“Cinderwild.” Mia tasted the word, turning it over in her mind. It fit this hot, untamed place.

  They moved into the center of camp, Nessa nodding and saying hello as they passed.

  The glances at Mia were quick and dismissive…a few were disgusted.

  It wasn’t hard to guess the assumptions they’d made. They weren’t even wrong. Despite her high-handed reasoning, she was taking advantage of Nessa. Not the information, Mia was paying for that.

  It was the rest…the self-soothing and self-deception.

  Nessa was her good deed. Helping her would balance out all the bad things Mia would need to do to survive. It was a way to preserve the person she wanted to be. It helped that Nessa wasn’t innocent. Mia didn’t have to teach her to be good; she just had to reassure Nessa that the way she behaved was fine.

  “How much does water cost, anyway?”

  Nessa smiled. Her toothy grin was mischievous. “The kindest warriors will sell it for five points, and that’s probably because I’m a kid.”

  Mia shook her head. Yes, Nessa was perfect: creative, cautious, and cunning without being devious. “A test?” Mia asked.

  “Had to see if you were worth working with,” Nessa said. Her eyes were always scanning the surroundings.

  Mia copied Nessa. There were several distinct groups. The robe-wearing group with the haughty attitudes was the mages. Their numbers were smaller, but their status was high. The warriors were obvious, their weapons and armor in better condition. They were the largest group. The next group helped set up the tents and cook. In the duchy, they would have been the secretaries, the support staff, the logistics group. The last group was small and had the worst treatment. They looked like Mia, skinny and barely holding on.

  “Or see how much you could take advantage of me. Who are they?” Mia asked, pointing at them.

  “It‘d be your fault, not mine, if you were a dullard.” Nessa’s face fell. “That’s the group we’ll join. They’re the scavengers. They walk through the battlefields collecting anything useful.”

  Mia picked at her nails. “That’s not good.” They milled around, their expressions vacant. They had better food than Mia, but not by much.

  She remembered them, walking through the bodies with their backs bent, each step hesitant.

  “The job isn’t terrible. We work every other week and also get paid forty percent of the value of what we collect. When the battle ends, we have one to two hours to collect as much as possible.” Her hands tangled in her shirt. “Problem is there’s a lot of us, making the competition tough. The hardest part is probably handing in the stuff you collect.”

  They fell into silence.

  When they reached the front of the line, Nessa stepped forward. “Ben can read.” Her voice was higher than Mia had ever heard. It was deliberately childish.

  Mox looked at Mia with a raised brow. “I’m aware.” He tapped his pen on the page. It was blank, but he’d been writing earlier.

  “How come he’s a scavenger?”

  His smile made Mia’s skin crawl. “Capable doesn’t mean competent. He’s…going to be a scribe for a scavenger team. If he's useful, who knows where he will end up.”

  Nessa nodded. “If he taught me how to read, what would it cost me?”

  “Depends on how much you learn.”

  “My dad was a herbalist. If I teach him about herbs and stuff, can that cover it?”

  Mox rested his elbows on the table and leaned forward. “Do you know why you're not in the medic group?”

  Nessa shook her head.

  “Because you can’t read. This,” he said, tapping the book, “has several measurement parameters, but one is the value of an item to the person requesting it. Learning to read would change your fate. It has a value you can’t repay. Do you wish to proceed?”

  Nessa looked devastated.

  “What’s the cost if a regular person wanted to learn and a regular person wanted to teach? Basic reading and writing, nothing advanced.”

  He scribbled on the page. “Ten thousand points.”

  “Ten thousand?” Mia’s eyes bugged out. She didn’t know the value of points, but that number seemed exorbitant.

  “Mox, stop playing with them. Troy will get mad.” Lady T, as Nessa called her, came over. She’d been watching from the start.

  Mox shrugged, leaning back in his chair. “They asked, I answered. Ask if you have more questions, or pay the fee, and step aside.”

  Lady T rolled her eyes. “There are schools in the city. They aren’t the best, but anyone can attend for one hundred points a month.”

  The math didn’t add up. “A bowl of water is five points.”

  “One point can get you four pints of beer. It can also get you ten loaves of bread.” Lady T’s eyes were fierce as she looked at the mages. “We don’t have a river in our territory, so water either comes from the rain or mages. The longer it goes without raining, the more the mages charge.”

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  “That’s enough, T.”

  Lady T’s gaze was almost fond as she looked at Mox. Well, fond in a way that didn’t hide, she would bash his head in given the chance. “Girl, when we meet up with the other groups, find Senric. He’ll explain what you need to do to become a medic and how best to go about it. You,” she said, pointing at Mia. “Nobody from logistics wants to travel around with the scavengers; the death rate is too high. However, waiting until scavengers get back to camp to record their finds is ineffective and problematic. No scribe wants to transfer over, so we're trying out something new, and you got lucky. The only way you’ll get out of it is to become a mage.”

  “Any cheap, convenient magic schools?” Nessa asked.

  Their grins were wolfish.

  “Didn’t think so.”

  Nessa pulled her out of the line.

  Mia, no last name. Girl. Sixteen. No magic. No martial arts training. Little value.

  Little value. He said she had little value, not that she had no value. A small difference. It didn’t hurt less. It didn’t help her wounded pride. It just meant she had options. Not great ones, but options nonetheless.

