Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet Read online

  I know who it is, though, because the woman beside me screams and leaps to her feet, widemouthed, running to her beloved. I know she has no brothers, only a husband. The marauder with the spear strikes her down, and only my own tears save me from the full brunt of the murder. I bite down on my own scream, not wanting my blood to mingle with hers. Not wanting these men to kick me out of the way as though I were a broken doll, the way they do to her.

  Three more marauders approach our huddle as the sun begins to set, throwing two more men into our ranks. Both look close to me in age. Of all of us, Barre—the man who runs the smithy near my shop—is the oldest at thirty-five. The youngest is—

  The thought flees as I recognize the bloody face of one of the men and gasp. “Tuck!” I whisper, hoarse.

  The spear-carrying marauder turns toward me, and I huddle down, hiding my face in my hands, waiting for a blow. I don’t hear it. Smoke wafts into my nostrils as the guards light torches. I lift my head to see Cleric Tuck lying on his back near me, his eyes closed, blood from his nose streaking his chin and cheeks.

  I hold my breath, searching for his. Cry tears of relief when I see his chest rise and fall.

  “Cleric Tuck,” I whisper, so quietly even I can barely hear it. I eye the two guards nearest me and inch forward on my knees, swallowing. I reach out a hand and touch his black hair. “Tuck.”

  He groans. His eyelids flutter, but when he looks at his surroundings, there’s no recognition in his gaze.

  Two rough, peachy-toned hands grab my shoulders and haul me back. A scream dies in my throat, and I kick out as the grip tugs me away from the group. I drop down to my knees, and a third hand shoves my head forward while a fourth and fifth tie fraying rope around my wrists, pinning them to the small of my back. The hand on my head shoves me onto my side, cracking my head on the cobblestone of the square, and two of the marauders go back to the circle for Barre. The blacksmith is larger than both of them but doesn’t struggle when they bind him. He doesn’t want to die, either.

  Strellis, anyone, help us, I pray, closing my eyes and thinking against the throbbing in my skull. My prayer feels weak and heavy, like it hits a glass wall not far above my beaten form.

  They tie Cleric Tuck last. I keep my head down but peer through my hair to watch him. He’s conscious, but he’s been bloodied up more than most of us. The other marauders circle us like vultures, weapons drawn. They mumble to each other, pointing at one person or another. Cleric Tuck raises his head and meets my eyes, then looks away.

  The men don’t sleep, if they’re even men at all. I don’t rest, either, though when dawn nears and more of the bandits arrive in Carmine, bearing with them loot and iron cuffs, I wish I had. They loose our ropes and cuff our wrists and ankles together, then bind us to their horses. I’m tied to a saddle with two other women. One is a farmer’s daughter, the other the governor’s wife. Cleric Tuck is fastened to one of the larger horses with Barre. He glances around, the blood on his face dried and sticky. He meets my eyes. There are words in his gaze, but I don’t understand them, and the warhorse stalks away, dragging Cleric Tuck with it.

  The thieves do not speak to us, do not comment on the tears streaming down my face. Another woman tied to a different horse begins to wail. They do not kill her, but they beat her. I squeeze my eyes shut, but the shackles around my wrists make it impossible to cover my ears. With each heavy, fleshy thump, with each startled cry, I think, Stop, stop, stop, but they don’t, and I’m too much of a coward to voice the plea.

  A bandit mounts the horse I’m tied to and kicks it into a pace I can barely maintain. The governor’s wife stumbles more than once. I try to offer my elbow, but she can’t get ahold of it. Not with the cuffs.

  As we move, I glance about desperately, forcing myself to examine the corpses we pass, trying to peer into dark windows to see if any surviving eyes peer back at me, and there are a few. None match Arrice and Franc. I should be glad for it, at least as far as the dead go.

  I glance back toward the stretch of woodland, where the white spirit told me to run. I pray to the gods for Arrice and Franc, then am forced to face forward or risk being dragged.

  I know these men will not stop long enough for me to find my feet again.

  The marauders move quickly despite the protest of the horses and their tethered load. The iron cuffs about my wrists dig into the base of my hands when my feet grow too heavy to keep pace, marking dark crescents of blood and blister. I’ve found that if I keep my tears silent and my moans quieter than the steps of the horses, my newfound captors don’t pay attention to me. I can’t always keep Cleric Tuck in view—his horse tends to lead the group, and the marauders are many—but he seems to have learned the trick as well. When I do spy him, I don’t see any new bruises or cuts along his body, minus the marks left by the cuffs. He hasn’t been beaten a second time . . . yet.

