“You dare defy me,” Er’it hissed against her ear, arms locked around Aida as he lifted her clear off her feet. Letting her kick and shriek into the chaos as everyone stared with wide eyes and confusion ran rampant through the dingy air.
“Majesty, perhaps—”
“Silence!” Er’it growled low in his throat, and it was that which stilled Aida’s struggles. “Fetch me rope, Ath’asho.”
Aida’s wide eyes fixed on Ath’asho, the murky depths of her fear shining in her gaze as he opened his mouth. Then with a stiff nod he turned away to do as his king bid him. The wail of denial building inside of her slammed around her chest. Clawing its way through soft tissue to be free of its mortal confines, to be free to shout into the Abyss.
Yet Aida remained silent. The scream didn’t pass her open lips, as neither did her breath. Suffocating by degrees until her limbs tingled with numbness, she hung limp in Er’it arms. Even as the rope wound tight over and under her wrists, tightening to the point of pain. Though her mouth fell open, and she shrieked and flailed within her head, not a muscle twitched as another length of coarse strands connected her neck to her bound wrists. All of it hobbled together with a far longer piece Er’it knotted around the stiff handle of the beast’s leather seat.
“You don’t wish to ride with me, princess? So be it.” With that Er’it dropped her to the earth, letting her crumple at his feet before he stalked towards the gray creature and mounted it once more.
“Up, Lady! Up,” Ath’asho said, tugging Aida to her feet though he kept a watchful gaze upon his king. “You must hurry now.”
Dragging in choking breaths tainted by grit and pain, Aida struggled to get her feet under her. She whined as blood rushed into her limbs with the sensation of being pricked by a thousand pins. With the caustic taste of magic coating her tongue she craned her neck to look at her master. There was no mistaking Er’it’s intent, not as he raised his arm high and all turned towards him. Readying to march onwards at his command. One he gave without delay, hand slicing downwards with a faint whistle. The very air complaining at his mistreatment.
Aida held back her shriek as the ropes jerked her forward. Teeth snapped together so hard she feared they might shatter, rough hemp threatening to peel away her flesh. Er’it nudging his mount until it picked a steady pace, abandoning the swirling eddies of dust for the open air as the gates groaned open to allow their exit. Soft slippers and the hem of her gown dragging through the dirt, Aida was forced to jog even at this slow walk. Legs too short, body far too small, she would have to run if he dared go any faster. The possibility alone was enough to send tears streaming down her cheeks once again. Aida wondered if ever they would end, if at some point in this new Abyss the well of her misery would run dry.
Grief drenched her first sight of what lay beyond the walls. There was no joy in seeing up close the huts that were even smaller at this distance than they’d appeared from her tower. Nor the people shouting Er’it’s full name, surrounding him with hurrahs and showering him with petals and leaves. Dressed in threadbare sack cloth, much mended and patched, faces gaunt and sallow, they still cheered the man as he rode down the narrow lane. Huts began standing shoulder to shoulder, so tight packed there was just enough space for a man to wedge himself between them. Many did so, struggling to get closer as they raised their smiling faces to Er’it.
Aida didn’t understand. These were Otaso’s people, yet they acted as if Er’it was their savior, the light at the end of a long darkness. She had never heard such an explosion of sound from her tower, and now in the thick of it she couldn’t cover her ears from the waves of excitement battering them. Not once in all her years had she seen Otaso decorated with bits of flowers and spring greenery caught in his hair. The first growths lavished upon Er’it seemed as alien as the man himself.
Nothing changed in these people’s demeanor when they spotted Aida rushing at the end of her tether. Some sneered and shouted things she couldn’t pick out amongst the din, others gave a shake of their head and nothing more. Had they known of her? She knew nothing of them, and the way Otaso had guarded her so close, she couldn’t understand how they might. Their distaste for her was absolute though, something she felt peeling away her skin. Attacking her from all sides, the chaos buffeted her.
Still Er’it rode on. Hand raised in what appeared to be victory, he waved to the passersby. At the first smile she saw grace his lips, true and unfettered by his hatred and disgust of her, she almost fell. So shocked that she tried to stop her tiring trot to gape, it was the rope wrenching her forward once again that sent her stumbling forward. Catching herself at the last moment as the ground swam up to meet her unprotected face, she scurried forward to return some slack to her ropes. A roar of laughter erupted around her, no doubt at her fumbling gait. Humiliation burned from the tips of her ears to her hot face and chest. Twisting her wrists in the tight confines of their coarse shackles, she clenched her fists. Something far
