Chapter Three

They traveled for days in silence. Even the normally chatty Zoya didn’t speak.

By the fifth evening, as they waited for Ivan to finish cooking the boar Kachka had taken down earlier in the day, they sat on boulders and stumps, in a circle, in a thickly wooded forest deep in Annaig Valley. It was a risk to travel through this area, but as Daughters of the Steppes, they could slip through easily enough. Duke Salebiri’s men often gave them a wide berth. At least for now. Perhaps, the more power Salebiri obtained, the more difficult it would become. But, so far, no one had bothered them.

Silently, they watched the boar turn on the spit as Ivan cleaned potatoes. His sister had started to help him, but when they all stared at her, wondering what she could possibly be thinking, she stopped.

Then, suddenly, Nina Chechneva closed her eyes and took in a deep breath. At first, Kachka assumed she was scenting the boar. Ivan had seasoned it nicely. But then the strange female slowly got to her feet and her body began to . . . undulate in a manner that made Kachka entirely uncomfortable.

Nina lifted her head, sniffing the air like one of Dagmar Reinholdt’s dogs.

“I smell,” she whispered, “fresh, untainted souls. Tortured. In pain. And oh-so-ripe,” she panted out. “Ripe for the taking.”

Marina Aleksandrovna leaned over and muttered to Kachka, “Are we going to have to put up with this sort of thing all the time? Because that does not work for me.”

Kachka gave a wave of her hand. “Don’t worry, comrade. I will handle this.” She focused on Nina Chechneva and, after a brief moment, punched the air-grinding female in the leg.

“Ow!” the witch screeched, turning on Kachka, black eyes flashing. “You vicious goat!”

“Whatever you’re doing, fiend, stop it. You’re making everyone uncomfortable!”

“Not me,” Zoya happily argued. “Let the demoness dance to her dark gods! Everyone should do what they love!”

Marina glared at Zoya for a moment, green eyes twitching, until she snarled, “Shut up.”

Nina sat back on her tree stump. “I was just telling you that there are people over there.”

“In the future, find a better way to do that.”

“She is right,” Zoya Kolesova said, her stomach grumbling like an angry bear. “I can hear them. There are people, maybe a mile or so, over there. I hear weapons.”

“You hear weapons a mile away?”

“I am Kolesova. We always know when there are men around . . . fresh for the plucking.”

Ivan snapped his fingers, and he and his sister switched places so that Yelena sat closer to Zoya.

“Why did you say they were in pain?” Tatyana asked. Always inquisitive, that one. She simply couldn’t leave well enough alone.

“Because they are,” Nina replied. “I feel their despair. Their misery. They cry out to be . . . helped.” She shrugged. “My guess . . . probably slaves being taken to market.”

“Slaves?” Zoya asked. She abruptly stood to her mighty, towering height. “Then we must go!”

“We don’t need to go anywhere,” Kachka replied.

“There might be a boy or two who would be good for my daughters.”

“We don’t have time to buy slaves.”

“Not buy, Kachka Shestakova. Rescue.”

“We don’t have time to rescue slaves either. Do you not understand what we’re doing?”

“Actually,” Marina cut in, “none of us understands what we’re doing. You haven’t told us.”

Kachka frowned. “I haven’t?”

“No.”

She gave a small wave of her hand. “Eh.”

Zoya walked off, shooting over her giant shoulder, “With so many daughters, you must understand that I have to find quality men wherever I can.”

“We should follow her, shouldn’t we?” Tatyana asked.

“Should we?” Kachka glanced around. “I’m quite comfortable.”

“And it’s not like we asked her here,” Marina tossed in. “She invited herself.”

“Cousin . . .”

“Fine!” Kachka stood. “We will follow the great beast.”

And they did. It wasn’t as if they had to try hard. Zoya moved through the trees like a herd of elephants.

“Excellent!” Zoya cheered when they reached the other party. “Slavers! With boys!”

“We really don’t have time for this, Zoya,” Kachka called out to her.

“Oh, come now!” Zoya cheered, making the slavers wince at the sound. They’d probably heard little but the sobs of the newer slaves for many days. “There are a few here who could be quite worthy of my daughters.”

“Doesn’t your human queen have problems with slavers?” Marina asked.

“Large problems.”

Ivan stood beside Kachka, looking over the slavers.

“You’re not going to let that boar burn, are you?” She was starving.

“No, no. It’s fine.” He seemed to be studying the group.

“What?” Kachka asked him.

“Seems an awful lot of armed protection for such weak-looking slaves, Kachka Shestakova.”

Putting her ravenous hunger aside, Kachka now studied the group herself.

And Ivan was right.

“You and your sister circle around,” she told Ivan softly while Zoya examined the wares and commented on them . . . loudly.

The Khoruzhaya siblings eased back into the surrounding trees as the rest of them moved closer to the slavers. Kachka just wanted to make sure there was nothing to worry about. She didn’t want to wake up in the middle of the night, fighting for her life against slavers who thought the small group could be added to their purchases.

What Kachka noticed right away was that the slavers became more tense, hands straying to the hilts of their weapons, as her group approached.

“And look at this one!” Zoya went on in the common tongue, oblivious as always. “Why did you have to beat him so?”

Zoya was right. The boy was young and could easily be managed without beating him to a pulp, but men . . . they weren’t really thinkers, were they? Always basing their actions on emotion and their own delicate egos.

“Cousin?” Tatyana said softly as she pointed out some random slave that Kachka knew for a fact her cousin would have no interest in.

“Yes?”

“The slave wearing the full cloak, to the far left?”

Kachka glanced over, then away, but saw nothing of interest. “What about him?”

“The boots he wears. Those are the boots of the Praetorian Guard.”

“So?”

“The Praetorian Guard provides personal protection for the royal family of the Quintilian Provinces. If my information is correct,” and they both knew it was, “your Southlander queen has a very strong and fruitful alliance with the king of that region. I’m sure it would not hurt if you looked into the capture of one of the king’s personal guards.”

“Look into the capture of a guard so weak he is captured by slavers?”

Ignoring Marina’s smirk and soft laugh, Tatyana moved closer and said, “Do you really think a king’s personal guard would be so easy to capture?”