Chapter 7: In the Slave Market ReduxAs the group left the compound together for the first time since they had entered it, Jaelle’n saw Aguilar had not lied to them that first night, now some five ten-days in the past. Challabadur was little more than a league away. Other than the flagged road, which passed in front of the compound, there was nothing but sand, snow-white sparkling sand. Beyond Aguilar’s walled oasis, there was only desert—dunes that changed with every wind, and strange beasts that somehow thrived without water. No place to hide, no way to travel except on the road, back to the city. There, a woman alone would be snatched up almost before she passed the gates.
As the group started for Challabadur the evening before the auction day, the twenty women were no longer chained, a
