29. Chapter 29
Chapter 29
I t’s in tense silence that we ride into the barren wilderness surrounding the town. It’s peaceful to say the least. There’s the distant line of withered trees to our left, the image already starting to waver in the growing heat. There’s the steady fall of horseshoes on the dusty beaten soil. Apart from that, there’s only the infrequent scurrying of lizards through the bone-dry underbrush.
It’s almost meditative, but the more we ride, the more anxious I become. Of all the things we’ve done so far, this I have the most trouble with. But despite Orpheus’s persistent glances, I manage to keep my mouth shut and focus on going through the plan in my head.
Until Orpheus reins his horse in and comes to a full stop. It’s only once I spot the tall, thick pole spurting out of the ground that I notice we’ve arrived at a crossroads. In the middle of fucking nowhere, but still a crossroads.
“Lorcan and I will go first,” Orpheus says flatly as he jumps off his horse and ties it around the pole. “I want you to immediately follow.”
Lorcan is already following suit.
Still on horseback, I frown. “Am I somehow failing to notice a market?”
This earns me two glares that don’t exactly make me feel smart. “What are you, Anna?” Lorcan asks with a pouty sigh.
“Ah.” I close and open my eyes, Sight making me spot a gash down the length of the pole from which some strange energy is emanating.
The two of them wait for me to get off and take care of my horse before Orpheus makes the next move. He just slides his hand inside the gash and moves it to the side, entering as if through a curtain.
I watch him disappear. My focus shifting onto Lorcan, I see by the way his nose is working that he is using his sense of smell to locate the gash.
As soon as he disappears, I follow suit, almost bumping into Lorcan in the near darkness of what seems like a winding entryway into some giant tent. All three of us get moving.
I throw a glance over my shoulder and then lean to ask Lorcan, “How would a vampire get in?”
“Blood sacrifice,” he replies just as the square of light that must be the entrance appears before us.
I frown. Orpheus did say that the entrance transports you to a secret location. I just didn’t expect to feel it.
We step through the entrance and the light hits me so abruptly, I automatically lift my hand to shield my eyes.
Then I lower it, my mind immediately going into overdrive trying to make sense of what I’m seeing.
It really is a giant tent, but the sun that’s slanting through the large windows overhead is illuminating what seems to be a veritable city, with crowded roads, rows of stalls, smaller tents serving as inns…
And large fenced-out areas holding the… merchandise. I feel Orpheus’s hand on the small of my back, nudging me to get a move on. I surrender to the crowd, but it’s at a snail’s pace that I pass the first shop, my gut twisting as I watch the pale faces of the humans herded inside.
“It’s three for one,” a sly face appears in front of me, “just for you, sweetheart.”
Afraid of showing disgust, I give the slightest shake of my head and keep moving, fixing my eyes on the stalls with actual merchandise. I see everything from bottled potions to strange rocks to severed animal heads.
And then… Then there are the fenced-out areas with strange animals, gargoyles, mermaids… In the distance, I even spot a giantess towering over the crowd.
I rush to catch up with Orpheus. “They have…” I break off, not knowing exactly what I’m referring to.
“Every substance, item and living being you could think of,” he answers flatly, “that would be illegal to sell elsewhere.”
I look up to study his profile, finding his jaw slightly clenching.
“What? I like ‘em blonde,” a rough male voice makes my head snap to my left, where there’s yet another shop with herded humans.
“What is the matter with you Southerners?” his friend asks with a laugh. “I’d understand if you’d said you preferred them in good health. But what does hair color have to do with taste ?”
Gods give me strength.
I signal to Orpheus and Lorcan to wait for me.
I cut in front of the men still ‘browsing’ and hold the purse out. “Three please.” Better me than those two .
“Excellent, my lady,” the salesman rushes to stand in front of me, waving a hand in the direction of his stock. “Preferences?”
I don’t know what gets into me, but I choose to test the limits of the evil I’m staring right in the eye. “None,” I say flatly. “They won’t live long.”
“Ah, well then,” the man replies, literally rubbing his hands as he proceeds to pick the ones he’d have the most trouble selling — a sickly child, an old woman and a young girl with a burn scar across half her face.
“Your keys, my lady,” he tells me as he takes the purse out of my hand and hands me a ring with three keys.
It makes me sick to my stomach, when I see the way the three bought humans fix their eyes on the ground and rush to stand by my side, cuffs on all of their wrists.
I have to grit my teeth to hold my composure. It becomes even harder when the single step I take to go back to Orpheus and Lorcan makes them jolt in place and rush to catch up with me again.
I stop to look down at the keys in my hand and then back at them. It must be some magic tying the keys to the cuffs. Something to prevent them from escaping. Possibly even killing them.
