The Vixen Trials

You Lie

"I wanted to be meat"

Keilah

She grabbed Dakkoul's sleeve. "We're being followed."

The corner of his mouth twitched. "Yes of course Keilah. That's why we rode so fast. He didn't confront us on the road though, he wanted to get his friends first. Let's just stay out of his way."

Before them the road widened to a square where there were rows and rows of people standing on blocks. Dakkoul had led the horses round the side, found a dirty faced urchin to mind them, and went straight over to the far-right section, inspecting three older ladies, each with a placard above their heads that said lady's maid. Keilah followed him, but stopped. Backing on to the rows was a fenced in section, in which a huddle of people were being circled by three arctic foxes, large ones, larger than she'd ever seen before.

She grabbed hold of Dakkoul's arm. "What's happening over there?" 

A grimness had tightened his mouth. "The tithe. They are choosing which ones will be given to the Fox."

The huddle of people was broken by a girl about her age stepping out of their midst with flame-colored hair. She picked up a stone from the ground and rubbed it along her flesh.

"Why's she doing that?" Keilah asked, as a cut appeared in the girl's skin.

"She's marking herself with blood," Dakkoul said in a hushed voice.

There was something so vital about her, so brave, in the way she stood there, shielding the children behind her, holding her bleeding arm in front of three foxes that Keilah found herself running to the fence. "She shouldn't be given to the Fox, not her. Stop this Dakkoul."

He bounded over the fence and called to the foxes. Two of them pricked their ears and turned to him. The third jumped at the flame colored girl, who ducked, so that the fox missed her, then shuddered and waved her arm in front of its snout.

Dakkoul was beside her in a moment, and held up her cut wrist, flicking the blood on the ground so that one of the foxes licked it. She struggled to free herself as a shout of protest came from a gangly man with a sword at the gate. Dakkoul threw her over his shoulders and ran through the foxes, dodging their snaps and climbing over the fence with impressive feed.

The gangly man came shouting towards him, then did a double-take when he saw Dakkoul and quietened down. "Your House wants her back, Hattavah?'"

He shook his head. "The lady wants to buy her. She'll pay what she's worth."

The gangly man surveyed Keilah with curious, probing eyes that made her want to straighten her cloak and check herself for smears of mud.
"As you wish," he said deferentially. "She's a fine one, it's true. Too fine for the Fox. She'll cost you thirty silver coins."

"Twenty," Dakkoul said. "She was meat anyway."

"I wanted to be meat," the girl hissed. "Now it will be one of the others."

Inside the fence a young boy was nipped by one of the foxes.

"That boy's the chosen," said the gangly man, and a slave behind him went extract him as the flame haired girl watched, her golden eyes squinting in an effort to prevent tears escaping. Only one did. Keilah watched as it traced a path down her dusty cheek. She remembered she had not cried since her mother died. How strange, she thought to herself, yet I went to bed with wet cheeks every night in the months she was sick, so that the straw in my pillow stank and I had to re-stuff it. She put out her hand and caught the girl's tear and looked at it, shiny on her finger in the flickering oil light.