The Regressed Princess - Chapter 26

Chapter 26: Hudora

The cold wind roamed across the land, kicking up layers of grit and sand.

The doors of the neighboring houses were tightly shut, but there was always one house that seemed to gape open like a wide mouth whenever the gale blew. A few people stood huddled in front of the door like crooked, decaying teeth, shivering from time to time.

“Please—please give us a few more days.” Hudora stood before her wife and daughter, bowing deeply until her head nearly touched the ground.

Unfortunately, the women surrounding her family were not so easy to talk to.

A squint-eyed woman holding a piece of parchment clicked her tongue and shook her head repeatedly. “Hudora, oh Hudora. Is your family treating me like a sheep to be slaughtered? The mother is missing, the mama needs medicine, the house is ancestral and can’t be sold, and the fields are rented to you by other relatives—ptui! Give me the money!!”

“It’s the truth.” Hudora calmly shielded her crying child, kneeling on the ground and slowly kowtowing. “Selling the house requires the consent of the whole clan. The fields belong to my wife’s elder sister. We truly have no money left.”

“Oh, so a few more days’ grace.?” The squint-eyed woman’s eyes drifted even further to the side as she mocked, “Three days? Five days? Your mother owes us two hundred gold coins. What are you going to use to pay it back?”

Hudora clenched her fists.

The creditor was right. The gambling debts her mother had accrued were simply too much. A single gold coin could buy a whole sheep; how could she possibly scrape together two hundred?

Forget another ten days or half a month—even if given until next year, this family had nothing left to sell.

So… run?

Regardless, she wasn’t the one who owed the money. Even if the law dictated that a daughter must pay her mother’s debts, she wanted to take her whole family and flee to a place where they would never be burdened again.

“Heh, asking for grace? You wouldn’t be thinking of running away, would you!” The squint-eyed woman coldly pierced through her small thought and snorted, “Bring me the ropes!”

“What are you doing?!” Hudora looked up, only to see two strong women grinning hideously as they coiled ropes around their arms, approaching her step by step.

No, why! I don’t want to be a slave!

She gritted her teeth and lunged toward the squint-eyed woman, wishing they could perish together!

Kill, kill, kill if you won’t let me live in peace, no one gets to live in peace.

“Mama!” The sharp cry of her young daughter made Hudora’s breath hitch.

Ignoring the club swinging toward her, she looked back in a panic. Those two weren’t coming for her; they had caught her wife like a helpless chick and were binding her arms loop after loop.

Thump!

A wooden club struck her head heavily, and Hudora instantly collapsed to the ground, her vision swimming.

“Hmph.” The squint-eyed woman stepped over her fingers and walked inside. After leading her people in a sweep of the house, she emerged with two strong women, each carrying a bulging sack.

“Poor ghosts! Nothing but worthless junk!” She viciously kicked Hudora on the ground.

The sacks were clearly stuffed full. Hudora guessed from the silhouettes that they had taken all the remaining books in her house.

Those parchment books were her treasures. If sold carefully to book lovers, each one could be exchanged for several gold coins. How could they be called worthless?

Her mouth was full of blood, and the voice she squeezed out was hoarse and hissing.

The squint-eyed woman acted as if she heard nothing. she walked to Hudora’s wife, looking her up and down, and finally bared her teeth and shook her head. “Really… how did your family pick such a worthless wife? So ugly! The higher-ups will give 20 coins at most.”

Ugly… Lilisha is clearly beautiful and kind, and she is so smart… cough cough cough.

Hudora wanted to scream a rebuttal, but even the rebuttal made her angry: No, no, no, on what grounds are you treating my wife as a commodity! She—she is priceless!!

Of course, the squint-eyed woman couldn’t hear the screams in Hudora’s heart.

Shaking her head, she walked to the little girl and pinched Aisha’s cheek with her dark, grimy fingers. “Hey, this kid isn’t bad. She can be worth.”

“Enough!” Hudora struggled to crawl up from the ground. she panted heavily, her chest rising and falling like a bellows.

But the squint-eyed woman only spared her a side glance and sneered, “Not doing it? If you don’t do it, what else do you have to settle the debt?”

“Lord Hudora should learn to be well-behaved like everyone else. Sell the wife and kid to save yourself. Psh, you still owe me 150 gold coins!” The squint-eyed woman crouched down and patted her face, while the thugs on either side helped their master by resting blades against Hudora’s neck.

“I…”

“You what?” The woman bared her teeth.

“Me!” Hudora’s eyes were bloodshot as she roared through gritted teeth.

Ignoring the blades, she twisted her neck desperately, struggling forward like a dying mad dog. “Me, I still have me! Me… sell me!!”

“Hoh?”

The squint-eyed woman paused, then grinned, revealing half her teeth. “Oh my, I didn’t realize you were such a tough woman. However—”

The grin vanished. “Why are you worth 150 gold coins?”

“It’s not 150, cough cough cough. It’s… it’s 300. I am worth 300!” Hudora rose unsteadily from the ground. The two thugs looked uncertainly at their boss, only relaxing and stepping aside when the squint-eyed woman gave a slight nod.

“Ha! So I have to give you an extra 100 coins?!” The woman struck a pose of mock shock.

However, Hudora was not distracted by her act. She returned to her wife and daughter’s side.

She stood in front of them like a swaying mountain.

“You know I am worth it. I—I have half-noble blood. Moreover, I am literate, and I am very, very good at calculation and prose. I am a scholar of some small renown.”

