Completed Masks and Miens

[Kit Rowan]

Day 10, Season of Summer, 513 AV

They were right, Kit reflected, to give her a new name. Not right by her, mind, but for their own purposes.

"Red, fetch this." They'd say. "Red, do that. Throw the garbage into the lake. Do this and this and this. Red, smile. Stand up straight. Look coy. Show me a trick." Kit found the whole thing demeaning, but more and more as the days dragged on Kit began to fall to the side, lethargic in her own mind, and Red began to come to life as a creature of her own.

Red could do many things that Kit could not do; she could get down on her hands and knees cleaning a corner that was already sparkling and thank her master for the privilege. Red could let the abuse roll over her without snapping back with something that would get her locked in the closet for a day. More than ever, Kit could understand what might bind a slave, day after day. Red understood that hope burned every hand that touched it, Red understood that it was safer to knuckle down and pretend that freedom was a thing that happened to other people.

But Kit could not stop hoping, could not fade away quietly into the dark. She had a secret, a trick of illusion and blessing by the only god that mattered. So long as she had that, they could not crush Kit entirely. Until then, Red remained a mask. After all, Ionu's followers wore many masks in their endeavors. This was no exception. One day, she would throw the mask aside and march away from this damnable city a richer lass than when she'd been stolen off the road.

Red was right about some things though, no matter how fictional she was. Every night she dreamed of freedom and woke up with a brand on her shoulder in the company of slaves.

Hope hurt.

[Kit Rowan]

"Soon," The cripple, Jakless Song, Red's master said. "You will begin performing." Red nodded meekly and did not meet his eyes. To him, that would be a challenge, and Jakless was a small man in mind and stature, his ego feeble and easily threatened, even by eye contact.

"Yes master," Red murmured. Perhaps she would have her gear back, at last? Had they saved her hat, or would she need some other tool to collect her mizas in? Kit supposed anything would do, but she had grown fond of her hat. Like an old friend. And her clothes . . . She'd had them made at home, in Alvadas. It would be a pleasure to wear them again.

Red's master turned over his shoulder and shouted, "JET!" And the cripple's pretty, dark-haired, favored slave marched out from the other room, holding a bundle of dark cloth to his chest.

Kit recognized clothes when she saw them, and it wasn't hard to guess who they were for. But it made some sense to make Red a little slow-witted. No need to keep too close a watch on a dim slave. "What's that, master?" Red murmured, eyes downcast.

"You'd best be thankful, Red." He said, tapping a finger on the table in front of him. Jet understood perfectly, and laid out the clothes for her to take. "I got your measurements when I picked you up off the market. I had some gear made for you." He put his hand on the pile of dark linen and pushed it forward. Take it, the gesture seemed to say to Kit, and she did.

Kit picked out her shirt and held it over herself. It was . . . smaller than anything Kit could have picked out herself. There were no sleeves, and Kit could tell on looking that it would leave her midsection bare. "It's . . . Beautiful." Red said while Kit seethed behind her eyes. "But . . . Don't I have performing clothes already? Could I not wear those?"

"That garish thing?" Jakless spat. "I threw it into the canal the moment you weren't looking."

Kit stood stock still and stared right at the petching cripple. There was no challenge in her eyes, only shock.

"Oh!" The cripple said, his smile sly and sideways. "Were those important to you?"

Kit remembered wearing them on foreign streets in Yahebah for the course of a year as reminder of what she was in a land of strangers. She remembered getting her measure at the Tattered Thread for it, before she began performing on the streets in earnest. Her fingers curled, and Kit wanted nothing more than to throttle this motherless sonovabitch right here and now. "I . . ."

"What was that?" The cripple held a hand to his ear. "I can't hear you!"

Kit tried to claw through Red's mask and do violence, but the rest of her remembered a night sealed in the closet till she nearly soiled herself in it. It remembered pain. "N—no." Red said. "Not . . . Not at all."

Jakless frowned. Had he been baiting her all along? Fishing for a reason to punish her? You sick bastard, Kit thought, and blinked the tears from her eyes before they could start flowing properly. I'll make you pay, I'll make you sorry you ever met me. I'll tear down everything you've built and leave you in ruins.

Jakless shook off his disappointment and smirked again. "Well then, let's see how it fits. Slip it on and let us see!"

[Kit Rowan]

"You're walking back, and a citizen asks you to help carry something for them."

"I say 'Where do I take it, sir?'"

