Cook sat at the head of the table, looking like the proud mother of a large brood, pouring mugs of steaming yak's milk flavored with cinnamon.
Tigen showed up, gave Repentance a shy wave, and joined a clutch of boys in one corner.
Repentance rose, thinking to take a wingback chair by the fire. She would sit and read as she had been doing.
But things were changed. She couldn't sit aloof anymore. Now that she was a servant like the rest, they opened their hearts to make room for her.
"Come, Repentance," Favor said. "Have a game of Dragon in the Tower with me."
"I don't know how to play."
He laid his square of suede across the table. "I'll explain it."
They'd been playing for half an hour when Tigen sidled up next to her.
She smiled at him and went back to studying the suede. She had two possible moves. She could eat Favor's crow with a polar bear or with a dragon. She hesitated, trying to see what his next move would be in either scenario.
She put her hand on the polar bear.
Tigen gasped softly.
"I heard that, Mr. Tigen," Favor said. "No helping."
The boy giggled.
Repentance looked at him from the corner of her eye. She moved her hand to the dragon.
Tigen gave a contented sigh.
Favor plucked his crow out of the tree and threw it at the boy. "Go away, you. If I wanted to be a laughingstock, I'd have challenged you to a game. I didn't do that now, did I? I asked Repentance."
Tigen laughed. "But the lady doesn't know how to play yet, Favor. She's brand new."
Repentance sighed. "And that's true. Only I'm not a lady anymore, Tigen. I'm a servant now."
"You're still the prettiest lady I've ever seen," he said.
"Tigen," a boy called from across the room. "Come play Tink-tops with us, then."
Tigen threw one more smile her way, then left.
Generosity looked over the top of her book. "Doesn't matter what age they are," she said. "They are bound to adore you."
Repentance thought of the king. And Sober. And the prince. "They don't adore me. Wanting to use someone and adoring someone are different things." Maybe she was cursed. Maybe her beauty was a curse.
"Well, our Tigen, he adores you."
But Tigen was just a child. She looked at Favor, sitting across from her. He didn't adore her. He had eyes-only for Merit even as he played Dragon in the Tower with Repentance. He loved Merit. It was as clear as white tea broth.
She sighed. She'd rather be loved by one man than wanted by many.
Life for Repentance, the maid, fell into a pattern. A grueling, hopeless pattern. Her shoulders ached from taking down and hanging up the heavy suncloths, her hands were red and cracking from constantly being wet and cold, but it wasn't the hard work that made her despair. Nor was it the anger she felt toward the overlords. It was the thought of Comfort, facing her Buttoning Day with no one to love her and no one to rescue her.
The one thing that made life bearable was that the prince had not returned to the palace. Favor had promised to tell her the minute he arrived back. So Repentance was able to relax on that count as she worked on the fifth floor, and she occupied her time thinking on how she might save Comfort from being sold as a concubine when her time on the slave dock came.
All day every day, in the mornings when Repentance washed and hung suncloths or in the evenings as she read in her room or sat in the kitchen with the others, her sister was never far from her mind.
Only one other person could knock Comfort from top place in her thoughts.
Sober.
She didn't want to ever see him again, and yet he intruded into her thoughts. It had been over a week and he'd not been back. Sick, Calamity said.
Monday morning she was on the fifth floor hanging suncloths, when she glanced out the window and saw Calamity's skim wagon winding its way up the drive. She felt sick to her stomach thinking about seeing Sober's smiling face again. She didn't want to meet with him and have her fears confirmed. She didn't want to learn that he'd been using her to gain information.
He'd told someone her secret. He must have.
Wondering about it was driving her mad. She had to find out the truth. She tacked up her last suncloth, wiped her face on her work smock, and headed for the kitchen. He probably wasn't there anyway. He probably was still sick.
She got to the kitchen too late.
Cook told her that Sober had been there, but he and Calamity had made it in and out quicker than a wolf could eat a piglet.
He was not sick, at least. She would confront him on Friday.
A little before noon on Friday morning, after washing a load of suncloths, she sneaked down to the yak barn to wait. She was taking a huge chance. If the king was watching her ... but the prince was gone and he was the one that liked to spy. And she had to see Sober. She had to know, once and for all, if he'd betrayed her.
She hoped for a better explanation than that. She dared to hope ... he did have a close relationship to the Deliverance Day people. He might help her run away. He might save her from the prince. She couldn't run away, though. The prince was buying her and if she ran, he'd take Comfort in her place. She shuddered at the thought of poor Comfort under the prince's control. Her sweet little sister wouldn't last two weeks under his abuse.
Still, she hoped that Sober might find a way to help her.
While she waited, she talked to the yaks, patting their velvety noses as she made her way down the corridor to the end of the barn where the greens were stored.
She was standing by Goldenrod's stall when the double doors slid open, letting in the brilliant mountain sunlight.
Blinded by the glare, she only saw Sober's silhouette.
He walked toward her, stepping into shadow.
It wasn't Sober. It was Belligerence.
"Something you need?" he asked when he saw her staring at him.
She shook her head. "I'm just ... I was just ... where's Sober?"
"Sick today."