Hudora’s tone grew calm. She looked at the squint-eyed woman with piercing eyes and said word by word, “You know I am worth this price. You don’t have to give the extra 100 gold coins, but you must come with me to a witness to sign a contract, swearing that you will never harass my wife and child again!”

The squint-eyed woman was silent for a while, then broke into a brilliant smile a few seconds later.

“My, my, of course. Come, come, let’s sign the contract~”

A roll of parchment covered in blood-red writing was placed before Hudora.

“No, I won’t sign! I don’t want to sign!!”

How did I shout my inner thoughts out loud? Little Aisha will be worried.

Hudora felt a surge of regret. Her hands jerked, and her forehead suddenly struck something hard.

That was…

She opened her eyes. A thick stack of parchment was piled in front of her, blocking her view.

Hudora rubbed the corners of her eyes and sat up from the desk. The light outside the window was already bright.

I remember now. Last night, I was ordered by the overseer to wipe down an entire row of cages, so I collapsed from exhaustion as soon as I got back.

It was just a nightmare.

Hudora mechanically reached out to gather the parchment, preparing to put them in a box and lock them away.

Although the master still didn’t trust her and only gave her public accounts to organize, she knew all too well what kind of terrifying punishment she would face if she lost these things.

She lowered her head to silently organize the scattered papers. Bang! The worn-out wooden door was suddenly pushed open.

“Teacher!”

A girl with ginger hair ran in like a whirlwind.

Her long hair was braided behind her back, and she wore a ranger-style outfit of long sleeves, trousers, and a cloak. As she walked, the scabbard hanging from her belt slapped against her thigh—clack, clack.

It was Elsa.

The cold expression on Hudora’s face melted for a fraction of a second; this child was the only person here who would call her “Teacher.”

But at the thought of “here,” her smile couldn’t surface.

No matter how respectfully Elsa spoke, she was still the daughter of her master—her little mistress.

“Look at this quickly, is it a treasure map?” Elsa impatiently handed over a piece of parchment.

It was covered in ancient script and accompanied by a simple sketch that resembled a map. In the middle of the drawing was a string of coins, though it was unclear if they were gold or copper.

Hudora took the parchment and looked at it closely, then shook her head.

“No. This is likely a letter written by a soldier two or three hundred years ago who was short of food and clothing during a march, asking a specialized messenger to go home and ask for money for her.”

“What~” Elsa immediately lost interest. She tossed the parchment aside and muttered, “It’s not worth anything at all.”

“It will be worth something in several hundred or a thousand years.” Hudora swallowed many words, seriously tidying up the ledgers. Then she picked up the discarded parchment and placed it in the box as well.

“Teacher, let’s go out and play today?” Elsa leaned against the edge of the table, her legs swinging.

“No, I have things to do later.”

“Oh”

Trot, trot-trot-trot.

The girl left as quickly as she came, hopping onto the ground and running off, not even closing the door.

Must be nice. I hope my little Aisha can be as full of life as her.

A dull ache throbbed in Hudora’s heart: If her mother hadn’t gambled and her mama wasn’t so sickly, her wife and daughter wouldn’t have to suffer like this. She wondered if they were doing well at home? Were they eating and sleeping on time?

Numbly, she walked out of the small room that was half-storehouse and half-accounting office, heading toward the kitchen.

Calling it a kitchen was an exaggeration; it was just a few small, dilapidated tents in the slave market.

The cook would wake up early to pound cooked tubers into powder and put them in buckets. Others were responsible for carrying the buckets away and using a long-handled wooden spoon to scoop the food. A single scoop of starch dough was the slaves’ breakfast.

Hudora wasn’t a trusted confidante in charge of accounting yet, but she knew that the master here the squint-eyed woman’s superior, Scarface Doni—was using this method to tame her.

She hadn’t truly interacted with Doni yet, but this lord had already made her experience true bullying through many subordinates.

If nothing went wrong, once Lord Doni believed she would be a good dog, she would probably descend personally to “deliver justice,” wouldn’t she?

Truly, enough is enough.

Hudora carried the bucket and walked between the rows of cages.

This was the wooden cage area, furthest from the central display area. It held “goods” that were relatively harder to sell.

Of course, if a seller specifically brought a “big fish” to wander here, they would also praise the goods here from the bottom of their hearts.

Those who were too thin were “travel-worn from a long journey.”

Those who were too ugly “possessed special sensitivity and skill.”

Those who were too defiant were “perfect in every way except for their personality”…

Splat.

She swung the spoon, slapping a lump of starch dough into the cupped hands of a slave.

“One more lump, milord.”

Hudora refused without looking up. “No, the kitchen has calculated it all. If I give you more, others will have nothing to eat.”

“Heh.”

Hearing the laughter by her ear, Hudora couldn’t help but look up. Slaves almost never made such a sinister sound; wasn’t she afraid of being whipped?

The slave before her eyes didn’t look special at first glance, except for those eyes, which were exceptionally cunning.

They were eyes that had perhaps suffered much humiliation but would never surrender.

“You… forget it, I’ll give you one more scoop.” Hudora shivered instinctively. A strange sense of danger made her want to leave this place immediately.

“No, no, no, food is useless now, milord.” The unusual slave pressed against the cage and spoke softly and slowly, “I need you to provide something else now.”

“What?”

“Join us.” The woman in the cage reached out. Those palms, covered in a crisscross of scars, turned over forcefully before her eyes—and then clenched into a fist.

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