"No," he said, with that slow, ancient exhale of someone who's watched too many civilizations collapse. "You are not going to impersonate a slaver. And I am not snatching a half-dozen serf girls so you can sell them down the river like pottery."
I rolled my eyes so hard I nearly saw last week. "You didn't have a problem selling those sheep."
"Sheep don't scream."
"Please," I scoffed. "Some of those girls baaa louder than sheep. And you know what? With a bit of mascara and a nice collar, they'll fetch twice what the woolies did."
He turned to look at me, slow as a dying moonrise. "It's disgusting. Also, weren't you sold several times?"
"Precisely!" I jabbed a finger in the air like I'd just revealed the location of buried treasure. "And look how great I turned out! It's not even that bad. You sit in a cage for a few market days, learn to arch your back and pout on command, shake your tits at passing buyers, and with any luck—boom! You're in some rich bastard's private harem getting oiled by eunuchs named after spices."
His jaw tightened. "You are talking about human beings."
"So am I!" I said cheerfully. "That's the whole point! People sell better. Nobody pays ten gold for a goat. You know what they pay ten gold for? A girl with good teeth and low expectations."
"I cannot believe you're making this argument."
"Listen," I said, waggling a finger. "Those girls are stuck in some mud-splattered goatfuck nowhere, breaking their backs for moldy turnips and drunken step-uncles. I am giving them upward mobility."
"In chains."
I shrugged. "Everything's a chain. Some just have prettier links."
He groaned. Ancient, fire-breathing, agelessly dramatic groan. "You are a moral sinkhole."
"And you are a hoarder with wings. We all have our flaws."
He turned away, muttering something in Old Draconic that probably translated to "may lightning strike my ovaries." I let him simmer. I knew I'd lost the argument—for now.
"Okay, fine," I said, dramatically tossing a pebble into the fire. "We don't kidnap them."
He narrowed his eyes. "I'm listening, but I already regret it."
"What if," I said, scooting closer, eyes sparkling with inspiration, "they volunteer?"
He blinked. "Volunteer for what."
"For better lives," I said, hands already sketching shapes in the air. "We set up a little recruitment stand in one of those sad-farm fiefdoms. Bright banner, maybe pink silk. 'Join Now: Future in Silk & Perfume Awaits!' We pitch it as an opportunity. No more pig shit, no more cracked heels. Just baths, honeyed wine, and a sturdy cock or two a week. Not even daily if the brothel's high-end."
He just stared at me.
I kept going. "Think about it! Half those village girls already act like they're the prettiest bucket-haulers east of the river. I'm doing them a favor. I'm giving them purpose. Direction. Perfumed direction."
He groaned. "You are going to hell. A very specific, slut-shaped hell."
"But a profitable one," I grinned. "Come on, we use the right pitch, some velvet cushions, a copper mirror or two—and bam, they line up. Modern slavery is just liberation from hard labor with better outfits."
"Better outfits," he repeated, dragging a claw across his face.
"Yes! You think anyone wants to die with hay in their hair and turnip soup in their gut? No! They want sandalwood baths and men who tip."
"You are—gods help me—monstrous."
"Recruitment is the future," I insisted. "No more chains, just choices. You think those present wenches wouldn't sign up? Sluts absolutely would. I would've signed up if someone offered me an option when I was scrubbing out chamber pots with my hands."
"You were sold."
"And now I'm a businesswoman."
He exhaled smoke. "You're a cautionary tale with breasts."
I smirked. "And a very clear business model."
***
I set up the stand just off the dirt path leading from the hamlet to the floating pumpkin fields. You know, where the air always smells like damp moss and fermenting dreams, and the mud sucks at your ankles like it wants to keep you forever.
One rickety stool, one cloth-draped crate, one badly painted sign that said:
"Join Madam Saya's Academy of Refinement"
—except I misspelled "refinement" as refinmant and ran out of space halfway through academy, so it just trailed off into a squiggle. Still, looked official enough. I draped a pink shawl over my shoulders, propped up a broken mirror, and practiced my sultriest merchant smile.
