The “roller” looked like a boxy carriage from afar, but in truth it was an enclosed animal pen on wheels—a cumbersome, bouncing edifice made of heavy steel bars overlaid with thick planks of splintery wood. The wheels seemed to find every bump, divot, and ditch in every road the procession took. It had one barred window, placed crookedly in one of the roller’s side panels, though that did not seem to allow any sort of breeze to pass through. Inside, the heat was stifling despite the early month; the roller’s dark exterior seemed to pull in the heat of even the most meager day’s sun, begetting a sweltering, claustrophobic malaise. And the stench was worse than the heat. The interior smelled like old hay, livestock, sweat, vomit, and waste.

Roen had awakened painfully, unsure of the day or date, crawling unwillingly out of the dark of unconsciousness and into the roiling reality she now found herself in. Malacai was gone. In his place was the roller, escorted by thirteen mounted, armored men garbed in unfamiliar livery and bearing an unfamiliar standard—a stone gray fist bold upon a field of black.

She knew she should feel miserable, but all she felt was numb. The pain of every blow she had taken these past days had been dulled, muted by the heaviness in her heart. Talcey’s blood-streaked face came to mind whenever she closed her eyes, so she tried not to close them. She did not know where she was going, and right now did not even care. Whatever her destination, it was bound to be a bad one. She had no illusions to the contrary. Despite the claim of an “academy”, some form of slavery seemed the most likely option.

This was her world now. She had no idea what tomorrow might bring.

Roen was not alone. She had been the last of six children tossed into the roller, all presumably bound for the same destination and for the same reason. They all wore thick leather collars around their throats—akin to what an unruly pet might be forced to wear—designed to prevent them from running off once they were outside of their cage. Two thick iron rings were looped through the collars, on opposite sides so that they could be leashed and chained together.

Equally alarming was the fact that the collars seemed to be made for people their size. Collars for children. She had no idea what sort of people abducted children so often that they would have special collars made for doing it.

She dreaded finding out. The children she was corralled with did not seem confident in the answer, either. None of them discussed it.

Roen sat where she had awakened, against the wall opposite the roller window. Of the interior’s four corners, three were occupied. In the two corners farthest from the door sat a boy and a girl—two of the most different-looking youths Roen had ever seen, as dissimilar in appearance as night was to day. In the third corner squatted a second girl, ragged-looking and woeful, as well as her equally ragged-looking younger brother, who clung to her leg. Roen thought he could not have been more than eight winters old.

The fourth corner of the roller served as the unofficial privy. No one wanted to sit there, though Roen noted with some sourness that she was forced by default to sit closest to it.

The last boy sat across from Roen, directly beneath the roller’s odd little window. He reminded her of the street urchin who had stolen her horse in Mooring, which made her immediately distrust him, fair or not. He seemed her age, but smaller than most boys, with narrow shoulders and gangly limbs. He was dressed in well-worn clothes two sizes too large for him; when he sat, his voluminous, patched trousers rode up, revealing knobby, scabbed knees. His shoes were old and worn, their soles having been re-stitched so many times the leather was barely thicker than a sock. He had skin browned by the sun—or dirt—and a tangled mess of dark hair that was matted in places with splotches of mud. It was hard to tell where boy ended and grime began.

His eyes, shadowed beneath his mop of messy hair, were brown and curious—a bit too curious, by Roen’s estimation. His gaze tended to flit about, especially on her, though most of the time she could not quite tell what he was looking at.

It was a surprise when he suddenly blurted out, “See something you like, freckles?”

Roen glanced away on reflex, feeling a flush creep up her face. It felt like he was just goading her, so she looked back at him purposefully, eyes narrowed.

“Yeah, you,” he said more loudly. “You got a story? To what do we owe the honor of yer accompaniment on this grand venture?” He spoke the custom tongue with an accent, rough and base-born. The boy sounded like he was using grand words to tease her. He grinned deliberately, wide and mocking.

“Leave her alone,” said the girl in the back corner, irritably. Her voice was scratchy, as though she had recently spent a great deal of time yelling. “We don’t need your mouth making things worse. Again.”

