"I wanted to be meat"

Keilah

She grabbed Dakkoul's sleeve. "We're being followed."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Yes of course Keilah. That's why we rode so fast. He didn't confront us on the road though, he wanted to get his friends first. Let's just stay out of his way."

Before them the road widened to a square where there were rows and rows of people standing on blocks. Dakkoul had led the horses round the side, found a dirty faced urchin to mind them, and went straight over to the far-right section, inspecting three older ladies, each with a placard above their heads that said lady's maid. Keilah followed him, but stopped. Backing on to the rows was a fenced in section, in which a huddle of people were being circled by three arctic foxes, large ones, larger than she'd ever seen before.

She grabbed hold of Dakkoul's arm. "What's happening over there?" 

A grimness had tightened his mouth. "The tithe. They are choosing which ones will be given to the Fox."

The huddle of people was broken by a girl about her age stepping out of their midst with flame-colored hair. She picked up a stone from the ground and rubbed it along her flesh.

"Why's she doing that?" Keilah asked, as a cut appeared in the girl's skin.

"She's marking herself with blood," Dakkoul said in a hushed voice.

There was something so vital about her, so brave, in the way she stood there, shielding the children behind her, holding her bleeding arm in front of three foxes that Keilah found herself running to the fence. "She shouldn't be given to the Fox, not her. Stop this Dakkoul."

He bounded over the fence and called to the foxes. Two of them pricked their ears and turned to him. The third jumped at the flame colored girl, who ducked, so that the fox missed her, then shuddered and waved her arm in front of its snout.

Dakkoul was beside her in a moment, and held up her cut wrist, flicking the blood on the ground so that one of the foxes licked it. She struggled to free herself as a shout of protest came from a gangly man with a sword at the gate. Dakkoul threw her over his shoulders and ran through the foxes, dodging their snaps and climbing over the fence with impressive feed.

The gangly man came shouting towards him, then did a double-take when he saw Dakkoul and quietened down. "Your House wants her back, Hattavah?'"

He shook his head. "The lady wants to buy her. She'll pay what she's worth."

The gangly man surveyed Keilah with curious, probing eyes that made her want to straighten her cloak and check herself for smears of mud.
"As you wish," he said deferentially. "She's a fine one, it's true. Too fine for the Fox. She'll cost you thirty silver coins."

"Twenty," Dakkoul said. "She was meat anyway."

"I wanted to be meat," the girl hissed. "Now it will be one of the others."

Inside the fence a young boy was nipped by one of the foxes.

"That boy's the chosen," said the gangly man, and a slave behind him went extract him as the flame haired girl watched, her golden eyes squinting in an effort to prevent tears escaping. Only one did. Keilah watched as it traced a path down her dusty cheek. She remembered she had not cried since her mother died. How strange, she thought to herself, yet I went to bed with wet cheeks every night in the months she was sick, so that the straw in my pillow stank and I had to re-stuff it. She put out her hand and caught the girl's tear and looked at it, shiny on her finger in the flickering oil light.

"It should be me," the girl said with such fierceness that Keilah wondered if she'd done the right thing even as Dakkoul completed the bargain.

"You are the Lady Keilah's now," he told the girl gently enough.

She clutched her hair and threw it over her face, hiding behind the thickness of it.

Dakkoul rolled his eyes. "She's a terrible choice. Not what I would have picked at all. A village girl. Useless. She won't know the first thing about how to assist you."

"You'd have picked one of those old stern-faced women and let her be eaten."

"I want to be eaten," said a muffled voice.

Dakkoul snorted. "No you don't. It's not a quick death. It doesn't happen there. You get taken back to the Queen-Priestess. You'd have regretted it in the end."

The girl flicked back her hair, exposing a thin brown leather strap around her neck. "I have lost my family, my village, everything. All I can hope for now is an honorable death. I want to sacrifice myself for them."

Dakkoul pulled at the brown leather strap and up it came, exposing a wooden flame.

