I knelt up, arching my back to stretch. The hand that had been beneath Kizzy’s head was floppy and numb, and I shook the blood back into it, tiny, invisible needles stabbing my skin.
My bladder was sore and full, and Girtie wordlessly passed me a bucket. I braced myself against the bars. The sound of my piss hitting tin brought hot sparks of shame to my cheeks, but no one jeered or laughed or looked. At least the men were still asleep.
I dropped my skirts and Kizzy emptied the bucket through the wooden slats of the floor. Already the thin fabric of privacy that had kept us apart from each other was shot through with holes: ripped apart by the men with crimson sashes.
We were moving through another, shallower valley now, forested hills rising gently to each side. This track was well worn, packed hard by countless feet and hooves, and as the day wore on we began to pass people travelling the other way, or else smaller convoys that overtook the lumbering cart.
No one talked to us, threw us a sympathetic glance, or questioned the men. These Settled people were maybe used to the sight of Travellers in cages, or perhaps the crimson sashes gave the slavers some authority.
Our captors were newly awake and bearing almost as many bruises as we were. I was especially proud of the injuries Kizzy had inflicted: deep nail rakes that ran from the man’s forehead, across his eye and to his neck. They were weeping clear liquid, and his eye was closed. He bared small, yellow teeth when he caught me looking, and I shuffled so I was again blocking my sister from sight.
Eventually the hills evened out, rolling gently down into open fields. We must be approaching a settlement: a large one. The black earth was furrowed in straight lines as far as I could see: miles and miles of land threshed and scythed and beaten into submission.
Here and there were blackened nubs of tree trunks, cut close to the ground but with roots too deep to rip out. The Settled had painted them with tar, but beneath the surface the roots were still spreading, clinging to the ground that was theirs first and would be again, long after the people who chopped them down were buried in the dirt.
The road continued to broaden until you could have driven three wagons abreast down it. As the low, square shapes of houses began to dot the roadside, labourers started to appear in the fields.
Some of them were dark skinned like us, with wavy black hair that you never saw in the Settled. But not even they looked at us. I could only guess they were slaves: surely no Traveller would choose such a life?
Kizzy pressed her cheeks to the cold metal bars, and watched them take up their tools and begin working at the earth, still frosted and glittering.
‘Why do they not use their tools to attack?’ she whispered. ‘Why do they not hack them all to pieces?’
The longing in her voice turned my stomach.
The houses began to line the road, and as the road took a rounded curve around a small hillock, I saw our destination: a walled hill, with houses carpeting its steep sides.
On top, ridiculous and looming, was a castle. I had never seen one so large, so in opposition to the downcast houses we had passed thus far. Its turrets pierced the sky, black needles against the clouds, sharp as bared teeth set in grey gums. A flag fluttered from the highest tower, black with a crimson slash diagonally across it. So Fen was right: the slavers were boyar’s men after all.
As we drew closer I could make out shapes topping the walls: crouched, enormous. I was not the only person who’d noticed.
‘Demoni!’ Morsh moaned, pointing. ‘Demons!’
‘They’re only statues,’ said Fen, but he sounded shaken too. I could see he was right, but the shapes were so intricately made, the grey light so uncertain, that at any moment they seemed ready to spring down from their places and attack. I crossed my fingers against them, barely able to breathe.
But before we reached the walls, the cart was jerked to a halt. I pulled my attention from the castle and the statues and looked around. We had drawn over to the side of the road, in front of a large, long stone structure, the size of five caravans laid end to end.
It had once been fine: the wooden door held remnants of blue paint, and the lintel was carved where it had not rotted away. But there was obviously no care left here.
We would never allow our homes to fall into such disrepair. Curtains were replaced if stained, uneven hems mended and holes darned as soon as they appeared. We were proud of the places we lived: I guessed the owner of this house had reason to be ashamed.
The men following behind approached the cage door, swords drawn.
‘Be ready,’ murmured Kizzy.
‘For what?’ I said, but she was not listening. She bared her teeth at the man who bore her nail marks, and he hit the cage bars with the flat of his sword, the way the Settled hit Albu’s cage with sticks to try and rattle him, before they were chased off by Mamă.
Mamă. The memory of the burnt wagon hit me hard in the chest.
Winded, I was too slow to stop Kizzy. The moment they unlocked the bolt she leapt forward, dark legs flailing, moving as though she would run and never stop.
But the nail-marked man was revived by his rest. He was faster than me, faster even than Kizzy. He caught her about the waist and threw her to the ground, boot brought down directly onto her long hair, bound by Old Charani’s scarf.
Laughing, one of his companions placed his own foot on one of Kizzy’s wrists, whooping and jeering as she kicked, her skirts falling up her thighs. I made a convulsive movement as he reached down, and pinched Kizzy just above the knee, but Fen was out of the cart first.
‘Leave her!’
He was rewarded with a square punch to the jaw, but the men released their hold on Kizzy enough for her to stand up and pull down her dress. Mamă’s bodice was askew, and I longed to straighten it, pull it up higher. Longed to claw out the man’s other eye.
‘Can’t sell soiled goods anyway,’ he spat, and shoved her back into the cart. I pulled her towards me. I could see a thin beading of blood along her scalp where her hair had been ripped out in her efforts to writhe free. ‘But any more of that, and each of your friends gets a scar to match the one you’ve given me.’
Fen went to follow Kizzy, but the soldier yanked him back. ‘You stay there. And you, and you, and you—’ he pointed to Morsh, and two of the other older boys. ‘Out too.’
Morsh looked up at Girtie, who cast a terrified glance at the blade the man had gestured with. She nodded, but could not meet the boy’s eye as he clambered out, the other boys following. The cart door was locked again, and the four boys lined up along outside.
One of the soldiers returned from the large stone house with a short, stout man who put me in mind of a badger with his greying hair, long face and small black eyes.
‘Morning, Captain Vereski. Where’re these from?’
‘The western hills,’ replied our captor.
The man nodded approvingly. ‘They’re coming closer. We’ll have a steady supply soon.’
He walked slowly along the line, turning the boys’ heads this way and that, peeling back their lips with his grimy hand and making them stick out their tongues. Fen stood tall when the badger man reached him, but I could see his legs shaking slightly. His hands were grasped behind his back, and Kizzy slipped her finger through the bars and stroked his palm. He stopped shaking.
The badger man nodded. ‘Twenty.’
‘Fifty,’ said Captain Vereski.