Chapter 6

The street outside was, like most others in Braghia, drab and dreary; the gray unadorned walls had begun to grate on my nerves by now. From a window high up on the other side came the scream of a young man. A servant failing some task or a slave being made to play his master's cruel game.

The sunlight only reached a few stories down, and where we were the mid-morning was nothing more than a feeble dawn. Only the typical tall, black carts pulled by sweating, running slaves were narrow enough to fit through these alleys, and woe to the man who did not find a portal to hide in when they passed. Somber, robed shadows passed us as Nightbreeze and I looked at each other, she finishing cleaning the blood from her mouth and I passing from fuming anger to depression.

"Here we are," I said, kicking at the cobbles. "Wet, sunburned, hungry, and broke."

"We can seek the warmth of the sun!" she grinned red-cheeked at me, hand covering the mouth. "And your skin is so fair that a little color won't hurt it! And you could stand to lose a little weight," she winked at me pleasantly.

"And money?" I asked, feeling my belly. It was not big, now was it? And could I do anything about the sunburns? I suddenly got a funny feeling, a prickling in my fingers.

"Well, I..." she began. Then her face twisted, and she seemed to suffer some internal turmoil. After a few seconds she growled angrily and jerked a money pouch out of her robes. "All right! The idiot who tried to kill us had this! Take it! Take it all! Feel free, and don't mind me!" She almost threw it at me.

"What do you mean?" I caught the pouch before it fell onto the clean, large cobbles. It was heavy, far heavier than the one I had started out with. I knew the worshipers of the Eternal Fire Below were renowned for their wealth, but this...

"Why can't I lie to you, Sleetspray? Why can't I keep the lion's share to myself and tell you that the remainder was all there was? The Kings only know you would buy it!"

"I didn't force you to-" I begun.

"Of course you didn't. I did. Me and my stupid head. I can't lie to you!"

"Your hair has grown," I observed. It had, the shining black hair was now long enough to even seem a little tousled.

"I bet it has," she groaned and felt it with an irritating wave of her hand. "I wonder if it is worth it. Maybe I should just leave you here and seek my chances among those whom I can fool and deceive?"

She looked defiantly at me from a head down and two feet away. Beautiful now, despite the sunburn and the thieves' cross and a few traces of blood around her mouth. So beautiful that I almost did not recognize her as the sorry thing I had bought yesterday. She meant it. I knew it. She was ready to leave. There was no joke in her eyes.

A clean cut is the easiest, my lovely, I thought. Then I opened the pouch, took out one of a few golden dragons that was in there, and tossed the leather bag back to her. "Thank you for saving my life. I wish you a happy one in return," I said, bowed, and turned to leave.

After only three paces I was hit in the back by a small, leathery object. "Damn you to burn! Come on, let's go eat. I am hungry."

She had lied to me, even though she claimed she couldn't; She wasn't hungry, she was famished. She filled her thin, thin body with stew at the little taverna by the sea in the Magnoran quarter, filled it to excess.

I had finished eating long ago, and was studying my new friend, my first slave. How long since she last had been fed properly? The hood of her robe covered her cross and unfortunately also her big, black eyes, but now and again she looked up at me and smiled. I found myself waiting for these moments. In one hand she held a wooden spoon, shuffling the hot stuff into her mouth, which she put layer upon layer in her belly together with groa, the thin, soft bread that the Magnorans love so much. Her hands were still red from the heat of the fireball which the door at the hostel had turned into, and they had to be aching, just like mine were. Indeed, mine were still prickling, prickling with a desire to take those damaged hands in mine. Not in any romantic fashion at all, but with a desire to cure her. To heal.