Her breaths came in shallow gasps. She wiped her sweaty palms on her dirty pants, but it didn't help.
She had to get out.
She had to leave.
Now.
She paced faster, the walls closing in on her.
She wanted to go home.
She wanted to go anywhere but here.
The stench of so many people.
The sound they made seeped through the walls.
She just wanted to ride Fallion, to flee into the deep desert, go somewhere where they could ride for an entire day without seeing anyone or anything else.
Her chest felt tight, like someone was squeezing the air out of her.
She threw the chair on the bed and sat cross-legged on the floor, wedging herself into the space by the table. Desperate, she started the Pattern—the series of deep, slow breaths and repeated phrases that would take her to the Core. She needed to go somewhere other than this dirty, crowded city.
She found it, eventually as her breaths finally slowed down and her mind drifted.
She stayed there long past when she should've returned, hovering in that place that wasn't a place, free for just a little while until Harley burst into the room and thrust her back into the real world. "Up. It's time you looked the part."
K'lrsa stood, flexing muscles stiff from sitting in one position for too long. "Where are we going?"
"A dressmaker friend of mine. She ought to be able to do something with you." The way he said it it was clear he doubted it would be enough.
K'lrsa scratched at her hair as she trailed along behind him. Nothing would make her look the part. She'd never been one of those girls.
F'lia? Oh, she'd be perfect as a desert princess, spinning around in layers of silks, smiling like the sun. But K'lrsa? She was a warrior, a fighter. No amount of clothing would change that.
She was smart enough not to say anything to Harley, though. No need to make him angry.
She might not like it, but as long as he was taking her closer to her goal, she'd let him dress her in whatever he wanted.
Chapter 38
They walked a few blocks through the crowded streets to a shop with colorful dresses displayed in the window. Each one was brighter than the last, the fabric so voluminous K'lrsa wondered if anyone would be able to tell a woman was wearing them.
A woman certainly wouldn't be able to do anything in them. She shook her head. She didn't understand these people.
Harley knocked on the door and entered, smiling at the woman sitting behind the counter sewing a pile of turquoise silks together.
"Mistress Hawthorne, I'd like you to meet K'lrsa dan V'na of the White Horse Tribe. She's a desert princess I captured on my trip. We're bound for Boradol."
The woman set down her silks and made her way around the counter. She was short and wide, her hair graying around the edges, and she wore a simple fitted dress that somehow covered every inch of her skin while managing to accentuate her ample bosom.
"A desert princess? Oh, Harley. What are you into now?"
"Katie, can you help me or not? She needs to make a good first impression."
Mistress Hawthorne crossed her arms, accentuating her considerable bust even more, and looked up at Harley. "Now Harley Redcliffe, I may not know much about the tribes folk, but I know this filthy dirty excuse for a girl is no princess. Look at her." The woman reached out and plucked something from K'lrsa's hair. "She has bugs in her hair, Harley. Bugs. What princess would walk around with bugs in her hair?"
K'lrsa expected Harley to get angry, but he didn't. Instead he rested his hands on Mistress Hawthorne's shoulders and lowered his voice to a soft whisper. "It's been a long journey, Katie. Will you do what you can? I need this." He stroked her arm and she blushed. "Please."
Mistress Hawthorne let out a deep sigh and turned away. She pulled at various bundles of fabric as she talked. "Boradol? You know the restrictions there. It's going to make this ten times harder than it needs to be. Sure you can't just sell her off here?"
He shook his head.
"Fine. I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can make her something like that one." She pointed to one of the dresses in the window. It had so many layers it took up half the space, crowding the other two dresses into the corners.
"No." The word was out of K'lrsa's mouth before she could stop it.
She bit her lip as Harley glared at her. "Did I ask your opinion?"
She was fortunate Mistress Hawthorne was watching them, because Harley's words were far more kind than the blinding anger that flashed in his eyes.
