Free Fox's Bride by A.E. Marling Page A

Fos! Always knew you'd follow someone into shit, but didn't think—I mean, shit! Shit! Shit!”
    “The enchantress bride, get her.”
    “Where's the fennec?”
    Two men seized the enchantress. “Where'd you stow the Golden Scoundrel?”
    “What'd you do with him? You god-stealing siren!”
    “I—I don't understand.” Hiresha pinched her eyes closed. “I refuse to marry an animal.”
    “Rip this ship apart. Carefully.” A guard captain with medals of golden flies on his tunic waved his men toward the hold. “Which of you sorry louts is the captain?”
    Djom's hands trembled as he showed Chandur a waxy roll of paper. “This is an order from the vizier. We're to arrest you for kidnapping the god's bride.”
    Hiresha's voice was high and outraged. “He did no such thing. I take all responsibility and—”
    “Shit, Fos! I'm going to have to lock you up, and—shit—there isn't going to be no good way out for you.” Djom wiped his pallid brow with his sleeve.
    One man punched Chandur in the side and cackled. “Hear you'll be sleeping below bars. They'll let you out soon as it it's time for a few good rounds of scorpion stings.”
    “Yeah,” another man said, “black scorpion, yellow scorpion, black, yellow, 'til you stop breathing. I always put my bets on the black.”
    Chandur wished to reassure his friend Djom and Hiresha that such a grisly fate would not be his. An arm clamped around his throat and prevented his jaw from moving.
    A sensation of oozing crept up Chandur's bowels, of burning and rot. He told himself it was not fear, not for himself. Chandur had his fate. He would live. No, he worried for Hiresha.
    How will she get away, he wondered, with me in prison?

 

    Hiresha was held by a guard who dug his arm into her ribs. She rode in front of him on top of a camel. The lurching stride rolled her insides and worsened the dry sickness of defeat. The sight below her of the spellsword horrified her, to see his hands trapped in a closeable block of wood, his feet tied together, and his arms roped at the elbows to two camels dragging him over the street.
    Pilgrims and merchants cheered at the sight of the prisoner. “When'll be his time?”
    A guard answered, “Two days, by deathstalker scorpion.”
    Hiresha could not believe they would celebrate the death of a man with a full life ahead of him. A man fit and strong and with a high degree of symmetry .
    Chandur had not shouted or struggled with the guards, and now he did no more than hold his head up to keep his face up from sliding over the street. His calmness disturbed Hiresha. Though she had told him to surrender, she wanted him to scream and shove, maybe even to curse her. I failed them all.
    She had not struggled either, but she could not have been expected to overpower one guard, let alone a score. Enchantresses created items of power. They never used them.
    The guards led her between archways of palm trees on the royal plaza. When the camels trudged closer to the palace, it loomed like a glass wave about to break over them with skull-crushing force.
    A tight-mouthed scribe swaggered toward them carrying a scroll in a glass jar. “The vizier will now receive Elder Enchantress Hiresha and Fosapam Chandur.” He motioned to the spellsword. “Secure him, as he is guilty of kidnapping of the enchantress and theft of the Incarnate of the Golden Scoundrel.”
    “This is ridiculous.” Hiresha pushed at the guard holding her, and he lowered her from the camel. “I won't pretend to know to what you're referring.”
    Royal guards pulled Chandur to his feet. One lowered an axe at him, green and blue gemstones speckling a blade that fanned outward from the end of a pole. Hiresha held a hand over her mouth as the axe dipped between Chandur's legs to sever the ropes around his feet. They marched him into the Water Palace. Hiresha shuffled after them, hating how a wooden block encased his hands while she stood without fetters. It felt like a betrayal. He'll