After that she just sat and finger-combed her hair until it was dry, which the ancient machine announced with a ping.
The next station was a bit like the day after Thanksgiving at a big shoe store. The stronger or more determined girls managed to wrench shoes away from their weaker sisters and jammed them on one foot, only to start the process again the next minute. Bonnie was lucky. She saw a tiny black shoe that had a faintly silvery bow coming down the ramp and kept her eye on it while it passed from girl to girl until someone dropped it and then she swooped in and tried it on. She didn't know what she would have done if it hadn't fit. But it did fit, and she went to the next station to get its mate. As she sat waiting, other girls were trying on perfume.
Bonnie saw two entire bottles go down the bodices of girls and wondered if they meant to sel them or try to poison themselves with them. There were also flowers. Bonnie was already dizzy with perfume and had decided not to wear any, but a tal woman bel owed over her head and a garland of freesia was pinned to frame her curls, without anyone asking her permission.
The last station was the hardest to bear. She had on no jewelry and would have worn only one bracelet with the dress. But she was given two: slim unbreakable plastic bracelets, each with a number on it - her identity from now on, she was told.
Slave bracelets. She had now been washed, packaged, and stamped, so that she could be conveniently sold.
Damon! she cried voicelessly, but something had died inside her, and she knew now that her cal s would not be answered.
"She was picked up as a runaway slave and confiscated,"the sweetshop man told Damon impatiently. "And that's al I know."
Damon was left with a feeling he didn't often have. Sickening terror. He was real y beginning to believe that this time he had cut it too fine; that he would be too late to save his redbird. That any of several dreadful scenarios might have played out before he got to her.
He couldn't stand to visualize them in detail. What he would do if he didn't find her in time...
He reached out and without the slightest effort gripped the sweetshop man around the throat, lifting him off the floor.
"We need to have a little chat,"he said, turning the ful force of his menacing dark eyes on the bulging ones of his prey.
"About just how she got confiscated. Don't struggle. If you haven't hurt the girl, you've got nothing to fear. If you have..."
He pul ed the terrified man completely across the counter and said very softly, "If you have, then, by al means struggle.
It won't make any difference in the end - if you know what I mean?"
The girls were put into the largest carriages Bonnie had yet seen in the Dark Dimension, three slim girls to a seat and two sets of seats in a carriage. She got a nasty jolt, though, when instead of going forward like a carriage, the whole thing was lifted straight up by sweaty male slaves straining at poles. It was a giant litter and Bonnie immediately snatched off her freesia garland and buried her nose in it. It had the added function of hiding her tears.
"Do you have any idea of how many homes and dancing rooms and hal s and theaters there are where girls are being sold tonight?"The golden-haired Guardian looked at him sardonical y.
"If I knew that,"Damon said with a cold and ominous smile, "I wouldn't be here asking you."
The Guardian shrugged. "Our job is real y only to try to keep the peace here - and you can see how well we succeed. It's a matter of too few of us; we're insanely understaffed. But I can give you a list of the venues where girls are being sold.
Still, as I said, I doubt you'l be able to find your runaway before morning. And by the way, we'l have an eye on you, because of your little query. If your runaway wasn't a slave, she's Imperial property - no humans are free here. If she was, and you freed her, as reported by the baker across the street - "
"Sweet-sel er."
"Whatever. Then he had a right to use a stun gun when she ran. Better for her, real y, than being Imperial property; they tend to char, if you get my drift. That level's a long way down."
"But if she was a slave - my slave..."
"Then you can have her. But there's a certain mandatory punishment set before you can have her. We want to discourage this kind of thing."
Damon looked at her with eyes that made her shrink and look away, abruptly losing her authority. "Why?"he demanded. "I thought you claimed to be from the other Court.
You know. The Celestial one?"
"We want to discourage runaways because there've been so many since some girl named Alianna came around,"the Guardian said, her frightened pulse visible in her temple.
"And then they get caught and have even more reason to try it again...and it wears out the girl, eventual y."
There was no one in the Great Hal when Bonnie and the others were hustled off the giant litter and into the building.
"It's a new one, so it's not on the lists,"Mouse said, unexpectedly at her shoulder. "Not that many people wil know about it, so it doesn't fil up til late, when the music gets loud."
Mouse seemed to be clinging to her for comfort. That was fine, but Bonnie needed some comfort of her own. The next minute she saw Eren and, dragging Mouse behind her, headed for the blond girl.
Eren was standing with her back against the wal . "Well, we can stand around like wal flowers,"she said, as a few men came in, "or we can look like we're having the best time of any of them right here by ourselves. Who knows a story?"
"Oh, I do,"Bonnie said absently, thinking of the star bal with its Five Hundred Stories for Young Ones.
Instantly there was a clamor. "Tel it!""Yes, please tel !"