K'lrsa took a deep breath. She couldn't let them burden her with that cloth monstrosity. She'd never be able to walk wearing that, let alone kill a man. "I need to ride Fallion. I can't do that in an outfit like that one."
"Oh, Harley, you're not letting her ride a horse are you? Have you completely lost your mind?"
"She's supposed to be a desert princess, Katie. They're different there. And the horse…well, it's the only way I'm going to sell this to anyone."
K'lrsa stepped forward. "Then put me in something I can wear on horseback."
"She needs to look the part, Harley."
K'lrsa laughed. "A woman of my tribe would never wear something like that. She'd wear this."
K'lrsa pulled off the baggy shirt she'd been given to reveal her hunting vest. It was a little worn—the leather ties that kept it closed were fraying at the edge causing the topmost portion to gape open a little more than normal and the weeks of travel without a proper cleaning had caused it to shrink a bit, tightening around her chest.
Mistress Hawthorne gasped and threw a large bolt of dark fabric around K'lrsa's shoulders. "This is a respectable establishment, Harley. What are you thinking? Not even a whore would dress like that."
K'lrsa stepped back. "This is what I wear to hunt. It covers what it needs to and doesn't get in the way. This is what a 'Desert Princess' wears."
Mistress Hawthorne shook her head. "You dress like that you get what you deserve. And no man would think it had to cost him a thing."
K'lrsa drew her knife. "Any man who tried to take what I wasn't willing to give would lose the hand that tried to take it."
Harley stepped between them. "Ladies. Please."
"I'd heard they were savages, Harley, but I'd never realized before…" Mistress Hawthorne shook her head. "You can't take this…thing to Boradol. No one will buy her."
"Katie." He took her hands in his and kissed them. "I can do this, but only if you help me. Will you do it? Can you make her presentable but exotic?"
Mistress Hawthorne glanced over at K'lrsa, her expression showing how impossible she thought the task was. "I'm not touching her until she's had a good bath." When Harley started to object, she waved him to silence. "She can do it here, don't worry. Go. I'll do what I can."
Harley kissed her cheek and Mistress Hawthorne blushed. "Can you finish by tomorrow?" he asked.
"Tomorrow? Are you addled, Harley?"
He stared down at his hands. "We're staying at the Lovely Lady. I can't afford more than two nights there."
"You could've stayed with me, you know." Mistress Hawthorne glanced sideways at K'lrsa as she spoke softly.
"I know. But I wouldn't want to impugn on your honor that way." He stepped back. "I need this, Katie. It's my only hope of redeeming this whole trip. And then, maybe, we could…" He glanced at K'lrsa. "Talk about where I'll stay when I'm not traveling."
Mistress Hawthorne shook her head. "I'd find myself a backup plan if I were you. This girl's not going to fool anyone."
"She has to."
Mistress Hawthorne pushed him towards the door. "I'll do my best, Harley. But no amount of pretty fabric is going to change things. A pig in a dress is still a pig."
Chapter 39
Before K'lrsa could fully register the fact that Mistress Hawthorne had just compared her to a pig, the woman had grabbed K'lrsa by the ear and dragged her to a small shed behind the shop.
"Take a bath. There's the pump, there's the tub, there's the soap. I want you spotless before you come back inside my shop."
K'lrsa stared at the implements in the shed, not sure where to begin.
"Well get on with it, girl."
"I don't know what to do. I've never taken a bath before."
"What? I knew you were a savage, but are you telling me you people never clean yourselves? Ever?"
K'lrsa clenched her teeth. "We do clean ourselves, just not like this. We use sweat baths."
Mistress Hawthorne's mouth gaped open. "You sweat to get clean?"
"Yes."
The woman looked as if she was going to faint. She shook her head as she bustled around the shed, priming the pump and moving it up and down until water started to pour into the tub. "I love that man, but he's a right fool sometimes."
When the tub was full, she gestured at it. "Get in."
K'lrsa shook her head. "It's too deep. I don't know how to swim."
