"She doesn't look to be stupid." A man's voice sounded in front of her.
She looked up.
Lord Malficc stood in the hallway by the schoolroom door. He ran his gaze down and back up her body.
She shuddered. "I'm sorry?"
"I said you don't look like you are stupid." He stepped closer to her. "But my uncle is in an uproar over your schooling. I've not seen him so energetic in a long time. You must be good medicine, Repentance Atwater. You've taken twenty years off that old man's life. But I warned you about this."
Her skin turned clammy. "I'm not sure what you mean."
"Oh, I think you know exactly what I mean." He smiled. "You complained to my uncle about my sons."
"I didn't complain. It was Provocation. She found out that you'd taken the boys out of school. I asked her not to tell."
He gave her a long look. "You're using up my patience, Lady Atwater." He turned and walked off.
Skoch looked up and saw her in the doorway. "Ah, good. We're all here, then."
And they were all there. All four of the young princes.
The king, once alerted by Provocation to the situation, had apparently demanded the boys return.
She wished he hadn't. She hated the sight of their faces. And ... the prince was that much closer to deciding that he needed to kill the king.
Skoch launched into the day's lesson. "Now the war between Harthill and Lavalley took place in the twelfth year of King Fawlin the Dragon Slayer. There were dragons then. Lavalley had domesticated the beasts and used them to hold off our attack."
"Where have all the dragons gone?" Rrow asked.
"They're extinct," Skoch said, "That means they all died."
Rrow looked stricken.
"That's a good thing," Skoch added quickly. "When they died so did the last threat to Harthill. Dragons' fiery breath was the only thing that could melt Harthill's towers."
Repentance, cold dread knotted in her stomach, used her char-stick to draw a picture of a scaly dragon in one corner of her parchment. It blew flames at an ice tower. Melt Harthill, melt.
Tigen leaned over to look at her dragon and smiled.
She glared at the little boy who was a perfect image of his father.
He picked up his own char-stick and sketched on his parchment, using swift, sure strokes.
She pretended not to notice.
"Why didn't Lavalley send the dragons against Harthill to destroy it?" Gaylor asked.
"They'd never gone on the offensive," Skoch said. "It's assumed they didn't know how. They were a peaceful people, trying to defend themselves."
Gaylor snorted. "A stupid people, you mean. Look at them now! Subjects of Harthill. As soon as the dragons were slain they had no way of defending their city."
"Weak," Baeler added.
Tigen nudged Repentance and shoved his parchment toward her. He'd drawn a boy dragon—obvious from his square jaw, muscular arms, and large size—with one wing wrapped protectively around a girl dragon. The girl dragon had long eyelashes and puckered lips and long dark hair. The boy dragon had white hair. Underneath, they were named. Tigen and Repentance.
Angry, Repentance snatched the parchment from him. He was a small boy, but he might as well learn early that she wanted nothing to do with filthy overlords. Bending over the parchment, she colored over her dragon, making it all part of a bigger dragon—a giant girl dragon, crouching above the little Tigen dragon, with an angry tilt to her eyes and flames spewing from her mouth.
Repentance smirked and shoved the parchment back across the desk to Tigen.
And for the first time since she'd met him, he lost his smile.
"Yes," Skoch was saying, apparently in answer to something Gaylor had said. "The conquest of Lavalley did give him the power he needed to take the lowborns into slavery. With the Lavalley men in the front lines, his troops far outnumbered the lowborns."
Repentance jerked her attention back to the tutor. So it seemed the overlords made a habit of putting other people in their front lines. They were talking about Fawlin the Dragon Slayer—the monster who had married a lowborn and then beheaded her when she was unfaithful, but nothing had changed over the past 200 years.
"And we've had them as slaves ever since," Gaylor said, sneering at Repentance. "Dark and dirty. And all they're good for is scrubbing our waste stools."
