Dnara glanced to her scarred arms, noting for the first time how her darker skin and even darker hair stood out in a village of pale complexions, brown, red or blond hair and facial features slightly different than her own. She knew the blackrope woman wanted an answer, but Dnara had none to offer. Instead, she stared intently at her boots and ensured the long sleeves of the dress continued to cover her arms.
“Girl?” the blackrope asked in a frustrated bark.
“Leave her be, please.” Athan kept his voice calm and raised an arm between her and the blackrope. “She’s no mageborne, just a friend of the family, and she’s extremely shy about her appearance.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.” The blackrope pushed Athan further away. “Girl! Look at me!”
‘Pay attention, girl!’ came the memory of her keeper’s shout, carried by the wind.
Dnara snapped out of her thoughts and sucked in a breath. Fear skittered over her skin and a breeze tugged at her hair. The blackrope stood close enough for Dnara to smell the woman’s sour breath and spot another jagged scar across her exposed collarbone. On the left side of the blackrope’s chest, a stitched badge granted her the authority of the crown to act as judge, jury and mercenary.
Dnara’s hands fisted the wrapping paper so hard it ripped. She hated that badge. Rough fingers slipped beneath her chin and lifted it up with enough force to make her back teeth clack together.
The woman had beady eyes, like a rat; eyes that said she had no heart for sob stories nor compassion for bad luck. Her lips sank into a glowering frown as she turned Dnara’s head this way and that, then those beady eyes widened as she lifted Dnara’s chin further to look at her neck.
“Well, what have we here?” the woman asked to no one, because she already knew the answer. “There ain’t even a rookie blackrope who don’t know the signs of a previous collar. See, it takes years, girl.” She leaned in, her spittle slapping across Dnara’s cheek. “Years, to have that mark disappear. What I don’t see is a mark of solvency.”
“No mark was needed,” Athan said, making a move to grasp the woman’s arm but stopping short of assaulting a mercenary of the crown. “Was years ago, her collar, but her skin is slow to heal. Her family’s debt was repaid, by my father no less. Her being so young at the time, they thought not to mar her with the mark of a previous debt for the rest of her life.”
“Smells foul, that tale you’re spinning, lad.” The blackrope pushed Athan away with a stronger hand than her lithe figure belied and his back hit the brick wall. “Stay back, boy, or I’ll slip a rope round your neck for interfering in crown business.”
As Athan let out a pained grunt, Dnara thought only to save the man who had saved her. “Please, stop,” she spoke in the quiet, pleading voice she’d learned through years of passive placation. “He has nothing to do with this.”
The wind curled around her ankles, whipping her skirt as if angered by her submission. It began to feel familiar, the wind and the way her arms tingled. Her mind filled with flashes of the river, of Jorn’s desperation, of the imposing figure of a soldier on horseback surrounded by smoke and a scream carried by the wind; all of it pushing at her back, pulling at her heart, and filling her eyes with shadow.
“Please,” she whispered. “Stop.”
The blackrope hacked a ragged cough in the billowing dust kicked up by the rising wind. She reached for one of the ropes hung from her horse’s saddle, but the horse let out a frightened whinny and stepped back. It snorted and shook its head as the blackrope cursed and pulled at its reins. Hooves frenziedly stamped the ground; the horse would not be calmed.
“Cursed beast!” The blackrope let go of the reins before being carried off her feet. The blackrope’s other hand slid from Dnara’s chin to her neck and wrapped around it tightly like a collar. “This your doing, girl? You an untrained mageborne that done broke her collar somehow?!” The women’s voice nearly screamed over the growing wind as it howled to silence her. “You stop this, now!”
She sounded angry. Scared. Desperate.
“Dnara?” Athan called out but the wind carried his concern away.
“I’ve a right to take you,” the blackrope threatened, clinging onto the badge-given authority, as if it might save her. She managed to fist a rope and yank it off the saddle as the horse reared up and a dusty whirlwind blinded. The magic woven into the rope sizzled and snapped as she brought it near Dnara’s head. “I’ll end this,” she snarled through the grit.
No, Dnara heard the wind say. Her heart echoed it, but in fear for what she had become. Her, a mageborne? No. Please!
“I’m afraid,” Dnara whispered, but her heart screamed the truth of it. She only wanted for it all to end, for the magic to stop, and for the blackrope to forget she ever saw-
The wind died in an instant. The horse calmed. The blackrope stood unmoving.
A tranquil stillness enveloped Dnara, giving her a moment of peace. Through one exhale and another, the air returned and with it the world around her. A man yelling about overpriced bread from down the street shattered the quiet. The rest of the town moved on, oblivious to the three who stood outside the washhouse and the windstorm
