"The pretty boy?" Odiana asked. "I wasn't hurting him. I was killing him. There's a difference." She sniffed and said, "It wasn't anything personal."
"Tavi," Isana said, coughing again. "Is Tavi all right?"
"How should I know?" Odiana said, her tone faintly impatient. "You tore my eyes out, woman. The next thing I saw was that ugly brute."
"Then you're not-" Isana shook her head. "Kord took you prisoner?"
She nodded, once. "He found me after the flood. I had just put my eyes back together." Odiana smiled. "I've never managed my nails like that before. You'll have to show me how it's done."
Isana stared at the woman for a moment, then said, "We have to get out of here."
"Yes," Odiana agreed, looking at the door. "But that seems unlikely for the moment. He's a slaver, isn't he, this Kord?"
"He is."
The dark haired woman's eyes glinted. "I thought as much."
The thirst in her throat abruptly became too much for Isana to ignore, and she murmured, "Rill, I need water."
Odiana let out an impatient sigh. "No," she said. "Don't be an idiot. He's ringed us in fire. Dried us out. Your fury cannot hear you, and even if it could, you'd not be able to dampen a washcloth."
Isana shivered, and for the first time since she'd found Rill, she felt no quivering response to her call, no reassuring presence of the water fury. Isana swallowed, eyes shifting around the interior of the building. Meat hung from hooks on some of the walls, and smoke lingered in the air. A smokehouse then, at Kord's steadholt.
She was a prisoner at Kord's steadholt.
The thought chilled her, sent a quiver creeping along her scalp, to the roots of her hair.
Odiana watched her in silence and then nodded, slowly. "He doesn't
intend for us to ever leave this place, you know. I felt that in him before he brought us here."
"I'm thirsty," Isana said. "Hot enough to kill us in here. I have to get a drink."
"They left us two tiny cups of water," Odiana said, nodding to the far side of the circle.
Isana looked until she saw the pair of wooden cups and pulled herself to them. The first she picked up was light, empty. She dropped it to one side, her throat on fire, and tried the second.
It was empty as well.
"You were asleep," Odiana said, calmly. "So I drank it."
Isana stared at the woman in disbelief. "This heat could kill us," she told her, struggling to keep an even tone.
The woman smiled at her, a lazy, languid smile. "Well it won't kill me. I've drunk enough for two."
Isana clenched her teeth together. "It makes the most sense anyway. Use it. Call your fury and send for help."
"We're far from any help, holdgirl."
Isana pressed her lips together. "Then when one of them comes in-"
Odiana shook her head slowly and spoke in a cool, passionless, practical tone. "Do you think they've never done this before? This is what slavers do, holdgirl. They left enough to keep us alive. Not enough to allow one of us full use of her fury. I'd try, it wouldn't work, and they'd punish both of us."
"So that's it?" Isana said. "We don't even try?"
Odiana closed her eyes for a moment, looking down. Then she said, very quietly, "We're only going to get one chance, holdgirl."
"I'm not a gi-"
"You're a child," Odiana hissed. "Do you know how many slaves are raped within a day or so of capture?"
The thought made Isana feel cold again. "No."
"Do you know what happens to the ones who resist?"
Isana shook her head.
Odiana smiled. "Take it from me. You only get to resist once. And after that, they make sure that you never want to try it again."
Isana stared at the woman for a long moment. Then she said, "How long were you a slave?"
Odiana brushed her hair back away from her face with one hand and
said, voice cool, "When I was eleven, our Steadholder sold my father's debt to a group of slavers. They took all of us. They killed my father and my oldest brother, and the baby. They took my mother, my sisters, me. And my youngest brother. He was pretty." Her eyes grew distant, and she focused them on the far wall. Fire glowed in them, reflection. "I was too young. I hadn't begun my cycle, or come into my furycrafting. But I did that night. When they took me. Passed me around the fire like a flask of wine. It woke up, and I could feel everything