The slaver held the ladle closer. Richard drank, three deep delicious gulps, then the man retracted the ladle and latched the window shut.
The slavers began to settle down. A pot was set over the fire; a couple of rabbits had been dressed and chopped into it. Voshak came to sit by the flames, facing the cage. He bent to poke at the coals, and Richard pondered the top of the man’s blond head. The human skull was such a fragile thing. If only his hands weren’t tied.
He had to survive and bide his time. The slavers were taking him to the Market, he was sure of it. Left to his own devices, Voshak would’ve strung him up on the first tree he saw. Richard grinned. And after his neck snapped, Voshak would probably stab his corpse a few times, drown it, then set it on fire. Just in case.
Someone near the top of the slaver food chain must’ve recognized that the rank-and-file slaver crews feared the Hunter. They wanted to boost morale by making a production out of killing him. Richard might have worked for a year to get to the Market, but he had no intention of arriving there on their terms. An opportunity would present itself. He just had to recognize it and make the best of it.
If he failed now, Sophie would take his place. The thought filled Richard with dread.
Revenge was an infectious disease. For a time it gave you the strength to go on, but it devoured you from the inside like a cancer, and when your target was finally destroyed, all that remained was a hollow shell of your former self. Then the target’s relatives began their own hunt, and the cycle continued. He’d learned that lesson at seventeen, when a feuding family’s bullet exploded in his father’s skull, spraying bloody mist all over the market stall. What he had lost was irreplaceable. No amount of death would bring his father back to life. Back then, Richard was already a warrior, a killer, and he continued to kill, but never out of revenge. He severed lives so the family would be safe, and the new generations would never feel the pain of having their parents ripped out of their lives. He fought to keep the rest of them safe.
He failed.
Richard’s memory resurrected Sophie the way she used to be—a funny, beautiful, fearless child. The muddy swamp flashed before Richard. When he had finally found Sophie in one of the holes, she was standing on the body of a slaver she had killed. As he pulled her out, her eyes burned with a fear and hate that had no place on the face of a twelve-year-old child. She had survived the slavers, but she would never be the same.
He’d hoped the years would cure it, but time only nurtured it. He watched, powerless, as that fear and hate germinated into self-loathing. When she came to him asking to be taught to work with the blade, he viewed it as a diversion. Sophie had never taken her lessons seriously before, neither from her own father nor from her sister. He thought she would get bored. He had no idea.
Her self-hate grew and matured into steely determination. He saw it in Sophie’s face every morning when she picked up her sword to meet him in practice. He was running out of things to teach her. One day, she would decide she was good enough, take her blade, and go hunting instead. He wouldn’t be able to stop her, so he had chosen to beat her to the punch. What he was doing wasn’t revenge, but justice. The world had failed Sophie by allowing slavers to exist. He had failed her by letting her suffer at their hands. He hoped to restore her faith in both.
A woman walked out of the forest. She was tall, about five-foot-eight, and pale. Mud splattered her faded jeans. Her lavender T-shirt had a scoop neckline and was smudged with something dark, dirt or possibly soot. Her blond hair rested on top of her head in a loose knot. Her mouth was full, her eyes were wide and round, and the line of her jaw was soft and feminine. She was beautiful, refined, but iced over by a lack of emotion and an eerie, unnatural calm.
Their stares connected. Every cell in his body went on alert. He couldn’t see her eye color from this distance, but he was sure her eyes were gray.
She was real.
His stomach tightened in alarm. What are you doing here? Run. Run before they see you.
The conversation died. The slavers stared.
Crow picked up his rifle and rolled into a crouch.
“Now that’s what I call free merchandise,” Voshak murmured from his perch on a fallen log.
“There are no towns around here,” Crow said quietly. “Where did she come from? I say shoot her now.”
“What’s your hurry?” Voshak leaned forward. “No gun, no knife. If she could flash, she would’ve hit us by now.”
“I don’t like it,” Crow said. “She might be with him.”
Voshak glanced at the cage. Richard turned to look him in the eye, and the slaver captain shrugged.
“Hunter is the Weird’s animal. She’s wearing jeans. And if she’s with him, then he’ll enjoy watching me fuck her brains out.” Voshak raised his voice. “Hey, sweetheart! Are you lost?”
The woman didn’t answer. She was still looking at him, and her eyes told Richard she wasn’t lost. No, she was exactly where she wanted to be. She had some sort of plan. How did she get here?
“Where are you from?” Voshak asked. “Talk to me. Are your folks worried about you?”
The woman said nothing.
“She’s mute,” someone offered.
“A pretty woman who doesn’t talk. My God, we can charge double.” Voshak grinned.
Appreciative laughter from half a dozen throats rang out.
“I don’t like it,” Crow repeated.
“I’ve seen this before.” Pavel spat into the fire. “She’s a loonie.”
“What’s a loonie?” A younger slaver asked.
“An Edger or someone from the Broken,” Voshak said. “Sometimes they blunder halfway through the boundary into the Weird and get stuck. Not enough magic to go either way. Eventually, the boundary spits them out, but they’re not quite right after that. The lights are on, but nobody’s driving. They just wander around until they starve to death.”
“Too much magic.” Pavel waved his hand around his ear. “Fries their brains right up.”
“I don’t—” Crow began.
“Yes, we know. You don’t like it.” Voshak grimaced and turned it into a smile. “Don’t worry, sweetheart,” the slaver captain called out. “We’ll take good care of you. You come sit by me.” He petted the log next to him.
The woman didn’t move.
“Come on.” Voshak winked at her. “It’s all right.”
The woman approached, moving with innate grace.
Richard watched her. She glanced at him briefly as she took her seat, and he saw a smart, agile mind behind her eyes. No, she wasn’t fried. Not at all. But Voshak was right. She had no weapons. Even if she was a flasher, the slavers were too spread out. Someone would shoot her before she got them all. He had to get out of this cursed cage.
“Pass me that puppy chain,” Voshak said.
Pavel passed the twelve-foot chain to him. The slavers used them as human tie outs—just enough length to let slaves shuffle off to the bushes to relieve themselves. Voshak smiled and locked one iron cuff on the woman’s ankle, above her shoe. He locked the other on his own ankle. “There we go. Just like marriage.”
The woman gave no indication she understood what had just happened.
Voshak leaned closer to her and brushed a small tendril of hair from the back of her long, graceful neck. “That’s a good girl.”
Richard wished for a sword, a knife, a nail. Anything he could stretch his flash on. He’d slice through the bars with the first cut and sever Voshak’s fingers from the rest of him with the second. Watching him touch her was like seeing filth smeared on her skin.
Voshak let go of her neck. “If only you were fifteen years younger. You’d be worth double.”
“That’d make her what, like ten?” a young man asked from the right.
“More like fifteen,” Voshak said. “She’s fared well, but you’ve got to look closely. See, no baby fat left. No wrinkles yet, and her lips are still full, but the face doesn’t have that fresh look. Buyers like them young. She’s thirty, if she’s a day. She’ll still be worth a good chunk of change, but in our trade a woman past twenty-five is past her prime. And some of those bitches look like hags by thirty. It all depends on how gently they were used.”