The girls came in trickles, baskets on hips, hoes on shoulders, bare feet slapping dust. Sun-browned, thighy little things in skimpy work tunics and smirks they hadn't earned yet. Perfect.
"You there," I called to the first group, twirling my finger like a queen summoning her subjects. "Tell me—do you truly want to spend the rest of your life ankle-deep in pumpkin muck, married to a man who farts in his sleep and calls your breasts 'his comforts'?"
They blinked. One of them said, "Well—"
"Or," I cut in, "would you rather recline on silk cushions, sipping pomegranate nectar while foreign merchants fan you and call you 'diamond of the dusk'?"
They exchanged looks.
I struck a pose. "Perfume. Satin. Grapes peeled by other people. The good life."
"Do we have to get naked?" asked one, adjusting her tunic like it had dignity.
"Eventually," I shrugged. "But artfully. Tastefully. In layers."
A moment of silence.
"Do we get new names?" another asked, eyes gleaming.
"Of course," I said, plucking names from memory and sin. "Velvet Sugar. Passion Dawn. Foxfire. Whatever fits your vibe."
That got them. By the time the fifth girl wandered over, I had a queue.
I pulled out a tattered scroll and my nicest quill (previously owned by a drunk poet who didn't need it anymore) and started "registering" them.
Sort of.
"Alright," I said, tongue sticking out slightly as I tried to form the letters. "Name?"
"Uh... Myra."
I squinted. "Spell it."
She blinked. "I can't."
"Right. That's fine. You're now... Mira the Blossom. Sign here."
"I don't know how."
I handed her the quill. "Make a squiggle. Everyone gets a squiggle. Yours is unique, like a titty-print."
She beamed, stabbed the parchment, made what looked like a startled chicken in flight. Perfect.
By the time we hit six, the scroll looked like a battlefield of ink blobs, half-names, thumbprints, and one crude drawing of a penis that I think was meant to be an "X."
Somewhere two hills over, the Dragon groaned from inside his cave, muttering something about moral decay and plague-worthy hubris. I ignored him. This was going splendidly.
Madam Saya's first graduating class was shaping up nicely.
By noon, I had two dozen of them.
Two dozen sun-kissed, giggly, barely-legal disasters loitering around my stand, bumping hips and whispering behind dirty fingernails. They'd ditched their hoes somewhere down the path and now milled about like overripe fruit, impatient and full of dumb hope.
I cleared my throat. Loudly.
"Alright, girls. Time for the next step."
They turned as one, eyes wide, eager as goats before slaughter. Gods. Youth really is a disease.
I clapped my hands. "Now, I know this part may feel a little odd, but trust me—it's tradition. Also professionalism. We're not savages. This is high-class preparation. So. Clothes off. All of them."
A stunned silence. One girl giggled. Another elbowed her and asked, "Right now?"
"Yes, now," I said, already rummaging in the crate behind me. "And put these on."
I pulled out the chains. Not the rusted dungeon ones, please. These were ceremonial—brass loops with tiny bells, ankle cuffs linked with silken rope, collars with little mother-of-pearl inlays. The tasteful sort of bondage that says exotic but manageable.
One girl reached for a collar. "Oh it jingles!"
"Yes," I said, beaming. "That's so your future patrons know you're on the move."
They started stripping. Tunics lifted, hair unpinned, bare feet shifting in the dust as they passed around the gleaming chains with oohs and ahhs like they were bracelets at a wedding fair.
"Remember," I said, pointing a finger like a schoolmistress. "This is proper, ceremonial stuff. Not some peasant improv theatre where you stumble into sin. We're talking Madam Saya's Certified House of Refinement standards."
They nodded solemnly, as if I'd just taught them sacred rites.
