Total pages in book: 222
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 210715 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 1054(@200wpm)___ 843(@250wpm)___ 702(@300wpm)
Thick calloused fingers grasped my chin and lifted my face. The man in front of me was large, with broad shoulders and the kind of seasoned strength you sometimes saw among the older MMA trainers, the guys who stood in the fighter’s corner and screamed incomprehensible advice and curses during the matches. He was in his fifties, with skin the color of sand and longish dark hair brushed back from his forehead. His face, with a sharp nose and dark hooded eyes, showed no emotion. Derog Olgren. The slavemonger.
His eyes studied me.
Like being caught in the claws of an old eagle.
Behind him, another man stood, holding a coin purse and a book with a quill in it. He was in his late thirties, pale, with short, dark blond hair. Lasa, the bookkeeper.
I tried to look oblivious and trusting.
Derog turned my head left, then right.
“She’s untouched,” Darotha told him. “Healthy. Not diseased.”
That first one was not strictly true. I wasn’t a virgin, but I doubted they would check. My value wasn’t between my legs, it was in my mouth.
Derog grimaced and let me go. “It’s supply and demand, Darotha. Customers who risk buying a fucktoy want something extraordinary.”
“She’s docile. She won’t run off, and she will do whatever you tell her to. Smile, Maggie.”
I produced a bright plastic smile.
Derog’s gaze sharpened. He reached over, pressed his thumb against my upper lip, and pulled it up, exposing my teeth. Ugh.
“Open your mouth.”
I opened and held still.
“Close it.”
I did.
“I’ll take her.”
Lasa stepped forward. “Two nomas.”
Darotha drew back in outrage. “Five!”
“Two nomas, ten dens.”
“Four nomas, forty dens.”
Telling Darotha that she could pocket whatever money she sold me for might have been a mistake.
“Three nomas,” Lasa declared. “Take it or leave it.”
“Fine.”
He dropped three silver coins into Darotha’s palm. The woman squirreled them away. “This man is in charge of you, Maggie. You be a good girl and obey him. I’m leaving now.”
I raised my hand and gave her a small wave.
“Follow me,” Derog told me.
I followed him and Lasa through the door into a large, well-lit hallway.
“Ciskan?” Lasa asked.
“Mhm,” Derog said.
“I’ll make the arrangements. Talpot is waiting for you in the pen, as you ordered.”
We kept walking.
Ciskan was an auldor, a minor aristocrat, the lowest rank of Kair Toren’s civilian nobility. It went king, duke, margrave or earl, baron, and everything below was an auldor. Some auldors had riches and land, others barely scraped by. Ciskan owned a thriving winery. He was wealthy, reclusive, and odd, and he had a crippling phobia of bad teeth. His fear was so severe that even something minor, like a gap or slightly crooked tooth, sparked an anxiety attack. One time he was forced to carry on a conversation with a man whose teeth had turned black from decay. After five minutes Ciskan fainted, fell down the stairs, and had to be treated for a concussion and a broken arm.
Derog had been supplying Ciskan with dentally sound slaves for the last seven years. Unfortunately for the two of them, Derog obtained slaves in two ways: by kidnapping them or buying them from desperate families. Both methods targeted the poor, and finding an award-winning smile among malnourished children was very rare. But I had enjoyed the benefits of twenty-first-century dentistry. All those years of high school braces had given me an Instagram smile, and my mouth was a poem in enamel to Crest 3D White. To Derog, I was a sure way to make a significant profit.
We turned the corner and stopped before a heavy wooden double door in the wall on our right. Lasa removed the inch-thick metal bar securing it and held it open. A stone staircase led down, and I could see a small section of brightly lit stone floor.
A long bloody smear stretched across the left wall as if a heavily bleeding person had leaned onto it, tried to climb the stairs, and then slid down. The blood was old and brown. There was so much blood. Someone had died here.
I want out. Let me out.
Derog started down. I had to follow.
It would be fine. I would just count the steps and not look at the blood. One, two . . .
Behind us, Lasa shut the door and caught up. I was so on edge, I could feel him behind me. I knew exactly where he was without looking.
Twenty-two. We had run out of stairs.
Derog turned to the left and I made myself mirror his movement. A large room stretched in front of us, illuminated by wall lanterns shielded with metal cages. Wooden double bunks lined the walls. Directly opposite us, a doorway allowed a glimpse of a latrine, sectioned off from the rest of the room by an interior wall. To the right of it, a big wooden door, reinforced with iron strips, loomed in the wall. The entrance to the escape tunnel.