Charlotte took a deep breath and stepped into the boundary. The magic clutched her, squeezing at her organs as if trying to wring the lifeblood from them. The pressure pushed her, propelling her forward. Each step was a conscious effort. Sweat broke on her forehead. Another step. Another. The pressure crushed her. Charlotte hunched over. She would crawl if she had to.
Another step.
Suddenly, the grinding burden vanished. Magic flooded her, rejuvenating her body. It was an absurd sensation, but she felt herself opening up like a flower greeting the morning sun. If she’d had wings, they would’ve unfurled. She inhaled slowly. There it was, the familiar potent power she was so used to wielding. During her years in the Edge, living with half magic, she had forgotten how wonderful it felt.
She had never understood why Éléonore didn’t move to the Weird . . .
Éléonore.
She had to keep moving. She was at least half an hour behind the slavers, probably more. The old Adrianglian forest stretched before her. The forest path forked ahead. Which way, right or left?
Charlotte knelt to the ground, trying to follow the hoofprints. A carpet of old pine needles blanketed the floor of the woods and the path, obscuring the trail. She had learned some tracking when she was a girl from an old veteran scout living at Ganer College because she thought it was interesting. But those lessons were long ago, and she had never taken them very seriously.
A high-pitched, labored whine came from under the brush on her left. She turned. Two brown canine eyes looked at her from a large black muzzle.
Charlotte froze.
The dog dipped its big head and let out another thin whine. She smelled blood. It lashed her healer instinct like a whip. The dark magic raging inside her vanished, as if snuffed out.
“Easy now.” Charlotte crouched and moved toward the dog. “Easy.”
It lay on its side, panting.
She reached for it.
The dog’s lips trembled, betraying a flash of fangs.
Charlotte stopped moving, her hand outstretched. “If you bite me, I won’t help you.” The dog couldn’t understand her, but it could understand the tone of her voice.
Slowly she reached forward. The dog opened its mouth. Jaws snapped but fell short of her fingers. It was too weak.
“If you were healthy, you’d tear my hand off, huh?”
Charlotte touched the fur, sending a current of golden sparks through the furry body. Male, low blood pressure. A bullet wound passing through the abdomen. Someone had shot the dog.
“This world is full of terrible people,” she told him, and began to repair the damage. The bullet had entered the chest, cut through the left lung, and tore out of the dog’s side. Judging by the state of the wound and blood loss, it had happened about five to six hours ago.
Charlotte knitted the injured tissues, rebuilding the lung.
The dog leaned over and licked her hand, a quick, short lick, as if embarrassed by his own weakness.
“Change your mind since it doesn’t hurt as much anymore?” She sealed the wound and petted his withers. Her hand slid against a spiked collar. “You wouldn’t be a slaver dog, would you?”
The dog rose. He was a massive beast—if they both stood upright, he could put his paws on her shoulders.
Charlotte got up. “Where are your owners?”
The dog looked at her, sniffed the air, and turned to the right.
She had nothing better to go on.
“Right it is,” Charlotte said, and followed the dog down the path.
THE wagon rolled over a root, creaking.
“That’s far enough,” a grating voice called out. Voshak Corwen, a seasoned slaver with over a dozen raids under his belt. Hardly a surprise, Richard reflected. This was the man Tuline had promised to betray. They must’ve agreed to set that little trap together, and when Richard had cut his way through Tuline’s crew, Voshak took his men and went after him.
“We make camp here,” Voshak said.
“We’re only two hours from the boundary,” a tall, redheaded man called out. Richard didn’t recognize him. Must be a new hire. The slavers needed to replenish their herd regularly—he kept thinning it out.
Voshak rode into view. Of average height, he was built with a gristle-and-tendon kind of strength: lean, with high endurance. He wasn’t the fastest or the strongest, but he would go the distance. A network of scars sliced his face. No doubt he had some romantic story about how he got them instead of admitting that a stablehand had raked his face with a pitchfork during a failed slave raid.
Voshak’s hair, a pale blond braid, which he bleached, was his trademark. It made him memorable. That’s how the slavers operated. They adopted costumes and personas, trying to make themselves larger-than-life and hoping to inspire fear. They counted on that fear. One could fight a man, but nobody could fight a nightmare.
Voshak focused on the redhead. “Milhem, did I make you my second?”
Milhem looked down.
Ceyren, Voshak’s second, was likely dead; otherwise, he would be here pulling Milhem off his horse and beating him to a bloody pulp. Interesting.
“Then don’t open your trap,” Voshak said. “If I want your opinion, I’ll beat it out of you.” He surveyed the riders. “If any of you morons are worried, nobody’s following us. These are Edgers. They look out for number one, and none of them want to catch a bullet. It’s been twenty hours since we last slept, and I’m tired. Now make the damn camp.” He turned to an older, one-eyed slaver. “Crow, you’re my second now. See they get it done.”
Crow, a broad-shouldered, weather-beaten bastard, roared, “Get a move on!”
Reasonable choice for a second, Richard reflected. Crow was older, had experience, and he worked hard to inspire fear. If his eye patch and height didn’t do it, the heavy black leather and ponytail of jet-black hair decorated with finger bones would.
Voshak turned his horse. His gaze paused on Richard. “Awake, my gentle maid? You’ve got something right here.” The slaver touched the left corner of his mouth. “What is that? . . . Oh, that’s shit from the bottom of my boot.”
Laughter rang out.
Richard smiled, baring his teeth. “Always brightening the day with your humor, Leftie.”
A muscle jerked in Voshak’s face. He clenched his reins. “You sit in your cage, Hunter. When we get where we’re going, you’ll sing like a bird when I start cutting through your joints.”
“What was that? I didn’t quite hear.” Richard leaned forward, focusing on Voshak. A hint of fear shivered in the slaver’s eyes, and Richard drank it in. “Come closer to the cage, Voshak. Don’t cower like a little boy hiding from your daddy and his belt.”
Voshak dug his spurs into his horse’s flanks. The animal jumped, and he rode off. Coward. Most of them were cowards, cruel and vicious. Brave men didn’t kidnap children in the middle of the night and sell them to perverts to earn their drinking money.
The riders dismounted. Two secured the horses, keeping well away from his cage. Others began pulling tents from the saddlebags, olive and gray, with a red logo spelling out COLEMAN sewn on one side. The tents must’ve come from the Broken. A few slavers piled together some branches. A dark-haired man soaked them in fluid from a flask, struck a match, and dropped it on the fuel. Fire flared up like an orange mushroom. He shied back, rubbing his face.
“You got any eyebrows left, Pavel?” Crow called.
Pavel spat into the fire. “It’s burning, ain’t it?”
A slaver stopped by the cage. He was thin, with dirty brown hair and pale eyes. He climbed onto the wagon, opened a small door near the top of the cage, barely large enough to pass a bowl through, and dipped a ladle with a long handle into a bucket.
Richard waited. His mouth was so dry, he could almost taste the water.
The slaver passed the ladle through the window. “Why Leftie?” he murmured.
“It’s what his father used to call him before he beat him in his drunken rages,” Richard said. “His right testicle never dropped.”