The girl had seemed irritated with the dirty boy from the moment Roen had awakened. Roen glanced at the girl…though in truth, part of the reason she had been looking in the boy’s direction at all was to avoid staring so openly at her. To Roen’s eye, the girl looked beyond odd. She was Roen’s age, though perhaps a year older. She had dark skin—not suntanned, but deep brown, the color of rich, warm earth—which exactly matched the color of her large brown eyes, an oddity Roen had never seen before. Her black hair was thick and curly, and done up in a mass of tangled braids atop her head. Roen thought she was singularly beautiful; her first instinct had been to stare, so she purposefully had not.

“I’m only bein’ hospitable, Chayand,” the dirty boy said with a snort. “More’n I can say for you and yer beloved.” He flicked his head at the silent boy in the other back corner.

The silent boy was another oddity, though he was not quite as foreign-looking as Chayand. Where Chayand was dark, he was pale—quite possibly the fairest boy Roen had ever seen, with skin like milk and hair so blond it was nearly white; his eyebrows were just as fair, as were his lashes. His eyes were pale too, colored the lightest, strangest lavender hue. Or, at least one eye was. Roen was not certain about the other; the boy had been beaten badly, his features blotted with dried blood and bruises, and his left eye was swollen and closed. His lip was split, and he bore a days-old cut on his cheek. The dark, dried blood that streaked his cheek, jaw, and neck contrasted starkly with the pale skin beneath.

His name was Vheret, Roen learned. Chayand would occasionally go to him and try to soothe him, saying his name softly, imploringly. But Vheret had not spoken since Roen’s arrival—had hardly looked up at all, in fact—and had silently rebuffed every attempt at conversation. Every time Chayand scooted near him, he would turn from her and stare sullenly at the roller wall.

Chayand clearly did not like the dirty boy talking about Vheret. “Shut up,” she snapped at him. “Don’t you dare even speak to him. After what you did…” Her hoarse voice seemed to catch.

The dirty boy folded his arms and looked away, perhaps guiltily. “I didn’t do nothin’,” he muttered, though not convincingly. “And I speak at who I want.” He did not actually speak to Vheret after that, however. Roen wondered what he had done.

In the silence that followed, Roen glanced to the last two occupants: the brother and sister, still huddled in the front corner. If the dirty boy was gangly and lowborn, these two were positively malnourished, with thin, nervous limbs, sallow cheeks, and hollow stares. They both looked near to starving, and their clothes were so rotted they were nearly rags. They barely spoke above a whisper when speaking at all, and only to each other. Roen thought she heard the boy call his sister “Mara” once, but she was not certain.

The day continued in silence. Their current path seemed less a road and more a crooked deer trail, so the roller bumped and bounced as they progressed. All Roen could see from her angle through the window was the passing sky and the occasional treetop when they passed trees tall enough to see. Roen rose when she was not sure to be bounced back off her feet, just to look out the window. The dirty boy did not move, making her lean over him, but at least he stayed quiet.

As far as she could tell, they were continuing in a northern direction. A few of the guards called ahead to others, so she learned a few names, like Rondan, Gabil, and Mace. But most of the men held their tongues and stayed silent, and for good reason.

The leader of the caravan was a man named Threll, though Roen heard more than one guard refer to him as the Lashmaster. Threll was a short, squat, powerful man, with thick arms and a bull neck. He wore grimy ring-mail armor, as well as a half-helm that covered only the upper portion of a face that could be described by most as hideous; the helm’s narrowed eye slits could not hide rheumy eyes, nor could the nose guard quite cover his broad, flat nose. His chin was warty and covered with boils, his teeth crooked and cracked. Roen had never seen a man half as ugly, the inhuman Dreck aside.

Threll’s disposition was uglier still. The Lashmaster was well-named, for he carried, coiled on his hip, a long, oiled whip that he did not hesitate to unfurl, sending cruel snaps at the flanks of men and horses alike if he deemed them lacking in effort or pace. Roen saw him unleash one particularly cruel barrage at the armored legs of a careless guard—the mousy one named Gabil—who had overseen the shoeing the horses. Gabil had shod a few improperly, causing two of the horses to pull up lame; the knot of Threll’s whip somehow found Gabil’s unprotected knees, and not just once. The cruel lashing rendered the guard incapable of walking, so Threll tossed him over his horse and made him ride slung over like a sack of grain, arse high.