"The sign of Jagur's god," Keilah breathed.

"Take it off," Dakkoul snapped. 

Her golden eyes hooded but she obeyed, passing it to him with trembling fingers.

Dakkoul flung it across the square where it fell into a hole in the road, a gap where the cobblestone had been removed. "Best you forget about that now. We follow the Fox in the House of the Lavilyn."

Keilah watched it fly through the air and a melancholy came over her. Jagur would have sorrowed to see it discarded like that.

"I will never follow the Fox," the girl spat.

"She's no good, Keilah," said Dakkoul. "She'll just cause trouble, slit your throat in the middle of the night like as not, as revenge for the village attack. Let me sell her back to the man. She'll not die now, the other boy was chosen."

Keilah pursed her lips together. There was something about the girl that reminded her of her best friend in the village, Belline. Her passionate responses, perhaps, but even her snub nose and wide mouth. If Keilah was unable to protect the village, Belline could wind up here to be sold, just like this girl and Belline would be just as angry. Was Dakkoul right? Would this girl see Keilah as a Wayvolkan, like everyone else, and want to get revenge on her because of it? She had no way of knowing for sure.

Keilah half-turned away, when she caught sight of the pendant glimmering in the torch light. She swung back to where the girl stood glaring at Dakkoul who was eyeballing her back. "What's your name?"

The fierceness on her face faded somewhat. "Alyssia."

"Do you follow the god of your pendant?" Keilah asked.

"I do," said Alyssia in a whisper.

"Do you follow the teaching to love your enemies?"

"Yes," she said with angry eyes. "Even if I don't want to."

Dakkoul's eyes widened. "What god demands that?"

"Jagur's god," Keilah said.

Dakkoul's mouth pinched. "No slave loves the Wayvolkan. You lie."

The girl opened her mouth, but Keilah, anxious on her behalf, forestalled her. "She doesn't love the Wayvolkan, she loves her god and his teachings. Jagur's the same. She'll do."

"Will she, my lady?" Dakkoul said, his tone half-mocking, but he untied the rope from Alyssiah's hands. "Lucky you," he told her. "The beautiful Lady Keilah wants you to serve her. You must come now and have your hair cut and receive her mark."

"What?" cried Keilah, "Why must her hair be cut?"

Dakkoul cleared his throat, tossing a glance at Keilah as he did so. "Short hair will mean she's under your protection, so that no man will dare lengthen his beard with her."

Keilah scrunched her face as she pondered his words. "Lengthen his beard with her?" Then she saw the dark red staining Alyssia's face and the way she hung her head.

"I see," she murmured.

Dakkoul led them to a booth adjacent to the square. A short toad-faced man cut Alyssia's hair to her chin, so that her yellow eyes became like two jewels strung together on otherwise empty chain. Keilah saw the crowd drifting by, looking at her and she shifted to block Alyssia from their view. As she did so she stepped on one of the long flame colored locks that littered the ground. Keilah picked one up and handed it to Alyssia who fingered it in her hands then held it tight.

"Now she must get her tattoo," stated Dakkoul when the cutting stopped.

"Is there any other way? I feel like I am defacing her."

"You are," said Dakkoul with a shrug. "A neck tattoo is the way your Grandmother chooses to distinguish the slaves of her House from the others. Come Alyssia," and he held out his hand to her. She transferred the strand of hair to her other hand one took his. He led her to the booth next door. Keilah trailed behind. Dakkoul scribbled on a piece of parchment, giving it to a boy with a fox etched on his cheek.

"This will hurt," Dakkoul said to Alyssia, "but it must be done. Hold my hand tight if that will help." He gave her his hand and she grasped it. He turned to Keilah. "I've told the man to ink on her your family crest."

The boy holding the needle sniggered as it bit into Alyssia's skin. Keilah saw her curl her lips between her teeth and her hand tighten around Hattavah's. She felt a sudden pang of envy. He'd rejected her hand. Why did he prefer Alyssia's?

Thank you for continuing to read on.