I blow out the candle, slip through the back door, and pull it shut behind me.
Tessana is dark and quiet. The port is a black line against the water, the ships rocking gently, their rigging tapping against the masts. I pass my garden on the corner of the lane, the beds of chamomile, mint and foxglove that I will never see again. I cross the empty market, keeping my head down, hurrying to get out of the town before it starts waking up.
The cobblestones end and the dirt road begins. It winds east, away from the coast, toward the interior where the borders between the human territories and the monster territories blur, and the bride markets are set up in the gaps.
Chapter Two
Korr
My left knee locks three steps past the door to my quarters. I stop, shift my weight to the right leg, and wait. The joint is stone grinding against stone, and it takes five seconds before it releases with a low, gritty pop that I feel up my thigh. I let out a sigh and keep walking.
The main corridor of the Highhalls stretches ahead, wide enough for two golems to pass, but I’m the only one here at this hour. The quartz veins in the walls catch the gray light filtering through the arched windows and scatter it across the floor. I’ve walked this corridor thousands of times, but today, every step is a decision I keep making until I reach my destination.
I pass my workshop. The door is ajar because my fingers couldn’t manage the latch yesterday. Inside, a half-finished necklace sits on the bench, a thin silver chain with a diamond I shaped and set myself. The clasp needs to be bent shut, but the pliers require a grip I don’t have anymore.
The lift is around the next corner. A year ago, I took the stairs every day. Six months ago, I took them when I felt strong enough. Now, my joints lock too often on the descent, and if my knee freezes on the spiral staircase, I’ll go down hard, and at my weight, the fall can do real damage. I pull the lever and the stone platform rises to meet me.
The platform lowers me one level to the Corehalls, and the ceiling opens up above me. This is the widest, tallest space in Steinheim, carved high and broad so it feels public and important. The council chamber is down the east corridor, the common halls are to the west, and I go straight, toward the portal chamber.
They’re waiting for me.
Jarrvik leans against the wall on the left side of the archway, arms crossed and one foot propped behind him. Irrva stands on the right, closer to the portal.
“Korrvun.”
My full name, which she only uses when she’s already decided I’m wrong and wants me to know it before we start. My little sister has bossed me around since she started crawling, and I wouldn’t have it any other way. Her husband is only here for moral support.
“Irrva.”
My jaw aches around the word. Speaking has gotten harder over the past weeks, and the muscles in my face are stiffening so that every syllable is a small fight between what I want to say and what my mouth will do.
“You could barely make it to dinner last night,” she says. “That was two corridors. How are you going to cross a market courtyard and back?”
“I feel better today.”
The lie comes out smoothly because I’ve had practice. Not too cheerful, because she’d catch that in a second, just steady and plain, in the voice of a man reporting a fact.
“The stiffness loosened up this morning, and my joints are moving easier than they have in days.”
She stares at me, and her eyes go to the moss on my forearms and the deepening cracks across my chest where my collar sits open. She sees every piece of evidence that I’m lying. But she steps aside because the last time she tried to physically stop me, we didn’t speak for a week, and the silent treatment cost her more than letting me go does.
Jarrvik pushes off the wall and claps me on the shoulder. The impact drives through my body, but I keep my face still. He doesn’t realize that the blow reverberates through stone that’shalf-dead, and that every vibration makes the cracks feel like they’re about to split wider.
“Come back in one piece.”
“I always do.”
I step through the portal. The transit used to feel like walking through cold water, but now the pressure hits from every side, squeezing my ribs and forcing the air out of my lungs. My heartbeat stutters and skips, and for a few seconds, I don’t know if it’s going to resume. Then the pressure drops, and I’m standing in a stuffy room, in a different place, and my legs are shaking so hard I have to lock my knees to stay upright.
The portal on this end is set into the wall of a converted trading hall in one of the border towns between human settlements and monster territories. The ceiling is high but not golem-high, and I have to duck my head under the crossbeams as I move through the corridor toward the courtyard.
The market is already running when I step outside. The courtyard is open to the sky, ringed by stone walls, with rows of wooden benches facing a raised stage. An auctioneer stands at a podium near the front, and his assistants move behind the stage, ushering women through a door into the side room where they wait.
I find a place along the back wall. I see an orc near the front row, broad and scarred, and a pair of trolls further down, leaning together and talking in low voices. These seem to be the only monsters who are reasonably big, but still not as big as me. I’m almost a giant. Golems rarely come to these markets because most of us find our mates through the Marriage Temples, or within Steinheim. Or not at all.
I’m here because the Temple never wrote back, and Steinheim ran out of possibilities years ago. This is the last trip I can make. There were twenty-three before this one, which means twenty-three women bought, brought home, and none of them mysoulmate. I freed every one of them and gave each a house in the Narrowhalls, but my body won’t survive this journey again.
I don’t sit, because if I go down, I won’t get back up. I lean against the wall, wrap my stiff fingers around the bidding paddle, and wait.