Gritting my teeth, I slowly make my way back to the two men watching me like hawks.
“Your money and your valuables, please,” I grit out when I come to stand in front of Orpheus.
He glances at the humans, then narrows his eyes at me. “ Why , Anyi?”
“Just give me everything you have.”
He presses his lips tight, but still produces a heavy purse and holds it out for me.
“Your rings,” I demand, “I know you have them on you.”
He just looks at me for a second, a war waging inside his head. Then he leans to whisper, “You know I can’t give you those. They could mean the difference between being able to protect you, and not , Anyi.”
“Fine,” I say, I take the purse and I go back to the salesman.
It’s with as many humans as the purse could buy — twelve in total — that I leave the shop, the disgusted restlessness inside me only seeming to have grown.
The two of them watch me weave through the crowd back to them in silence.
“You really should learn to control your wife, my lord,” Lorcan tells Orpheus in a voice that’s somehow flat, disapproving and mocking all at once.
And sure as hell, Orpheus does not look pleased. I watch a muscle in his jaw jump. He leans to grit out, “You do understand what you’ve just done? You’ve bought more slaves than anyone else on this market. There was a point to the three maximum, and it was to avoid putting a target on you .”
I pull back, opening my mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.
His eyebrows pull down. “Are you alright?”
I let my eyes sweep around the place I’ve found myself in, unable to find words to express what I’m feeling, because the images of the market around me are fighting with the images of all the other places like this that I’ve had the misfortune of seeing with my own two eyes.
In other lifetimes, at least. Rulers keeping hundreds of women prisoners in their harems, holy men ordering the burning of entire villages for purification, battlefields with people scavenging for golden teeth and pulling them out of still breathing mouths.
Great. What perfect timing for these kinds of memories to resurface, after almost an entire year of absolute absence.
“Anyi,” Orpheus cautiously calls out.
“Why don’t we get a move on?” I say, and I get moving, trying to ignore the fact that the dozen of people who jump at those very words are the people I’ve just bought.
I force myself to focus on the plan. The first part was to blend in by buying a human. The second part is to make it possible for someone from the Order to try to poach us.
So I head straight for one of the tents, where I see people sitting around rough wooden tables with drinks in their hands, some alone, some immersed in conversation.
The moment I enter, all heads snap to us, eyes narrowing as soon as they land on the humans trailing after me.
I choose one of the more central tables, taking a seat at a long bench with a backrest, Orpheus and Lorcan following suit while the humans remain standing around me.
“See?” Orpheus leans to whisper. “Now everyone will be weary of approaching us.”
But I know what to do. I just don’t have any more money. “Here’s a question for you,” I whisper back, dragging my boots over the gravel beneath my feet. “Would you know how to make gravel sound like coins?” I pull away to find him frowning at me. “ Lots of them,” I add.
He glares at me as if I’m the biggest trouble he’s ever been in, but then he tears his eyes away, starting to thrum his fingers against the table as he casually looks around the tent.
I only manage to ask confused Lorcan to wait for a bit before Orpheus nudges me to turn to him, handing me a heavy purse.
“Now,” I say with a smile, “you said that if the Order were trying to expand their ranks, it would be to fund their efforts.”
Narrowing his eyes at me, he begrudgingly lets out a quiet, “I did.”
I lean back, throw my arms around the backrest and put my feet up. I toss the purse onto the table, my lips curling into a smile when the loud clinking sound it produces makes lots of eyes snap back in our direction.
I make sure it’s with nothing short of fearlessness that I meet them all. Then I turn to Orpheus, who’s staring at me in silence, waiting. “You forget that people aren’t rational beings,” I tell him with a sly smile. “If they want something bad enough, they’ll find a way to ignore every single warning against it.”
His gaze flicks to my boots and drags up my thighs. “ That is not something I need to be made aware of,” he grumbles before he looks away.
The look and the words take me by surprise, so it’s all tense, flustered and focused on Orpheus’s profile that the man finds me.
“My lords, my lady,” he starts sweetly, making me snap out of it as I watch him come to a stop in front of our table and dip his upper body in a subtle, elegant bow. “Would you mind if I joined you?”
*
I nod, and the stylishly, richly dressed vampire takes a seat across from me, tipping his elegant chin at the humans standing around me. “That is quite the purchase you’ve just made.” He places his forearms on the table, clasps his hands and leans a little closer. “Am I to understand this market is a touch too limited for you?”
I sense Orpheus and Lorcan shift in their seats, as if they’re both on the verge of warning me to play my cards right.
Using Urryse as inspiration, I throw the man a cold, regal smile and say, “It sure seems a touch too… provincial .”