Threll ordered the lame horses killed, which meant two other guards were forced to walk—a punishment they blamed on poor Gabil. The guards made certain that Gabil was aware of their displeasure by beating him a few times. Threll found out about that soon enough and proceeded to whip them too.

“Now there’s a job I’d like to have,” the dirty boy murmured. “Whipping guards.” He had risen to his feet and was crowding the window next to her. Roen glanced at him but said nothing.

“Keep quiet,” Chayand hissed from her corner. “You’re going to get us whipped.” According to Chayand, Threll had ordered each child to silence when they were tossed into the roller, on pain of lashing. But the roller’s wheels made so much noise that no one outside the box could hear anything within, so the children sometimes talked regardless, though quietly.

Roen sat back down. The dirty boy snorted. “She’s not your master, freckles. You don’t have to listen to her.”

“She will if she’s smart,” Chayand muttered. She looked at Roen. “And he doesn’t care what happens to anyone but himself,” she said accusingly. “He’s a thief.”

“I ain’t,” the boy protested.

Chayand glared at him. “No? Well, what’s your name?”

That seemed to irritate him even more. “My name ain’t the point—”

“He’s called Filch,” Chayand said to Roen.

“There’s reasons—”

“His name’s Filch, and he’s a thief, a liar, a scammer, and a bilker.”

“Who stole the hat?” the boy shot back, his voice climbing. Clearly this was a sore subject.

The dark-skinned girl ignored that, still addressing Roen. “He’s a scamp and a cheat and a con and a fraud. He’s a charlatan.”

“Don’t even know what a charlatran is,” Filch muttered.

“A charlatan is you and that perverted old man and that perverted old hat,” Chayand shot back.

That seemed to rouse the dirty boy to anger for some reason. “Leave him out of this. What do you even know? You don’t know lick or spit! Like yer better’n me? Dark girl from a pale town, you’re not even from these lands. Did the Ata-lanta-eens sail up and trade ya for some fish, or did they just drop you on the shore on account of you being dumb?”

Chayand’s large eyes got larger. She lashed out with a leg and kicked Filch in the thigh with a meaty thwack. The kick was so hard it made the boy double over, clutching his leg and moaning. Roen was suitably impressed; Chayand reminded her a little of herself. Roen wondered if girls were supposed to be strong, wherever she was from. She had no idea what an “Atalanteen” was, but if Chayand was one, Roen thought she might want to meet a few more.

Filch was still rolling around on the grimy floor, holding his thigh, though his groans of pain had weirdly become whimpering giggles. Chayand said nothing more. Vheret remained silent, as did the two siblings.

Roen did not quite know what to make of it all. Some of them act as though we are not being taken to a life of captivity, she thought. She could not imagine it was anything else. Malacai had never promised anything better, to her father or to her.

Roen stared at the wall, away from any of them, and tried very hard not to think of Talcey.

She must have dozed, because the next thing she knew they had come to a full stop. Filch was holding onto the window bars and peering out. “Hey!” Filch cried out suddenly; then again, louder, “HEY!” Roen got up and went to look, squeezing next to him.

Outside, Threll was speaking to a group of five strange horsemen—a patrol of guards, judging by their armor and weapons. The leader of the newcomers wore a chainmail jack with a black hammer symbol sewn onto the steel links. The Gaultic hammer, Roen realized. Were they in Gault? Had they already bypassed Onby and left Zhadra? They were only a day from Mooring. She tried to remember how close the countries seemed when she studied the DeMaris map but had no way to compare it to the actual terrain.

Filch did not appear to care who they were or where they were from. “Hey!” he screeched again, kicking the roller wall. He seemed to be shrill on purpose. “Help! They’ve taken us! We’s just children, sirs! Help us!”

A few of the Gaulten soldiers glanced over, though none made a move towards them. The leader did not even look; he was busy receiving a small bag of coins from Threll and smiling appreciatively.

“They keepin’ us for rape!” Filch yowled. “They sodded me arse thrice already! Milords!” Roen looked at him, alarmed.

One of Threll’s men—a thick-bodied guard Filch had nicknamed “Moustache” for the fat mass of hair that stuck out beneath his nose—wheeled his horse and trotted up to the roller window. “Shut your barking mouth!” the man snarled.

Filch ignored Moustache. “They gonna do the women next!” he called past him. “Help us! Help!”