One slipped off her underwraps and held up the jingling ankle-cuffs. "Do these go on both legs or just the one you lead with?"
Gods help me, I think I had a business model.
I was just getting them sorted—chains adjusted, collars snug but flattering, no bell tangles—when I took a step back and admired the scene.
Twenty-four bare-skinned girls, sun-kissed and glinting like a low-budget vision of paradise, standing in uneven lines and posing awkwardly in ornamental shackles. Some looked shy, some smug, most just excited to be part of something that didn't involve root vegetables or hand blisters.
I crossed my arms, nodded, satisfied. Dragon was going to be mortified. And—though he'd never say it—secretly proud. A fully functioning operation. Professional. Organized. Profitable. With branding.
Then came the sound of hooves.
Shit.
Three riders crested the low ridge, kicking up dust, the kind that sticks to sweat and trouble. Local types—copper-trimmed jerkins, sunburnt necks, the distinct facial expression of men who thought they mattered more than they did. One of them had a mustache that looked like it had been drawn on in anger.
They pulled up hard, horses snorting. The lead rider pointed a gloved hand at me like I was a bloodstain.
"What is the meaning of this?"
The girls froze. One tried to cover herself with a bell chain. It did not work.
"Who are you," the man barked, "and what are you doing with these serfs?"
"Ah," I said, flashing my best noble-but-accessible smile. "Madam Saya, vocational specialist and mentor to the promising. These young women are enrolling in a life-changing artisanal refinement initiative."
He blinked. "These serfs are the workforce assigned to till the soil. They are not your—" he looked at the jingling, bare group "—merchandise."
One of the girls piped up: "You said we could choose our own names!"
Another yelled, "She said we'd get perfume!"
"I wanna be called Velvet Vixen!" shouted a third, half-collared and glowing with indignation.
The man turned a shade of red normally reserved for wine spills and fistfights. "They are property of Lord Harras of Birch Hollow! You have no right—"
I put my hands on my hips. "They're people, not pumpkins. If pumpkins can choose whether to float or not, these girls can damn well pick silk over backbreaking toil."
Argument exploded.
The girls shouted. The men shouted louder. I adjusted my shawl and sighed.
Somewhere, two hills away, the Dragon probably felt a headache blooming behind his ancient eyes.
Steel flashed, and before I could even gasp, two swords were drawn — idiot gleam in their eyes, testosterone thick in the air.
"No no no no no," I blurted, arms wide like a living "do not stab" sign. "Gentlemen, put the phallic symbols away, we are resolving this verbally!"
But it was too late. The mood had curdled. Velvet Vixen — gods bless her soul — stepped protectively in front of me, bare feet planted, chain still dangling from one wrist like a fashion statement. She glared at the horsemen.
"You can't make us go back."
"Yeah!" another girl shouted, jabbing a finger. "You said Lord Harras cares about discipline. He never said we couldn't better ourselves!"
One of the riders snapped, "You are assigned to till the fields. Not prance about in chains like whores-in-training."
The chorus that followed could've stripped paint from a shrine wall.
"We are whores-in-training!"
"I'd rather get whipped by a noble than married to Janneth the pig boy!"
"I got bitten by a floating pumpkin last week. I deserve better!"
"Madam Saya gave us names! Velvet. Sugar. Starfox. That's upward mobility!"
I watched, stunned, as the girls turned into a shouting, jingling mob of righteous indignation. Bare thighs and jingling bells, fists raised, they closed in around the guards like a sweaty, furious flock of featherless geese.
One girl tossed a tunic at the lead rider's face.
Another girl — bless her revolutionary heart — snapped her collar closed again and posed. Full hip, defiant chin, eyes like someone who's seen a brothel window and understood the assignment.
The lead guard looked deeply, existentially confused.
"These are serfs," he barked, trying to regain control.
"These are women with vision," I corrected, arms crossed, smug.
"They're my sisters now," Velvet Vixen added, "and I'll scratch out your eyeballs with this toenail if you call me livestock again."
