Disclaimer: All characters, settings, names, and other copyrighted material belongs to Tamora Pierce or its original author. I'm just a student who likes to borrow fictional worlds and torment the characters.

Author's Note: Thanks to MagnetTarpit for reviewing and those of you who read this, favourited it (I think I just made up a word there) and added this to your story alert! Your support is what keeps me writing here.

As for this chapter, some of the sentences may seem familiar because I have based this chapter off the one in Trickster's Choice. This chapter is here to set up for the next one were most of the plot is introduced and things start to get a lot more interesting. So read, review and enjoy!

The Slave Market, Rajmuat, on the island of Kypriang, capital of the Copper Isles

Aly huddled in the corner of the slave pen farthest from the door. Her knees were drawn up to her chest, arms around her knees, forehead on her arms. She was barefoot, her cold and dirty feet tightly pressed together. Her hair, after the pirate's had cut it off, now covered her head in a fine layer of red-gold stubble. She was dressed in a rough, sleeveless, undyed tunic, with a rag that served her for a loincloth. The pirates' leather collar had been exchanged for one that would keep her in the Rajmuat slave market until she'd been sold.

After three weeks away from home, two of them on a filthy and disgusting pirate ship, her body was skinnier and striped with ugly bruises. Her head ached from a purple knot on the back of her head, a pirate's gift after she had warned him away from touching her with a kick to the cod. To anyone inside or outside the pen, Aly looked as cowed as any slave about to be sold for the dozenth time.

Her brain, however, ticked steadily, working through what was likely to happen and what she could do about it. After the previous night's dream with Kyprioth and the crows, Aly knew that no help would be coming from home, or through any means that Kyprioth had intended to use. Only she could save herself now and find her way home, so she had to be well prepared.

Tomorrow the slaves in her pen were to be sold. Escape from the pen was not impossible, but it would have required more time than she had, and there was the nuisance of her leather collar to be considered. The easiest way for her to escape now was to be sold. She could then leave her new masters, acquire money and clothes, and find a ship that would be willing to take her back to Tortall.

Even though being sold was her best bet at an escape, it was still the part that she feared the most. At sixteen, she would be considered ripe for a career as a master's toy. She wasn't sure what she wanted to do about her virginity yet, but she did not want to lose it as a bedwarmer.

So, in an attempt to discourage any master who would buy a slave for pleasure, Aly had eaten little until now. The other slaves had told her she was mad to give away the meagre scraps they were fed, but Aly did not want to look as shapely as she had at home. Anything that made her look less appealing and more troublesome helped her even more, including the fuzz that she now had for hair and her tender bruises.

Aly watched her companions over crossed arms. They clustered around the gate, pushing and shoving to get to the front of the crowd waiting for food. She knew some by name now, but most stayed away from 'the strange Tortallan'. One who she did know, Feran, a man of few words and many punches, forced his way to the front of the crowd. Smiling, Aly got to her feet. Here was her last chance to gain a few more ugly bruises.

Keys rattled outside the pen. The gate groaned as it was pushed open to admit armed guards with padded batons. The slaves shrank back, watching with greedy eyes as cooks tossed a number of small loaves onto the floor. Aly reached the back of the crowd just as the cooks were setting down pots of weak porridge. She shouldered her way into the middle of the crowd as the cooks and guards withdrew, slamming the gate behind them.

The slaves surged forwards, the strongest captives keeping things orderly while they helped themselves and their friends. Feran grinned broadly as he elbowed his way back through the crowd, speaking in fluent Carthaki to a friend. Aly seized her chance as he passed her, running into him, knocking his porridge flying.

The big man stared dumbly at her for a moment, lips twitching. Aly could see his thoughts flicking rapidly across his face. His friend took a step back as the grin returned to Ferant's mouth.

"Stupid," he growled in Common, rolling the word around in his throat. "Very stupid."

Aly ducked his first punch before it could break her collarbone, but missed the second. She straightened again, holding her newly broken nose, to be knocked down a moment later by a kick to her knee. The surging crowd dragged her under its feet, brutally trampling her.

Aly curled into a ball, heaving. If this was what war felt like, she suddenly had more respect for what her mother was going through on the Scanran border. She tried to get to her feet again, but someone stepped on her hand as another slave tripped over her stomach. Aly gave up on attempting to stand, crawling through the crowd instead to find a way out.

"That was stupid," another voice informed her as she crawled into someone's foot. Aly braced herself, expecting another punch. An arm wrapped under her arms as another hooked around her back. "Up, you mad easterner."

The woman who helped Aly to her feet was strong and rather plain faced. She set the battered and bleeding girl in a corner and disappeared back into the dispersing crowd.

Once she had the pen's wooden walls at her back and side, Aly clenched her teeth and moulded the broken cartilage of her nose so it wouldn't heal entirely crooked. The pain made her eyes water and her head spin. Still, she was pleased with herself, even though the encounter with Ferant had not gone entirely to plan.

"You'll have a nice fighter's scar on that brow, little girl," the woman remarked as she came back, settling in the dirt beside Aly. Confused, Aly reached a throbbing hand up to her eyebrow and felt a tender split in the skin. The woman handed her a rag to wipe the blood away with before offering a crust of bread soaked in thin porridge. "And a broken nose – they'll brand you as quarrelsome," she continued, cleaning Aly's other many cuts with rags and a bowl of water. "No-one will buy you for a bedwarmer now, unless they're the ones that like to break a woman's spirit before they play with her."

Aly looked at her through swollen and bruised eyes.

The big woman rocked back on her heels. "You did this on purpose? Are you truly cracked? A bedwarmer gets fed, and clothed, and sleeps warm."

"With a good owner," Aly replied, grimacing through the pain of talking. "Not with a bad one. My aunt Risaph used to be a flower seller in Corus. She told me all manner of tales about masters and servants. I'll wager it's worse when you're a slave with a choke collar." She tugged at the leather band around her neck, gasping as the chaffed skin twinged. "I'd rather not find out. Better to be ugly and troublesome."

The woman shook her head, gently washing the blood from Aly's chin. "Were you always this mad, or did it come on you when you was took?"

Aly smiled, closing her eyes against the swarm of movement around her. "I'm told it runs in the family."

End Note: So, I hope you enjoyed this chapter (but not too much because Aly did just get a broken nose!) and I'd love to see some reviews (Yes, I am fishing for reviews *pulls out fishing rod* but reviews give me the motivation to write - which has been spoiled my school and a cold at the moment) and look out for a familiar character in the next chapter: He's very good at hiding so we'll have to see who can spot him!