Chapter 2

A feather fell from above. As if in a dream, Amelia put out her hand to receive it. It was a perfect curve of cuticle, fluffy down smoothing into a white moon. She lifted her eyes trying to find the source of the mysterious gift from the heavens. A bird circled the rafters, trapped by tile. She stroked the feather between her fingers as the tug on the collar around her neck pulled her forward. The girl in front of her was crying, the bones of her shoulder blades jerking with her sobs. Her spine was a path of knobbly points from which the curves of her rib bones spread like wings. Amelia lifted the feather to her lips and blew it away, watching it trip and turn in the air, caught in the current of heat that gusted over the chain of naked women, keeping them from freezing in the winter-sharp air. The feather landed in a puddle of blood, the fragile white threads stark against its darkness, picking up the red like ink. The blood had dripped down the body of the man strung from the rafters, running from the two-inch wound in his throat, spreading slowly through the threads of his shirt, tracking down until it puddled in the lines of his palms, before flowing down to drip in a slow splash from his still twitching fingertips. She met his eyes, vacant now, the light gone from behind them. The jerk of pressure against the collar moved her forward. It was an odd shuffling dance of reluctant dancers. Step and stand, step and stand, with the current of hot air lifting the tails of her hair across her skin and drying her eyes. The sunlight broke through a window, catching the dust kicked up by the jostling men, refracting off the floating grains. She turned her face into its warmth, gentler than the heated air, and passed her hand through the dust, disrupting its flow, watching the particles drawn towards her, then blown out by her breath. The bird must have come in the same way as the watching crowd did, she decided. Through the large double doors standing open at the other end of the large structure, and not through the smaller door to the side by which the women had been led out onto the raised platform. She watched the bird seeking escape. It was beginning to realize that the way to freedom was not up, but through the predators that lurked below it. A gauntlet of fire, she thought, as she watched it brave a run towards the door, and she smiled as it found its freedom. The crowd was almost entirely male, which did not surprise her, considering what they were there to purchase. They were a big species. Both broad shouldered and tall, but also heavily muscled and strong jawed. An attractive people, but there was a hardness to them, a ferocity in their expression and mannerism, and a brutality to their interactions both with each other, and with their captives. Their skin was scarred, deliberately in patterns, and by their nature, from in-fighting. Amelia had seen both occur since her capture. She had watched in fascination as one had carved a pattern into a blank space on his chest before rubbing a black powder into the bleeding wound after winning a bare-fist fight with a competitor. She had not been sure what the argument had been about, but the loser had left wearing a scar across his cheek that had not been administered black powder and was not as decorative. The faces turned up towards her were all scarred in one way or another. They moved restlessly, reminding her of the waves of the ocean against the sand. The men came in through the double doors, pressed their way through the crowd, waving their hands into the air and calling out, their voices hard and harsh, the light catching on the metal cuffs on their wrists. The cuffs were important. They used the cuffs for everything, opening cage doors, operating vehicles, activating weapons, communication, and releasing the collars around their slaves necks. Amelia reached up and hooked her fingers around the collar she wore, feeling the ridges and carvings that she had never seen for herself, but she knew by touch were identical to those on the necks of the women around her. She had examined the collar on the woman before her intently from her position, and believed she understood how it would open, the hinge hidden in engravings that were almost pretty. Her new position drew her in line with where a woman was staked to the ground, on her knees, her arms splayed before her. They had shaved her head, and she had fought them during the process by the many small, bleeding knicks in her scalp. She had been whipped, the lashes vivid across pale skin, red darkening as the bruising set in. The whip had broken the skin at some points, the blood running down her pale skin like paint. Her head was turned to the side, her eyelashes a dark curve against her cheek. She was still panting from the beating, her sides sucking in and out as she fought against the pain for air. She was below the heated air current, and