  I wonder if the shrine on the outskirts of Carmine was one of the first buildings to face the attack, like the farms and my shop. If its stone walls weren’t sturdy enough to keep the bandits out. I wonder if Cleric Tuck was overpowered in a fight, or if he hid from them as I did. He wouldn’t be this bloodied had he merely surrendered.

  I stumble again, hiss as the cuffs dig into the raw stripes of my wrists, and force my knees up. This is why the bandits only take those strong in body, I realize. Others, like Arrice, would never survive this trek. They wouldn’t be sellable.

  My stomach sinks into my pelvis, and despite my thirst, new tears spring to my eyes. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it before, but we’re to be made slaves. If I’m forced into slavery—if my freedom is forfeit—I’ll never be able to search for them. My missing family. My heritage. My self. I’ve searched for four years without finding so much as a clue, but if these bandits keep me in chains, I will never find one.

  Except, I think, the ghost.

  He knows my name. How? Who is he? He is insubstantial—a spirit, a specter, a shade—but perhaps I knew him before he died. I try to picture his face, his odd-colored eyes. Try to remember, but the vacant expanse beneath my skull only grows darker, and all thought disappears when the cuffs dig into my flesh once more.

  I watch the peach-skinned marauders as we travel; they’re easier to behold than the other captives. They fidget constantly. They look over their shoulders and demand silence from us. My shoulders bear two stripes already for trying to reason with my captor. The farmer’s daughter who is tied behind me said the first stripe was for speaking, the second for sounding too much like a real person. She herself bears three stripes across her back and one down the center of her face.

  When we finally stop, I pray that the marauder guiding me will situate his camp near Cleric Tuck, but he settles far away, leaving several campfires between us.

  I don’t sleep the first night, despite my weariness. I hear the cries of women, many of whom I recognize, toward the center of camp. Cries of desperation muffled by grappling hands. Only women. I curl up beside the horse and pray for them not to take me next. I don’t know why, but the earth softens beneath me until I’m lying in a sort of trough: a cradle of soil and rock that keeps me half-hidden from the vile world around me. This is the second time the ground beneath me behaved as if alive, and I know with assurance that it has been no doing of mine.

  We rise early to gain ground on any pursuers, but my village is on the southern edge of the city-state Amaranth, surrounded by pastoral ranges. The marauders have, at minimum, half a day’s head start on any backup sent from the main city. No one follows us.

  The air grows cooler the closer we get to the western coast, and the troop finally stops once sea salt flavors the air. For a moment I hope we’re to be brought aship, which might give me a chance to flee or dive as we’re moved from land to sea, but the marauders stay clear of the beach. We camp and wait until more of their kind arrive with carts lined with bars. They loose us from the horses and corral us without unsheathing our wrists. To my relief, I’m the last one shoved into t
he cart that contains Cleric Tuck. Once the horses begin moving, I worm my way to the back of the cart, careful to avoid the gaze of the marauders who ride to either side of it. There is little room to sit, though some of the captives do. Cleric Tuck leans in the nook where the wall of bars meets the wall of wood that separates us from the cart’s driver.

  The wheels hit a bump in the road, jostling us. A man knocks into me, and I sail forward into Cleric Tuck, who grasps me by the elbows with hands that are too cold.

  “Maire,” he whispers, so quiet it could be the wind. He doesn’t look at me, but at the bandit riding nearest to us. He adjusts, putting more of his back to the man. “Are you all right?”

  I nod, though none of us are. I don’t speak for fear of being heard.

  Cleric Tuck licks his lips, which sport several cracks. “They’ll sell us.”

  I nod, too weary to cry at the unwelcome reminder. The marauder near us quickens his mount’s trot, eyeing me, and I pull away from Cleric Tuck’s hands. The last thing I want is to be put into a different cart.

  Cleric Tuck notices as well and eyes me with what I can only assume is exasperation, as though the attention on us is my fault. I grit my teeth and stare past a few other prisoners to another set of bars and the passing landscape. After what must be an hour, Cleric Tuck grasps my thumb and doesn’t let go.

