26th Spring 517
Whenever anything momentous happened in Sorla's life, she had always felt the need to mark the change by altering her appearance in some way. Sometimes it was enough to just add a new feather to her hair, but for important things the mark had to be more permanent, as if imprinting her story onto the way she looked. That was how she had ended up with four piercings. The first two, simple glass rings in each ear, had been to celebrate her passage from child to young adult and her acceptance as an apprentice. The third, a glass bar that ran through the central cartilage in her left ear, was for the first time somebody bought a cloak that she had made herself, from start to finish. The fourth was a ring through her nose and had been done the day after the first night she had spent in another's bed. It was the day she felt she had at last become a real adult. She remembered how she had treasured what she believed was her new-found maturity; looking back, it was nothing more than the self-conscious pride of a child.
But she had nothing that recorded the most momentous events yet; nothing that marked her as the forever altered person she was after leaving Wind Reach. She felt strangely incomplete. Without an outward symbol of the fact that she had changed it as was if she had not caught up with her own life. And so here she was, stepping through a doorway that seemed to be made of bones and into what seemed like a tropical hothouse. She almost went back outside to make sure she had read the sign properly - 'Poisoned Arrow Piercings & Tattoos'. Before she could, a tall woman with burnished bronze skin and black hair appeared from a door at the back of the room. Her hair was braided to her scalp over her head and then flowed loose down her back. Aside from her height, her defined muscles and her almost menacingly beautiful face, what made her especially striking was her skin: almost every visible inch of it was tattooed with intricate swirling patterns, whorling helices and what looked like carved slashes. 'What do you want?' the woman asked. Sorla swallowed nervously, doubting again that this was even a shop. Had she just walked straight into a stranger's house, and a clearly dangerous one at that?
'I'm very sorry, I must have come to the wrong place,' she said, backing away. She was no coward but she couldn't see any sense in tangling with this aggressive woman. 'I was looking for the piercing shop, it must be next door.'
'You've come to the right place,' the woman said. 'Sit down.' She gestured to a leather stool nestled in a corner between several spiky plants. The proliferation of toxic-looking foliage in the room made it feel like a surreal jungle. Sorla did as she was told, noting the tray of needles and forceps glinting in the greenish light like a torturer's armoury.
The woman pulled up another stool and sat down facing Sorla, her legs half straddling the stool and her feet planted far apart as she pulled the stool closer and leant in so close Sorla could feel her breath. She seemed to be examining her for a while, and then without a word picked up a pair of forceps and one of the thicker needles, rubbed them both with a foul-smelling cloth and said, 'Open your mouth.' The red-haired Inarta tried to inch backwards, but her stool was against the wall. 'Aren't you going to ask me what I want pierced?' The woman gestured impatiently. 'I'm going to pierce your lip. Open up.' Sorla still wasn't convinced and, at the risk of angering this madwoman even more, she nodded to the cloth she woman had used. 'What was on that cloth?' she said, her voice trembling more than she would have liked. A strange smile curved itself round the dark woman's teeth and then she winked, the effect so unexpectedly friendly and conspiratorial that Sorla was taken aback. 'What, do you think I'm going to poison you, sweet one? You can trust me, you know.' She laughed seeing Sorla's discomfort. 'It's just a poultice made with herbs from the Taloban jungle. It smells like a tiger's arse but trust me, it'll stop the fresh wound getting infected. Now open up, I haven't got all day.' Sorla was tempted to counter that as there were no other customers it seemed like the woman did in fact have plenty of time, but she decided against it and opened her mouth.
She felt the forceps clamping tightly round her lower lip and pulling it taut, and then a few seconds of blinding pain later the needle was through and the woman was threading a black stud into the hole. Her hands moved quickly and skillfully, and the work was soon complete, at which point the woman used one hand to keep Sorla's jaw open while with the other reaching for the putrid cloth and wiping the inside of her mouth with it. Sorla gagged, and the woman passed her a glass of a clear fluid. It had a fresh, acid taste she wasn't familiar with, but once she had drunk it the nausea subsided. 'See, that wasn't so bad, was it?' The woman was flashing her another of those strangely animalistic smiles, but there didn't seem to be anything sinister in it. Sorla smiled back, feeling the new metal in her lip as she did so. 'It was quicker than I was expecting, I'll give you that,' she said. Despite the woman's savage appearance her touch had been gentle and deft, clearly trying to avoid causing any more pain than necessary.