Empire of Ashes

Chapter XLII - Hell on Earth

Canton was a living, breathing scar in the earth. They had cracked open a hillside to get at the iron ore beneath, and once that was gone, they had moved onto the next, and the next, and so on. Consequently, the camp was spread out over a huge area, bordered by a wooden stockade twice as tall as me. Guards patrolled along its edges, but they were looking inwards, not outwards, and they carried crossbows.

I hated it on principle, I hated the look of it, and I hated the idea that I would soon be on the wrong side of that stockade.

After all, I had avoided this fate moons ago. All this time as a free woman, playing at a rebellion, and now fate was dragging me right back to where I was supposed to be — in chains, behind those awful walls. How the gods must be laughing.

Anlai whistled long and low, curbing his horse. "We're sending Lyra in there?"

I could have sworn I detected a note of concern. He wasn't actually— He couldn't be ... worried? Surely, I was just sleep-deprived and imagining things. The day Anlai gave a shit about me was the day the abyss returned its souls to the earth.

"Regrettably, yes," Temris sighed. He caught my eye for a fleeting second and flashed a grin. We were still keeping his brand a secret, for the sake of the Iyrak, so the last few days had been rife with cryptic conversations and glances. It felt like a game for the moment, but I knew that would change when the time came to enter Canton.

"Well, for the record, I think it's a stupid bloody idea. If she gets killed—"

"You can say you told me so, Anlai," Tem cut across. "Satisfied?"

He looked between the walls and me, those dark eyes unreadable. "Yes. Satisfied."

"Then let's get on it with, eh?"

"Yes, Ragnyr," the Iyrak, Eirac and the corps members murmured in unison. Anlai kept his mouth firmly closed, but Saqui's lips twitched into a smirk. He seemed to find most of what the northerners did amusing in one way or another, so this was no longer a surprise.

I threw a leg over Amber's back and hopped to the ground. She kept walking, her nose at Nightmare's flank, and Tem leant down to catch her reins. I stood at the roadside in a cloud of hoof-raised dust and scooped up a handful of dirt while I waited for the third wagon, our newest acquisition.

As it rumbled past, I clambered into the back and sat on a crate of apples. Two nights past, we had stopped in a town to buy the wagon and enough food to fill it. This was our ticket into Canton — they received a never-ending flood of food deliveries, according to Ark and Saqui. No one would ask many questions.

I peeled off my boots and socks and cast them to one side, and my knife belt followed an instant later. Then I picked at the clasp of my cloak. It was a warm day, but I couldn't suppress a shiver as I shrugged the wool from my shoulders. Underneath, I wore nothing but a tattered, dirty shift. This was another purchase from the town, although the gutter-rat who had owned it had been baffled by our offers of silver.

It came to the skin above my knees, and it left my shoulders bare to display the slave brand. There was a lot of skin showing, now, but I was cooler. I rubbed the dirt into that bare skin, leaving streaks and smears and a thin layer of grime into the pale, sun-kissed gold. Even into my hair, as I tangled and knotted it.

There was no faking weeks' worth of faded bruises, so it was lucky I had been sparring. Anlai might not bother hitting me, but Melia's clumsy blows occasionally found their mark. As for fresher wounds ... well... I found my knife, and drove the hilt into my face, once, twice, three times. It went against every fibre in my being, but my arm didn't dare disobey.