Tortured Read Online Free Page B

fingers, she saw, were clean, with stubby fingernails.
    “Where are you from?” he asked.
    “South of here. From Wharfton, on the other side of the wasteland.”
    “So that still exists?” he asked. “How long have you been traveling?”
    She thought back over a daze of time in the wasteland. “The formula for Maya lasted ten days. I lost track after that. I found an oasis and caught a rabbit. That was, I’m not sure, maybe two days ago.” There’d been a corpse at the oasis, a body with no visible wounds, like a harbinger of her own pending starvation. Yet she’d made it this far.
    “You’re safe now,” he said. “Or almost.”
    The path rose one last time, turned, and the earth dropped away on their right. Stretching far toward the eastern horizon was a great, blue-green flatness that reflected bits of sky between hillocks of green.
    She had to squint to see it clearly, and even then she could hardly believe what she was seeing. “Is it a lake?”
    “It’s the marsh. Marsh Nipigon.”
    “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful,” she said.
    Lifting a hand to shade her eyes, she stared, marveling. Gaia had spent much of her childhood trying to imagine Unlake Superior full of water, but she’d never guessed it would be like having a second, broken sky down below the horizon. The marsh expanded across much of the visible world: part serpentine paths of water, part patches of green, with three islands receding into the distance. Even from this height, she could breathe in the cool freshness of it, laced with the loamy tang of mud.
    “How can there be so much water?” she asked. “Why hasn’t it all evaporated?”
    “Most of the water is gone. This is all that’s left of an old lake from the cool age, and the water gets lower every year.”
    She pointed to a swatch of dark green that rippled in a slow-motion wave as the wind moved across it. “What’s that area there?”
    “There? That’s the black rice slue,” he said.
    The path took a long, left-handed turn along the bluff, and as they rode, Gaia could see where the landscape dipped down to form a sprawling V-shaped valley. At the wide end, the forest descended to meet the marsh. A patchwork of woods, farmland, and backyard gardens seemed to be stitched together by dirt roads and pinned in place by three water towers. Where the path curved down to meet the sandy beach, a dozen groups of men were working around canoes and skiffs.
    “Havandish!” the outrider called. “Hurry ahead and tell the Matrarc I’ve brought in a girl with a starving baby. She needs a wet nurse.”
    “We’ll meet you at the lodge,” a man answered, swinging onto another horse and bolting ahead. People turned to stare.
    “Who’s the Matrarc?” Gaia asked.
    “Mlady Olivia. She runs Sylum for us,” he said.
    He steered his horse rapidly up the shore and through the village, and for the first time, the horse stumbled. Gaia clutched at the pommel, but the horse regained its footing.
    “Almost there, Spider,” the outrider said. “Good boy.”
    Caked with sweat, double-burdened, the horse flicked back an ear and pushed onward. The road turned to abut a level, open oval of lawn, edged with oaks and ringed further out by sturdy log cabins. Simply dressed people paused in their work to follow their progress.
    Ahead, a sun-scorched strip of dirt separated the commons from a big lodge of hewn, dovetailed logs, and in this area stood a row of four wooden frames, like disconnected parts of a fence. Puzzled by the jumbled sight, Gaia stared at a hunched form in the last frame until understanding came to her: they were stocks, and the dark form was a slumped prisoner, passed out or dead under the noonday sun.
    “Why is that man in the stocks?” she asked.
    “Attempted rape.”
    “Is the girl okay?” Gaia asked. What sort of place have I come to?
    “Yes,” he said, and dismounted from behind her. Rugged and lean, bearded and strong, the outrider ran a hand down his