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else, and for shipping emergency and highly perishable stuff. Ah! Here we are!
Let's get the horses stabled and then we'll get some real food not great but a
lot better than what we've been eating and sleep in real beds."
Until now Charley hardly remembered that she was wearing just the cloak, but
now she suddenly felt self-conscious, not only about that but about how rotten
her hair and her overall appearance might be and she had no way to improve on
it.
Boday sensed her sudden feeling.
"We can not do much about the clothing the old outfit never was much and is a
mass of shrunken wrinkles right now but we can at least comb the hair and get
it looking somewhat presentable . . . so. Both of us would prefer a true bath
and a wider choice of wardrobe and perhaps some slight makeup, but we do what
we must with what we have. There! Not as lovely as you could look by half, but
more than good enough."
It was no longer enough to simply follow Dorion's crimson aura; now there were
steps and obstacles about which she could know nothing, and it was up to Boday
to take her hand and guide her as well as she could.
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Charley had never particularly liked Boday, but she was beginning to see why
Sam had stuck by her. Boday was more and more showing her other, more hidden
side, at least to Charley, and, most of all, she was totally trustworthy in a
world where everybody seemed against Charley, Sam, and all that was good and
holy.
There was certainly no getting around the fact that Boday felt no guilt for
turning young girls into mindless courtesans and whose only objection to
slavery was which end she was on, but that wasn't all her fault, either. This
world had bred Boday, and Akahlar bred harder, harsher people with ideas and
standards formed in a quite different world than Charley's home. And even back
home, there were people brought up to believe with all their heart that
suicide for god was the best thing you could do so long as you took enemies
with you and lots of equally weird stuff. Didn't the same guy who wrote "All
men are created equal"
own slaves? You couldn't blame them so much as you could blame the system that
created them.
If nothing else, Charley was beginning to learn perspective.
The inn was small; a bar and back kitchen area opened onto a relatively tiny
room with just five round tables. There was no electricity or other modern
conveniences; even by Boday's standards this place was pretty primitive. In
back and opposite the bar was a steep wooden staircase and rail leading
upstairs. If the top floor wasn't any bigger than the bottom, then the four
rooms up there were pretty small and the bathroom had to be in the back of the
place.
Boday described it softly to Charley, who sighed and said, "Well, there goes
the dream of a nice bath."
The inn was run by a couple of middle-aged Akhbreed types, the man of medium
height but with bushy red hair and moustache and a great belly that no tunic
could disguise. The woman, presumably his wife, was a bit shorter but of equal
girth, wearing the traditional baggy dress and sandals and with short graying
hair. They appeared to be in their fifties and they looked well suited to this
sort of job in this middle-of-nowhere location.
The man greeted Dorion. "Well, I see you are back with your charges,
magician,"
he said in a gravel voice that suited him. "You'll need two rooms, you know.
No way to put three of you in one of ours."
"That's fine," Dorion responded. "I think the best thing to do would be to get
settled in as best we can. Do you have any facilities for bathing? I think
after so long on the trail that's a top priority."
The innkeeper scratched his chin. "Well, sir, we got one tub and heating the
water's no problem. You understand, though, there'll be a charge."
"Just add it to the bill. If you can get started on that now, I'd also like to
find some more suitable clothing for this pair. The elements have pretty well
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0-%20Riders%20of%20the%20Winds.txt wrecked what they came with."
"We usually just go over to Quodac for that," the innkeeper responded. "No use
in keeping much stock here, being so close to the border and all. Benzlau, he
runs the dock and warehouse, keeps a stock of things, though, in case there's
need. Might not be much of a fit, or much at all in women's clothes, but I'll
get down there when we're through here and see if he can get a wub to open up
the company supply store there. Closed now, of course."
"Wub?"
"The lizard folk. That's what we all calls 'em. They ain't too bright but they
does a lot of heavy labor with no complaints around here. Most folks use 'em
for most everything, but I don't allow 'em in here. For one thing, they get
really nutty in the head when they get some booze in 'em, if you know what I
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mean, and they'll steal that sort of stuff. Best to keep 'em out of places
like this."
The good old Akhbreed colonial mentality strikes again, Charley thought
sourly.
For people who weren't that bright that one back on the beach sure got the
message fast and had no problems with a map. The fact was, they probably had
more interaction with the "wub" than this guy did who lived and worked here
simply because he treated them as the animals he saw them as being, while
they'd treated the one as an equal human being. She couldn't help but wonder
what most of this world, inhabited by only its natives, might be like. There
might possibly be "wub" cities and "wub" kings and all the rest. The
government probably knew, but to these people who lived here it was not only
irrelevant, it was unimaginable.
"Thank you, that will be fine," Dorion assured him. "Have you seen my friend?"
"The courier? Yes, sir, he went out a little while back to check on the
shipping and just take a walk down by the water, he said. He'll be back at any
time." As
Dorion predicted, things began to work out, at least for a little while, in
their favor. Dorion decided to try for the clothing problem first, while the
bath situation was percolating, so to speak, and one of the wubs came after a
while with a bunch of keys on a ring and led them to a door in the side of a
big warehouse and then into the structure. At the rear was a separate room
containing clothing, shoes, hats, boots, you name it. Most were in men's and
boy's sizes and clearly were designed as replacements for clothing of the
Akhbreed who lived and worked here and perhaps who lived and worked on the
ship or ships. The women's clothing was mostly the sack-like dresses and, as
slaves, they weren't allowed to don "respectable" clothes, something that
distressed neither of them.
Nothing really fit Charley, but they found that large men's cotton T-shirts
came down almost to her knees and they provided some protection and
improvement over the bare nothing she really had. Boday found a couple of
pairs of boys' black work pants that were okay at the waist although the legs
weren't long enough.
She decided the effect was all right, and went with them plus the same kind of
shirt situation as Charley. Since Boday was so tall, the shirts were large and
baggy but didn't come down nearly as far as they did on Charley, which made
things work out.
"We will win no fashion awards, but it is acceptable," Boday pronounced.
The baths were crude but compared to the lack of them for so long Charley was
not about to complain. With water a bit cooler than she liked it but with a
big bar of soap she managed pretty well on her own, impressing the innkeeper's
wife with her ability to manage without sight very well indeed. She didn't
really want to get out, but considering that it was also Boday's turn she
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