Moustache reached over and slammed the outside window shutter shut. Something clacked into place, securing it.

“Fet,” Filch muttered. Still, he appeared undaunted. “Tell my mum I love ‘er!” he yelled against the closed window shutter. And then, “Tell my da’, too!”

That got nothing, so Filch shouted, “Kiss ‘im good, like you always do!”

“Filch…” Chayand warned again.

“What?” He shrugged at her. “My mum won’t kiss ‘im. Someone’s got to.”

Chayand was not amused. “You said you didn’t have a father.”

“I’m sure I do somewhere,” he said briskly.

“You also said you didn’t have a mother,” she pointed out. “You said you don’t have parents.”

“Everyone has parents. Mine just never lived with me. And I don’t know ‘em, ‘cause I don’t make a habit of tryin’ to know anyone who don’t want to know me.” He paused, then smiled his false smile. “‘Cept you lot.”

Roen could have guessed he was an orphan. She had begun to realize that their unknown destination might actually be a step up for some of the children, though Filch seemed far from content to be here.

Chayand was not precisely happy either. “I don’t want to know you, and yet here we are.”

“You’ll learn to like me.” Filch sniffed. “I’m a charming young rascal, or so I’ve been told.”

“Go charm the guards then, dirt-mouth,” Chayand grumbled. She folded her arms and turned away, tucking her knees close to her chest.

“Fine,” he muttered. “Time I was gone from here, anyway.” He slipped two fingers into one of his ratty-looking shoes and pulled out a thick steel wire, bent and twisted. He rose and went to the window again, sticking the wire through the window shutter, poking at the latch. In three heartbeats he had the shutter open again. It swung in place as the roller continued to bounce.

“Hey, Moustache!” Filch yelled. “Forget my mum. Tell your mum I love ‘er!”

Roen heard a few of the guards chortle.

“Or I did! Once! She was great!”

More laughter. One of them muttered. Filch grinned, and gave Roen a thumbs-up, before turning and yelling again. “If you like, I can tell you some of the other things she loves! Like horses! You know, romantically! Horses, and bulls, and their great big bull cocks! Randy hogs too!”

That jibe finally brought an actual response: a thrown rock pinged off the cage bars.

Filch, unbothered, continuing his verbal barrage. “I’ll love ‘er again, if you like. Tell ‘er I’ll meet ‘er down in the barn! Third stall, left hand side! Still likes the riding crop, yeah?”

Roen heard another rock impact the side of the roller, harder, though further away from the window.

“Couldn’t hit the ground if he fell on it,” Filch muttered. He put his lips through the bars and whistled, then yelled, “I’ve a great idea! Why don’t you come on in and spank me? I know you want to. Yer mum told me she wished you did it more often to her!”

A man shouted something, and a moment later the caravan halted. “See, that got a rise,” Filch said, grinning at Chayand. Chayand looked at him like he was crazy.

Moustache walked to the window and stared at Filch through the bars. “I’ll be givin’ the widemouth his exercise for t’day, time comes,” Mustache said menacingly. He reached toward the bars.

“Still sore ‘bout yer mum?” Filch asked pleasantly, leaning back. “I don’t blame ya. She’s still sore from our last go ‘round.”

“You worthless, dirty little piece of dung…” Moustache tried to reach through the bars to grab the dirty boy. His forearm was too thick to get very far in, however.

Filch lingered just beyond Moustache’s grasp. “Weird, that’s what she liked to be called. How’d you know? She swore me to secrecy!”

Moustache twisted his wrist around and tried to get a better angle, to no avail.

“That riding crop leaves marks.” Filch made three sharp whipping gestures with his hand, lightly slapping Moustache’s fingertips in between futile grab attempts. “Tried to spell out my name on her arse, but the way her backside was bouncing, it—”

Moustache made a slightly strangled sound and yanked his arm out. He disappeared from sight, shouting for keys.

All the children just stared at Filch, dumbfounded, Roen included.

“What?” Filch asked them, looking at all the gaping mouths. “Like I can’t spell my own name? Come on now.”

The only entrance or exit to the roller was a thick, iron-barred door that was raised and lowered from the outside, like a plank. Footsteps came straight to it. Keys jangled. The door opened. Moustache stepped up onto the ramp, his shadow filling the interior. His face was red. He was not happy.

