“I am here, humanoid female.” The voice that answered her sounded like the creaking of tree branches in the wind. It had a whispery-sighing quality but it was so unexpected that Jillian jumped and gave out a little yelp of surprise.
“Um, who…who said that?” she asked, wishing her voice wouldn’t tremble so much.
“I did.” The purple oak tree in the center of the clearing shook its bare branches and two eyes appeared to open on its rough trunk. They looked like knots you sometimes see on the bole of a tree and its mouth appeared the same way.
“Oh, um…thank you. Nice to meet you, Your Honor,” Jillian said quickly, not sure what else to say. Her mouth was dry as the tree being glided closer. It seemed to move underground, somehow—maybe using its roots?
Like a person wading through water—that’s how it’s moving through the dirt, Jillian thought. God, it’s huge!
For the enormous tree dwarfed even the ten-foot tall Trolloxes. It loomed over them, its knothole eyes and mouth making it look like something out of a nightmare.
“It is never ‘nice’ to be woken from my slumber,” the Master of the Market creaked ominously at her. “Why have you woken me?”
“Oh great Master of the Market, we come with a grave grievance that we ask you to settle,” Ripper’s yellow-eyed head exclaimed quickly. It pointed at Jillian “This humanoid female owes us a debt she refuses to pay!”
Jillian opened her mouth to refute the Trollox’s claims, but Kalis shook his head and frowned at her.
“What? I can’t just stand there and let him lie about me!” she hissed. “Why can’t I say anything to defend myself?”
“The Master of the Market is a Quinlow,” Kalis rumbled, as though that was supposed to mean something to her. “He is an omniscient being who sees into the hearts of all who come before him. Don’t worry, little Mistress—he’ll give you your chance to speak.”
“The Kindred is right,” the Master of the Market said, in his creaky, sighing voice. “Now, Trollox, state your case,” he added, speaking to Ripper.
“Your Eminence, we gave this humanoid female our finest handmade linen handkerchief—made for us by our own dear mother, it was,” Ripper began. “Now, by Market Law, she owes us a gift for a gift, but she refuses to pay her debt to us. She even attacked us in our very own shop when we tried to take payment!” He gestured to the gory socket where his missing eye used to be. “I ask you, Your Eminence, what is a good, honest Trollox to do?”
“What indeed,” the Master of the Market answered obliquely. His knothole eyes turned towards Jillian. “Well, humanoid female? What do you have to say to this charge the Trollox has laid against you?”
Taking a deep breath, Jillian stepped forward.
“Your Honor…I mean, your Eminence,” she began. “First of all, this, uh, Trollox took advantage of me. I was drugged and dumped in the Dark Market and he came along when I was still disoriented, to offer me his handkerchief.”
“None of this is relevant except for the fact that he did, indeed, offer you his handkerchief and you did, indeed, take it,” the Master of the Market said sternly. “Did you also attack him in his own shop?”
“Well, yes, but I was defending myself!” Jillian exclaimed. “He had dragged me forcibly to his shop and he was threatening to chop me into pieces and rape me—in that order!”
The Quinlow judge shifted his knothole gaze to Ripper.
“I see in this humanoid’s heart that she is telling the truth,” he whisper-sighed to the Trollox. “Why would you threaten such a thing? If you are a shop owner, you know it is against Market Law to hurt or abduct another market patron.”
Ripper’s remaining yellow eye got a crafty look in it.
“Why, your Eminence, it’s possible we made some rash threats at the time because we were so upset about the loss of our eye!” He pointed to the gory black empty socket. “Scooped it right out of our head, she did, and all because we caught her trying to run off before paying her debt!”
The Master of the Market looked at Jillian sternly.
“This is also true. Why did you take the Trollox’s eye and attempt to abscond without paying your debt, humanoid female?”
“Because the way he wanted me to repay him was by letting him impregnate me with his child!” Jillian exclaimed. “Which I never agreed to, by the way! And if what I’ve heard about Trolloxes is right, if I’d let him do it, his spawn would have chewed its way out when it was time to be born, killing me in the process! I ask you, Your Eminence, is that a fair trade? My life for a handkerchief?”
The Quinlow judge glared at Ripper and his purple branches suddenly burst into brilliant blue flames, surprising Jillian so much that she gasped and jumped back.