Two Fridays in a row! He was trying to avoid her. He was skipping Fridays so he'd not have to eat lunch at the palace.
It didn't matter. She'd be ready for him on Monday, then. The hateful beast. He was avoiding her because he was ashamed. He wasn't going to get away with it.
"He is not trying to avoid you." Generosity sat in front of the reflecting wall braiding her hair. "I told you on Monday he was asking after you."
Repentance lowered herself into the bathing pool until only her head stuck out. They got to bathe every other night, and she and Generosity were on the same schedule. "Say what you want. I know what I know. Sober Marsh is hiding because he's done wrong. I told no one else that I wasn't servicing the king."
"Well, if he told anyone, he had good reason, Repentance Atwater. You can be sure of that. He's a good man. You ought to be ashamed, thinking so poorly of him. And him being so in love with you. What a waste and a pity that is."
Repentance felt her heart give a little tumble. "He's not in love with me."
"Most any fool would see it." Generosity gave her a stern look. "But maybe you're more fool than most."
Repentance ducked her head under the water to drown out Generosity's scolding. Sober couldn't be in love with her and betray her as he had. She had thought that maybe ... she had hoped he might …. But it was becoming apparent that he had been using her. He was either paying her back for refusing to button with him, or he was involved in some plot against the king.
After bathing, she was too wound up for sleep, and she was in no mood to face the crowd playing games in the kitchen, so she pulled on her robe and headed down the yak barn for a word with Bramble. Coming back she looked up at the starry sky and breathed deeply of the cold mountain air. She wrapped her lavacloth shawl tighter and spun around, gazing at millions of brilliant red and green and blue twinkles, lavishly sown across the sky by the hand of Providence.
And she felt a sudden anger well up.
Providence withheld so much beauty from the lowborns in Hot Springs. They were not worthy to look on the stars or the clear, blue sky, apparently.
And he seemed to delight in knocking her down. Every time she had her hopes raised, he would dash them. She dared try to escape the village and fight back against the overlords and Providence had sent her back to the swamp. She dared to hope that the king would help her save her sister and Providence had allowed the prince to make the king hate her. She dared to hope that Sober might be a true friend, and ... Sober believed in Providence. He was doing Providence's bidding, no doubt, when he told the king's enemies what Repentance had said.
A light bobbing up the lane caught her attention. A yak-drawn coach approached and finally disappeared from view as it followed the curving lane toward the front steps of the palace.
She hurried toward the palace, afraid to be out alone in the dark.
Provocation was coming out of the washroom as Repentance approached. "And where have you been?" the older woman demanded.
"I was catching a breath of fresh air."
"Fresh air, my elbow. You were sneaking around. I don't know what kind of scheme you have going, but I aim to discover it. Why is it that Madame Cawrocc won't buy you back?"
Repentance shrugged. The prince had probably paid her to refuse.
"And now you're taken off the fifth-floor suncloths and put on kitchen duty until after the Moonlight Festival. Why does Providence reward you?"
"I'd forgotten about the Moonlight Festival. When is it?"
"Little that matters to you. You'll not be going."
"Little that matters to me. I didn't even want to go."
"Then each one is happy, and the mountain stands strong," A satisfied look crossed Provocation's normally sour face. "The other servants will sit at the slave tables, but the king gave me specific instructions that you are not to attend. It seems he's afraid he'll kill you if he has to lay eyes on you." She sniffed. "I'm not able to guess what hold you have on him, that he takes such pains to protect you from himself."
Repentance held up her chapped, bleeding hands. "I think you may be confusing the word protect with the word punish."
But the next day she had to admit that she was being protected.
At breakfast Favor told her the prince had returned to the palace the previous night. So the day he got back she was assigned to kitchen duty, instead of being stuck working all alone on the fifth floor. The prince may have been off protecting her from Cawrocc, but Providence, it seemed, was protecting her from the prince.
That day she cut up vegetables and scoured pots and pans.
Cook, bustling and bossing, made it clear that no one was to touch her stove. She would only allow Merit and Repentance, and Generosity who was also on loan to the kitchen, to fill pie shells, pluck and clean birds, and engage in other such activities "what took no skill and little grace," as she liked to say.
To that end she sent Repentance to the yak barn on a mission that took no skill. "Take these left-over taters down to the boys," she said, handing a bowl to Repentance. "They never seem to get enough food, those three."
"Hello to you, Repentance," Shamed said when she entered the barn.
She stood, letting her eyes adjust to the gloom. Finally she saw him, looking over the door of the stall he'd been mucking out. He leaned on his pitchfork.
"Bringing sweets to Bramble, then?" he asked.
Repentance gave him a distracted smile. She liked this boy with his open face and quick smile. "I'm afraid I have nothing for the yaks today. But Cook sent you a bowl full of garlic potatoes."
"Here, then," he said, reaching into his pocket. "You can't very well go see your lover empty-handed. He'd be crushed."
Her heart gave a quick tumble, and she had to keep herself from looking around for Sober. He was talking about Bramble, she knew that. But that word ... lover ... it brought Sober immediately to mind.
Shamed held out a pickle.
Her cheeks flamed. It was Generosity's fault. All that nonsense about Sober loving her.
