Activity began with sunrise in that place, and I was awake to see it.  I'd been tired enough to fall asleep almost immediately the night before, but once the initial exhaustion passed my eyes simply opened up, and then refused to close again.  It was still torch-lit darkness that I stared at, but that made no difference at all; it wasn't torch-lit darkness that I saw.

I was sitting on my mat with my back against the wooden and woven wall of my prison, when one of the newly-awakened Belows moving around the clearing came up to the door to stare at me through it.  He was a big man with dark hair and eyes and an unsmiling face, dressed the way all of them seemed to be in cotton shirt, leather pants, and boots with a dagger at his hip, and I thought he was the one who had been called Raf the night before.  He stared at me in silence for several moments and then went away somewhere, but was back very shortly carrying something.  He dropped the something at his feet until he had the door untied, and then he picked it up and came inside with it.
"We'll be crossing open country today, and those - things you're wearing will be visible a mile away," he said, this time throwing the something to the dirt near my booted feet.  "Get out of them now, so I can get rid of them."

He looked down at me with disapproval strong in his dark eyes, another name added to the list of those who hated my taste in clothes.  Those of Below were beginning to take on a good many of the aspects of the Uppers above, but I doubted that anyone not in my unique position would have seen it that way.  Unique positions were apparently becoming a way of life with me, and I discovered that my previous experience with them was standing me in good stead.  The look of the Below - not to mention my surroundings - made me want to pull the old blanket over my head and simply hide until it all went away, but instead I merely shook my head.

"In the last day or so I've become very attached to these clothes," I said, deliberately ignoring how stained and aromatic they'd become.  "I think I'd rather keep them."
"Uppers, the man growled, suddenly so furious that he stepped forward and pulled me to my feet by a fist in my hair.  "You're always so damned much better than everybody else, always giving orders and always too good to take them!  The first time I tried refusing to obey an order, that prince had his Slugs tie me to a post and use a whip on me, 'to teach me manners,' he said.  Get out of those clothes now, before I decide to teach you the same lesson."

The terror that I'd thought had faded to nothing was suddenly all through me again, freezing me in place and barely letting me breathe.  The pain of the Below's angry hand in my hair was intense, and he was holding me so close to him I could smell his sweat, the thought of actually touching him turning me weak and ill.  Belows weren't entirely human, I'd been told that over and over again, and to touch the body of any of them other than an approved nurse would surely bring disease and rotting.  I held myself just short of actual contact, so frightened I thought I would die, so petrified I could neither move nor speak.  I wanted to tremble and whimper, but those things were totally beyond me.

"You think I'm bluffing?" the man demanded after what seemed like an instant, shaking my head hard by the hair he held.  "You think I wouldn't dare do something to an Uppity?  I've killed enough Slugs to get a real yen for moving up higher, but I can't kill you yet because Gareth still needs you.  And some think doing in an Uppity would make a Sick Day even worse, but it would still be worth it even if it did happen.  Maybe this will make it only a little worse."