“Three travelers. The two women are logged under your responsibility.”
“They are.”
“Esme.” Her mother pushes closer, crying openly now. “Please. It’s not too late. Come home.”
“Turn around,” Aldric says. “Now. This is the last time I ask.”
Esme stops in front of the portal frame and turns to face them.
“You wanted your daughter sold to a man,” she says. “You got what you wanted.”
Then she takes Darina’s hand and walks through ahead of me, without a single look back.
Her mother presses a hand over her mouth. Her father stands still, boiling on the inside.
I expected to lead a frightened girl through the portal. Instead, my bride ended the argument with dignity, and walked ahead of the monster who bought her, holding her friend’s hand. She is strong. She is stubborn. I can’t help the smile that stretches my lips.
I give her parents a respectful nod, then adjust my grip on the bags and follow the two women through.
Chapter Five
Esme
The heat hits me two steps out of the portal, and it’s not the heat of a Concord summer. The air burns going in, dry all the way down, and I stop abruptly, which makes Darina bump into my back.
“This way,” Osric says. “The chamber has to stay clear.”
The portal chamber is a cave of black stone, and the two Scorpii guards flanking its doors turn their heads to watch us pass. Their tails curve up over their shoulders, stingers raised. Darina grabs my hand and grips hard enough to hurt. I understand her distress, because I feel it too.
We step outside, and I see Haara for the first time.
I expected a camp, tents scattered across sand, something crude. Instead, a hidden valley opens between black cliffs, and a whole city climbs up in layers – terraces, stone bridges, stairways cut into the rock, shade cloths stretched over narrow paths. Water must run somewhere under all that stone. Scorpii move along terraces and stairways, and the ones nearest to us stop what they’re doing when they see us.
They stare as we walk. Armored warriors, traders with baskets, children whose small tails already carry stingers… All of them look at me as if I were an oddity carried in to be examined. I keep my chin up and my face smooth. Concord trained me to be looked at and judged, so this is nothing to me.
Osric walks ahead of us. In Concord, he was one of the biggest creatures at the market, save for the orcs and giants. Here, among his own kind, he’s still one of the biggest, and his tail moves behind him as he walks, thick at the base of his spine, narrowing section by section to the sharp, dark point at its tip.
I did this, I remind myself as I follow him. I sold myself to him. I traded a gilded cage for the Waste, and I have no one to blame for it.
His car waits at the end of the walkway, long, wide and open, with no roof at all. He lifts our two bags into the back, then comes around the side and offers me his hand, palm up, to help me climb in.
“Don’t touch me.” It comes out harsher than I intend, and I can hear the panic in my own voice. “Don’t come near me, and don’t expect anything from me.”
He freezes.
“I would never...” He doesn’t finish the sentence. “It’s not my intention to make you feel uncomfortable. I’m sorry.”
He steps back and tucks both hands behind his back. He stands there, waiting, while Darina and I climb up on our own.
Shame warms my face. He’s carried our bags since Concord, said nothing cruel to either of us, and I shouted at him for trying to help me. I don’t apologize, though. I settle onto the seat, fold my hands in my lap, and look straight ahead.
He drives along the valley floor, through the lowest level of the city, past terraces and staring Scorpii. Then the cliffs open, and the road runs out into the desert.
I’ve never seen this much empty land. Black stone, thornbrush, cacti taller than the car, and dust that rises behind us and hangs in the air. There are no walls out here, no gates, no roads leading anywhere I could name. Our maps at home mark all of this as blank space with danger written along the edges, and now I understand why.
Darina reaches over and takes my hand. I hold on. I’m shaking, and I can’t make it stop, so I stare at the horizon and ask myself what I’ve done. Whether I traded an old man’s bed for something worse. Whether I’ve dragged the only person who loves me into a desert that kills humans. Neither of us says aword with him so near, but her thumb moves back and forth across my knuckles the entire way, and I focus on that small motion instead of on the desert.
The house stands where the city ends and the open desert begins, built into a dark cliff. It has heavy doors, high ceilings I can see through the entryway, and a wide terrace facing the sand. It’s severe and plain.
