Chapter 6 - Part VII

"Your destination is the heart of the Empire, Pho-boteth.  That much I can tell you, but I don't know much else.  Maybe one of the Orders will wish to take you on, perhaps the Learned of Exotics will want your first hand experience of your culture and language.  Perhaps the Empress will desire you to take up the brush and scroll yourself and become a Learned.  Perhaps the Bei'thal will want you for themselves."

He paused to himself for a moment, his face darkening quickly, "I will not let them make you bei though.  You have my oath.

"But mostly it will depend on your skills and loyalties.  And that fate will be determined after your main purpose."

"What is that?  What is my purpose?"

"We," he paused, "Pho-boteth is interested in the Nü.  Well, we're interested in all the races of the Outer Crest."

"I'm sure you could have found another, less intractable subject." Onion quietly observed to the man before her.

"Don't be so sure of that.  Even when I have come across your people, you always travel in herds!  You are not an easily co-opted group you know." he said.  "And what Nü do you know of who would willingly leave their home alone to travel to a strange world?  After the start of the Three-pronged War, we dare not try anyway."

In the back of her mind Onion knew Rejnev might have delighted at the chance to travel to the University on High, but her brother was a strange man to have ever gone alone to the continent.  There was no life outside of family.  "No I doubt many of us would."  she admitted.

"So yes, it's not ideal.  I know, I'm taking advantage of you, of your sad circumstance, but there was no way around it.  If you were Lithenese, as I am, you'd not have gotten a chance at all.  Anita would have slit your throat rather than let you see the hangman and give you the chance to tell our tale.

I've caught you in my web as you say, and I know what that means.  I'll try to get back to the University on High as soon as I can, and see the right of it.  But if not, give your hatred to me.  It was my choice in the end, and I thought it was the best one for you.  On this side of the Torrent Sea, nothing comes for free.  When something is too cheap, know that somewhere, someone is paying something."

Not another word crossed between the two for the remainder of the meal.  Onion reflected for a moment, that while her dish of par'la was savory in its own right, it lacked the distinct flavor of grixi  smoked cooking, a staple of the southern Nü.  Even that small treasure she'd kill for now.

~~~~~~~~~

Later, in a small tent Vaughn had prepared for them, Gregor began the process of wrapping Onion from fingertip to neck in the yellow-white gauze of a leper, a garb that would continue to irritate her dry-air loving skin for weeks to come.

The Lithenese man donned a robe that was reminiscent of the cloak worn by the man Gregor had referred to as the "Gegleth".  The dull grey weave of the fabric was coarse on the exterior, but light.  Under the cheesecloth material was a light cotton of solid charcoal color.

Under the hooded cloak was a similarly fashioned long sleeved tunic, bound and cinched on the forearm and cinched again just above his calf-high rough leather boots.  Around his hood a face scarf bearing the only color of the ensemble, light purple, hung loosely, ready to be utilized at any moment.

Onion would later  learn that this was the traveling garb of the Vrit Wilders of the Benge Wastelands which lie on the other side of Pho-boteth.  In crossing the sunless desert for the first time, in ages long past, the scholar kings of Old Boteth had learned the valuable lesson of cultural adaptation and they adopted it as traveling clothes to just about anywhere..