“You can't be serious,” scoffed Taxhi'a, running pale, delicate fingers through a slate black ponytail. She laid back, relaxed, against the soft cushions of the lounge chair. Black and white geometric patterns decorated them, matching the wooden lattice of the balcony railing beside her.

“I can be nothing else,” replied Kalolin gravely. Her own hair was as long and as black as her cousin's, but stringy and limp from water as Kalolin combed it aggressively with her hands.

“Have you told Uncle Benjheming about this...crazed delusion?” Taxhi'a spoke easily, hiding a dubious yet amused smile behind her pink lipstick.

“Father knows nothing about this. My sister doesn't even know,” said Kalolin, her tone hushed as though her family might hear her speaking about them from miles away. Instead, it just made it difficult for Taxhi’a to hear her over the bustle of the busy streets below them.

“Aren't your parents worried sick, with you running away again?”

“I have not run away,” insisted Kalolin. She shook her hair roughly with her calloused hands as though that would help it to dry any faster. “I left a message with Arhemang to tell our parents I was coming to Hanzo to find a husband myself. That is the truth as far as they need to know.”

The amusement dropped from Taxhi'a's youthful face. Kalolin looked older, though they were the same age. It was the work of her characteristic, uncomfortable frown.

“Kali, perhaps you should sit down and...have a cup of tea. Mother will be home soon and—”

“I will be talked out of this by no one,” growled Kalolin, moving out from the apartment through the open double door to stand tall in the midday sunlight of the balcony. Her dark hair gleamed like ice over deep river water. Her black, half-moon eyes were angrier than usual. “I would slit your throat this instant if I knew it would allow me to marry this man,” she said. Amidst Taxhi'a's stunned silence she added, “but I am not insane, as you might think.”

“I said nothing of the sort,” assured Taxhi'a weakly.

“I could hear you thinking it,” said Kalolin. Her soft, down-turned lips pulled up into a self-satisfied smirk. “Rest easy, cousin, for I am in my right mind. From where I stand, it is all the rest of you women who are insane.” She tied her hair behind her with a simple red ribbon. 

“You spend your days,” accused Kalolin, “as dogs, bragging about your loyalty to your master, as though he would not turn the switch on you the moment you bare your teeth at him. I, for one, will choose my master. If I am to be caged, let it be in gilded cages, bound with chains of silver, and switched with jeweled scepters.”

“You are twisted,” her cousin remarked with a shake of her head.

“I am pragmatic,” Kalolin corrected. She shouldered on a borrowed jacket of red silk over a pair of long, straight-legged black pants. 

“And how do you intend to convince this man to marry you?” asked Taxhi'a.

Kalolin slipped delicate red shoes onto her feet. “By any and all means necessary.”

Kalolin followed the flow of the crowded Hanzo streets uphill, toward the heart of the market district. Streets here were old stone, worn smooth by generations of merchants and traders in the venerable port. Every inch of the city was crammed with stores and stalls, where merchants and artisans lived in apartments above their shops, and laborers lived in small, one room houses bunched together in the residential districts. 

Kalolin used to come into the city often to visit her aunt and cousin. After a few too many times where she didn't come back, her parents forbade her. These days, she only came when she was in a particularly disobedient mood. Her parents, poor laborers under indenture to Farmer Rhomeili, believed her place was at the apple orchard. Kalolin believed her place was where ever she was not right now.

The denser the traffic was, she knew, the closer she came to her target. Rumors had been flooding into the city for days now of a large procession headed from Sarnai to Hanzo. Trade from Sarnai to its smaller sister city was constant and vibrant, but the scale of this procession was a once in a decade event. 

As the procession entered the city, the crowds of the Hanzo streets slowed, thickening to a viscous, creeping current. At the same time, the noise increased until it was like the buzzing of an insect hive. Kalolin pushed through the crowd, trying not to break a sweat despite the anticipation and panic battling inside her skull. Eventually she could see the tops of ostentatious wagons, flagrantly colored with the most expensive of purple dyes. She could hear the pounding of horse hooves. Not the dainty prancing of local merchants' swift, slender pets, but the drum-beat stride of towering, muscled beasts bred to pull. 

She shouldered closer to the parade of wagons until she could see their straight-backed, well-dressed drivers and the glowing, scantily-clad keptmaids that waved to the crowd from beside them. Uniformed guards marched in step with the wagons, eyeing the crowd around them suspiciously. Kalolin waited, breath bated, for the sight of a palanquin. It came into view over the heads of the gathered crowd, a rich mahogany chair inlaid with gold, borne on the shoulders of four strapping men. Sheer silk curtains protected the occupant from the sun and obscured them from the watching eyes of onlookers.

Desperation swelling inside her chest, Kalolin struggled to break free of the crowd and dashed into the path of the palanquin. It was not even half a moment before a guard grabbed her roughly by the arm and began to drag her back toward the crowd.

“Mister Kaelkarim!” Kalolin cried out towards the palanquin as its bearers slowed to a stop, waiting for her to be removed from their path. “Please, Heir Kaelkarim!”

The throng around them watched the scene unfold, enraptured. Another guard approached Kalolin from her left, and she had to act quickly. Shaking her arm from her captor's grasp, she fell to her knees before the palanquin. 

“Do whatever you want with me, Heir Kaelkarim!” Her voice somewhere between a sob and a scream, Kalolin wrenched apart the two sides of her jacket, polished buttons pinging off the stone ground as the fabric yielded to expose her bare breasts.

Kalolin was proud of her breasts, full and round and ivory white. She had to be, to try a stunt like this.

The crowd gasped as one, and somewhere nearby a woman screamed. Two guards grabbed at Kalolin, one for each shoulder, and pulled her roughly to her feet. 

“Have her arrested for acts profane!” An old man was shouting orders to the guards, scandalized, from beside the palanquin. His rich garb marked him as a high ranking assistant to the Kaelkarims.

Kalolin fought to remain put, but was lifted off her feet by the burly guards. 

“Assaulting the eyes of such an esteemed companiman,” the old man scoffed. “She'll be lucky not to be put to death!” This was an exaggeration, and Kalolin knew it.

“Wait,” came a calm voice, cold as ice water and smooth as cream. A hush fell upon the crowd and the guards froze where they held Kalolin aloft. 

The assistant responded with wrung hands, tense and apologetic. “Of course, I am sure they will be merciful to the poor wretch. No need to worry yourself on her behalf, sehr.”

The sheer curtains at the front of the palanquin parted, and Kalolin found herself held in the measuring gaze of a young man with skin of bronze and hair of fire. He had a strong nose, a slight chin, and it was anyone's guess whether he was divine, or devil.

“Put her with the rest of my souvenirs,” he remarked offhandedly. “If there isn't any room, then make some.”