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"You want to WHAT!?" Ujari exclaimed after Salael had finished calmly detailing her plan for escape some hours later. "You're insane!"
Salael just smiled serenely. "I thought you might think that. But you're a drudge, you have to do as I say. And that includes not telling anyone else."
Ujari opened her mouth and then closed it again, shaking her head sadly. "So you're using rank now, Salael? Scared you'll be betrayed by a lowly drudge like me?"
"Shardit Ujari, I'm not using you! I want your help! As a friend!" Salael thundered in frustration.
"You order all your friends not to betray you?" Ujari asked slyly. "I don't think that's a very friendly kind of thing to do."
"I've never trusted any of my friends with somehting this big!" Salael exclaimed. "Maybe you forgot my plan, Ujari, but everyone here will think me dead!"
"And you want me to go along with the lie? Mourn for someone who wasn't truly lost?" Ujari whispered.
"Yes!" Salael felt as though she would burst with the frustrarion held inside. "I know this sounds selfish, but if I don't think of myself now, I never will be able to again!"
Ujari was silent for a moment and then returned her friend's gaze. "I will help you. What do we need to do first?"
Getting the freshly killed wherry carcass proved suprisingly easy for Ujari, who stole it while the cook was investigating her carefully devised mess in the cookfire. "You think this will be enough?" Ujari asked, looking doubtfully at the carcass. It hadn't even been beheaded or blooded yet.
Salael produced a belt kinfe and slit the wherry's throat. A bright red pool of blood appeared on her furs. A bit of creative manuvering of the wherry produced many more splotches and spatters of blood. Salael stood back to admire their work.
"It's as believable as if I'd bled it myself," she declared, unconciously rubbing at her own throat. "Now for the note."
Ujari, like all drudges, was completely illiterate, which made the task of writing a letter much easier, for no one would know Ujari's handwriting.
"What should I write?" the drudge asked, holding the quill a bit awkwardly above the scrap of hide.
Salael thought for a moment. "If I can't have her, no one can," she replied. "That sound's threatening, doesn't it?"
Uljari shivered and nodded. "Too threatening for my taste, but it's your death, not mine."
Within half an hour, Salael had created her murder. That had been the easy part. The bloodied furs were arranged to look like a struggle had taken place; a long bladed knife from the kitchen left as evidence along with the note it lay on top of. Now came the hard part.
Salael had always treasured her soft, thick, slightly wavy dark brown hair. It pained Uljari as much as it did Salael to hack it off to a more respectable length for a boy, the longest hairs not reaching to her shoulders and then bound back into a rough runner's tail. Salael fingered the rest of her hair sadly. Never again would she ever be allowed hair like she had had a few minutes ago.
Uljari sensed her friend's sorrow. "You're sure you want to go through with this?"
Salael smiled up at the drudge. "It's a bit too late for regret now, isn't it? Let's finish with turning me into a boy.
Salael didn't have an extremely full figure but it was still impossible to mistake her for a boy in tighter clothing. So the clothes they selected were all loose shirts and loose trousers. All disgusting, all nessecary if Salael's plan was to work.
Finally it was all ready. Salael shouldered her bag and gave Uljari a reassuring smile before heading out the back way she had discovered. It would lead her out to the stables. As she descended the stairs, she could hear Uljari's scream of anguish as she "discovered" the bloody mess.
Salael ran down the stairs as fast as she could without tripping, running towards the stables and freedom...
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