“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.”