Heir of Beasts

Ch. 6.2- Madder Still

                   

Tyro spends the next hour explaining more about council etiquette and educating me about the structure of a hearing. When the clock strikes six, he pulls me out of his office.

         "Now to find you something appropriate to wear."

         "What's wrong with what I'm wearing now?"

         Tyro chuckles. "It's much too fine, and you look superbly foreign. Don't worry, I'll get Galia. She'll find something to fit you."

         "Galia?"

         "The head housekeeper. One of the most reliable and trustworthy women in Kama. Wait here, I'll find her."

         So I sit quietly in the office, tracing the titles of books with my eyes and staring at the woodwork, until a woman peeks in and motions at me.

         "Come on, come on!" She rushes me. "I don't have much time to get you ready. It's thirty minutes until seven!"

         Galia is small but strong, with deep-set black eyes and a cloud of black curls tied back haphazardly with a leather thong. She wears a beige tunic and simple white linen pants.

         She pulls me along the hallway so fast I almost stumble, then throws open the door of a room and pushes me inside. Before I have a chance to take a breath, much less introduce myself, she's throw open a wardrobe and started pulling out piles of fabric.

         "No, that's not right," she says, holding up a tunic before tossing it haphazardly aside. "The color makes you look sickly. How about the purple, yes, the purple..."

         I stand still while she holds up swaths of fabric and mumbles to herself, trying to find something small enough for me in a color acceptable to her. After a few minutes she settles on a light blue tunic and tan linen trousers. She ties a leather belt around my waist to hide the fact that even the smallest men's clothing she can find hangs loosely on me and nods, satisfied.

         "That's better. You look like a proper Kamai now."

         I snort. "I'm ten shades too light and twenty pounds too light to pass for Kamai."

         She smiles. "Well, you could pass for half-Kamai, then. You certainly have the eyes."

         I grimace and she frowns, catching my discomfort. "You grew up in Shikkah, didn't you?"

         I nod. Both Shira Katzuna and I.

         She shakes her head. "I'll never understand the Shikkan's obsession with blood. There's no shame in being half-Kamai, you know. I'd say it's a strength, to have some island grit in you. Makes you stronger."

         "There's no shame in being half-Kamai here," I clarify quietly. In Shikkah, mixing blood is looked down upon. And to wear your mixed blood in the center of your face, with eyes much too dark to pass for Shikkan... I've always been conscious of how obvious my parentage is.

         How funny, that the eyes that alienated me from the Dimaraste, that almost lead to my disinheritance when my mother returned from a diplomatic trip abroad with an anonymous Kamai trader's baby inside of her, might work to my advantage here. I'll look less foreign, less Shikkan.

         "There's a reason the Shikkans that come to Kama never leave," Galia remarks as she leads me from the room, adjusting my tunic one last time like a fussy mother. "There isn't a freer place anywhere on earth."