She wasn’t sure if the stranger would be impressed or irritated with her boldness. She’d attacked herself with his dagger, begged him to help her, and offered him his own coin. Amaris was certain this wasn’t the best way to forge new alliances, but she was out of options.

“Take me with you,” she said again, her voice heavy with desperation.

His answering grunt seemed to be filled with conflicting emotions.

“I’ll buy her off you,” he finally said to the advancing women. His gravelly voice had an upsetting effect on the matrons and the Madame alike. They stirred like snakes disturbed into writhing.

Millicent was horrified. She cried out, “There was a down payment made!”

He nodded. “I will reimburse whatever down payment. I’m in need of a”—he searched for a word before, settling on—“squire.”

Millicent shook her head so hard that her curls nearly freed themselves from her elaborate pins. Every step she took brought her farther from the open door of the manor and closer to the man and his horse. Her voice was shrill and cruel as she raised her gloved fist.

“I own you, girl,” she declared.

If they did nothing, Millicent would be at her side in fewer than ten paces. The Madame began once more to yank at the black fabric on her forearms and stopped just short of pulling off her gloves.

They had an audience.

The moon-faced waking children pressed into the windows from the dorms up above. The matrons watched in open-mouthed horror, aghast at the mutilated young girl in the courtyard, fresh blood soaking her hair and tunic, plastering it to her body. More children poured from the halls and clutched the doorframes. A crowd had gathered both within and without Farleigh to witness the bedlam caused by the girl who would rather disfigure herself than go with this woman.

“Amaris,” Agnes said sadly.

Amaris met the Gray Matron’s mournful look, but the woman said nothing more. The matron truly did look sorry. Amaris’s choice to slice her face and body rather than be sold to the Madame appeared to have broken something in Agnes.

“You can’t make me go,” Amaris said with a feral intensity. She took another step back until her shoulders pressed into the tall, dappled horse.

With a prayer to the All Mother, she reached her hand up and—praise be to the goddess—the man gripped her elbow, swinging her up behind him. Amaris passed him the pouch in a seamless exchange, and the man tossed his coin purse to Matron Agnes. He instructed the matron to keep the change before urging his horse into a trot away from the courtyard, down the road. The clatter of hooves against the cobbles clashed with the cacophony of angry shouts, shrill accusations, clustering children, and the incongruously happy chirping of early morning birds. The pandemonium had just begun.