“Haaa,” Filch laughed nervously, backing away from the door. “A jest, good sir!”

Moustache did not seem to agree. He lunged for Filch’s leg, but the wiry boy scrambled back, out of reach.

“You didn’t think that was funny? Be fair, it was funny!” Filch had a nervous laugh that sounded half-giddy, half-scared. Moustache lunged and missed again. “Look, if anything, I’m the one who’s sore! She’s one randy scab, yer mu—”

Mustache swiped at him again and Filch backed away some more. The guard had no recourse but to clamber up into the roller. The other children scrambled to get out of his way as Filch continued to edge back, though he did not have much room to maneuver.

“Time for a walk,” Moustache said, reaching for Filch’s collar.

“With you? I guess. If you insist.” Filch dodged left then ducked under another grab. Roen was amazed at how many grabs Filch had been able to avoid so far. There was not much room to maneuver inside the roller at all.

“Gonna see how long you can keep up with one of your skinny ankles in my hand,” Moustache said with an angry sneer, and lunged again. He missed again as Filch scrambled sideways, using the window as leverage. Filch ended up halfway up the roller, braced between a wall and the ceiling, clinging like a bug. Moustache reached for the closest ankle but Filch kicked his hand away and dropped to the floor.

Moustache looked ready to hurl himself at the boy, but then seemed to think better of it. Instead he rose to a crouch inside the roller, forcing his shoulders to hunch, blocking any opening Filch might find to slip past. He slowly advanced on the gangly boy.

Filch laughed his nervous laugh, dropping and lunging back one last time. He ended up between Chayand and Vheret, his back against the furthest wall… and nowhere left to run.

“Think I changed my mind on that walk,” Filch said, slightly breathless. He grinned a reckless grin. “And I don’t like you anyway.” The ratty boy suddenly launched himself off the wall. Moustache’s eyes bulged as Filch came at him, arms swinging crazily, fists flying. Five blows connected with Moustache’s chin and cheek before he could react. Roen stared, amazed at the boy’s mad, windmilling blows.

If only he had any actual power behind them. The punches only made the guard angrier; Filch was simply not strong enough to do any real harm. The man weathered three more punches and was finally able to grab Filch by the arm. Moustache only had to hold the flailing boy still for a moment in order to deliver a spine-bending punch to Filch’s stomach.

“Ahh…” Filch dropped to his knees. “You hit…like yer mum,” he bit out between gasps for air. “Though she’s dangerous too…those tets of hers are like…weapons when they start that crazy…swingin’ about thing they do when—”

Moustache held him with one hand and punched him again with the other. Hard. Compared to Filch’s small fists, the guard’s blows looked like they were delivered by warhammers.

Amazingly, the punch only gave the ratty boy a moment’s pause. In the blink of an eye, Filch whirled on the arm that held him. He latched onto it with his free arm—and bit Moustache on his meaty forearm.

The man cursed loudly and made the mistake of letting go with one hand while trying to grab Filch with the other. Filch assailed him again, blow after blow, some missing, some not. The pap pap pap of knuckles on skin echoed off the roller walls.

They were not strong blows, nor were they very accurate, but one caught Moustache on the nose, which made it bleed. The guard reached out with both hands and grabbed Filch by the shoulder and the sleeve of his oversized tunic, trying to pin him down.

That did not work either. Filch’s feet started kicking, kicking, kicking like a trapped rabbit. And the perpetual resistance only made Moustache angrier. Roen had never seen a man so furious; she was reasonably certain he was going to kill Filch, right then and there. A part of her wanted to jump in—at the very least to show the boy how to throw a proper punch—but she sanely stayed clear. He brought it on himself, she thought regretfully, then wondered why she felt guilty for the thought.

Filch kicked and kicked, again and again, feet a-whirl. Moustache tried to alleviate the continuous assault by lifting Filch off the floor and slamming his head against the roof, but that did not stop the kicks. Filch’s baggy pants had slipped off of his hips in the struggle and were currently bunched around his knees. Roen was a little alarmed to note he did not wear anything underneath; the boy’s bare backside was a blur too. He kept struggling, kicking and fighting and…

For all the good it did him. The guard was finally able to get his hand firmly in Filch’s tangled hair, holding him there at arm’s length while the boy’s hands and feet continued their whirlwind flail. Moustache cocked his arm back and punched Filch full in the face—so hard that he flew from the man’s grasp, straight down. His head bounced.

