She nodded, clutching the box to her chest, then began looking through what they had taken. She found some letters her mother had written, a small gold cat she told him her mother had given her on her fourteenth birthday. “I haven’t seen this in years.” She asked Caleb where he’d found it, but he had no idea, neither did Jarod, Pethar, or Marcus or any of the others.
“It was in with your father’s belongings, Princess.”
She turned to see Jonas collecting things to pack away.
“It was in an oak box on one of his dressers.”
“My father? What would he be doing with it?”
Neither Jonas nor Caleb had any idea, but Caleb was glad she had found it.
Finally, they had everything packed and were ready to go.
He glanced at her riding with Jonas. He was glad she wasn’t sitting with him, telling him all his faults.
But madly, he missed her.
Chapter 7
Theshwar was a thriving trading city in the middle of a dry, scorching hell. People flocked to it from all over to trade and sell. Here, according to Jonas, one could find anything from water to precious soil. Nothing was too rare, or too sacred to sell.
There is one thing left to bargain with.
No. It couldn’t be true. Her father was trading people? No!
“But anything that’s illegal to sell is hidden from us,” Jonas continued. “We are recognized by the black painted bands around our eyes. No one wants to go to swords with a Warrior, or worse, go to prison in Predaria.”
When they entered the city the men of the troupe brightened considerably. Willow couldn’t help but notice the batting lashes and promising smiles of many fair maidens among the throngs of people there to trade.
Caleb dismounted and after he smiled at one or two of them, he reminded the men that it was trading first, play later. The men watched the women go with disappointment in their eyes. “And Jonas, you will get us a cart?”
His second nodded and moved to help her dismount after him. But she refused his help.
When Caleb offered her his hand, she refused that too. They all thought she was helpless well she would show—she slipped from the saddle and then to her knees when she discovered the fall was a bit higher than she remembered.
In addition to the suffering indifference she tried to exude, the second her feet were firmly planted on the ground, she glared at Caleb. “Let me make this perfectly clear to you so that there are no misunderstandings.” She looked up at him and jabbed her finger into his chest. “You will not use anything that belongs to me to bed those women. I will not stand quietly by whilst you trade my belongings for a quick tumble with a village wench who probably bedded one hundred men today alone, and besides, we all smell terrible.”
All the men agreed and laughed about it. Willow barely understood their ways. She had always stayed away from her father’s guards.
Caleb flashed her a warm grin. He didn’t keep his eyes on her long enough to catch the almost audible swallow that came from her, but instead lifted his cerulean gaze to a dark green and yellow tent in the distance. He raised his eyebrows wistfully before turning back to her. “Deal,” he said, somehow making it sound appropriate within the great trading city walls.
Willow almost smiled, but then realized what he was thinking about doing in that tent. Her eyes narrowed on him and she folded her arms across her chest. “Are you truly that uncivilized and crude?”
Under the slight upward slant of his dark golden brows, his eyes touched her as powerfully as a caress. The small black pupils that basked in the warm oceans around them zeroed in on hers and seemed to search out her soul. She looked away, flustered by his potent stare.
“I’m guessing we’ll find out.”
He gathered what he wanted to trade in a large sack and carried it over his shoulder. She was quite astonished when, two hours later, after many of their goods, or rather, her family’s goods, were sold, he hadn’t run off to quench any fires in his breeches but stayed with her instead. They walked together through the crowds. Caleb offered her his arm. She refused it and looked around.
On either side of her were tents the size of small cottages, under which baskets of fruit of every kind, shape, and color, along with sacks