The man gives me a satisfied, sly little smile. He glances around before turning his eyes back onto me. “Then perhaps I could interest you in a deal that exceeds the bounds of this tent.”
But it’s not more ‘purchases’ we’re here for, so I let the smile slide off my face. I fold my arms. “I don’t make deals with people I don’t know,” I reply coldly.
My attitude only makes the man smile wider. “I’m only a humble servant to the elite, my lady.”
“What kind of elite?” I demand.
He shakes his head. “I’m not interested in politics, my lady. I’m only interested in numbers.”
Damn it. Not the guy for us.
He glances at the ‘money’ in front of me. “For the kind of purse you have there, I’m sure I could go up to fifty.”
Before I get the chance to wrap the conversation up so someone more useful can approach us, I sense Lorcan lean forward. “Would this get us more?” he asks.
My eyes already rounding, I hear Orpheus suppress a groan and turn to see Lorcan showing the man the pendant.
For fuck’s sake. But what’s done is done.
I turn my focus back onto the vampire. He’s staring at the pendant and he’s frowning, but he’s looking at it as if it’s the most random, worthless thing he’s ever seen.
“I seem to have gotten the wrong impression,” he says as he gets up, still all saccharine but no longer trying to please. “I don’t deal with penny-pinchers.”
With that, he turns on his heel and disappears.
I sense Lorcan moving to tell me something, but my eyes have already become fixed on a spot out of the tent, where I’ve found someone staring at us.
The giantess.
My heart skips a beat. “Let’s go,” I say as I get up.
*
“She’s a giantess from the East, my lady,” the salesman starts as soon as we all approach the fence. “Extremely dangerous, though, and—”
“I’d like to determine her nature myself, thank you,” I cut him off. I let my eyes drag up the enormous body dressed in rags, over the cuffs chaining her to the giant oak she’s standing next to, and all the way to the dirty face wearing a look of proud scorn.
Once again, sadness and anger threaten to overwhelm me, and I find myself forced to mercilessly snuff out any and all of my feelings.
Just as I start brainstorming how to talk to her without the salesman overhearing, I watch her cuffs send a shock through her body, forcing her to get on her knees in front of me and then slouch some.
A wince turning into gritted teeth, I move to get a little closer, only to have Orpheus take me by the upper arm. “Be careful,” he leans to whisper in my ear.
I give him a nod, get as close as I can get and climb one of the fence rungs. And my eyes and the giantess’s are still not quite at the same level, but I manage to make my voice low enough anyway. “You were looking at my friend’s pendant,” I start gently.
She makes a disgusted face. “I don’t talk to people looking to buy me.”
“Why were you looking at the pendant?” I insist. “It’s an ordinary little thing.”
To this, she just looks away.
“Unless you know it’s not,” I continue, my heart skipping a beat when I see something flash through her eyes.
Still, she says nothing.
“My name is Anyi,” I start, realizing she must have been spending the day, or days , without anyone acknowledging that she was a living being.
She turns to throw me a look filled with rage. “Stay away from me,” she grits out as she abruptly gets up, making me stumble back and the ground beneath her groan under the force.
Before I can react, there’s another one of those shocks that sends her crashing to the ground. “If I don’t sell you,” I hear the salesman yell out, “you think you’ve won ? Guess again, and answer the lady’s question.”
My vision starts to blur with anger, my mind flashing with violent images as the world around me recedes into the background.
There’s another shock and an angry, “ Answer it.”
But they seem so distant, and for the first time in quite a while, I see the light burst from my tattoos and I hear the sound of screaming.
Then everything grows silent.
My breathing heavy and my mind in a haze, I turn to see that there are only bloodied body parts where the salesman was standing. The giantess, my humans, Lorcan and Orpheus are all staring at me in silence, a sphere of dense energy between them and the crowd trying to break through to us, their angry yelling muffled beyond recognition.
Snap out of it, Anna, I tell myself.
I turn all my focus onto the giantess, whose eyes are rounding with realization. “You’re…”
I nod, mustering all my determination to see this through, because I can’t keep all these people away for much longer. “I am. Will you tell me how to get in touch with the Order?”
She glances around, evidently realizing the urgency of the situation. “It might not end well for you,” she almost instantly starts talking. “The Head of the Order is a man by the name of Heldin, one who cares very little about defeating Baldur and very much about amassing power for himself.”
I shake my head. “That’s for me to worry about.”
She gives me a somber nod. “You’d need to find a way to get between dimensions, at exactly midnight, wearing the pendant. This would draw someone to you, a member on call who’d then alert the others.”
“Thank you,” I say softly, with the corner of my eye spotting Orpheus getting the key and throwing it to the giantess.
She gives him a grateful look and turns back to me. “Now run,” she whispers just as I feel the barriers start giving in.