Page 14 of Lich's Mate

“If there’s anything I can do to help,” I start to offer, trailing off. “...I could give you some of my water if it would help.”

She shakes her head.

“No, you’re just as bad off as I am,” she says. “I can’t take your water. It wouldn’t feel right.”

I nod in response.

She looks at me as though studying me.

“What makes you so sure we’re going to be okay?” she asks.

I can’t hide my surprise at the question.

“Oh, I don’t know. It just feels like the right thing to say in situations like this.”

She shakes her head. Her eyebrows furrow.

“That’s not it though,” she replies. “When you said it, you weren’t just reassuring me. There was confidence in it.”

I try to prop myself up as we climb another incline. She clutches her wrist, still wincing from the pain.

“So what do you know that I don’t? Why aren’t you scared for your fucking life, like the women who tried to run out of here, and wound up dead?”

I shrug.

“I guess I just know that if we’re their ‘cargo,’ they’re going to lose too much of us in transit the way they’re treating us,” I suggest. “Two of us have died of starvation.”

She nods.

“Mary and Ellish,” she says. “I knew them well. Terrible loss.”

“...Four have tried to run off, but failed,” I continue, emphasizing with a solemn nod that I agreed. “Our numbers are dwindling. If they don’t start feeding us better, they’re going to wind up on the bad side of whoever’s paying them to move us.”

Abigail leans in closer, as though to whisper. A whisper couldn’t cross the threshold though.

“I heard his name is Gorran,” she says in a hushed voice. “They say he works out of Ikoth. Claim he doesn’t give two shits about any of us.”

This seems doubtful to me.

“He doesn’t care about us… yet he’s paying these people to move us. Yeah, I don’t know how much I’d trust that information.”

My stomach gurgles, the food clearly having a negative impact on my body.

The terrain changes rather suddenly, and I realize that we’re rolling forward, not on mounds of dirt and makeshift streets but on stone pathways. Clearly, this area is much better maintained.

Which doesn’t bode well for us.

On one hand, I’m glad to be rolling along smooth surfaces, rather than clutching on for dear life, trying not to injure myself against the poorly maintained cages.

On the other, I can see the silhouettes of buildings in the distance.

We come to a stop suddenly, even though we’re not in the town yet. From the looks of it, our destination is still a ways away.

That’s when several xaphans come trodding back, their footsteps resounding against the hard stone ground.

At the very least, these xaphans look kinder than the one who neglected and beat us.

And what’s far better, they’re no longer bringing back portions of inedible gruel. Instead, I see braised meat and fresh water.

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