There were many such slave girls under Sorpiala's personal
power, who were virtually as answerable to Sorpiala as they were to
Master Rababull himself.
Si'Wren watched in blank astonishment, secure behind her tent skirts,
as the other three women made carefully orchestrated faces of sham
sorrow over the fruit to Sorpiala's face, and then when they departed,
delivered with equal skill and dispatch the most despicably reviling,
hateful looks to Sorpiala behind her back.
Sorpiala's slave attendants were like flounders, fish that could not
swim with a proper motion, that dwelt in the mire at the bottom of the
sea, and looked strangely at one with the peculiar oddness of two eyes
both wrongfully on one side only, but no eye on the other side. So
that, wherever the flounder looked, it looked while concealing it's
other side, all the while appearing to be as falsely over-sincere as
only a flounder could seem.
The following morning, Si'Wren found herself working in the spice tent
beside a disturbingly quiet Nelatha. It was early enough that the
morning mists still drifted thickly over the glistening outer walls and
swirled wetly through the compound and softening and obscuring all form
and substance.
Softly, Si'Wren sang a prayer to herself for a day filled with
blessings from Heaven for all who lived in Master Rababull's House,
respectfully beseeching various and sundry gods as she followed a
tribal melody with the words of her prayer.
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