Page 159 of Daughter of No Worlds

Just for a moment, before we turned around and made another stomach-churning leap.

* * *

Three more leaps.

By this time, my head spun every time we landed. To make things worse, Reshaye was growing more and more agitated.

{Now?}It asked, impatiently, with every landing.

Not yet,I would reply, with as soothing a tone as I could manage. But I was beginning to wonder if I had made a mistake by rousing it the night before. It did a tenuously good job of listening to me… so far. But I dreaded what would happen if it got fed up with my rejection before I was ready.

When we landed this time, it took me a moment to clear my spinning vision, to push Reshaye back, to put the rest of my head in order.

When I did, I blinked and found that we were standing on a long, dirt road. The path led up to a rising hill, upon which sat a building. Not enormous, but certainly imposing — constructed of golden brick that seemed to rise directly from the amber grass surrounding it, spires topped with rounded points that came to a curled tip like the dollop of frosting on a pastry. Perhaps it had once been beautiful, but now it crumbled and peeled with superficial neglect.

Activity surrounded it, people and horses bustling around its base. At the other side of the hill, I could see lines of figures making their way to its entrance.

My chest guttered as I realized what I was looking at.

“This was abandoned last time I was here,” Zeryth said, frowning.

“This building is Nyzrenese,” I murmured.

The architecture was very similar to that of the Threllian Lords, but the little differences were easy to spot if you knew where to look — the narrower windows, brighter shades of paint, square doors instead of rounded. One of our old governmental buildings, left to rot. Now used to cage and torture the people it once served.

I looked again to the lines of people traveling the paths and furrowed my brow. Walls and walls of terror hit me, shaking my knees. I had forgotten how powerful the emotions of large groups of unshielded minds were. And these? These slid between my ribs and clawed at my insides.

“Hey!” Two men on white horses trotted towards us, shouting in sharp Thereni. One raised a scimitar above his head, a clumsy threat. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

Two men on white horses.

Two men wearing wide-brimmed, black hats.

My blood turned to ice. “Slavers.” Of course. They did this — took up abandoned buildings to use as trading and transport hubs. I had been in many myself.

As if fueled by the shock that ran through me, Reshaye banged at my thoughts, eager.

{Now, we end them.}

Not yet.

The men rode closer, approaching us down the dirt road.

“If we Stratagram out, we do it now,” Ariadnea said.

Zeryth gave me a curious look, unfazed, one eyebrow tweaked. “We don’thaveto go, if Tisaanah would rather intervene.”

“There are maybe fifty men up there,” Nura said. “Plus the slaves.”

“For us? Easy,” Zeryth purred. “What a wonderfully noble way to see what Reshaye can do.”

The string of furious Thereni curses grew louder, coupled with hoof beats.

I looked up at the building, landing on a small figure in the approaching line. A child, with her wrists bound in front of her.

{Yes, yes, now!}

Not yet, not yet.

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