" KEEP MY HEART WITH MY DOGS, KEEP MY CAR IN THE YARD "
O has never cared for, or even learned much about, politics. But she knows a princess when she sees one.
The girl at the fruit stand is Hagar Ieshan. Somehow she’s smaller than O expected; in the sea of tall, lithe Solterran horses that crowd the market, she stands out in more ways than one. Lion-bright yellow eyes. A diaphanous robe, dyed a wine-dark purple. Despite her smallness, her general strangeness, the world seems to bend around her like everyone here knows enough to be afraid. Maybe it’s just the way she carries herself. (Bexley used to walk like that. That was the woman who raised her—someone who once was like Hagar, glittering with gravity, drawing people in from every direction. O presses her lips together and wonders what happened.)
The sun is high and bright today. But it’s still spring, not late enough in the year to be blisteringly hot, and the light that streams down is thin and gentle, closer to the ebbing heat of an ember than a raging bonfire. It seeps over O’s back, melts her into a stack of too-relaxed muscle kept standing only by the shoulder that she leans up against a tent pole. Around her, the world is picking up speed after a long winter with its head buried in the pillows. Vendors yell from both sides of the street; foals chase each other down the length of the market; everywhere one looks, there are coins being tossed from hand to hand, or drums being played, or some baked good being broken open, so fresh it spills steam into the air.
Will you talk to her? Tuchulcha asks, soft enough that only the two of them can hear.
O’s ear flicks back, half to catch the quiet voice, half in surprise. It’s not often the two of them decide to really be friendly. (Although, O thinks, if there is a difference between friendly and flirty, then…) Tuchulcha rarely even gets involved in social affairs; the “talking axe” aspect of its existence tends to freak people out. Somehow, though, O gets the feeling Hagar won’t be bothered by it. Or at least not as bothered as a princess should be.
Just to herself—just barely—she smirks, the sooty lip flashing up into a faint curl, then falling just as fast.
O pushes her weight out of its leaning stance. Languid, elastic, with the exaggerated confidence of a fox, she stalks toward the redhead and calls out: “Are you looking for something, princess?”
Say yes, say yes, say yes.
