Dead Letters: In The Ruins Of Hope Page 3

  ~

  She knew better than to take the job. Broke a lot of her rules. But when the guy offered to pay up front, in full, it piqued her interest. Mary could tell it showed too, because the guy sat down across from her with a smug look on his sour face. It looked all scrunched together, like he’d eaten spoon full of vinegar. Right here, right now, two thousand silver coins. Along with a hundred and fifty copper shillings for expenses. That would pay back one of her bigger debts and still give her a nice jingle in that otherwise woeful pocket.

  “And tell me again why I can’t know what I’m carrying?” She asked him. The man claimed to be from Las, a trader of some reputation, and went by the name Reginald Winters. So fake it made her laugh when he had introduced himself. She’d been to Las and knew he was a liar. The man hadn’t bothered to even half-ass a braid in his hair. The people of that cold place wore their braids with pride. Even the exiled and condemned kept their hair knotted.

  “What’s inside is quite sensitive. Valuable to the Hermetic College. My man will meet you at the mark and take the cargo the rest of the way.” He’d tossed down a crude map with one of the most haphazard routes she had ever seen drawn on it. “And if you leave straight away, I’ll send word to him to offer a bonus. Half the standard fare.” That had got her and he knew it. Shifty or not, that was too much coin to pass up.

  By the time Mary had readied Oats and bought supplies, on credit, Reginald had already filled her cart with three massive wooden crates. He'd also handed over a satchel stuffed with silver. Mary later thanked her lucky stars for leaving that bag with the local scribe. Along with insisting on a signed letter of retrieval. Otherwise nothing would have come from that awful trip. The boxes bothered her more than she cared to admit.

  This whole thing was off from tip to tail. Not knowing what she was hauling was just the start. The path he wanted her to go by screamed she was being followed. It looped and broke direction every which way, even doubling back on itself a few times. Not only that, but attached to each of the crates, at the top was a glass jar filled with a pinkish gas. She figured it wasn’t able to completely leak out thanks to a cotton stopper. But it was giving whatever was inside a good dose of the fumes.

  While all this should have made her run for the hills, desperation had become her middle name. It wasn’t far into the run that things turned south. Mary took the cart around a long turn. From the tree line came six other riders. They had their faces in wraps. If Mary hadn’t already been taking the turn fast, they would have overwhelmed her. As it were, she was able to gain a little head way after the turn evened out. She utilized that to jump from the cart to Oats’ back and kick off the hitch.

  Now liberated from the weight of their haul, Oats sped off from the bandits. Sadly the cargo didn’t appear to be what all of them were after because three continued the chase. Ditching the goods had been a tactic that saved her life more than once. Nothing was worth dying over and since she had to travel without guard, it had worked well in the past. She would just ditch out and give them what they wanted. Paying a refund was far cheaper than a funeral.

  However, she could tell by how hard those three were pushing their horses, this wasn’t going to end well. She spurred Oats into a frenzy and lunged off her back. She hit the dusty road and rolled hard to her right, she flattened out in the ditch. Oats would keep on for hours and hopefully lead them on a chase wide enough for her to slip away. Mary pressed as tight to the ground as she could. Her heart was pounding in her ears when the bandits rushed by but stopped only a small way up from her position. She tried to keep still when she heard boots hit the ground.

  “She’s here.” A long, wet snorting sound. As if a dog were sniffing the air.

  “Ditch,” another one said, followed by scrapes across the ground.

  “Well, that’s obvious.”

  “No, milk sucker, she's in the ditch.” Mary jumped up and ran. She ran along the ditch a way before scaling up the side and back on the road. Her plan was to cross quickly and make it to the trees. Would have been a sound idea if they hadn’t been faster. One slammed into her and they both tumbled to the ground. She sprang up first and drew a thin dagger which had cut more goat roast than people, but it turned out to be apt at both.

  She thrust blind and he let out a scream somewhere between a person and a doused cat. She pulled back to lunge forward again, but before she could a rock cracked against her shoulder. It hit with enough force to spin her around, dagger flying. The one she stabbed flew at her then and knocked her on her back. Looming above her, Mary finally got a chance to get a good look at him.