“Haaa…” Filch wheezed, his mouth full of blood. “Yer mum hits…harder…”

Moustache lifted him by the shirt and punched him in the face again. Filch impacted the floor again. One of Filch’s teeth skipped across the floor and bounced off Roen’s boot.

Filch was not moving now. Moustache lifted him once more; blood was streaming from the guard’s nose, though Filch’s face was very much the bloodier of the two now. The guard cocked his meaty fist back one last time. Roen looked away so as not to watch him die.

“No.” Threll’s whip snapped the air and caught Moustache’s arm. The guard was yanked off balance. He tripped and crashed onto his back, landing so hard he made the roller bounce. Threll, still mounted on his warhorse, uncoiled his whip with a twitch of his hand. Another quick snap wrapped the whip around the guard’s throat. Moustache was dragged by Threll and his horse, choking and red-faced, out of the roller and into the dust.

Moustache, still furious, tried to struggle to his feet, but Threll’s horse continued backwards, sending the guard stumbling back down. The whip was so tight the guard could not even gain a breath, and he soon stopped fighting and simply stayed on his hands and knees. The man did not meet Threll’s stare when the Lashmaster finally jerked the whip to uncoil it, either; once he was able to breathe, he rose unsteadily and stumbled off.

Threll eyed all the children, making certain they had stayed in place. He grunted in satisfaction and signaled for another guard to close and lock the roller door.

The caravan rolled on, through the remains of the day and on through the night.

It was not until dawn that Filch returned to actual consciousness, though he had moaned and twitched throughout the night. He gingerly touched his face, which now looked as beaten as Vheret’s. He was bruised and bloodied so badly he was hardly recognizable.

“Did I miff dinner?” Filch asked no one in particular. His words were as thick as his swollen face.

“We all did,” Chayand muttered. “They didn’t stop for the night, or even let us out.”

“And thaf’s my fault?” He actually looked serious in asking.

Roen did not know the routine, but apparently food, water, and fresh air were a part of it. She was as thirsty as she had ever been in her life, though a small part of her was grateful she had not had anything to drink; the Knightlord’s daughter was loath to drop her trousers in broad daylight to piss in the corner.

Still, she would need water eventually. They all would. She licked her chapped lips. Her tongue felt like sand.

“I hope you’re happy,” Chayand said, shaking her head. Roen noted that she seemed less angry with Filch, now that he had been properly pummeled. She had tugged Filch’s trousers back up around his hips during the night, too.

“Thrilled,” Filch muttered, gingerly trying to work the kinks out of his jaw. He shot all of them a glare. “Though I’m less excited to see all of you still here. I would have been long gone if any of you had thought to distract ‘em.”

Chayand returned to her previous irritated glare. “You were trying to help us escape? What are you, an idiot?”

“There was an opening.” He shrugged, though not as pronounced as his usual shrugs. “Sacrificed my face for nothin’.” His words were still thick with pain.

“You know they have horses,” Roen said. She wondered if he was addled. People did not outrun mounted men.

“So? I got good shoes. I can lose a horse in the trees.” Filch vaguely gestured toward the window. “They got fat arses, them horses.”

“Any good horseman can catch any fool on foot,” she said stubbornly.

Filch smirked a painful-looking smirk. “That may be, I dunno. But I ain’t no fool, and how do we know they’s good horsemen? I’d take my chances.”

Roen did not argue the point, even though she knew Filch was probably just woozy from the blows. But he seemed not to care what anyone thought of him.

“All I wanted was a little fun,” Filch muttered. He leaned over and spat a gob of blood onto the roller floor.

Roen found herself absurdly amused, despite herself. “It is probably not as much fun once you lose all your teeth.”

“I once knew a whore who said that,” Filch returned almost cheerfully. “But another whore told her she was full of stink, said life’s better without teeth. Said she made the most coin she ever had the day her last tooth fell out.” He then grinned his big fake grin, showing off the large and bloody gap in his bottom row of teeth.

Roen just shook her head. Filch was, by far, the oddest boy she had ever met.

She should have known he would eventually try an actual escape.