  If she didn’t die.

  The death rate is too high, so we're trying out something new, and you got lucky.

  The casual mention of death.

  Little Value.

  By next month, someone would come through who could replace her if she died.

  “What should we do now?”

  Mia closed her eyes, adding more things to that box she was ignoring. “How much does the average scavenger make?”

  Nessa’s frown deepened. It was such an old expression for such a young face. “We probably can’t hand in that much. We’re not strong enough to hold on to what we collect.”

  “I’m going to be a scribe. I’ll be recording who collects what.” Mia also had her storage space, and collecting and hiding extras should be easy.

  Nessa’s eyes brightened. “There is no upper limit, but you’ll have to return empty-handed to earn less than ten points.”

  “Alright. You’ll teach me herbs, and I’ll ensure what you collect is protected and accurately recorded. After you’ve started classes, we’ll price my additional support at twenty to fifty points in the months you can afford it.”

  Nessa stuck out her hand again. “Deal.”

  “And Nessa, save some points. They're giving us water and food, I doubt it’s free.”

  ***

  In an open space, several groups integrated with ease.

  Their group had exited the forest into a large clearing. It was so wide that Mia mistook it for the edge of the forest at first, but on the other side were more trees. She could make out roads and what appeared to be signs.

  “Line up leftovers!”

  Mia gathered up her bedroll and got into line, Nessa at her side. Two days had passed since they made their deal. During that time, they stayed close to each other and found their rhythm.

  Mia could climb and act as a lookout, while Nessa knew most of the plants that grew and their uses. They collected the ones they didn’t know for Mox to identify.

  It wasn’t long before Nessa collected fifty points, so during the evening, Mia taught her the alphabet and how to write simple words.

  Tic, the only boy in their motley crew, had attached himself to a rowdy group of warriors. Mia did not like them. The guy who’d found her first was in that group, and everything about them screamed trouble.

  On the fourth day, the drug addict disappeared. She was there in the morning but not in the afternoon. Warriors escorted the guy she was always with to Mox, and after he placed his hand on the book, they let him go. There was no explanation for her disappearance. No one mentioned her.

  Her absence echoed and lingered more because Mia didn’t know what had happened to her.

  If you kill her, you’ll have to pay. If you fuck her, you’ll have to pay.

  Mia kept her hands at her side when all she wanted to do was wrap them around herself.

  “Our time together is up! Don’t disappear, I’m sure you’ll see me around.” She swung her arm wide, gesturing to a man with a puckered scar from temple to chin who approached. He had the same red coloring as the man Mia took the storage space from. “This is Troy. He’s in charge of all the scavengers.”

  He turned, foot tapping on the floor.

  Following him were several groups of people, numbering twenty or more. They were all old, sick, or children.

  “Your group is small.” Troy’s expression didn’t change as he looked them over. He just lingered a second longer on Mia.

  “That’s Ben. Mox assigned him to work as a scribe. If it works out, we’ll assign more people and put a scribe in each group.”

  “Alright. What about the thing attached to her?”

  “That’s Nessa, she knows herbs, but it doesn’t amount to much if she doesn’t learn to read. She’s already started, though, and her progress isn’t bad. We’ll mention her to Senric and take it from there. They’ll be useful if they live long enough. Proactive, smart, plus Mox says to leave them together.”

  Troy nodded.

  Lady T gave a salute and disappeared into the cluster of tents.

  The camp set up this time was different. There were hundreds of people, and the space they occupied was massive.

  “Leftovers, listen carefully. From this point on, you are scavengers. You’ll scour battlefields, picking through the bones of the dead. What you find is yours. Whether you hand it over or try to get more for it in town is your choice.” His voice carried over the crowd, sending murmurs through some, while others looked resigned. “If you hand it over to us, you will receive forty percent of the total, twenty percent will be a handling fee, and forty percent will go to paying off your debt. If you trade in the city, you pay fifty points a month. ”

  “What debt?” An old man screamed.

  A whip appeared in his hand. He lashed it on the ground, causing the whole group to step back. “You’ve been eating our food and drinking our water. Not to mention we're protecting you. Do you think you’d survive on your own if you wandered out of that forest with no idea where to go? Huh? Do you think we went there out of the kindness in our hearts?” Troy sneered. “Don’t interrupt me again.” He slowly wound the whip over his hand. “By the time we reach Ashfall, you’ll have incurred a debt of at least two thousand points. We’ll recover that amount whether you're dead or alive.”

  The weight of the canteen in her bag increased. Mia knew it wasn’t free. She would still have filled her bottle, but she hated the situation. Hated being dependent and desperate, having to shut up and do what she was told without question.

  Rage bubbled in her belly, but she pushed it down.

  “You’ll operate in groups of fifteen, working one week on and one week off. A veteran scavenger will supervise each group. They’ll show you the ropes. At Ashfall, there is a communal space where you can live, have two meals a day, and get water. This is not free. It will be added to your total.” He started pacing, hand behind his back. The whip gripped in his hand, threat clear. “After your debt is clear, you’re free to do as you please.”

  A hand went up in the front.

  Troy huffed a laugh, his shoulder relaxing, his grip on the whip loosening. “Speak.”

  “Has anyone ever cleared it? Their debt?”

  “All the time, all you really need is one good find.”