You fetch a change of clothes for the noble woman from your tent. Her current garb is far too modest for her new lot in life. The most flattering thing she wore to greet your army was the corset support her heavy bosom, and truth be told that was far more functional than flashy. The outfit you prepare is more appropriate to the role she shall be given in the Pits, having failed to uphold her ancestral oaths to the empire.

Just looking at it fills you with nostalgia. Your mother's old working clothes, from your days living in the Pits of the capital city. Now, of course, your mother wears fine silks to work and entertains demons and gentlemen of refined taste at court. What she wears beneath those dresses are even flashier than this, but in those bygone days this was all she needed to wear to ply her trade.

Flashy, flattering, and with fine gilding that implied a higher price for her services. Even thinly plated, gold chains upon a slave commanded a customer's attention.

You kept them throughout your years as a squire, even after Dormandal found your mother a place as a courtesan to better match her daughter's status as a Dreadknight. A reminder of where you came from... and to where you could return, if your failures piled up too high too quickly. Lending them to your first trophy taken in battle - even if she's not cute enough to keep around - is a fitting use. How happy it is that she shares your mother's size!

Besides, you have dozens of these outfits in storage. Your mother plied the old trade well enough that she never had to work in the stables for even a single night. She kept good enough track of her clients that you even know the man most likely to be your father. Knowing what her clients liked and didn't like earned her the sort of affection that saw her showered with many gifts; usually flashy outfits they wanted her to wear.

The only one you've no intention of giving to some trophy or another is the one she hand made for you, a few weeks before Dormandal raised you to the squire corps on a whim. That one you'll keep forever, as more than anything else it represents what could have been.

That, and wearing it gives you a delightful thrill. She made it for your coming of age, and it still fits you well.

"Look at me, getting all nostalgic," you chuckle, putting the clean clothes in your bag. The lady has gone still on your shoulder, her eyes far away and despondent. You give her a smack on her plump rump to get her attention. "Hey! Where's a good place to have a bath around these parts? Don't tell me your village is so backwards that you don't have a bathhouse..."

"Huh...?" Her voice is dazed and confused as she answers you. "There's the hotsprings that are halfway up the mountain. It's said that they've been blessed by the angels to restore the health of those who bathe there, but I don't believe those rumors are true..."