She bit her lip. Fawlin the Dragon Slayer sired a son with his lowborn button mate before he'd beheaded her. Gaylor had lowborn blood in his veins. But she wouldn't remind him of that. She had enough trouble with the prince without antagonizing his son.
She glanced at the boy, wondering how she would survive day after day in school with him.
Gaylor jumped up, grabbed a handful of her hair, and yanked her head back.
Repentance cried out.
"Don't you ever look at me." Gaylor said.
Tigen grabbed his brother's hands, trying to pry them from Repentance's hair. "Leave her be, Gaylor," he pleaded.
Gaylor backhanded Tigen, sending him flying. "Sit down, baby, and suck your thumb."
Giving Repentance's hair a jerk, he said, "You were giving me a dirty look. I want recompense."
Repentance moved her head, trying to follow Gaylor's hand as he yanked her hair.
"D-d-dis-m-m-missed," the tutor stammered.
Gaylor gave her head a final jerk, and released her. "My father will hear about this!"
Gaylor gave Skoch a dirty look, then sauntered out the door with Baeler and Rrow tagging along behind.
We are made for relationship and when we don't find it in the familiar places and faces, we must needs find it in the unfamiliar. Desperation drives us to humbly accept friendship from one we've all along despised.
~Meticulous Mudslide, An Old Man Remembers
Chapter 20
Tigen stood slowly. Blood dripped from his lip.
Repentance felt a stab of guilt. She shouldn't have been mean to him. He only wanted to defend her.
"My lady," Skoch said, "are you injured?"
She wanted to scream at him. Of course she was injured. The brat Gaylor treated her worse than he would treat an animal. Why would Skoch need to ask if that caused injury? But the last thing she needed was for the prince to think she was complaining about his sons. "I'm fine," she said. "It was my fault. I shouldn't have looked at him."
Repentance watched Tigen collect his char-stick and parchment from the table, hoping he'd smile at her again.
He looked up and saw her. "Why don't you want to be my friend?"
What a silly question. How could she have an overlord boy for a friend? Especially one with a father and brothers who would kill her as soon as look at her.
But he was just a little boy. He couldn't help who his father was. She reached out to wipe the blood from his chin.
He flinched and backed away.
"I'm sorry, Tigen. I was wrong. You remind me of my own brothers. They are kind and brave, just like you."
He gave her a shy smile and left.
The boys showed up to school the next day, Gaylor and Baeler acting as obnoxious as ever. No more, no less. Nothing came of Gaylor's demand for recompense. Apparently his father wasn't going to battle the king just then on whether or not the young princes were to be educated alongside a slave. Repentance took special care not to look at Gaylor or respond in any way to his constant threats and harassments.
The schoolroom was not her favorite place, though. Never knowing what would set Gaylor off put a huge strain on her, and by the end of the week, she was exhausted.
She took to slipping down, often, to the yak barn, to unburden her heart to the ever-patient Bramble. He never failed to calm her nerves.
On Friday morning, when she finished hanging her suncloths a few minutes early, she smiled up into the cloudless sky and made her way to visit the yaks. When she entered the barn, she saw Shamed at the far end, divvying up food. She nodded at him and slipped into Bramble's stall. "Here you go, big boy," she sai
d, feeding him some bits of birch syrup pie she'd saved from breakfast.
He slurped the food up with a snuffle and a grunt.
"He looks for you every day," Shamed said, leaning over the stall door. "You've spoiled him with all the treats."
Repentance rubbed the yak's nose. "I have to bring Bramble treats. What good is it to have a friend in the palace, if she won't bring you tidbits every now and again?"
Shamed went back to work, and Repentance left Bramble and made her way down the corridor, petting noses and passing out treats. "Here you go, Thistle . . .. Now, don't be so impatient, Rose, I've not forgotten you . . .. Ah, Holly and Hawthorne, calm down you two, I'm coming."
She was at Barberry's stall, when the double doors at the end of the barn scraped open on their icy tracks.
Framed in the open doorway was Sober.