"Or ma'am. You're working and a man asks the same?"

"Decline, be sorry. 'My master has given me work to do.'"

"You're walking back and a citizen tells you to come and petch them?"

Squirming uncomfortably under the question, Kit pulled the shirt over her head and tugged it down, trying to get it to cover as much of her body as possible, to no avail. No amount of tugging would make the damn thing longer. "I am sorry sir, but no."

Kit could practically hear Jakless' eyes rising from where she stood. "That's not pride I hear, is it?"

Be cool, be calm, be clever. Kit shrugged. "If I get with child, I can hardly perform, can I?"

". . . Point. Here's another rule. Before you tell them no, you ask their name. They say Lazarin, Nitrozian or Valdinox, you do anything they ask. They ask you petch them, you petch them. You petch 'em past curfew and until the earliest hours of the morning, make them the happiest bastards this side of the Suvan and thank them for the privilege. The risk of ending up with their leavings is small price to pay. You know who they are?"

"No," Kit said. But I've a feeling you're gonna tell . . .

"The Lazarin have got more ties to the ebonstryfe than anyone else. They aren't to be messed with." Kit nodded in assent as though she knew more about the Ebonstryfe than what little she'd heard wandering the city the last few days. There was something odd about Jakless' tone, though.

"The Valdinox have got a hand in the Black Sun, and they serve Rhysol's whims abroad, praise them." Was that . . . Reverence Kit was hearing? Kit felt like laughing. Everyone in this damnable city was falling over themselves trying to praise the god of evil; it was like everyone else was in on the joke, and were leaving Kit out of it. "Your stomach bothering you?"

Kit smoothed her face over and shook it no.

"Well good. The Nitrozians have a hand in everything that's got to do with money in this city, and don't think for a second we're safe from them. Any of those ask for anything, I don't care if it's your virginity or your firstborn, you do whatever you've gotta to make it happen."

Kit nodded mutely and made a note to stay as far away from anyone with those names as physically possible. She slipped the last leg of her pants on.

The cripple hadn't been lying when he said he'd taken her measurements. Her shirt and pants cleaved close to her meager curves. She felt exposed in them, and more exposed under the cripple's squinting eyes. "Turn around, let me see you from the back. Mmm. The side. Yes . . ."

Maybe there was still a chance. He could have been fibbing about throwing her things into the water; perhaps he could be convinced to give them back. "It is very nice," Kit said. "But I can't imagine anyone would want to look at—"

"You trying to be clever, or are you just plain daft?" Kit bristled. "You're robust and young and you ain't hard on the eyes, it ain't gonna be offense watching you sweat in the sun, I'll say that much. Only good things will of you showing a bit more skin in the game."

Red knew that it was best treated as a compliment, regardless. "Thank you, master," Kit said, turning her eyes toward the ground.

"You take a long look at what you're wearing, Red. That's an order. Take a long damn look." Kit did. She looked down on herself in these strange clothes where she could feel the air tickling her skin in so many places and breathed an unsteady breath. "I don't care who you were before, this is what you are now. It's what you'll be till you get too old and broken to do what you do anymore. What's your name?"

Kit breathed in, wanted to shout her true name in his face and stamp her feet and throw what little magic she knew against him. "Red," she said instead. I'm alone, and no one will save me.

I'll be free one day, Kit thought, gritting her teeth. I'll break out and ruin you worse than you've ever been ruined before, so terrible it'll make your handless stump seem nothing.

"This is what you are," Jakless said again, stepped forward and ran a hand down her side in a gesture of possession. "Sooner you accept that, the sooner your life is going to make sense again."

Fall into the Void! Kit thought.

"Yes master." Red said.

[Verilian]

. . Thread Award . . Kit Rowan + You Question My Logic? : No xp to award here. Lores: The Birth of Red, The Pain of Losing Something Sentimental, More Rules of Slavery, Lore of the Lazarins, Lore of the Valdinox, Lore of the Nitrozians Notes: Another very good thread. Keep it up. Oh, and make sure to update your possessions list. You can keep the stuff that wasn't on your person, but everything else should be removed, or at least put into a different tab and noted that you do not have access to it. Notice As per the request of the Founders, threads cannot be graded unless your CS is up to date. This means you need to add threads to your thread list when you make new threads, keep your skills up to date, ledger, living expenses, ect. If you aren't up to date, you'll get a PM from me before i grade your thread. If you are up to date, disregard this notice.