Sands of Aggar: Amazons of Aggar Book 3 (6 page)

Rox didn’t acknowledge Adrian, simply returned to her drink. Adrian found herself, once again, captivated by the woman’s presence. She wasn’t Adrian’s usual type, lean and rough around the edges, but she suddenly found herself wishing it was Rox’s key clenched in her fist. Adrian wondered what she was doing with the Circle. She clearly detested the Circle she traveled with and the Twins rarely ever employed women, let alone women who were so physically unimposing. Still, no
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would have such fire in her eyes or be as brazen as Rox had been with the drunk marauders before. She was likely a guide or a magician. Adrian wondered with a brief sinking feeling if she’d ever have to kill Rox.

Mary passed in front of Adrian’s table as she stepped back into the kitchens, returning shortly without her apron or dishes.

“I’m going to bed, Da’,” she called to the bar. The burly blond barkeep nodded to his daughter with an affectionate smile and Mary strolled up the stairs to the higher levels of the inn.

Adrian waited until the barkeep’s attention had returned to his customers before standing and slowly following Mary up the worn wooden stairs. She passed a long hallway of hostel-style rooms lined with bunks and cots until she found a narrow, angled staircase leading up to the attic. She focused on a series of illusion spells, running her hands through her silver hair, darkening it to a pale gold before unlocking Mary’s door and stepping inside.

The room was cloaked in darkness, heavy curtains drawn over the only windows, edged in moonlight leaking through the edges of the tattered material. She tensed, instinctively crouching into a fighting stance as she tuned her other senses on searching for a trap.

A single candle flared to life on the opposite end of the room, releasing a single, sharp scent of ash and flame, creating dark gold pools of light across a carved wooden night table and a narrow bed dressed with thick, hand-stitched quilts. Mary stood leaning back against the wall along the edge of the candle’s light, her corset and overskirt already on the floor. The flames cast rippling shadows across her woven linen chemise and the bare skin of her collar, arms and legs. Her body was a textured map of peaks and deep valleys. Adrian ran her tongue over the inside of her lip, already hungry.

Mary looked Adrian over, her
amarin
whispering of lust, fear, and excitement. Adrian blinked, distancing herself from Mary’s emotions. “I’m glad you came.”

Adrian loosened her cloak, letting it fall to the floor. Mary made a soft sound of appreciation as Adrian’s face and frame were revealed unhindered by the cloak.

Adrian didn’t wait for further invitation. She pulled Mary close, kissing her rough and deep as Mary melted against her. Adrian lost herself in Mary’s softness, her scent like cream and fresh bread, her hair like strands of silk. She hadn’t had anything so warm, so sweet, since being banished from the Core. For a moment the energy she reserved for death shifted to passion, her restlessness sated with lust.

Mary gasped, the sound ragged with desire as Adrian nipped and kissed down the lines of her neck and collar toward the curve of her breasts, her hands tugging and shifting at linen in search of bare skin.

Mary wrapped a leg around her hips and an image of Rox suddenly flashed through Adrian’s mind. She paused in shock, pushing the other woman from her thoughts.

Mary’s lips trembled with desire, her skin like caramel under Adrian’s hands, now dark with lust. “Who are you?”

Adrian led her to the bed, laying her back as her teeth tugged at the laces of Mary’s chemise. “Does it matter?”

Mary pulled Adrian’s shirt over her head and kissed her again. “No.”

Adrian woke as dawn bled around Mary’s curtains, leaking sunlight into the attic apartment. Mary slept beside her, tangled in quilts, a woven tapestry of skin and cloth, her hair fanned out across the pillows and Adrian’s chest. Adrian sat up slowly, trying not to wake Mary as she climbed out of bed in search of her clothes.

“Going so soon?”

Adrian turned as she pulled her pants back over her hips and tied them close. Mary leaned up, resting on her elbows, her hair a tangled mass running down her shoulders and back. Adrian smirked appreciatively at the sight. Her restlessness was already returning, but for a few hours in the night she had been calm and centered, drowning in passion instead of death. “I have errands to run.”

Mary pouted. Adrian grinned and rushed to her side, leaning over her and kissing her gently, the kiss deepening as Mary pulled her down toward the bed. Adrian grunted and pulled away, “I really do have to go.”

Adrian searched for her shirt, spotting it beneath the end table. “I never noticed your tattoo before.” Adrian froze, glancing down at the small outline of a stone on her inner arm. It wasn’t a tattoo. “My cousin was a Blue Sight. She never understood why people tattoo a lifestone mark on their wrists. Do you think it’s romantic?”

Adrian pulled her shirt over her head, hiding the mark. “It was a foolish mistake in my youth.”