Everyone froze.
She held up the toenail. It was disturbingly long.
The men backed off a step.
The girls stood taller.
And somewhere—definitely two hills away—the Dragon muttered, "Gods damn it, she's unionizing them."
The shouting must've carried, because within minutes, more guards started showing up. Half a dozen, then ten — stomping in with their clubs and smug faces and tight little tax-funded jerkins. All puffed up like they were storming a rebel camp and not… a gaggle of barefoot girls in decorative chains.
Velvet Vixen held the line for as long as she could. So did Foxfire. And Passion Dawn. Brave little fools.
But when the captain showed up — thick-jawed, red-faced, the kind of man who thought "stern tone" was an argument — the crowd shifted. You could feel the moment they remembered their fathers. Their ration counts. Their beatings.
"All serfs back to assigned fields," he barked. "You are not permitted to leave designated work zones without writ or escort."
"But we were signing up!" one girl shouted.
"For a future!" another added.
"This is exploitation!" someone yelled. I didn't recognize her, but I liked her style.
"Exactly," I said, stepping forward. "And as their self-appointed life coach slash liberation consultant, I can tell you this is a gross violation of emotional—"
A spearhead tapped under my chin. Not hard. Just… there.
"You," the captain said. "Are not from this fief. You are not a registered tradeswoman. And you are not charming enough to talk your way out of this."
I smiled. "I get that a lot. But give it another try."
"Leave. Now. Or I'll take you to the magistrate in a sack."
The girls gasped.
I glanced at Velvet Vixen. She looked crushed. Starfox was already taking off her collar. Even Passion Dawn—the one with the attitude and the visible thigh muscle—had gone quiet.
One by one, grumbling, glaring, muttering about stolen dreams and pomegranate wine, they started shuffling off. Wrists unchained. Hope deflated.
The guards herded them like livestock, back toward the path that wound down to the floating pumpkin fields, where the vines were fat and the sun was merciless.
I stood there a moment, then turned to grab my crate.
"Leave it," one guard snapped. "Magistrate'll want a look."
I let it go.
As I walked away, I heard one of the girls whisper behind me, just loud enough for me to catch:
"Still wanna be Velvet Vixen."
Damn right, I thought.
***
Much later, back in the cave, wrapped in a blanket that smelled like old smoke and dragon breath, I sat on a cold rock rubbing my wrists. Rope burns. Cheap hemp. Twisted tight enough that I could still feel the grooves when I closed my hands.
The Dragon watched me for a long while without speaking. Just the flick of his tail and the occasional annoyed puff of steam from his nostrils. Finally, in that smug, drawling, older-than-your-gods tone, he said:
"So. What did we learn today?"
I didn't look up. My back still stung. Thin red welts across my shoulders and lower spine, neat and spaced like the magistrate had been practicing calligraphy in pain. Nothing life-threatening. Just a reminder.
"Shut up," I muttered.
He exhaled through his nose, smoke curling along the cave floor.
"I'm just saying," he went on, "perhaps conscripting the local peasantry into your makeshift brothel militia wasn't—"
"Shut up." I snapped, louder. "I had a vision. A business model. Branding. Clients. Recruitment pipeline. I was so close to revolutionizing rural employment."
"You were flogged."
"For disruption! For being ahead of my time!"
He tilted his head. "They tied you to the magistrate's desk and whipped you with a ledger strap."
"Yes," I hissed, "and it hurt less than your smugness."
Silence again. He didn't push. He never did when the bruises were still fresh.
After a while, he draped the tip of his tail across my ankles. Not much. Just a reminder.
Of who came for me when they kicked me out of town at dawn, barefoot and bleeding, with my crate broken and my scroll confiscated.
I didn't say thank you.
He didn't ask.
We just sat there. Him stewing. Me smoldering. The faint jingle of a lone ankle bell still tangled in my satchel.