Bloodchild. Anna Stephens

Or do you want to stay in Rilpor? Another flutter.

      Rillirin huffed. ‘All right then,’ she muttered to the first stars and the stirring life within her, ‘that’ll do. Rilpor it is. But if we’re staying, I really hope we win.’

      ‘Colonel Thatcher?’ Rillirin hurried to catch up as the officer crossed towards the mess. He paused and waited, giving her a distracted smile. ‘Colonel, I’d like to volunteer.’

      He glanced sidelong at her spear. Despite general Rilporian attitudes to women fighting, her status as a sort-of-Wolf had guaranteed her a weapon when she and Gilda made it to the forts. ‘Volunteer for what?’ he asked.

      ‘Anything, really,’ she said. ‘Anything that gets me out of the forts. Or a transfer to one of the others.’

      He paused by the mess hall door. ‘Transfer? I know we’re tightly packed in here, but the other forts are just as crowded.’

      ‘Away from the Wolves,’ she said in a rush. ‘I’ll go when the civilians go, so it won’t be for long, but I’d like to help out. Riding patrols, perhaps?’

      He gestured her into the mess and followed and they joined a line of people waiting for breakfast. ‘You’re pregnant, aren’t you?’

      ‘Yes, but I can still ride and fight and scout,’ Rillirin said, annoyed at how everyone assumed she was incapable. ‘I’m barely even showing,’ she added.

      Thatcher frowned. ‘Pregnant women get extra rations,’ he said and pointed at the soldier doling out bread and porridge. Rillirin blushed, stammered an apology. ‘As for volunteering or moving barracks, let me see what I can do. Ride and scout and hunt, you say?’

      ‘Well, I’ve done it before a few times,’ she admitted and took the bowl offered, added a spoonful of honey. ‘I want – I need – to be useful. I can’t just sit here doing nothing.’

      ‘I appreciate your enthusiasm, but I need experienced people performing those tasks – the security and provision of the forts isn’t something I can trust to a novice. But I’ll sign you up to train with the militia, and we might get you out on a foraging party or something. There are lists of things that need doing, if you don’t mind hard work.’

      ‘I don’t mind,’ she said. ‘I just need to be busy.’ He nodded, already distracted by another soldier waving a sheaf of papers, and slipped away into the press. Rillirin examined the long trestle tables packed with soldiers and civilians. A knot of Wolves eyed her from a corner; Isbet beckoned with a wave.

      Rillirin took her bowl outside and ate in the early sunlight. Two hours later, she joined three hundred civilians in the drill yard and began to learn to fight like a Ranker. In the afternoon she rode out with a firewood party, and by nightfall she’d been transferred to Fort Three.

      It was exactly what she wanted, so it had to be the pregnancy that made her cry herself to sleep.

       TARA

       Seventh moon, first year of the reign of King Corvus

       Marketplace, First Circle, Rilporin, Wheat Lands

      Tara didn’t know what to think of the shopping list Valan had given her, didn’t want to examine what it said about the man who owned her, who lived a life of brutality and violence, who only three days before had flogged one of his other slaves for breaking a plate.

      The very first of the Rilporian merchants had arrived, those bastards who didn’t care who they sold to or what it was if it turned a profit. The same merchants who sold opium to the rich or the desperate, or stolen goods to the unsuspecting poor, had arrived in a small, wary group outside the gates and Corvus had allowed them entry.

      Tara had to admire their ingenuity even as she cursed their greed. Livestock and grain, jewellery and weapons, fish and information: all were for sale. Some merchants were even accepting slaves as payment and then bartering those for more goods and reselling on again, a loop of wealth that gained them a few copper knights more with each transaction.

      She stared at their bare necks with hungry intensity. Rilporians without slave collars – how was it they were allowed to walk free? She stopped at a stall holding thin bolts of cloth, all of them dyed an uneven blue. The quality was poor, but the price was high and it was the only stall selling material in the required colour.

      ‘How much for eight yards?’ she asked.

      The man leered at her, brown teeth in a pockmarked face. ‘For you, pretty? Depends on what you got to offer. Knock a bit off the price if you’re a good girl.’

      ‘I’m not a good girl,’ Tara said and then cursed as the merchant winked and leered some more. ‘No, is what I’m saying. How much?’

      ‘No? Say no to your owner too, do you? Bet you don’t. How’d it be if I told him you offered yourself to me in exchange for your freedom, eh? How’d that be?’

      Tara rounded the stall and grabbed the man by the front of his shirt, hauled him close until they were nose to nose and she was enveloped in the stink of his breath. ‘How’d it be if I choked you to death with your own shitty linen, you traitorous little wank-stain? I want eight yards and I want a good price.’

      ‘Royal a yard, royal a yard and no less,’ the man croaked.

      Tara shoved him away. ‘I’m not paying you eight silvers. I wouldn’t pay two silvers for this quality of dye.’

      The merchant spat at her. ‘Fucking Mireces can afford it, why shouldn’t I make a profit serving scum like that?’

      Tara could’ve told him why not, could’ve mentioned the fact many of the slaves here in the market would be beaten, starved or executed either for failing to purchase the goods or for buying at too high a price. She knew none of that would matter to this man.

      She put her back to him and snatched up the tailoring shears, started measuring the linen. When he tried to stop her she shoved the shears towards his face and he fell back squealing, though not loudly enough to attract attention.

      Tara hacked off eight yards and threw two silver royals on to the table. ‘And just so we’re clear,’ she snarled in his face. ‘You’re all scum.’ She stalked away before he could reply and made it twenty yards before she remembered to drop her head and slow her steps, kill the fire in her eyes.

      A slave was watching her, standing with a couple of others. A big man, huge in fact, with a beard halfway down his chest. He had a trowel in his hand and was supposed to be shovelling mortar on to the inner face of the wall, right about where it had breached. Where Durdil had died. She blinked and looked away, looked back. The man went to wipe his face, then tapped his fingertips quickly against his heart. Tara faltered, then kept walking. When she was almost past she glanced back, gave him the tiniest nod. A Mireces overseer snapped something at him and he bent to his task again.

       A mason. That could be useful, either to bring the wall down or to blow the fucker up, maybe. Somehow. Failing that, he’s as big as an ox and if he had a shield he could hold a stairwell indefinitely.

      It wasn’t much, but it was a start. Tara checked her list and bought those items she could find. Combs and hair ribbons; four fine cups and plates with a matching pattern of flowers around the edges; linens and breast band, linens for children. The underwear was the only thing she got for a good price, there not being any free women or children in the city who might need such things. So cheap, in fact, that Tara took the enormous risk of buying fresh ones for herself and then, on a whim that could see her executed, she bought two painted wooden horses.

      The slave woman who was selling them wept with silent hopelessness as she handed them over. ‘Your children’s?’ Tara whispered as she paid. The woman nodded; then she looked fearfully over her shoulder at the Raiders crouched in a circle and betting on dice.