"What Was Mine" 9

The next few hours were spent in preparation.  I asked the guard to bring by my actual clothes, so that I wouldn’t have to die in some raggedy gray work-linens.  He wasn’t sure if they were still in storage, but he would check.  I busied myself with quiet meditation and all the food that the boy, Osef, could sneak out of the kitchen for me.

My clothes arrived an hour and a half after I’d requested them.  Nothing was missing, which surprised me on one hand, since my duds weren’t cheap.  On the other hand, Peyd ran a tight ship, and stealing from the prisoners was probably harshly punished.  I slowly dressed, feeling more like myself and less like a captive with ever article I donned.  The rust-red dungarees, tailored by an ancient native, slid on like a glove.  The shirt, white cotton, was as soft as an elf’s eyelash.  The black vest, decorated all down the front with embroidered silver filigrees and the like, buttoned nice and snug.  My black boots were simply designed, but made of the hide of an adolescent dust-drake I’d personally witnessed a native boy run through with an obsidian-tipped spear.  I looked at the hat.  It was a fine hat, fitted, sturdy, black with a band as red as blood.  I held it for a few moments, and then I tossed it back to the bed.  The hat would wait until I was a free man.

There was no mirror, so I had no way to appraise my look, but the outfit felt loose on me, like I’d lost a lot of bulk swimming in a wizard’s pet’s guts for two years.  My getup felt incomplete, and it wasn’t because I hadn’t put the hat on.  The familiar weight of my trusty Break-Smythe was absent: the smoothness of the dark walnut handle, the smooth, reliable pull of the trigger, the sun glinting off the polished silver plating, the music of the click and roar.

Well, I’d get that back, too.  I’d get it all back.  Everything of what was mine.

END OF CHAPTER ONE