The Condemned Read Free Page B

it by now.
       Xavian had always made sure they had a safe place to sleep but the best Leci could usually do was a secluded self-made nest compiled of boxes and sheets of metal. She was starting to ache in places she hadn't even known she could ache because she slept in so many cramped positions.
       It was rare she managed to sleep in an actual bed and considering the circumstances under which that most often happened it wasn't something she particularly looked forward to. It usually meant things were bad enough that she resorted to spending time with another actual human being, something she avoided wherever possible, not entirely because of what it meant she was doing and what she had found herself having to sell, more a simple case of enjoying the reclusive status she had come to rely on.
    Solitary confinement was self imposed and welcomed.
    The people who got close to her ended up dead and so she wouldn’t be making the mistake of allowing anyon e to penetrate the wall of armou r she had built around herself. It made the stab of loneliness that occasionally wormed its way through her defences just that touch easier to bear if she told herself she was alone for the good of everyone else.
       Her stomach grumbled noisily and she set her mind to breakfast. Glancing about the alleyway in which she'd made her bed for the night... I t was deserted and she slipped out of the end and into the crowded street, brushing against a small man as she did, her hand slipping deftly into the loose pocket of his baggy jacket and pulling out a tattered coin purse. She slid it into her own pocket without checking the
    contents and continued moving, weaving amongst the milling bodies.
       Market day was always the easiest. It was so crowded and bustling that the people in the streets were easy prey and the stallholders were so occupied they hardly ever noticed her.
       She sidled up close to a fruit stall and when the owner turned his back she brushed two only slightly bruised looking apples into the small linen sack she carried. Leci repeated this procedure at several stalls until she had obtained a small, stale chunk of bread that was only just starting to show signs of green at the edges; not a problem, easy to brush off , a lump of cheese and a small plastic container of some milky kind of liquid. Possibly even milk . She didn’t like to think about what kind of animal it might be from if it was.
       Returning to her makeshift home, Leci satiated her stomach with her meagre breakfast , pausing only once to fight off the wave of nausea that hit when she downed the unknown liquid, and went back to hiding. The rest of her 'business' could be conducted when darkness began to fall and her position here gave her a good enough view of the passers-by while at the same time keeping her fairly hidden from view.
       If the men she was looking for were around they'd hopefully show themselves eventually. The routine of moving from town to town, bar to bar in search of the men who had killed her brother, the men who had stolen from her the last piece of family she had ever known, had become something close to a religion for her. It was all she knew, all that kept her going. The only reason she had to keep on waking up. Once she had paid back Xavian for making the ultimate sacrifice in her name she could rest.
       Or die.
       Or just fade to nothingness.
       But right now the knowledge that she owed the biggest debt possible was what drove her. She would not stop looking until she had evened the score. Painfully aware that the time she had allowed herself to grieve following his death and the time it had taken for her to recover from her own injuries had probably greatly diminished any chance she may have had of succeeding in her goal.
       The men had moved on, were lost to her.
       She did not let this knowledge dishearten her. They were renegades, just as she was, they had no real home and they travelled ceaselessly. All she