He frowned down at me. “Why are you using a translation spell? Where are you from?”
“Somewhere else. And I need him,” I repeated, because he hadn’t let go.
The frowning intensified. “Your new master is never going to let you keep this thing! Best throw it on the fire now and be done with it.”
“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.”