Fox's Bride Read Online Free PDF Page A

in the city.
    While she tried to focus, her reflection chattered about details she spotted in the other mirrors. The woman in the yellow dress distracted Hiresha with observations about how the string on a guard's bow had worn to the point of snapping. Three of the oysters in one basket were dry and shriveled, revealing themselves as rotten. One priest's shoulders shivered from a fever he was trying to hide.
    Hiresha, meanwhile, decided she favored a sudden departure. One option was to travel at night when no one else dared to leave their homes or tents. The figurine of the Lord of the Feast crushed this possibility all the way down to the stone table. He appeared in his nighttime aspect, a man with no arms and three heads, riding a most unbecoming basilisk. The image disturbed Hiresha, but she was thankful for the reminder of how his magic distorted him. Fleeing into the night alongside him had tempted her.
    “We're afraid what he'd do to Chandur,” the reflection said.
    Hiresha nodded. “And encountering him would be a near certainty at night.”
    The reflection pressed her fingers against her cheeks, lips quivering as she gazed through her mirror at the balance with all its arms weighed down with statuettes. “Too much clutter.”
    “Too much risk.” Hiresha pointed to another arm, its plate pressed down with the sculpture of a sarcophagus. “Yet anything is better than accepting that airless fate.”

    After Chandur enjoyed his third course of delicacies, the enchantress' eyes opened. Her gloved finger drifted as she pointed and tried to focus her bleary eyes.
    “Mind the oysters,” she said. “And that priest is ill. He should be resting.”
    Fosapam Chandur always liked it when the enchantress did this, plucked truth out of her dreams. Again, he found himself sorry to think of her gone in only a few days.
    The priest bowed. “I am feeling well enough, Enchantress.”
    “Nonsense. You mixed pigment with oil to hide your pallor.”
    Chandur's brows rose at this. The other priests chortled and slapped the man. “Son Inannis, that’s why you missed catching the god today?”
    The bowing priest spoke with calm. “You are most wise, Enchantress. I will rest until I am well.”
    The fennec whirred around the priest's feet as he left. Chandur joined the men in throwing bits of cricket that the god caught with his teeth.
    “How hideous.” Hiresha shielded her eyes from the fennec.
    “Nothing wrong about that leap,” Chandur said. “Look at him go.”
    “My fiancé is snapping cricket heads out of the air. Abominable.”
    “Oh.” Chandur rolled a ball of coconut and date between thumb and forefinger. “Did you never want to marry?”
    She propped her temples up with her fingers. Pursing her lips, she glanced at him but did not answer.
    Janny plopped down to sit on the other side of Hiresha. “It's a fair question,” the maid said. The skin of her freckled face was peeling from too much sun. “Could've had yourself some real full shirts and full pants. Didn't want them. Now don't want this toothed-bunny god?”
    “He's a fox.” Chandur ran a hand over the fennec's back as he dashed by.
    “I wanted to marry,” Hiresha said, “yet it can't be done anytime one pleases.”
    “Yes it can.” Janny had a face that wrinkles had etched into a smile. A turban wrapped her hair with grey fabric. A dress of the same color was filled by a body that Chandur could only respectfully call practical and built to last. “Can even happen when you don't please. 'Specially a hurry-up-please-before-father-finds-out wedding.”
    “There is nothing more vulgar than the unplanned,” Hiresha said. “A life isn't great by chance, but by design.”
    “I could use some vulgarity tonight.” Janny winked at two of the guards. “Hope they don't drink too much.”
    “Janny, don't expose others to your thoughts. It is indecent.”
    The maid said, “Just tell me I won't have to pick up your wee husband god. Or comb him. I