“She was always afraid of being bonded. Meeting a stranger and suddenly being tied to them for life? It’s terrifying.”

“It keeps Blue Sights safe from the Plague. It’s evolution.”

“It’s genetic slavery,” Mary grunted.

Adrian held her arm through her sleeve. Her stomach twisted. “Only if a Blue Sight comes into contact with their bondmate.” Adrian pulled her boots on and stood, grabbing her cloak and pulling it over her shoulders. “I have to go.”

Mary climbed out of bed and pulled Adrian into her arms. “Did I offend you?”

Adrian kissed her, savoring the sensation. “No. You were just what I needed.”

Adrian released her and left the room, descending the attic stairs back toward the common room. She glanced into the hostel rooms as she traveled, a knot untangling in her stomach as she spotted a half dozen unconscious Circle members draped over the cots and bunks.

In the last room before the stairs to the common room, Adrian spotted Rox asleep sitting up in the corner, cocooned in a wool blanket. Adrian paused, watching the older woman sleep, one hand over the lifestone mark on her wrist. She contemplated entering the room, studying her more closely when her blanket bounced and Fisk popped his head out, watching Adrian with bared teeth. Adrian scowled. She didn’t need to be discovered by the Circle because of an angry ferret.

She headed back down the stairs toward the common room and with a few whispered phrases she was shrouded again in shadow.

Rox stared at a bramble bush, watching a collection of bumble bees dance across the small white and pink blossoms. She lay on her bedmat, an arm propped under her head, the ground rough and sharp. Fisk rested in the cradle of her side, his head propped on her hip, his weight comforting. In the distance she could hear the screams, smell the smoke rising over the nearby hills. She focused more intensely on the bees, dancing and spinning over the flowers, oblivious to the nearby destruction. She willed her mind to join them, leaping from plant to plant, nothing weighing on her mind but pollen and honey.

A woman’s piercing, strangled scream shattered through the noise of the raid to be immediately silenced. Rox clenched her jaw, her fists curled into hard fists. She refused to take part in the Circle’s raids, but she was no less accountable for their actions. She protected them, even guided them when their maps proved inaccurate. It might as well be her dagger that had silenced the woman’s cries. But there was no other option. No choice. She needed to be paid.

The pound of hooves echoed through the brush, sending a cloud of dust into the air. Circle members had been traveling back and forth between town and the camp all day to offload plunder. Rox didn’t move as a band of a half dozen men returned, their horses weighed down with money, antiques and other valuables.

“We don’t have time to drag them along.”

“We have more than enough men to send a party back to the Core. No use wasting such hardy stock.”

Another dozen men returned, the sounds of their party interspersed with whimpers and muffled moans. Rox sat up and spun toward the returning marauders. Each raider pulled a soot-covered, bound and gagged women behind their horses, their bruised and raw hands tied to long leashes attached to the raiders’ saddles.

Rox leapt to her feet, her eyes blazing rage. “No slaves.” She charged forward, confronting the band of marauders.

“You have no authority here.” Calder rode up fast, circling around the rest of his men. Rox’s breath caught in her throat. A young girl, no older than 4 tenmoons, was bound and draped over the back of Calder’s saddle. Her blond curls hung limp with dirt and sweat around her panicked green eyes. Her skin was covered in ash, smelling of fire and blood. Long streams of tears left filthy streaks down her cheeks. “We loot as we please.”

“You’re a monster,” Rox hissed between her teeth. Calder smirked back at her, his eyes full of malicious glee. Calder had never shown an affinity for children before and Rox knew he usually didn’t keep slaves. He had brought the girl to torment Rox.

Calder slid off his saddle, landing on the ground with a heavy thud. He pulled the girl off the saddle, dropping her on the ground and crouching before her. He grabbed the child’s face, forcing her to look at him as she wept. “Such a fragile little thing, isn’t she? And so very familiar.”

Rox felt her heart break, her breath heavy in her chest. She could so clearly see another little girl, willowy and wild, her long gold girls whipping through the wind, tangled with leaves and twigs. She could see the child in the young slave’s eyes, imagine the other child covered in ash and soot and blood.

Calder ran his fingers through the child’s hair. “Golden curls. Green eyes.” Calder looked Rox in the eye. “I think I’ll call her Serena.”

Rox drew a green glass dagger off her back and charged, Calder meeting her blow with his sword, expecting her attack. He laughed aloud and pushed her back. “Kill me and you’ll never get your daughter back from the Core, Rox. You willing to trade this one’s life for your girl’s?”

