Looking Up

She thought, judging by how tender the side of her face felt, that she might have suffered a broken cheekbone from the pike. At the least, she could tell that she had a very swollen cheek. Well, she had suffered much worse than that in her time. She had been fortunate that, so far as she could tell, she had suffered nothing worse than minor bruises in addition, when falling from her horse. For the moment her discomfort was secondary to the mixture of confusion and anger which she felt about how she had been treated.

"Why should I answer to you?" she said, finding that talking was, though painful and rather muffled, at least possible. "Who are you, that you should attack someone going about their lawful business, yet seem to think that you have the right to do so? If you wanted to ask me my name and nationality, you could have done so without attacking me first. Also I do not take kindly to being addressed as 'woman'."

"Why were you not carrying your papers, woman?" Astra noticed that his accent sounded foreign. As was, she assumed, his outlandish garb.

"As a free-born Aqualarian in my own land, I need carry none."

1. "Whatever gave you that idea?"
2. "Some time in the cells may improve your attitude."
3. "You should know the penalties for defying an overseer. They start at a whipping, and work up from there."

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