Free A Cup of Normal by Devon Monk Page B

obviously female form, though she wore shirt and trousers.
    The man smiled, showing crooked teeth. “Let me make sure you don’t have anything sharp under your clothes, girl.” His hands lingered over her breasts, hips, and slid up her thighs.
    The other sentries chuckled.
    Thera grit her teeth and stared straight ahead.
    “You feel safe enough to me.” He bit the lobe of her ear.
    Anger filled her in a flash. Though she would endure many things, she was still the queen.
    Thera shifted her weight and ground the heel of her boot into his insole.
    The man howled and slapped her across the face. Her vision tunneled to a point of darkness and her ears rang. When her head cleared, she heard Johnathon’s voice.
    “Enough! She carries no weapons. Men of the Midlands don’t need women to fight their battles.”
    Thera blinked until her eyes focused. “Do not —” she began.
    The sentry holding Johnathon drove a fist into his stomach. Johnathon bent at the waist, breathing heavily, his hood hiding his face.
    “Let him be!” Thera commanded. She tried to move but her wrists were behind her back and a rope bit into her skin.
    The swordsman glared at Thera, looked at Johnathon, then at Thera again. “Which of you is the leader?”
    Thera drew a breath but Johnathon spoke first. “I am.” He straightened.
    The swordsman strode forward and punched him again. Johnathon groaned.
    “Tell your people to obey us,” he said to Johnathon, “or they will receive twice your punishment.” He looked over at Thera. “Do you understand?”
    Johnathon straightened, slower this time. “We will listen,” he said. Thera nodded.
    “Good,” the swordsman said. “The captain will not want to be kept waiting. Move.” He pointed to the thin trail that lead down the mountain side.
    Johnathon started down the path, Tarin and Beir pushed into place behind him. Thera was last. Her head hurt and her right eye was swelling. The anger that had filled her seethed below the surface of her thoughts and with it, fear.
    The men behind her muttered and made wagers. More than once, she heard them say “the woman” was the prize. Hands tied, weaponless, she felt vulnerable as a naked child. She pushed that thought away, and kept her gaze on the uncertain footing among the rocks. What mattered now was finding a way to save her lands. Everything else, she could endure.
    The trail ended at a dirt road that brought them alongside the encampment. They stopped in the middle of the road and one of the sentries jogged off through the maze of tents and returned with a cloaked and booted woman beside him. The other sentries acknowledged the woman’s arrival with a nod.
    “Tell me,” she said. Her voice was a soft alto, her unhooded face a pale oval with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes that were colorless in the moonlight. Her hair was pulled back in a peasant’s knot, yet she held herself with confidence and poise. Royalty, but too young to be the Mother Queen.
    “Midlanders from the tunnels, Captain,” the sentry said. “They say they have news for the Mother Queen.”
    “And the tunnels?”
    “I left two behind to see.”
    The woman — the captain — nodded. “Bring them.” She strode into the encampment.
    In a voice they alone could hear, the swordsman said, “You have come to the wrong place this night, Midlanders.”
    They were marched into the encampment, past tents where Thera heard gambling, snoring and soft prayers. In one tent, the only sound was a blade drawing again and again over a whetstone.
    That , Thera thought, is the sound of my land’s death, and I their only shield .
    The sentries pushed them through the door of a small tent surrounded by torches. The torchlight outside and within the tent fouled Thera’s night vision and made her eyes water and sting. Johnathon, the guards, and she, stood shoulder to shoulder, crossbows still aimed at their backs.
    The woman, the captain, sat in a chair behind a dark wooden table that