The Alabaster Staff - Edward Bolme [25]
"I am not a slave!" protested Kehrsyn, pinching the very top of her branded arm in an attempt to strangle the pain.
"Oh, you know that, hon, and we know that, but no one else knows that. Hey, you're just a homeless street urchin, right? So just be sure to keep that little ol' brand covered up, and no one will be the wiser."
"I'll tell them I'm freeborn!" snarled Kehrsyn, eyes narrowed.
Ruzzara could tell she was just barely holding on.
"It'll be hard to tell anyone anything when you're dead."
Kehrsyn stopped in her tracks, trembling.
Ruzzara smiled disarmingly and said, "Hey, that'll only happen if you double-cross us. If you do well, why, the future will open wide just for you… nice bed, fancy food, friends who look after you, gold…" Ruzzara paused to let her words sink in. "Ta-ta, hon," she said as she walked away. "You have two days. Don't be late. It'd be a shame to ruin a work of art like you."
She walked away, whistling. She passed along the word about the new recruit to the one person who needed to know, then wandered back to rejoin her group. By the time she'd drawn a chair up by the fire, kicked off her boots and socks, and finished her first glass of liqueur, all thoughts of Kehrsyn's plight were gone from her mind.
CHAPTER SIX
Kehrsyn aimlessly walked the streets of Messemprar for the remaining daylight hours. Her partially eaten pear sat in her left hand unnoticed, almost forgotten, its raw surfaces slowly turning brown. Her right hand clutched her left biceps just opposite the throbbing brand. She couldn't see the burn well and dared not touch it, but the unrelenting sensation of heat, the blisters that surrounded the area, and the bitter odor all told her she'd been injured fairly seriously. Tears of fear, rage, shame, and pain quivered at the corners of her eyes, but she refused to let them fall. She was an Untheri; she would persevere. Somehow she would prosper just as her nation had persevered and occasionally prospered under the tyranny of the god-king Gilgeam.
Even worse than the pain of the burn were the knot in her stomach, and the anguish, nausea, and hopelessness it brought to her. She wanted to curl up but wouldn't. She needed to eat but couldn't.
All the darkest times of her childhood were falling back in upon her soul, wiping away what self-respect she'd had, like a thunderhead blotting out a young spring sky. What little hope she had was offered by a den of thieves… hardly the most auspicious bearers of gifts.
Her pride urged her to find a way not to let the ugly wall-walking sorceress get the better of her (though, in fact, she already had), but without knowing the guild's reach she could find no sure solution. She'd been placed into a position in which she had no choice. She'd always told herself before that there was hope, yet she could see none left.
She tried not to think about the fact that she could have chosen death instead. She failed, of course, and when she thought about it she tried to tell herself that it wasn't fair that she should die for being a murderer's scapegoat.
None of it stuck. The guilt of her capitulation had torn the scab off of her memories-the days of her youth that she hated-and the pain and self-recrimination welled up from the wound once again. She wondered whether, even without the threat of arrest, she would have done their bidding just to earn a good meal, a dry bed, a bit of security and a hope of belonging… somewhere.
The salt in her wound was that someone else would profit from her theft, from her abandonment of her principles. Profit financially, of course, but it was also clear that the sorceress enjoyed exerting power over people like Kehrsyn. She was probably gloating about how she'd directed Kehrsyn like a trained dog.
Kehrsyn tried to focus her turbulent emotions and turn them against the sorceress. If she could, it would give her motivation and drive, perhaps even help her to figure out some way to get back at that false-friendly wench with the supercilious smirk.
But, the guilty portions