were gone before she could really examine their origin, the only thing left was a fine layer of almost dirty ash lingering in the air about them. Which she couldn’t prove had come from him.