Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet Read Online Free PDF Page B

of the pen lies too still against the earth, but the marauder thieves are watching. If I try to console her, their whips will be against both of our backs. Beside her is Cleric Tuck, the chain around his ankle pulled taut in my direction. If I pull toward him, our fingertips can touch. I look at him, studying his dark eyes for some sort of solace, but he closes them in concentration, wrapping himself once more in silent prayer.
    I don’t think Strellis hears him.
    I squat down until my chest presses against my knees and hug myself, squeezing my eyes shut until my vision is an uneven swirl of red and black. Despite my efforts, a few tears prick my eyelids. I blink them back into my eyes. I heard what the marauders did to the girl who wouldn’t stop crying. I’ll give you something to cry about , he had said in his clipped, northern dialect as he untied her from her horse and lugged her into his tent. She screamed and screamed but stopped crying after that. She’s been silent as stone ever since.
    A pit is growing inside of me, hard and rough. Hate, hate, hate. The most bitter thing to taste, but I stomach it better than sorrow. I try desperately not to think of Arrice and Franc. I can only nurture a small, veiled hope that their hiding places were better than my own. For a moment I wonder if it’s a lingering effect of the lavender cake, but my body would have digested that days ago.
    The earth around my feet, which are shod with worn shoes, lifts up in careful spoonfuls until it covers my toes. I study it. Touch my fingers to it. Just earth, but this is the third time I’ve seen it move. I’ve never witnessed such a strange phenomenon before the marauders came to Carmine. Is this another secret lost to the void of my memory?
    I ignore a gasp to my right, but when the gate bars rattle I jerk upward and trip, my tether tightening around my ankle. Cleric Tuck jolts from his prayer and reaches for me, but we’re too far apart for him to help.
    Before me stands a tall, terrifying man, gripping the iron bars from the other side with tight, trembling hands. His wiry, curling hair is the color of unearthed carrots and protrudes from either side of his head as though trying to escape his ears. His skin is unlike any I’ve seen before—pale and chalky, almost blue in hue. Predawn on a winter morning. His bright chartreuse eyes, different in size, hover under thick brows. They’re wide as they study me, and his thin lips spread to reveal a large smile of even teeth. Like the ghost in the woods, he’s dressed in apparel I don’t recognize, but it isn’t of the same make. His is violet and patched and long, too heavy for this warm weather. He is two-thirds coat and one-third trousers that do not fit his legs. A tall hat pinches his scalp, barely holding on.
    “You, you,” he says. “I knoooow you. Yes. Your hands, let me see your hands!”
    I pull as far away from him as my tether will allow, but his crazed words prickle my breast. “You know me?”
    Surely, surely , I would never have forgotten a man such as this. He looks at me with a wide and hungry gaze.
    He rattles the gate. “Your hands! Now now !”
    One of the slave traders lifts his head at the noise and starts walking our way. I hurriedly show the man my hands, palms up.
    He laughs, a suffocated giggle too high in pitch to match his appearance. He releases the gate and claps.
    “Maire!” Cleric Tuck hisses behind me. “Don’t—”
    “Her!” The orange-haired man shouts to no one in particular, but the trader quickens his stride. “Her, I want her !”
    “Please, sir, this is a mistake,” I whisper, rushing the words before the salesman can hear them. “I’m not a slave! I’ve been stolen—”
    He doesn’t hear me, or perhaps he’s simply not listening. He turns to the trader and claps again before pointing a long, crooked finger my way. “Her, her, her,” he says again. He pulls a pouch of money from his strange coat and shoves it at the man.