Mistress Hawthorne laughed, the sound filling the small space. She kept laughing until she cried, wiping away the tears that fell down her round cheeks. "Oh, child. You won't drown. It isn't that deep. Now strip and get in."
The bath was one of the most miserable experiences of K'lrsa's life. Mistress Hawthorne scoured her skin with a gritty bar of soap until every inch of her body burned. She wasn't gentle about it in the least, either, muttering the whole time about foolish men and their even more foolish ideas.
And just when K'lrsa thought it couldn't get any worse, Mistress Hawthorne drew a new bath and started in on K'lrsa's hair.
"What's this?" she demanded holding the desiccated shell of a bug before K'lrsa's eyes.
"A sand beetle?"
"Oh, a sand beetle. Oh, okay." Mistress Hawthorne scrubbed her fingers against K'lrsa's scalp as K'lrsa tried to squirm away. "When was the last time you washed your hair?"
"Like this?"
"Yes."
"Never."
At that point Mistress Hawthorne devolved into mumbling under her breath and shaking her head as she scratched so hard at K'lrsa's scalp K'lrsa swore she must be bleeding. Then the woman took a comb and yanked it through K'lrsa's hair—starting at the bottom fortunately—until it was completely straight.
It took forever.
But at last Mistress Hawthorne finished and let K'lrsa dry herself.
"Alright. Stand up. Let me see what I'm working with."
K'lrsa stood in front of the woman, arms crossed under her breasts, and waited for more insults.
"Huh. Not bad." She slapped K'lrsa's hip as she walked around her. "Under all that grime, turns out you're actually quite attractive. A little too much muscle." She pinched K'lrsa's arm. "But I can hide that."
K'lrsa stepped back. "Why do you have to hide my body? Why can't I just be presented as I am?"
Mistress Hawthorne laughed. "Oh, child. That would never work. A woman dresses in the way she wants men to treat her. You cover yourself to show men that you're like their wives and daughters, to be treated with care and respect. If you insist on dressing like a savage, they'll treat you like one."
"That's ridiculous."
"That's the world."
K'lrsa shook her head. "How can you love a man like Harley knowing that he'd sell a woman? Or hurt a woman? Did you know there was a girl who traveled with us whose sole use was to entertain the men?"
Mistress Hawthorne tsked as if K'lrsa didn't understand anything. "A slave no doubt. Meant for that purpose. Harley would never treat someone like me that way."
"In the tribes men treat all women with respect. There is no right way to dress or act. We do what makes the most sense."
"Well, you're not in the tribes anymore, are you? Learn to act the right way or pay the consequences."
Before K'lrsa could argue further, Mistress Hawthorne threw a loose dress at her and turned away. "Put that on and follow me inside. Time to work a miracle."
Chapter 40
The next morning, Harley had Melinda, one of the slave women he'd bought in Crossroads, help K'lrsa to dress. She felt like a child's doll, standing in the middle of the small room Barkley and Reginald had slept in the night before, turning this way and that so Melinda could burden her in layer after layer of fabric.
It took the woman half a candlemark to dress K'lrsa in the ridiculous costume Mistress Hawthorne had put together. At least the entire outfit consisted of sensible shades of brown that would travel well instead of the garish colors in the store window. And K'lrsa had managed to convince Mistress Hawthorne to make the bottom-most layer a split skirt that would still allow her to ride Fallion in comfort.
(That after a shouting match when K'lrsa asked for pants as the bottom layer and Mistress Hawthorne lectured her on how inappropriate it was for a woman to ever ride a horse and K'lrsa retorted that at least in the tribes women actually had a use and Mistress Hawthorne grew so angry she couldn't form words.)
K'lrsa stumbled as she stepped out of the room, the voluminous skirts of the dress tangling her feet. She didn't know how she was going to manage four flights of stairs without falling and breaking her neck. She was gathering the fabric in her hands to try, when the men arrived.
