They moved over a complex that had that same weather-beaten, hard-lived look as the transport did.
Yep. They were in the right place.
The transport set down with a shudder.
Around her, the other women started moving, unstrapping, gathering their things. The noise level rose — voices, footsteps, the hydraulic groan of the ramp lowering. Adryel stood with them, letting the crowd carry her forward.
The smell hit her the moment the ramp opened.
Not faint anymore. Not something she could rationalize or blame on the atmosphere.
Vetiver and ash.
Strong.
Close.
Her stomach dropped.
She kept moving because stopping would make her visible, and visible was the last thing she wanted to be right now. She scanned faces as she walked. Guards. Miners. Refinery workers watching the arrival with flat expressions. Women from the transport filing past her.
Nothing. Nobody.
She was almost at the bottom of the ramp.
Maybe she was wrong. Maybe it really was just?—
A hand closed around her arm from behind. Hard and certain, the way hands grabbed you when they didn't expect you to get away.
"Don't make a sound," a voice said close to her ear.
She knew that voice.
She'd known he was dirty the moment he didn't mention the moonstone.
Burk.
25
STRON
The refinery complex was exactly as Stron remembered it. Loud, industrial, and smelling like something had been burning for a very long time. The kind of place that got into your clothing and stayed there.
The dark side of Kantenan had no softness to it. No trees, no filtered light, no smell of green things growing. Just rock and metal and the constant low thunder of the refineries processing ore around the clock, indifferent to everything that wasn't citricite. The air tasted like it had been used before. Recycled through too many filters, carrying the ghost of every shift that had ever worked this complex.
He'd never liked it here.
Dhomhes stood beside him as the ramp lowered, already speaking quietly into his communicator, coordinating the guards he'd positioned around the perimeter. Whatever else Stron thought about Dhomhes, he was thorough.
Women filed off the transport in clusters, blinking against the flat grey light of the dark side. Guards moved them toward the refinery entrance, efficient and calm. Stron watched the flow, tracking faces, tracking movement.
Tracking red hair.
She'd be near the back. She always let others go first.
He waited.
The crowd thinned.