She could only see his silhouette because he was backlit by the sun and the glaring snow outside. Ducking into Barberry's stall, she hoped Sober hadn't noticed her. It would take his eyes a moment to adjust to the dim interior of the barn.
"Ho, Shamed," Sober called.
"Right here, no need to yell."
"I didn't see you hiding behind the bales. I've brought two wagons of greens this week. Do you want it all at this end?"
It was Friday! She'd forgotten.
Barberry ate his sweets and snuffled around Repentance's pocket looking for more.
She pushed against his wide nose. "I don't have any more, boy," she whispered.
He didn't believe her. He pushed against her with his wide forehead.
She stepped back to catch her balance.
He pushed her again.
"This end'll do fine," Shamed said. "I've been pulling the old greens forward to make room for the new."
Barberry gave a snort. He wanted more treats and he wanted them now. He pushed Repentance again.
She fell against the door, which unlatched and fell open. Stumbling into the corridor, she tried to catch her feet up to the rest of her, all to no avail. She landed in a heap in the center of the barn floor.
"Repentance?"
Sober stood over her, concern in his dark eyes. He reached down and helped her up. "Are you hurt?"
She pulled away from him, brushing off her work smock, avoiding his eyes. "I'm fine."
He bent and picked something up, then held out his hand to her.
Three gray buttons sat in his wide, calloused palm. They must have fallen from her pocket.
"Why do you keep these?" he asked.
She pocketed the buttons and touched his scarf. "Why do you keep that?"
"To remind me of home, for one thing."
"Same with me." She turned to leave.
"Repentance?"
She stopped.
"I shouldn't have spoken as I did the other day. I was surprised, is all. I thought you were a maid, and I was upset to find out you were a …. " His voice trailed off.
She faced him. "A whore."
He cringed. "Can you not forgive?"
"What good would it do? I'm still a whore in the end."
He looked away from her.
Her cheeks burned with shame. "You can't stand to even look at me."
She turned and left.
The king would be gone for a week or so. Business in the south, he said, and he didn't want to take Repentance out of school. The Moonlight Festival was fast approaching, and she needed all the help Skoch could give her.
He'd been feeling poorly, and Repentance suspected he might be going to the healing pool at Hot Springs. He wouldn't admit to it—he was always so worried about appearing weak.
Repentance followed him to the front steps to bid him goodbye. "Is it safe for you to go?" she asked.
He gave her a strange look. "Why the concern?"
"I'm afraid for you. What if the prince ... do you think the prince might try to take the throne from you?"
He grimaced. "He'd have done that long ago if he could have. He cannot. The people would storm the palace and kill him. My subjects love me, because I have always treated them fairly. The prince, however, is not well loved. He's in line for the throne, true, but if I die without handing the throne to him—without showing my confidence in him—it will not go well for my devoted nephew. If he wants to assassinate me, and I'm sure he does, he'll have to woo my troopers away from me and make my subjects hate me, first. And that will be a battle fought on uneven ground with me in the upper position."
Relief coursed through her. "Why do you travel with all the troopers, then?"
"Appearances." He sighed. "I must keep up appearances. Traveling with a full skein of troopers gives me power in the eyes of the people. It also keeps the troopers close to me. It keeps them loyal."
Relieved, she watched his skim coach wind down the drive. The prince thought he was smart, but the king was smarter. She offered a prayer for the king's safety, picked up her basket, and headed upstairs to her suncloths.
She was in one of the guest chambers, taking down cloth, when someone came in.
Twisting on the ladder, she looked over her shoulder at the doorway.
Lord Malficc.
She jerked and almost fell.
"Careful, my Lady," he said. "We can't have you breaking your neck just when I have such a wonderful proposal for you."
Repentance glanced nervously at the bed below her. The entire fifth floor was reserved for guests and usually deserted. And here was Lord Malficc making a proposal.
"I've been invited to a feast. An early Moonlight Festival party. I'd like you to go as my guest."