  We travel north. Most of the marauders who attacked our village don’t attend us. When attention leaves the cart for an argument up ahead, I test each bar of the wagon, the floorboards, and the lock, ignoring Cleric Tuck’s gestures for me to remain still. They’re all sound. Rubbing my hands over the rusting bars, I try to encourage them to enlighten us, try to usher love and peace into them as I do my cakes, but the jostling of the wagon makes it hard to grasp fond memories, and the iron bars remain as unsympathetic as they are unyielding.

  CHAPTER 3

  When we arrive to the marauders’ destination, they transport us into cages—little more than animal pens with high walls. I grasp the gate of my enclosure and will sweetness into it, but it remains rigid and uncompromising. It will not bend to my desires as my confections do.

  I rest my forehead against the gate. It’s level with my height, just short enough to climb over were I to shed my shoes, but a new shackle encases my right foot and tethers me to the floor with others from my village. I stare at the harsh crescent moons encircling the bases of both hands. The marauders followed the coast until we reached the city-state of Aureolin. At least, I believe this is Aureolin. I’ve never traveled so far from Carmine. Not that I can remember, at least.

  I touch the tender scabs about my wrists and close my eyes, releasing a slow breath through my nose. I try to remember the world beyond Carmine, traveling to Carmine. I find only darkness. My earliest memory, still, is Arrice.

  Footsteps call my attention. A bald, heavyset man, peach skinned like the marauders, eyes me and one of the men sharing my cage as he walks by. I meet his eyes, trying to see beyond them. I can’t understand how he can ogle me like that, like I’m a goat or a cow in the market. Like I’m something less than human.

  Stepping away from the bars, I try again to think of love, try to grasp on to good feelings that will alleviate the embers scalding me between every bone. Something to plug the beads of cold sweat that run down my back each time another pair of eyes finds me. But all I can think about is the ashes of the lavender cake left in the oven, as if they were an omen of things to come.

  A woman tethered to the opposite side 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. “Take it, take it, give me her!”

  “No!” Cleric Tuck shouts, his voice matching the volume of the buyer’s. I turn around to face him, frantic that he’ll be caught, yet desperate for him to save me.

  “Tuck,” I cry.

  He reaches for me, his chain taut. I do the same, pulling the iron links to their limit. Our fingertips touch.

  The trader calls others over to help. A clamor of footsteps and keys tickles my ears as I yank at my tether until the shackle cuts into my ankle. The other slaves in our pen are stirring, curious, watching. Silent.

  The gate opens, and men—none of whom are the bandits who ransacked my home—surround me. They grab my arms and h
ips before I can even attempt to struggle, and one pulls a sour-smelling burlap sack over my face, as though I’m a scared bird. I hear a muffled cry and that all-too-familiar sound of weight striking flesh. I cry out for Cleric Tuck as my captors wrench my arms back to bind them. I kick off the ground, throwing myself against the chest of the man holding me.

  My fingers touch a warm, metal ring, and a sensation like vinegar rushes up my arm and into my blood.

  “Hold her!” barks one of the men. I struggle against the chain around my ankle and slam back into the captor again, not hard enough to move him, just enough to distract him. My sweating hand grasps for that key ring and tugs. It resists.

  A club beats into my shoulder. I cry out and drop to my knees, but the weight of my fall tugs the keys loose. Despite the throbbing radiating down my shoulder blade and up my neck, I flail on the dirt, trying to kick up as much dust as possible before I throw the keys in Cleric Tuck’s direction, praying—even to Strellis—that he sees them, and the others don’t.

  Then I’m pinned. The men slam my face into the ground, and I cut my lip on my front teeth. Using rough rope, they bind first my elbows, then my wrists. It digs into the wounds left by the iron cuffs, and I grit my teeth and weep. They yank me upright when they’re finished, unhook my ankle, and shove me forward without removing the bag from my head.

  To my relief, my buyer does not grab me by my bindings and worsen my injuries, but places one clammy hand on the back of my neck and the other on my chest, though not in a lecherous manner. He guides me this way through the narrow passageways between the slave cells and beyond. I’m not sure where we’re going; I can see only a sliver of rusty earth at the base of the bag. I stumble several times, but my buyer’s pace does not slow, nor do his cold hands move.