She ignored them. But their ugly faces made her think of the Vidrini headwoman, who might as well be their sister for all that they looked so similar. The Qin were a brutal-hearted, demon-tainted people, always happy to hire themselves out to fight for whatever foreigner paid the most. She doubted she and Kontas could outride these.

“Hoy! Hoy!” The fat man returned, bouncing awkwardly on his trotting horse. Two riders followed him.

The Qin soldiers rode away toward the rear of the caravan.

“Greetings, greetings,” called the younger of the two men. He had a dark face that looked reasonably human, and kept his gaze averted in a mannerly fashion as he kept talking. “Greetings, tribeswoman. My sarvar say to me, you desire to trade for a boy.”

His companion was wiry, sour-mouthed, and funny-looking, his features mismatched. This old man looked her up and down as impertinently as if she were a horse he meant to acquire.

Nervously, she glanced toward the retreating Qin soldiers. “I will trade this horse for the boy. That is good value.”

The younger man grinned at his hands, cast a glance at his narrow-eyed companion.

The old man said, “These horses are shit, ugly as my wife’s face.” He scratched at his groin. “We no take them for the boy. Not worth the boy.”

“Both horses, then,” said Kirya desperately.

“No,” said the old man. “The horses are shit. No boy.”

The younger one smiled as a man smiles when hearing a pretty melody that reminds him of a lover. “We offer a better trade,” he said. “For you, five boys. You pick, any five boys from the herd.”

“For the two horses? What about my brother?”

“No, no,” said the younger man, chuckling now, although Kirya could not see what anyone might find funny in this situation.

The old man said, irritably, “You trade your person, for five boys. Including the boy you say is brother to you.”

Dumbfounded, she could not fathom what they meant. “Trade what?”

“You. You are girl,” said the old man. “With the ghost hair and the demon eyes, and a female, you are worth five boys. Worth plenty. You want the boy, the brother? Or no boy, and we ride on? We will not wait. Weather changes, hot days come, we cannot wait. We ride far, go fast. Decide now, or ride away with nothing. Now, now. Decide.”

Now. Now. Decide.

On the caravan rumbled, lurching forward like a wounded beast. A pair of wagons stuck in an irregularity in the track, and the ranks of trudging boys staggered to a halt behind it. One boy, at the end of a row, stumbled, fell to a knee, and hastily jumped up just as a guard closed in with whip raised to strike him on the shoulder.

“Kontas!” she shouted.

He raised an arm to shield his body from the blow. He didn’t hear her, and as the whip came down he jerked back, knocking into another boy, who shoved him into yet another, and the guard slashed at their heads with the biting whip until all cowered and wept.