Free Dragonskin Slippers by Jessica Day George

black eyes, and didn’t seem to even remember having been stepped on. She looked very much like she would prefer being on the ground, investigating the black-and-white monkeys, to being squeezed by her royal mistress.
    “Well, I think she did it on purpose,” the princess said, refusing to be mollified. “If you ever come near me again, I’ll set my guards on you!” She shook her fist at me.
    “I’m sorry, Your Highness,” I forced myself to say. What I really wanted to do was slap the silly wench,royal or no, but I was sure I would be spending the rest of my life in a dungeon if I did.
    The princess whirled around and stormed off, her guards and the crown prince in tow, and I breathed a sigh of relief. After I had calmed myself, I turned to ask the bird seller the way to the cloth district.
    “Please go away,” he said uneasily, refusing to meet my eyes.
    “What? But you said –”
    “I don’t want no trouble, maidy,” the man said, and made a shooing gesture at me, still not meeting my gaze.
    “But can’t someone please just point me towards the cloth-workers’ district?” I looked around at the other exotic pet sellers, who busied themselves with cleaning cages or untangling leashes. The brown man with the black-and-white monkeys smiled back, though, and gabbled something I couldn’t understand. “Please?” I tugged at my clothes and raised my eyebrows at the monkey seller, trying to mime what I wanted.
    “Dorfath,” he said merrily, and pointed down the street in the direction I had come from. “Dorfath!”
    “Thank you!” And I marched off in that direction, hoping he knew what he was talking about.

The Curfew Bells Toll
    By the time the sun began to set, I had to admit that either the monkey seller
hadn’t
known what I wanted, or he was playing a cruel joke on me. I had plodded up and down the streets and found no sign of a dress shop or even a glove maker. In fact, for the last hour I hadn’t seen any shops at all. Instead I had been wandering among large houses with brightly painted shutters and window boxes full of flowers. No one I passed would give me directions. The people on foot looked to be servants hurrying about their errands, and the rest were fine ladies and gentlemen riding horses or closed up in carriages.
    As the streets darkened, lamplighters came along with their long torches and lit the polished lanterns that hung from posts in front of every house. I tried asking one of them for directions, but they were all foreigners, and only brandished their torches at me and shouted, “Fire hot, maidy! Fire hot!” so that I would stay clear.
    “Here now, what are you doing out and about?”
    I wheeled around to see a guardsman in a green leather jerkin glaring at me. I clapped my hands in relief.
    “Oh, please, sir,” I said, so tired that I was swaying where I stood. “Could you direct me to the cloth-workers’ district? I just came from the country today, and I’m looking for work.”
    “It’s nearly curfew, girl,” the guardsman said in a rough voice. “It’s not time to be lookin’ for work. Get on home with you!”
    “I haven’t got a home, sir,” I began.
    “Vagrant, are you?” He frowned at me.
    “Er, no. I’ve only just arrived in the King’s Seat,” I repeated. “I’m looking for work, but haven’t found the cloth-workers’ district –”
    “So you don’t have work or a home?” He chewed his lip. “I’ll have to take you in for violating the curfew,” he warned me. He glanced up at the sky, where the sun had set and the smaller moon was just rising.
    “Please, I don’t understand,” I pleaded. “I’ve only just arrived; what is this about a curfew?”
    “What town are you from?” The guard’s eyebrows were approaching his receding hairline. “The curfew, girl, the curfew!”
    I looked at him with a blank expression. None of the traders who stopped in Carlieff Town had ever said anything about there being a curfew in the King’s