  The wrap had fallen almost completely off his face to reveal sharp teeth. A fine reddish fur covering his body. One yellow eye sliced almost completely in half cried blood down on her. He was a Gooya, a male Nanako, in fact. His presence here confused her to such an extent that Mary didn’t feel the first cuts from his angry claws.

  There were few Gooya in Mandria. They were mostly confined to ghettos in the larger cities and almost unheard of out in the country. People weren’t kind to the half folk here. They were often victims of lynching or just downright murdered in mass for any conceivable reason. The last Gooyas she had seen were a tiny family of Aluieen and those winged people were just passing through.

  That shock of discovery didn’t last long. Mary curled into a ball to avoid as much of his sharp claws and vicious kicks as she could. His companions arrived and manged to pull him off her. They were also Nanako. The largest of them hauled her to her feet. Mary was cut and bruised in a dozen places but able to answer their questions, though she didn’t have many to give. Turns out they weren’t bandits at all. They were actually after her cargo for a completely different reason than money. The big one didn’t seem happy with her story.

  She told him about Winters and everything that happened before they rushed her. He dragged her back to the cart without a word. Back at the cart, Mary felt her heart sink when she saw what had been in the crates. The ones who hadn’t pursued her were helping Nanako females to their feet. They looked groggy and stumbled often, one couldn’t stand even with help. Her head just rolled around with eyes wide but vacant. It was obvious the three of them had been heavily drugged.

  Their leader explained to her that they were kidnapped from a ghetto in the capital by the man she called Winters. The men had given chase but he switched transport often and they had lost the trail. It had only been thanks to their good sense of smell that they had tracked her down at all. She was a slaver to them, no better than the men who had kidnapped their wives and daughters in the night.

  Mary felt sick, she knew where they would have ended up. Tris, to the south, was famous for its Pleasure Bazaar. Mary was familiar enough with the other kingdoms to know not all of them shared Mandria's aversion to the Gooya. While still second class citizens, Nanako women were popular as comfort girls. Worse yet, Winters might have been telling her the truth. He could have been selling them to the Khemics at their college. There were rumors of horrible experimentation on people deemed unfit. It wouldn’t be a stretch to think the Gooya fit into that category.

  She became a topic of heated debate among her captors. A few of them wanted her given a punishment fit for her crime. Some were very interested in burning her alive. While another group wanted her drawn and quartered. There were a few leaning more to the side that thought she had more to tell, at least she hoped there was. At any rate, they all agreed it would be better taken care of in the morning because tonight was a night to celebrate.

  The women were overjoyed at being rescued. The men manged to throw together a pretty impressive party with what little they had. A lyre showed up from somewhere and a bottle of cider was passed around. When night had fully settled and so did they, all in a heap around the fire. Mary had been unceremoniously tied to her wagon wheel.

  They all seemed to be passed out but she was still careful to keep her gentle rocking in check. There was a cracked spoke where the
rope was looped through. She figured with enough persistence the sharp edge of the crack might just get her out of here. It was slow going and she ached from the earlier beating. She had a dozen cuts along her body. Mary could tell by the dull pain in her jaw she was sporting a nasty bruise.

  She ached but the prospect of what they would do to her in the morning was powerful motivation. Up, down, up, down. That became all she thought about. When the rope would get hung on the wood, Mary felt almost giddy knowing it was a little closer.

  “Trying to escape?” The voice was close and made her freeze. She’d been so focused she hadn’t heard anyone approach. “You know, your kind are amazing. Even caught red handed, you still try to worm out.” She recognized him as he got closer. The bandage over his eye was red with blood.

  “I didn’t...” His fist knocked the rest of her words away and split her lip.

  “Why do you think I listen?” He leaned in closer, the smell of bad apples burned her nose. “It’s all lies, right?” He nodded, not needing an answer. His claws moved so fast Mary didn’t have time to flinch. One dug deep into her left ass cheek and sliced through the cord that had held up her breeches in the process.

  She let out a