"I'm sorry," she said. "My new wardrobe is not complete yet. I have nothing appropriate for feasts."
He crossed the room and lay down on the bed, folding his hands behind his head and gazing at her. "I will talk to the seamstress myself. I'll speed her up a trickle. What do you think of that?"
She had to tread carefully. He was a powerful man and a dangerous one. "I'll ask the king when he returns. When is the feast?"
"It is when I say it is. I'm not sure of the exact date, yet. It will most likely be before the king returns from his trip. I have it on good authority that he'll be delayed at the healing house."
She shot him a look.
"Oh yes, I know exactly where he is at all times. And in his absence I am in charge of the kingdom and I give you permission, Repentance, to go to a feast with me."
"If you want him to stop interfering with you ... maybe you should stop antagonizing him. How do you think he'll react when he finds out you've taken me to a feast?"
"That's no longer a concern."
She gasped. The king was wrong. The prince was going to try to kill him. Maybe one of the girls at the healing house would sneak in and kill the king. Maybe Tawnic would do it. How hard would it be to smother him in the night? There were no troopers inside the healing house.
"He's off the mountain," the prince said. "He'll never know what we do."
"Someone will tell him." Whatever the prince was playing at, she wanted no part of it. But she couldn't very well deny him on the deserted fifth floor. It wasn't safe.
She dropped the suncloth into a basket on the floor, stepped down from the ladder, and began to drag both basket and ladder toward the door.
"Where are you going?" the prince asked.
She pointed toward the hallway. "Only 102 rooms to go."
"You'll have a little break soon. I'll have a dress made up for you. When it's done, you and I will have a night out."
Not if she could help it. She would get a message to the king somehow. She turned to leave the room.
"Oh, and Repentance?"
She looked back at him.
"I don't think you should mention our little outing to Provocation, or anyone. Just in case you were thinking that you might. Remember that my uncle is old and weak. He won't be here forever to protect you."
She left her ladder in the hall and fled downstairs with her basket of suncloths. Down to the relative sa
fety of the kitchen washroom.
She spent the next few days avoiding the prince and worrying about how she was to get out of betraying the king without calling the prince's wrath down on her head. It wasn't safe to send a message. She didn't know which servants were trustworthy. Besides, the prince might intercept a written message.
Eating alone in the royal dining room left her exposed to the prince, so she took to eating dinner, as well as lunch, with the housekeeper and tutor in the kitchen. She changed her morning routine, too, and stopped going to the fifth floor. She had no intention of being caught up there all alone. In the mornings she washed the same suncloths over and over. In between times, when she was supposed to be hanging the clean cloths on the fifth floor and taking dirty ones down, she hid out in the yak barns. She had her whole life to get the washing done. When the king came back and she told him what the prince had proposed, he wouldn't blame her for not doing the work he'd assigned. She continued to attend lectures in the afternoons. Her absence there would have been noticed. But she made sure she was never alone. Always she walked with Skoch to and from the classroom.
On Monday, the king had been gone a week. Repentance prayed he'd return soon.
After visiting Bramble, she made her way to the lake, which lay at the back side of the palace, opposite from the barns. It was full of cold, cold water, but it never quite froze because half of it lay in a cavern beneath the palace dungeons—fed by a spring that constantly flowed from deep inside the mountain.
The water, with fog billowing off its surface, was gray and cruel and cold, and that morning it fit her mood. She climbed the steps on the dock and sat down on the bench there. She was thinking about the swamp and Comfort and her little brothers when a man emerged from the fog a few feet from her.
Sober.
He jerked when he saw her and stopped at the bottom of the steps. "I'm surprised to see you here." He looked genuinely startled but quickly recovered his wits. "Do you mind company, or are you trying to be alone?"
She stood. "I was just leaving."
"You have so many friends on the mountain that you can afford to bear a grudge?" He looked up at her, not moving to let her by.
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