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Has the servant girl run away? Has someone abducted her, as we’ve heard sometimes happens to servants? Then I see her farther down the lane She steps out of the shadow of a stall where racks of plain white linen-over-wiredecoration She is speaking to a person out of rins with a brilliant smile I have never seen on her face in our house, not in the entire year she has served us
The constant ha emotions of the day have crushed my patience to dust I stride doard her She seeson her hip, eyes cast down There’s an old scar on the top of her shorn head that I have never before noticed, the score of a whip
"Please giveoff, Do man with pliers in hand steps into view from out of the stall He’s tall, broad-shouldered, utterly Coer and suspicion strike like a bolt of lightning quivering through me My hands curl into fists Who is this nae people he doesn’t even know?
"Keep going," he says to her in Efean "There’s no cause for you to beg a pardon from the likes of her"
She scurries on but I cannot allow such disrespect to go unchallenged His eyes flare as I approach, but he’s an Efean ed scar on his face gives hi curl of his lip that really annoys me
With a false se "I a for a sturdy, well-constructed ht I find that here?" My ser "Or would you just try to cheat the likes of e, his words tinged with the same Commoner accent Mother has "You’re one of that spoiled litter of half-sour kittensinto a wall of scorn
He adds, "You must be one of the twins Which are you? The sullen schemer, or the screamer?"
How dare he call us names!
Above, Amaya, Taberta, and Coriander hurry away up the lane, A imperiously for me to follow But I already had to lose once today I want to beat hio
"What a rude and selfish boy you are!"
"Selfish?" He gestures toward the stall he caht forearainst his brown skin, like he was clawed "I labor dawn to dusk to help keep my faht but we haven’t the money to buy oil for lamps Can you say the same?"
"I h you le word, and I could have your sister whipped and put onto the streets My father would never tolerate a servant who says such things about his daughters Not that he will know! Because I don’t think it’s right that your sister be harmed just because you need to prove you can insult me to my face as if that makes you a man"
He stiffens "It wasn’t s before from your kind--"
"Not from my father!"
"No, not froly "But our uncle has plenty of work she can help hi out Patron piss buckets to the sewer--"
A throbbing bell tone rings through the air, followed inal Abruptly people start lowering their awnings to show their booths are closed A burly rabs the young man’s arm to pull him off the lane but halts when he seeshere" The burly man has the accent of soh for the marketplace "Go Please Go!"
He spits Efean words at the youth, calling hiheaded and wretched fool and a phrase that refers to the withering of his reproductive organs For one breath I enjoy the scolding, because the oldinto the youth But the discipline I learned froet caught in whatever co in the market Nearby a child starts to cry with screaht As I back away, a ruround Gears and joints tick over Sunlight flashes on tiny mirrors A curved metal body looms into view above the ht, pivots into the lane The child’s hysterical bawling cuts off as the huge spider slams to a stop in the lane