Read Magic Bitter, Magic Sweet for Free Online

“Take it, take it, give me her !”
    “No!” Cleric Tuck shouts, his voice matching the volume of the buyer’s. I turn around to face him, frantic that he’ll be caught, yet desperate for him to save me.
    “Tuck,” I cry.
    He reaches for me, his chain taut. I do the same, pulling the iron links to their limit. Our fingertips touch.
    The trader calls others over to help. A clamor of footsteps and keys tickles my ears as I yank at my tether until the shackle cuts into my ankle. The other slaves in our pen are stirring, curious, watching. Silent.
    The gate opens, and men—none of whom are the bandits who ransacked my home—surround me. They grab my arms and hips before I can even attempt to struggle, and one pulls a sour-smelling burlap sack over my face, as though I’m a scared bird. I hear a muffled cry and that all-too-familiar sound of weight striking flesh. I cry out for Cleric Tuck as my captors wrench my arms back to bind them. I kick off the ground, throwing myself against the chest of the man holding me.
    My fingers touch a warm, metal ring, and a sensation like vinegar rushes up my arm and into my blood.
    “Hold her!” barks one of the men. I struggle against the chain around my ankle and slam back into the captor again, not hard enough to move him, just enough to distract him. My sweating hand grasps for that key ring and tugs. It resists.
    A club beats into my shoulder. I cry out and drop to my knees, but the weight of my fall tugs the keys loose. Despite the throbbing radiating down my shoulder blade and up my neck, I flail on the dirt, trying to kick up as much dust as possible before I throw the keys in Cleric Tuck’s direction, praying—even to Strellis—that he sees them, and the others don’t.
    Then I’m pinned. The men slam my face into the ground, and I cut my lip on my front teeth. Using rough rope, they bind first my elbows, then my wrists. It digs into the wounds left by the iron cuffs, and I grit my teeth and weep. They yank me upright when they’re finished, unhook my ankle, and shove me forward without removing the bag from my head.
    To my relief, my buyer does not grab me by my bindings and worsen my injuries, but places one clammy hand on the back of my neck and the other on my chest, though not in a lecherous manner. He guides me this way through the narrow passageways between the slave cells and beyond. I’m not sure where we’re going; I can see only a sliver of rusty earth at the base of the bag. I stumble several times, but my buyer’s pace does not slow, nor do his cold hands move.
    My buyer. My captor. Not my master. I’ll never call him master.
    I wonder if we’ll get far enough for me to run. Could I outrun this tall, awkward man?
    “Here, here, get in,” he says after a quarter hour of walking. My stomach bumps against the bed of a narrow wagon. “Step up!”
    It’s nearly impossible to do this without the use of my arms, but he pushes me forward nonetheless. I manage to get a knee up onto the wagon’s lip, and he shoves me indelicately. I roll and feel splinters dig into my arms where sleeves don’t cover me. The sliver of sight the bag allows me widens ever so slightly.
    The wagon shifts as he mounts the driver’s seat, and a donkey brays and jerks us forward. The smell of moldy straw seeps between the network of burlap covering my face. I wiggle back and forth, trying to shift the bag off my head, but the space is so cramped and the ride so jarring, I can’t find easy purchase. Sometime into our journey, I give up and lie there, resting. I consider jumping over the side of the wagon, but the way I’m bound—my shoulders stretched out behind me—I’m certain to cause injury. And what if the motion doesn’t knock free my blindfold?
    I don’t know this man. Will he hurt me like the marauders hurt the other women? Will he do worse?
    I remember his words.
    “Please!” I shout over the sound of the wagon and donkey. “You said you knew me. Did you speak