Whether the man meant his reply as an answer or not was hard to tell. It was entirely likely, she considered, that he was reciting words he was meant to recite and that she had not managed to say anything at all.
One of the guards ordered her forward. A raspy female voice. She could not make out any discernible female form through the armor, but what did it matter? Óraithe stumbled forward, eyes having become somewhat accustomed to the dim firelight of the hall. She was made to walk in front of the guards, the man who had spoken walked behind. No further words were exchanged.
Óraithe forced herself to be alert. Her heart beat fast enough, but some crucial opportunity might pass her by. Yard duty. The words rattled in her mind. Outside. This could work. She had not given much thought to where she might be and now she cursed herself for it. As they rounded corner after corner, the light stone walls of the keep grew lighter and wider. It was all she could do to remember the path. It was near impossible to guess whether she might need to know the way, but it was at least something. A map, a bearing.
It was something so sweet when it first hit her cheek that Óraithe almost gasped. A breeze. Moving air, not stale or fetid with the rank leavings of discarded elves. She breathed deep. Her lungs ached and protested but she held it in. She could have sworn she could taste a sweetness in the air. The breeze grew and she could hear a howling. The wind was pressing itself through a massive door somewhere not far off. She could hear it but there were some turns yet left before it would show itself.
The turns passed and the door appeared. A mass of heavy, old wood. Not a sort that grew in Fásachbaile. It was dark and thicker than any tree Óraithe had ever put eyes to. A pair of women stood guard at the door. They looked her over and their noses curled in disgust almost in unison. The man who had spoken to her in the dungeon stepped forward and said a few muffled words to the guard nearest them. She looked at Óraithe and chuckled.
He turned to face her.
“Your garb is unfit to be worn in the presence of others and so the Treorai, in her mercy, grants you a change of clothes.”
He threw a pair of thin, brown roughspun braies and a somehow thinner still shift onto the ground in front of her. Óraithe stood a moment, looking at him. It became clear they meant to have her change in front of them. She frowned.
Her clothes were near black from the muck and filth that had accrued in the room. Not once in a season had it been cleaned. The door had never opened in such a way as to even let light in. She did her best in the early weeks to keep her stools to the farthest corner of the room, but it was little help. Soon enough the waste ran where it would. She slept in it more nights than not. It was her first time looking down, she realized.
The blackened shift made the sound of wet meat shifting as she pulled it over her head. She was not sure what she was meant to do with the garment.
The man had lost whatever sense of decorum he’d had when reciting his lines. “Throw it away from us, idiot girl.”
She did as she was bid. The braies followed and she was naked in front of them. The women at the door did nothing to hide their derisive laughter, but Óraithe could hardly hear it. She saw herself now for the first time and she felt sick. Every edge of bone, every knobby joint looked as though it was behind a sheet of wet paper. She had turned a pallid, sickly color. What she had called breasts were now bits of loose skin hanging in an awkward, sunken pouch against jutting ribs. Was she truly so weak? She had felt capable, even though she was alone. She had felt that she could attempt… something. Anything. The pain, the hurt returned but the tears that had been so ready to flow before did not join them. Perhaps that had broken her and she had simply not been able to accept it.
“Dress now, muleborn, or go naked.”
Óraithe forced herself into the clothes. They were loose beyond reason. The braies had a tie, at least, but it helped little. The laughter grew louder as she dressed. She stopped, staring at the floor. She could not think. What was this? Had they won? Why now? Why when she had been let out?
The flat of a blade slapped her naked back hard, and Óraithe screamed out. The laughed crescendoed. Her knees hit like plates of glass against the rock below. Pain. Sharp and uncaring. The hate began to boil again at the back of her mind. A hate she had let dull in her visions of Scaa and her dreams of a life where she had mattered to someone.
Óraithe’s eyes widened and she stood. She pulled the shift over her head and down around a chest that disgusted her. She took in all of it. Her pathetic form, the laughter, the sting of thin skin. This was fine. There was time. All there was left to her was time.
The man who had given her the little speech was done with the antics and ordered the doors opened. Outside the Bais wind was whipping. Óraithe looked dead ahead and walked through them into the cloudless day. The doors rumbled shut behind her and her life in the yard had begun. It was above ground, she reminded herself. It was an improvement. She had to live.
She glanced around the yard. There were rocks piled in
