Somehow, though, she'd found reserves of strength from deep within, and under the tending of her people Amber had survived. She had been terrified she would lose her baby, but one of the prisoners had been a midwife, and assured Amber that the baby was unharmed.
When the woman told her, Amber had cried, for the first time in weeks. She'd cried for Beatta, the Halrana who had died so close to freedom, and for Ness, the old woman who had sacrificed herself just to give them their chance. Most of all, she cried for her child. Amber had tried, but she had failed. Her child deserved its chance at life.
In the time since her try for freedom Amber had healed, but she now worried for the health of her child even more. She shivered at night and the pangs of hunger were like red hot pokers in her chest.
Now the time had come, and Amber had a different plan.
It was a plan that caused her heart to quail with fear.
With her auburn hair brushed and glowing, lips ruby red, and brown eyes lowered, she walked towards the guard post and tried to ignore the tightness in her chest.
She was hardly showing her pregnancy, and while the rations of the prison camp meant her waist was the slimmest it had ever been, Amber still filled out the silk dress she'd pillaged from a dead woman's belongings. She had modified the dark blue dress so that the neckline was low, scandalously low, and the material was sheer, so that Amber felt near-naked.
As she picked her way through the groups of huddled prisoners, heading for the check point, Amber caught the disapproving stares of both the Halrana and her Alturan countrymen. The Alturans here were mostly soldiers who had been captured at the battle at the Bridge of Sutanesta, and they'd seen their friends killed by the Black Army, by the very men that Amber was evidently giving herself to. Amber lifted her chin and ignored them. In her position they would do the same thing.
She hadn't made the decision lightly. People were disappearing from the camp. They certainly weren't being released, for the ones disappearing were the old and the infirm, the weak and the dying, but if they weren't being released then where were they going? Then others started vanishing — those who argued with the guards, or even looked at them the wrong way.
Amber's trouble started in the food line when, two days before, Hugo, a vicious Tingaran, had tried to kiss her. When she'd turned her head, he'd angrily pulled her ragged dress from her shoulders, displaying her breasts for all to see. Without thinking, Amber had responded by slapping him across the face.
Hugo, a big man with the typical shaved head of a Tingaran, had looked surprised for a moment, and then glared at Amber as his fellow guards hooted and jeered. "You're going next." He had prodded Amber's bare chest with his finger. "I'll make sure of it," he said with venom. Amber had hung her head and pulled her dress back up, before realising what it was he meant. Wherever they were taking the vanishing prisoners, she was going, too.
Amber could see only one way out, a way she could save her life, and provide security for her unborn child. She had spent two days getting ready for this moment. She was beautiful, she reminded herself.
Amber reached the guard post. She saw the guard in front of her breathe in as he caught the scent of lavender and rose from the fragrance Amber had placed at her neck and wrists. The other guard looked her slowly up and then down, his gaze finally setting on her chest.
"Hello, beauty," the first guard said. "Where did you turn up from? How come we 'aven't noticed you before?"
"I'm new," Amber said.
The second guard came forward, his mouth open and eyes still fixated on Amber's body. He leered, his hand running over the soft material on Amber's waist. "Good news for us," the guard said.
Amber smiled up at him, letting his hand run over the material and up, feeling the outside of her hip, moving further still to the underside of her breast. She finally stepped back and pushed his hand away. "I'm not here for you two, I'm afraid. I'm here for someone else."
"Who?" asked the first guard.
"High Lord Moragon," Amber said. "His command tent is out there, isn't it?" She smiled up at the guard sweetly.
Both men stood back and exchanged worried glances. The leering guard's expression was fearful.
"Could you let me through?" Amber asked.
The guards lived in a separate compound to the main prison camp, Moragon with them. Amber prayed to the Lord of the Sky. If they let her out unescorted she could potentially escape, and she wouldn't have to do what she came here to do.
Amber remembered Hugo's words: he'd said she would be next. She owed it to her unborn child to stay alive.
The first guard whistled, and a uniformed man came over. "Take her to High Lord Moragon's tent."
Amber's escort quickly looked her over, but said nothing about Amber's obvious purpose. "Come with me," he said.