Rox charged again, her mind a blank chasm of rage. Calder blocked a few of her blows, but in minutes she tackled him to the ground. Without hesitating she drove her knife through his hand, pinning him to the ground.

He screamed in pain, blood pooling out of his hand, staining the green glass blade a sickly brown. “You bitch! You’re never getting paid!”

Rox grabbed him by the face, holding him still. Her eyes danced with insane, chaotic light, her lips curled back in a snarl. “You’re still alive. You’re not vitally wounded. And Helos has the magic to seal your hand. Raids come with risks.”

“You’re dead.”

“Not yet. The Twins will never forgive you if you kill me after being healed.”

“Accidents happen.”

Rox grabbed him by the throat, sensitive and fragile organs and veins pounding chaotically under her hands. “Give me the girl.”

Rox felt rough hands grab her under the arms, pulling her slender frame off the ground. She grabbed her knife, ripping it from Calder’s hand as a burly thug pulled her toward her bedmat. Another man knocked it from her hand again.

Rox struggled against her captor, biting and clawing to get to the young girl. The child watched Rox with desperate eyes, running to reach her when another marauder scooped her under one arm and started carrying her away with the other slaves. The child cried, the sounds muffled through the strip of cloth tied over her mouth as a gag.

Rox shrieked, her voice primal and wild. “Give me the girl!”

Calder stood, his healer already rushing to his aid. “She’s mine by right of plunder.”

“And mine by duel!”

The marauder held Rox down and tied her hands and feet, leaving her bound on her bedmat.

Calder, now healed, strode toward her and kicked her hard in the ribs. He sneered, the expression full of embarrassment at letting her stab him and fury. “Perhaps it will be easier for you to wait out the raid here.”

He continued on toward the stash of loot collected deeper in the brush. A marauder known for his clashes with Calder lingered behind the rest of the party and, when no one was looking, grabbed Rox’s dagger and tossed it closer.

“Wanted to stab ’im for ages.”

“Let me go and I’ll do a lot more than stab him,” Rox swore.

The man considered, then shook his head. “Nah. I don’t have a contract with the Twins. Calder’d kill me. And everyone knows yer rages, Rox. Don’t want ya wild in the camp until ya calm down.” Rox’s eyes darkened and the man took another step back. “Still, there’s yer knife. I never see ya without it, so I figure it means somethin’ to ya.”

Rox closed her eyes, forcing herself to calm. The knife was important to her. A family heirloom. But it didn’t mean anything to her while a little girl cried, bound and gagged, not far away. When she opened her eyes again, the man had disappeared.

Rox waited, not moving a muscle as she listened to the Circle unload their plunder and prepare to return to town. She became calmer, more focused as she waited, the raging storms of her mind dissipating into a deadly quiet. She’d kill Calder. After she was paid, after her daughter, Serena, was free. She would watch the light go out in his maniacal eyes and feel his heart stop. Every slave he took to the Core, every man, woman and child he killed, would find justice through her blade.

Less than an hour later Calder led the remaining Circle members back into town. “Fisk!” she called into the nearby brush. Fisk, who had fled during the attack, raced back to join her. She motioned to her knife and he ran to it, propping it carefully up by the hilt.

Rox rolled, scurrying like a caterpillar against her bonds, until she reached her knife. She grabbed the hilt, projecting from the ground, and angled it toward the ropes binding her wrists. The thin, sharp blade, still covered in Calder’s blood, sliced easily through the bonds, freeing her hands. She quickly cut the ties around her feet and threw them aside, standing and stretching her arms and legs as she wiped her knife with a cloth from her pack and resheathed it at her back.

She raced through the brush toward a small copse of trees hiding the marauder’s loot. As she pushed through the brush into the copse, however, she paused. The slaves were guarded by half a dozen new marauders. There was no way she could take them all. Not in broad daylight, and not without severing her deal with the Twins.

The young girl spotted Rox, her face pleading for escape. Rox locked eyes with her and nodded, hoping the child could read every intention in her heart.
I’ll save you. You’ll survive. You won’t end up like my daughter.

Dusk had fallen and the raid had turned into a celebration. The flames still rose high into the burnt-orange sky, but the screams were gone, replaced with wild slurs and drunken cheers. Rox listened, sick to her stomach. The only good thing about the party was the absence of raiders at the camp.

Rox knocked Fisk away from a bubbling metal bowl suspended over the small fire she’d built hours before. “That will kill you.”

Fisk skulked back a few steps, staring at the hunter-green brew. She pulled the last pinch of white powder, a blend of herbs and blessed dust from her hometown, from a leather bag at her waist and added it to the broth. The broth steamed, blowing a flash of earthy, musty hot air into her face, whipping at her warm, pink cheeks.