"Don't." Harley slapped at her hand. "Defeats the purpose if you go around showing off your ankles like a lowly street walker."
He walked around her twice, nodding his head. "It'll do. It'll do. Nice touch." He pointed to the headband Mistress Hawthorne had made her with a giant everen feather sticking out the back. Everens hadn't been seen in tribal lands for at least five generations—not that anyone in the tribes had ever worn a headband with a bird feather in it—but no one seemed to care much for accuracy.
Or even plausibility. If she did manage to stay seated on Fallion, there was no way she'd be able to draw her bow with this many layers hampering every movement.
K'lrsa met Barkley's eyes and saw him shake his head slightly, warning her against saying anything.
This was all so ridiculous. Did the people of the Toreem Daliphate really know nothing of the tribes? But Barkley was right. It would do her no good to say anything now.
So she swallowed her concerns and didn't even object when Barkley had to physically carry her down the stairs and plop her on Fallion's back like a sack of grain.
As long as they were continuing towards Toreem, that's all that mattered.
Chapter 41
The next few days of travel were uneventful. They passed more and more people as they continued on towards the now not-so-distant mountains. Each group gawked at her, whispering to one another in shock.
A woman on a horse. And one in such a unique outfit. Look at the feather.
Harley told every person who'd listen that she was a desert princess he was taking to Boradol for sale to the highest bidder.
K'lrsa eventually learned to ignore everyone, staring over their heads and pretending she was somewhere else.
She spent most of each day thinking about one of two things: the young man she continued to see in her moon dreams, and her father.
She couldn't speak to the young man in her dreams, but their bodies spoke for them as they came together in the Moon Dance each night.
She'd experimented here or there with the boys in the tribe—a stolen kiss or touch behind one of the tents when no one was looking, sharing a fire and some affection on a hunting trip—but nothing had made her feel the way she did with him.
It was like every touch and kiss drove her to want another and another and another until she could barely see straight for wanting him. She spent each day in a haze, longing for another night so she could see him again.
She refused to let it go further than the dance and a stolen kiss or two. Which just left her aching for that final release she wouldn't allow herself.
And then, out of guilt and a desperate desire to keep focused on what she was doing and why, she'd awaken and force herself to think about her father. To picture those last moments with him, reliving ov
er and over again the moment he'd begged her to kill him. Feeling once more the knife in her hand as she plunged it into his chest.
For every moment she thought of the young man in her dreams, she spent another picturing the ways she would kill the Daliph. The young man was just a dream to distract her mind. Killing the Daliph was her destiny.
The night before they reached Boradol, she found herself alone with Barkley. Yet again, Harley had paid for a set of rooms for her and ordered Barkley and Reginald to stay in the outer room so she couldn't escape.
The room assigned to her was narrow, the ceiling low enough that it almost touched her head. She tried to sleep but couldn't. She felt as if the whole world were closing in around her.
Eventually, she opened the door to the outer room, hoping that Reginald wouldn't be there to mock her yet again. Fortunately, he was still downstairs, gambling like he did most nights.
Barkley sat at the small table in the middle of the room, polishing his boots. There were no beds in the room, so the men would have to use their sleeping pallets. K'lrsa envied them. She dreaded the thought of another night buried in a fluffy mattress.
"Join me." Barkley gestured at the other chair and K'lrsa sank into it, still not quite used to sitting on something so stiff and high off the ground. She missed the baru hide stools of home, but that was so far behind her it almost seemed like a dream.
Barkley set aside his boot. "We'll reach Boradol tomorrow."
She'd spent the entire trip trying not to think about what would happen once they reached Boradol, but now she had no choice.
"What happens then?"
He fiddled with one of the laces on the boot, not looking at her. "Harley tries to sell you off."
"Tries?" It had never occurred to her he might not be able to. "Could he fail?"
"No. He'll find someone to buy you. There are enough places in Boradol. One has to take you." He shook his head. "I just…"
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