Jek radiated vitality and health. The deckhand was long-boned, well muscled, and completely unselfconscious about her body. She did not bind her breasts at all, nor worry that her sailor’s trousers reached no farther than her knee. Her long blonde braid was tattering to straw from the wind and saltwater, but she cared not at all. She is, Althea thought uneasily, what I pretend to be: a woman who does not let her sex deter her from living as she pleases. It wasn’t fair. Jek had grown up in the Six Duchies, and claimed this equality as her birthright. Consequently, men usually ceded it to her.
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