The girl had woken to hear raised voices coming from the room down the corridor.
“You are such a fool if you think you are the only one. How long has this been going on?”
There was a pause, as a quieter voice gave some reply, before the angry shouts of the woman were heard again.
“If you maybe thought with your brain instead of… well… something else, I wouldn’t have to be dealing with her now!” she snarled.
Keldaa lay still for a moment, as she listened to the argument. “Well, time’s up then” she mumbled to herself before she slipped out from under the blanket to retrieve her clothes and boots, as hastily and quietly as she could manage.
She had almost managed to climb out of the window, when the woman stormed into the bedroom and grabbed her by the hair.
“Aaghh” was the only sound to come from the girl, as she was pulled back into the room and thrown onto a chair in front of the woman.
Keldaa sat there quietly, yet confidently, as more people wandered into the room. She looked at them all in turn as they also were watching her.
The young man, whose bedroom it was, stood quietly in the corner, having been chastised by the older woman. Keldaa glanced over to him and gave him a smile and a wink, before the woman spotted her and slapped her sharply across the face. “Enough!” declared the older woman firmly “you have toyed with that one plenty. We both know why you chose him. He is too young and stupid to realise what he has told you.” She said glaring at the flustered and blushing man “The question is – what do we do with you now?”
Keldaa just watched the woman as she muttered and raged, her eyes raised slightly and her face mainly expressionless. If she was scared or threatened, she did not show it. Quite the contrary. In fact, you may not have been mistaken if you noticed a slight smile in her eyes and and an upward curl to her lips.
The woman did indeed notice – and it made her rage even more. She marched over to the huddle of men standing by the door. “She needs to be dealt with. Today.” She turned back to look at Keldaa with a snarl of a smile “but do not kill her. Just make sure she is far away from here. We can sort out his mess easy enough – but I do not want to see her face anywhere near our family again. I am sure a girl like her will raise a decent price – we may as well get some benefit from the hassle she has caused”.
Keldaa sat in her room, staring at the ceiling, her mind tracking back at how she had happened to be in this place. Her time with the people traders, the night-time rescue where she had happened to be close by to the one they had come for, and the following placement within this village. She had definitely been in the right place at the right time. Her shoulders relaxed a little as she breathed. Although she had never let down her guard, there was an undeniable feeling of safety within these walls.
In her time there she had been encouraged to regain her strength and fitness. She had trained and honed her skills, in such a way that she had a confidence in her ability that she maybe did not have before.
She had begun to hear rumblings around the village of newcomers heading this way. As she considered what that meant, she removed the dagger from its strapping on her thigh, and twirled and flicked the curved blade around her fingers. It had been reasonably quiet here, and she had just been allowed to keep herself to herself, but she wondered for how much longer that would be possible.
