Clara woke to white sunlight, sleeting in sheets through the window frames and silken curtains.

Her eyes closed again, almost against her will, and she breathed. Everything felt, everything was disconcertingly fresh. Even the air seemed reborn, scrubbed, for a moment, of the stinks of port life. She stretched under the covers, sighing luxuriously, bonelessly deep in the softness of feather-and-woolen bedding. She could never believe she could sleep so comfortably, so completely, or that she could linger, only half awake, without interruption.

She might have, in fact, fallen asleep again. When she next opened her eyes the noise outside had started to pick up. Under the window, a draft horse clopped with a rattling of wagon wheels on the cobbles. Heavily loaded, probably barrels, she mused. Foot traffic, too, thinly scattered, not the clamor and crowds of midday. Distantly, ship’s bells clanged in the sea breeze, and gulls called. The city was waking as she was, late and lazy on a Restday morning.

The man beside her did not stir as she slowly sat up. Poor thing must have been at his work all night, cutting his emeralds and jade and sapphires and diamonds into indecipherable shape. Such gems were precious commodities, neutral channels and shapers of ambient forces, absolutely essential for ‘civilized’ magick. The touch to cut these stones to the requisite precision was a talent so rare the Faceting Guild had never set any other requirement for apprenticeship...and the men of that guild were still overworked, hopelessly behind demand.

No, she decided, Master didn’t need to be woken just yet.

She slipped out of bed, silently, ignoring the thrill as a silken sheet slid lovingly over her breasts. Somehow, a lifetime ago, they’d been too big, inconvenient, always just getting in the way. Master had broached the subject last night of having them done up even bigger, by a fleshsmith friend of his down at Harbourside Market. The more she thought about it, in truth, the more the notion appealed. One more thing to figure in the jealousies of the petit nobility that still clung to scrapes of power and prestige in the land that had been married, bought, or murdered out from under them. And, she dreamed with bitten lip, in more than a few of their nocturnal emissions.

Anything to be her Master’s...what was the name He’d used? Ah, yes, his Tiger’s Eye. An odd choice of gemstone, but perhaps more appropriate than not. His to be polished and displayed. Flaunted. Wanted.

Wanted. Oh, to be wanted. She wanted that, more than anything, more than gems, more than gold, more than bread and breath. It unsettled her, actually, how the need stole over her just now, and it surprised her that it was unsettling. It had been years since she was bought at auction, years since she had last been ‘free’. This was who she was, and no more than that.

She opened her eyes and found herself by the window, lured by the promise of the breeze. She acquiesced, and swept the curtains aside to let in the sun. A cool morning wind tousled her hair, and her eyes hooded again as she breathed cool, fresh sea-air. She set her hands on the window sill, leaning out to bask in the sun, and the glass shard slashed her palm upon.