Amara crept slowly back from the edge of the building and settled down next to Rook. Then she turned and descended to the relative safety of the building, which had been a prosperous tailor’s residence, before the Vord came. Rook followed her.
Amara sat for a moment, simply absorbing the horrific, machinelike pace of the way the captured Alerans’ very humanity was being destroyed.
“I know you aren’t supposed to speak of it,” Amara said quietly. “But I need you to try.”
Rook swallowed. She lifted her fingers to the collar at her throat, her face pale, and nodded.
“How many have been taken?” Amara asked.
“Several h-” Rook began. She sucked in a breath, squeezing her eyes shut, and her face beaded with sweat. “Seven or eight hundred at least. Maybe a hundred who didn’t need to be…” Her face twisted into a grimace. “… coerced. Of the rest, only a little more than half of them come out of it… functional. The rest get used to help recruit more or are given to the Vord.”
“As slaves?” Amara asked.
“As food, Countess.”
Amara shivered. “There were hundreds of people up there.”
Rook nodded, her breath coming in steady, consciously regulated timing. “Yes. Any strongly gifted crafter captured by the Vord is brought here now.”
“Where are the collars coming from?”
Rook let out a bitter, pained laugh, and withdrew what must have been half a dozen slender silver collars from a pouch on her belt, tossing them aside like refuse. “Dead slaves, Countess. They litter the ground in this place.”
Amara bent over and picked up one of the collars and stared at it. It didn’t feel like anything other than metal, slightly cool, and smooth underneath her fingertips. “How is it done?” she asked Rook. “The collars, the drug. It isn’t enough to do that.”
“You’d be surprised, Countess,” Rook said, shuddering. “But there’s more to it, as well. Brencis does something to each collar as he attaches-” She jerked in pain, and blood suddenly ran from one of her nostrils. “As he attaches it,” she gasped. “His father knew how and taught him. He won’t t-tell anyone how. It p-protects his life, as long as the V-Vord want more crafters to s-serve them.”
She clenched her teeth over a scream and pressed one hand to her mouth to muffle the sound, the other to the center of her forehead, as she crumpled slowly to the floor.
Amara had to look away from the woman. “Enough,” she said gently. “Enough, Rook.”
Rook rocked back and forth on her knees, falling silent, her breath coming in gasps. She nodded once to Amara, and slurred, “Be ’llright. Minute.”
Amara touched her shoulder gently, then rose to stare out the window at the courtyard without through a window that had been broken, its jagged edges stained with drying blood. The cages were packed. Amara began to count the number of prisoners, and shook her head. Hundreds of Alerans waited there to be taken into the service of the Vord.
Brencis had just put the collar around the throat of a woman in a fine, soaking-wet silk gown. She writhed on the platform while he stood over her, an expression of revulsion and hunger and something Amara could not put a name to on his beautiful face.
“You’d better report in,” she said quietly. “Do your best not to give anything away.”
Rook had recovered somewhat. She held a cloth to her face, cleaning the blood from her mouth and chin. “I’ll die first, Countess,” she whispered.
“Go.”
Rook departed without a further word. Amara watched as she entered the courtyard a few moments later, walking briskly toward Brencis. Again, she beckoned, and Cirrus brought the sound to her.
Brencis looked up at Rook as she approached.
Rook’s stance and bearing had changed completely. There was a liquid, sensual grace to her movements, her hips shifting with a noticeable, swaying rhythm as she walked.
“Rook,” Brencis spat, his voice irritated. “What took you so long?”
“Incompetence,” Rook replied in a throaty purr. She pressed her body full-length against Brencis’s and kissed him.
The young slaver returned the kiss with ardor, and Amara’s stomach twisted in revulsion.
“Where are the two I sent with you?” he growled.
“When they realized I was going to tell you what they’d done, they thought they’d leave my body somewhere dark and quiet. After they’d raped me.” She kissed his throat. “I objected. I’m afraid they’re the worse for wear. Should I go recover their collars, my lord?”
“Tell me?” Brencis said. The anger had faded from his voice, a different kind of heat replacing it. “Tell me what?”
“The fools questioned the Cursors too hard,” Rook said. “I told you we should have recruited them.”
“Couldn’t take the chance that they’d… mmmm. That their minds would break down.” He shook his head. “You’re earthcrafting me, you little bitch. Mmmm. Stop it.”
Rook let out a wicked little laugh. Her ripped shirt chose that moment to slip, exposing naked skin. “You love it, my lord. And I can’t help it. I took them with my bare hands. It was close. That always leaves me in a mood.” She pressed against him in a slow undulation of her body. “You could take me here if you wished it. Who could stop you, my lord? Right here, before everyone. There are no rules any longer, no laws. Shall I fight you? Would that please you, to force me?”
Brencis turned to Rook with a growl, seizing a handful of her hair in a painful grasp, jerking her head back as he kissed her with near-bruising violence.
Amara turned away, sickened. She would return to the tunnels until nightfall.
She had killed men before.
But this was the first time she’d ever wanted to.
CHAPTER 32
Isana had been back in her chambers in the wall for perhaps two minutes before there was a diffident knock at the door, followed by the decidedly nondiffident entry of High Lady Aria Placida.
“That will be all, Araris,” she said over her shoulder, her tone neutral. She shut the door firmly and folded her arms as she stared at Isana.
Isana arched an eyebrow at the other woman, then moved her hand in a rolling gesture, beckoning her to speak.
Lady Placida’s face quivered through several half-formed expressions that never quite congealed into any single emotion before she finally blurted, “Have you lost your mind?”
To her own complete surprise, Isana burst into laughter. She couldn’t help it. She laughed and laughed until she had to sit down on the edge of the small chamber’s bed, her eyes watering, her sides aching.
It took a few moments to get herself under control again, and when she did, Aria was staring at her with a distinctly uncomfortable expression on her face. “Isana…?”
“I was just thinking,” Isana said, her words still quivering with the edges of the laughter. “Finally. I know how it must feel to be Tavi.”
Aria opened her mouth, closed it again, and let out an exasperated sigh. “From a watercrafter of your skill, that’s a remarkably ironic statement.”
Isana waved her hand. “Oh, you know how teenagers are. There’s so much emotion piled up in them that you can hardly sort out one from the next.” She felt the smile fade a little wistfully. “That was the last time I spent more than a few weeks around him, you know. He was fifteen.”
Some of the rigidity went out of Aria’s stance. “Yes. My own sons were off to the Academy at sixteen, then the Legions after that. It hardly seems fair, does it?”
Isana met Aria’s gaze. “My son doesn’t live under my protection anymore. But that doesn’t mean that he doesn’t need it. That’s why I challenged Raucus today.”