Anzil (Gladiators of Krix #2) - Miranda Martin Page 0,26

set us on this path after all.

Kiara shrugs, but it’s not going to be that simple. If Jyark arrives and we’ve got nothing, he’ll be suspicious, which he will then report to Dominus.

“Leave the shooter and you can go,” I say.

Saelethil frowns, looks down at his Krixian companion, then back up. He nods sharply. The two behind us are stirring, and just in time. The guards are coming. I shoo them away and rush to the one Kiara dropped from the trees.

Kneeling, I grab him and throw him over my shoulder then quickly rejoin Kiara. A few moments later Jyark and the other guards emerge.

“What’s going on here?” Jyark demands.

“Caught this one,” I say, throwing him to the ground.

“Were there others?” Jyark asks suspiciously.

“I didn’t see any. You, Kiara?”

“Nope, not a soul,” Kiara says.

Jyark narrows his eyes at us as he kneels next to the body. He pulls the hood back to reveal another one of the blue-skinned aliens. He pulls the man’s lip down to reveal he also has fangs.

“Widows’ cursed Alva,” he mutters. “Heard there was some of them free in this area.”

“Hey, boss, reward?” one of the guards asks.

“Put him on back of her mount,” Jyark says, nodding at Kiara. “She’s light, it won’t notice the weight. We’ll see if there’s a reward.”

The guards grab the body and head out of the woods. Kiara and I follow in their wake. I’ve never given more than lip service to fate or the Widows’ hand on a man’s destiny. Perhaps I was wrong. Perhaps there’s a whole lot more in the world than I ever thought.

Chapter 11

Kiara

The City, if that’s what you want to call it, is more of a garbage dump. I’m not sure if it’s where the other girls and I were sold originally or not. It could be.

The streets are narrow and lined with debris. There is a low-level reek that assaults my sinuses like tiny men armed with sharp spears. Every breath makes my stomach churn, and I continuously have to swallow bile.

The buildings are close, but small alleys randomly appear between them, dark and uninviting. I’ve scrubbed latrines that are nicer than this place. The guards seem happy to be here. As we make our way deeper in, shops fill the buildings. Random pounding beats issue out of some open doors, another smoke pours out of, but no one seems concerned that it’s on fire. Ask me, and burning the place to the ground and starting over is the only solution.

I stay close to Anzil. I don’t want to give him the wrong idea, but I’m also not stupid. This place is a hive of scum and villainy if I ever saw one. Which I haven’t, really. On the ship there were the lower decks, and every once in a great while we’d run missions down there to round up vagrants or break up a protest. This place makes the lower decks look like utopia.

The baladi barely fit through the streets, and the beggars/peasants/riffraff curse our passing. At last we enter a large square. The center is filled with colorful canopies protecting individual sellers from the sun.

Most of them have their wares spread on rough blankets while they busily yell and scream at the passersby in what looks like a vain attempt to get them to stop and buy. Jyark looks over his shoulder.

“Anzil, you know your duty,” he says.

“I do,” Anzil says.

“I’ll get us three rooms for the night,” Jyark says. “We’ll ask around and then plan to shut down this market in the morning.”

Anzil growls but nods his agreement. Jyark tsks, and his mount wanders into the thick crowd that barely parts to let us through. He doesn’t care, though, letting the massive beast push the people out of the way, knocking them to the ground.

I feel numb looking around myself. I’m on a planet filled with so many diverse lifeforms, all of them intelligent, but they live like this. Why has no one tried to change it? How can an entire planet, so many different peoples, continue living in such abject poverty?

Scanning the crowds, there is violence all around us. The way Jyark is acting—it’s not unusual, it’s the norm. None of these people have any sense of value of a life. It’s nothing to them, apparently even their own.

The more I see the more it steels my resolve. I have to get my people off this planet. I know that the generation ship we were taken from was destroyed. I