Page 23 of The Threadbare Queen

It was a strange sense of vertigo—she felt off-kilter and dizzy, but couldn’t move.

When her cloak had burned, she’d thought her inability to move had been caused by her protective workings reacting to something they couldn’t counter. They hadn't known how to help her, and so they’d kept her in place.

It was not good that she felt the same way again. Whatever this net was, it wasn’t the fire that had burned her cloak before, but it must contain something that was confusing her protections.

And whoever had thrown it had been able to see her, even though she should be invisible to most eyes.

The net suddenly tightened around her thighs, and as it did, she recalled the man from earlier that day, his quick frown as he caught a glimpse of her in the crowd.

At least one personcouldsee her.

And they had clearly tracked her. Tricked her into entering this alley.

Something in the net ignited as she gripped the ropes and tried to pull them up.

Pain flared all around her, white hot and blinding, and Ava fell.

Chapter 6

She came awake to the rattle of wheels over stones.

It was dawn, or just after, because pale gray light seeped between the gaps in the rough wooden walls that had been knocked together to form an enclosed cart.

She was alone in the back, and no longer caught in the net, but something weighed her down.

She had felt its like before, when the Grimwalt Speaker’s agents had tried to take her from the Rising Wave. General Ru still had it, a thin black rope that seemed to suck the energy and will out of a person.

This could be the same one, but as she was sure the general wouldn’t be careless with the one she had, there must be two of them.

The rope bound her hands and wound around her neck, and it burned where it touched her skin.

She was wearing a rough shift, not her own clothes.

She wanted to sit up, but the energy-sapping rope made that impossible, and she found it difficult even to turn her head to see if she could work out which direction the light filtering into the cart was coming from.

They were going north, it seemed.

No surprises there if the Grimwalt Speaker was involved.

The cart finally moved from the stony road to something smoother, and she heard the sound of water.

The cart slowed, and then came to a stop.

Although she needed to relieve herself and wanted some idea of who had her, when she heard the creak of someone standing from the driver’s seat, and the thump of him jumping down, her heart beat harder, fear and panic warring for a place in her chest.

There was a creak of sound as the ill-fitting door at the back of the cart opened, and a man stepped up from the ground to look in.

It was difficult to see him properly and he was backlit by the just-risen sun, but as her eyes adjusted, she saw he was the man from yesterday who’d seen her in the city. He still wore his black cloak. His eyes were light brown and his scruffy beard held a few strands of gray.

He looked her over impersonally, holding a long knife in a gloved hand.

The space was so small, he only had to shuffle in to loom over her, using his gloved hands to unwind the rope into a tight coil.

She took her first proper breath since she’d woken, and the knife slid, cool and deadly, against her throat.

“Now, I’m going to let you out, and you’re going to give me no trouble.”

She wondered, as she pushed herself off the thin, lumpy mattress and got to her feet, if he knew she was a spell caster.

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