Despite the fact that she had been hired as a protector and occasional assassin by the Twins, the Circle rarely realized the arsenal of supplies she kept in her small pack. The powder was the base for a powerful tranquilizer poison, the last she had. But it was worth it.

She grabbed her glass dagger from the belt at her waist and dipped the blade in the brew, waiting until the hilt in her hand grew warm to the touch. When she pulled the blade from the brew, it was coated in a pale, sticky paste that was already hardening, infusing along the edge of the edge of the blade.

“Get my darts.”

Fisk scuttled to the edge of the small clearing Rox had turned into a makeshift pharmacy half a league from the Circle’s camp and rooted through her bag, dragging back a small, bound leather pack. Rox untied it, revealing a series of darts and needles. There was no need to waste what was left of the poison.

She was able to dip six darts and 15 needles before the brew turned a sickly brown. She used a clean knife to make small notches in the sides of the poisoned darts and rewrapped them, handing them to Fisk to put back in her bag. She carefully tipped the remnants of the poison into a shallow hole she’d dug earlier in the day and she mixed it with the dirt she’d removed from the hole, making a thick mud.

She doused her fire, carefully sheathing her blade at her hip and stood. The sky was red as the last light of day clung to the clouds. It would be dark before she reached the Circle’s camp and if the sounds from the destroyed village were any indication, nearly every member of the Circle was in town.

Rox glanced back at Fisk, her eyes already beginning to glow as her eyes began to shift to her night vision. “Stay with the pack.”

Fisk hummed low in his throat and circled her pack before settling down on the bag like a nest. Rox huffed. Even with her bedmat laid out beside the bag, Fisk chose to leave his fur embedded in her only good travel pack.

“Be here when I get back.”

Fisk huffed. He knew what to do. It wasn’t the first time she’d left him in charge of guarding her gear.

Rox turned and jogged back to the Circle’s camp, heading for the copse of trees where the loot had been kept. She crept forward, weaving through the copse until she could assess the situation. The women and child were tied to trees, secured tight enough that all but three raiders returned to the city to celebrate. The three remaining were already drunk enough not to be a threat. Rox grinned, feral and wild.

She slipped along around the copse, circling behind the guards and moving silently in front of the slaves. She turned to the women, holding a single finger to her lips. They nodded, their muscles tense with fear and hope, their dirty faces streaked with tears and sweat.

Rox pulled her glass dagger from her belt and moved swiftly toward the drunk guards. She struck in three lightning-fast movements, leaving shallow cuts along their necks, instantly knocking them out, leaving them sprawled across the ground. She stood over each and used the hilt of her knife to bludgeon their heads, not enough to kill them, but enough to blame their unconsciousness on an escaped slave beating them from behind.

The women let out a collective groan of panic and relief at their imminent freedom, each struggling against their bonds as a surge of adrenaline shot through their veins. Rox ran to each, cutting them free of their bonds. As she reached the child, the young girl collapsed off the tree and buried herself in Rox’s arms. Rox froze in shock, the feel of tiny hands gripping her waist, soft gold curls under her chin, a tiny child trembling in her arms tore at her heart. She was suddenly back in time, Serena crawling into her arms in the middle of the night, trembling from a thunder storm. Her daughter being dragged away as Rox screamed from behind the bars of a Core prison cell.

Rox held the child, her grip tight and possessive. She looked up at one of the lingering women. “You know this child?” The woman was still too shocked to speak, but she nodded. Rox pulled away just enough to angle the child’s face to the woman. “You know her?” The child reached for the woman, who scooped her into a tight embrace.

Rox grabbed a knife out of the nearest guard’s belt and handed it to the woman. “You worked free of your bonds. You knocked out the guards and cut everyone free, do you understand?”

The woman nodded again and took the knife. “Thank you.” Her voice was raspy and soft, weighed down with grief and pain.

Rox’s eyes burned as she looked at the child, worried about the burns on her arms and legs from her bonds, the injuries weaker than the irreparable mental pain that would follow her for the rest of her life. “You take care of her, do you understand me? You give her a good life. You owe me yours, now it belongs to that child.”

The woman held the girl closer and nodded again. Rox clenched her jaw tight and nodded back, trying to hope that the woman would keep her word. “Now get out of here before they return.”

Without any more prompting, the woman raced out into the night, the rest of the women following close behind. Rox said a prayer to the goddess for their safety, then immediately turned in the opposite direction and ran for her makeshift camp.

As the copse disappeared from view, Rox froze. Standing ahead of her, unmoving, was a cloaked figure. She crouched into a fighting stance. No one in the Circle wore a cloak so low over his face or traveled alone.