Free The Seven Markets by David Hoffman Page A

color, oceans rising up to take the shapes of men. She’d taken every marvel in stride but somehow the act of turning a knob or pulling a chain and summoning water, fresh and clear, never ceased to amaze her.
    She added oils and scented powders to her bath. She washed her hair, rinsing it and combing it out. There would not be the slightest hint of road on her when she saw her love again.
    A folded towel drawn from a nearby shelf provided Ellie with a headrest. She lay back, covered in lavender and honey-scented bubbles, and closed her eyes. She might have dozed but for the Prince, who she knew would not be long with a ball to prepare for. Still, she soaked much longer than she’d intended, emerging from the still-steaming waters of the tub red as a beet, her fingers wrinkled like a congress of tiny, disagreeable old men.
    As she dried, there came a knock on the door. Ellie called to her visitor and Cutter peered in at her.
    “My lady,” he said. “I apologize for the interruption.”
    “Of course not. Your timing is impeccable.”
    He bowed his head.
    “My Prince will expect much of me tonight, Cutter.”
    “I anticipated, my lady. If I may?”
    He pushed the door further open and let in two girls, younger in appearance than herself, and a tall man with stringy golden hair and tanned skin. His eyes narrowed to a razor’s edge as he examined Ellie in her bathrobe with her hair still wringing wet.
    “Splendid, splendid,” the tall man said. “Yes, yes.”
    Cutter bowed again, excusing himself.
    The tall man directed Ellie to stand in the middle of the room. His assistants removed her bathrobe and retreated to let their master work.
    “Your Prince,” he said after a long silence. “How does he feel about blue?”
    “It is one of his favored colors,” Ellie said.
    “Light or dark?”
    “Light like the sky or dark like the sea. He says it brings out the sparkles in my eyes.”
    He leaned close so their noses were almost touching.
    “Yes, yes. It will be blue, then.”
    One of the assistants rushed forward with a bolt of cloth. If she’d hurled it out the window and up into the sky it would have been lost at once in the brilliance of the day. The colors were so close Ellie could see clouds drifting in a breeze that was not there.
    “Unless my lady objects?”
    The Prince would approve; Ellie said as much.
    “Splendid.” He produced a measuring tape from a hidden pocket and quickly fitted Ellie for her new gown. He called out measurements to one of the assistants. When he was finished he instructed them to return Ellie’s bathrobe. “Don’t want you to catch a chill while I’m working,” he said.
    Ellie sat at her dressing table, sipping a cup of tea she did not remember steeping or asking for. One of the assistants—she had a hard time telling them apart and suspected they might be twins—set to work on her hair. The other attended the tall man, handing over pins and thread when asked, acting as an impromptu mannequin when needed.
    It came to Ellie, watching him work, that the tall man’s name was Sartha and that his hands had crafted the garments her Prince had worn the first time they’d met. His assistants she could not name, but somehow this did not bother her. She had the sense it would not bother them either. The one who’d styled her hair and was now applying gentle brushstrokes of makeup to her face Ellie named Esme after a nymph they’d encountered long ago. The second assistant she named Resme, after the nymph’s younger sister.
    “Come,” Sartha said, holding out a hand. “Let us see how we did today, shall we?”
    Ellie rose, sparing a glance at her now-unfamiliar face in the grand mirror. She was a stranger to herself. Her cheekbones were more pronounced, her eyes at once brightened and oddly deeper, as if one might lose himself staring into them. Her hair rose in an impossible pile of curls and waves. Esme had worked a miracle with her plain hair, transforming it into a living