her lips and nails were turning blue. A man, dressed in the black uniform of the invaders, stood just before the kneeling woman, and looked up meeting Amelia s gaze with eyes the colour of emeralds. For a moment, it was if everything else around her retreated into the distance, the noise of the crowd, the sobbing of the women, faded into white noise. The collar pulled, and Amelia took another step, her eyes dragged from the man only momentarily. He moved, keeping pace with her, his eyes still on hers. The crowds that pressed against the raised platform on which the women walked seemed to move around him like water parting around rock. There was a scurry ahead of her, the audience growing excited over the girl at the head of the queue. She was red-haired, something obviously exotic to them. There was a surge towards the stage, wrists raised. Fists flew, and the crowd parted as two began a fight, snarling, spitting bright blood. Fabric tore and the ground below her feet moved as the combatants rolled into the supports for the raised platform on which the slaves to be auctioned were displayed. They only used their weapons against Amelia s people, never amongst themselves. Amongst themselves, they used what nature had given them – and from the injuries, nature had been generous. The men around them laughed and bared their teeth in sneers, occasionally contributing a kick into the melee, and exchanging commentary between themselves. Betting on the outcome, she determined, as she saw them tap their cuffs together, exchanging whatever they used as currency. The green-eyed man continued to stare at her, indifferent to the scuffle behind him. His hair was elaborately braided, a thick column from crown to nape interwoven with smaller braids of varying thickness and styles of plaiting, threaded with carved white beads. Released from its braids, she thought, his hair would be long, almost to his waist. She wondered what it would be like to run her fingers through the heavy silk of it. There was a crack and a scream from the fight in the crowd. The winner wiped blood from his chin as he moved forward to claim his prize. The loser nursed a broken arm as he withdrew. The red-haired girl screamed and begged, as the chain connecting her to the girl behind separated, and the one in her new owner s hand connected, magnetically drawn to a port that glowed briefly blue. Her new owner fingered her hair, laughing, as he tugged her down the stairs and into the crowd. She saw several reach out to touch it. The girl in front of Amelia was a blonde. The man in charge of sales spoke at length, touching her hair and body, making her turn around so the audience could view her from behind. The bidding was almost as frantic for her as for the red-head. When Amelia was drawn up to the front, the green-eyed man moved to stand by the staircase. She looked at him and knew that he intended to buy her. Amelia s hair was almost as dark as their own, and the salesman focused on other points, sliding his hands down her waist, and pinching her buttock between his fingers, with a grin before stroking his palm over her stomach. The green-eyed man did not like that, his posture changing, and his lips peeling back from his lips in a snarl revealing sharper canine and pre-molars. The salesman stuck his fingers in Amelia s mouth, and she bit down in surprise, earning herself a slap, a sharp sting of pain across her cheek, designed to caution and not to harm. He pinched her cheeks against her teeth, growling down at her, his dark eyes fierce. The audience laughed at this exchange, and there were a number of bids, the green-eyed man amongst them, and, from the attitude of the salesman, he had bid the highest. The two men spoke for a moment, and the green-eyed man put a foot on the first step, when, from the back, another man man spoke, and the gathering of men fell silent. The crowd parted and the new man stalked through them. She looked at the green-eyed man and saw that he had melted into the crowd. Her heart raced in her chest. Surely he would not surrender so easily? The new man s eyes met and fixed on hers. They were an astonishing blue, and he was possibly the most heavily scarred man that she had seen, the majority of the scars winners marks. He stepped up the stairs and tilted her face up. He was ridiculously tall, even for one of them, towering over her, and he wore the black uniform of the invading force, rather than the muted colours of the others in the crowd. Whatever he said, the salesman agreed emphatically from his tone of voice. There was a tap of cuffs, and an exchange of chains, and Amelia followed her new owner back down the stairs searching the crowd for green-eyes and finding none. As they stepped out of the building through the double doors but, unlike the bird, she did not pass through them into freedom, but rather slavery. There was only one reason that men bought women.