She traded her bowl of potatoes for Shamed's pickle and smiled at the boy. The fact that he loved Bramble made her like him even more. If Comfort came up to the palace in two years, Shamed would make her a nice button mate.
Of course that dream was now gutted like a catfish on the block.
"Maybe you'd best give him the pickle quick like and be off back to the palace. It's been a busy place of late, this yak barn has. Never know if someone new is going to show up, what with all the hush hush hullabaloo going on."
"What kind of hullabaloo?"
"Coming in at all hours. They were trying to be quiet and all. But any fool knows you can't sneak into a yak barn in the middle of the night. These animals always get to snortin' and snufflin' when they're worried, and waking them in the middle of the night worries them."
"Who was trying to sneak in?"
"Two of them. One a trooper."
"Were they going on a trip?"
"Not going on. Coming from. Brought two yaks with them." He pointed down the corridor indicating two strange yaks with their heads poking over their stall doors.
"I pretended not to be awake," he said, dropping his voice even further. "It's not my place to interrupt people sneaking around in the middle of the night, is the way I see it."
"No, I would think not. I wonder what they were doing, though."
"This morning, when I'm letting the yaks out for their early exercise, the trooper comes in. He tells me I'll find two new yaks in the barn. He and a nobleman had come in late last night, he says. After sunset. So they drove the yaks in not a skim wagon. And would I please exercise and feed them well. Says we want to take extra good care of them as they belong to the nobleman and him being such a close friend of the prince and all."
A trickle of fear sprang up in her chest and quickly grew to the size of a swollen, springtime river. The prince had some scheme underway.
They hide in the dark—these eaters of flesh—and spring when they think no one is looking. But as long as there are some few left that will fight, against all odds, I will not lose my faith in Providence, who alone is the giver of courage in the blackest of nights.
~Kindness Firtree, Meditations on the Precepts
Chapter 25
The second day in the kitchen Repentance peeled four chignets of apples for Cook's fluffy pies and cobblers. It took all day and the work was boring, but she didn't mind. She was happy to be in the warm kitchen knowing she was safe from the prince for a spot and a space.
The third day, Repentance was assigned the filling of Cook's puddingpuffs. She bent over the round, flaky pastries, spooning out pockets in the center and dollopping in the pudding.
Tigen, having a love for puddings and pastries of all kinds, had come to visit each day. His family had their own kitchen and cook on the other side of the palace, but Tigen preferred Cook's tender, flaky pastries to Goodwoman Hardscrabble's dry, clumpy crusts. And so he sat, on Repentance's third day in the kitchen, with a little plate of pudding, talking to her as she worked.
"And if I lived in the days of dragons, I'd not hunt them. I'd train them. That's what," he said. "I'd keep them in the dungeon and let them swim in the lake underneath."
"I wasn't aware that dragons liked to swim. Would they eat your old-uncle's prisoners, do you suppose?" Repentance asked.
"They loved to swim," Tigen said. "In cold water, 'specially. It cooled the burning in their bellies. And, there are nary any prisoners in the dungeons to be et. My old-uncle never locks people up. My friends and I like to play down there. You can get onto the lake under the dungeon floor."
Repentance stopped her work to stare at him. "The lake is frozen under there?" She was sure Sober said it wasn't.
He grinned. "No, we go in the boat."
She was stunned. "Why would you go out on that lake in a boat?"
"To fish. There are sawtooth fish way down deep. We drop in a hundred foot line
with a slug on a hook, and those old sawteeth can't resist."
Repentance could picture the gray lake, enshrouded in fog. It was warm enough not to freeze, true, but only by a degree or two. To fall into that water would mean swift and certain death. "Tigen, that lake is dangerous," she said with a shiver.
The boy shrugged. "So are dragons dangerous. I'd still tame them if there were any to be had."
"A tall order for such a short person," Repentance said. "How would a person go about training a dragon?"
"The same way as the yaks. If you get an animal young enough, it grows up trusting you."
"And how, pray tell, would you get a young dragon?" She thought about her brothers Tribulation and Devastation—taken early. She had hoped to find out where they were, but she hadn't wanted to push the king too early. If she'd have known she would lose favor so fast, she would have made inquiry sooner. "Do you suppose the dragon's mother would give it to you when you asked?"
Tigen frowned. "I may have to kill the mother of the first litter."
She gasped. If her own parents had refused to give their sons, they too would have been killed. And then all their children would have been taken.
"That's not right, Tigen."
He sighed. "It matters not. There are no dragons left. My old-father many times back did away with the last of the lot."
"It might not work, anyway," Repentance said. "Look at your own family. Why is it that you like slaves and your brothers don't? You all had slaves taking care of you from the time you were babies. But you alone trust us, out of all your family."
Tigen shrugged, then licked his plate.
Repentance spooned out more pudding for him. "Maybe you take after your mother. I've heard she's kind to lowborns. At any rate, I'm glad you don't hate slaves the way your father does."
"All but one," Tigen said.
"You hate one slave? Which one?"
"No, my father. He hates all but one slave."
"Which one?" She straightened up, stretched her back, and looked at the boy.
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