"The one he has hidden in the yak barn," he said.
"What?" She searched his face to see if he was having a joke on her, then bent to ask him quietly, "Why is your father hiding a slave in the yak barn?"
The boy shrugged.
"Shoo, now, Tigen," Cook called from the stove. "You're ruinin' your appetite and Goodwoman Hardscrabble will be glaring icicles at me on account of it. She'll likely complain to the king. You know how she is."
"She's not paying me any mind, today," Tigen replied. "She's too busy cooking for the feast my father is hosting tonight."
The kitchen door opened and the stable boys flooded in, rosy cheeked and hungry for their lunch.
Tigen quickly licked his plate, slid off the bench, and scampered out.
In the afternoon, Repentance told Cook she needed a short break.
"What for do you leave me now?" Cook stepped back from the pot of pork gravy she was stirring.
To look around the yak barn, of course. "I promised the boys that I'd take pudding down to the barn if I had any leftovers." She held up a bowl full of pudding.
"Did you settle the pans of pastries in the freeze?" Cook asked, wiping her sweaty brow.
"I delivered twelve flats of thirty-six puddingpuffs to the freezing barn this morning. And another six flats after lunch."
"I need you back here to peel my boiled potatoes. I'll be ready to fill the pork pies in two hours."
"I'll peel you a chignet of potatoes before you need them, I promise you that."
"Promises so easily made, young Repentance, are usually not so easily kept. You remember that when you're wanting a break from peeling."
Repentance ran down to the yak barn and found Reticent mucking stalls.
"Take a break," she called cheerily. "I brought you some pudding."
He smiled. "Put it in the tack room, would you? I'll wash my hands first."
"Where's Shamed?"
"Out back, ministering to a calf."
Repentance dropped the bowl of pudding on the table in the tack room, and headed out.
Shamed had a young yak cornered in a corral and was putting drops in its big, round eyes.
"I brought you some pudding," Repentance said loudly. In case anyone was listening.
When she got up to him she asked, "What are you doing with the yak?"
"He's got glare burn. Blind, he is. The drops will fix him up."
"Poor fellow." Repentance reached out to pet the baby.
Then she whispered. "Shamed, that trooper that came in the other night? Did he hide someone in the barn?"
"Haven't seen anyone." Shamed whispered back. "Or heard anyone, either, for that matter."
"If you wanted to hide someone in the barn, where would you put him?" Then she said out loud, "Don't be so scared, little fellow. Shamed is taking good care of you."
Shamed looked at her from the corner of his eye. "You want me to give you all my secrets? So you can interrupt me when I take girls there, no doubt. I've always suspected you were the jealous type, Repentance."
"You've found me out. Think on this, my comical friend: I'm working in the kitchen for the next three weeks. I have it in my power to bless your stomach or curse it. Which will it be?"
"I'm having a joke on you. No need to get mean. There's a secret room. Back of the feed bins. In the old days the troopers used it to store a cache of crossbows and arrows. If the dragons attacked the palace, well then—"
"No, no, calm down, little yak," she said out loud. "The big mean boy is almost finished torturing you."
"Who do you think is listening?" Shamed whispered.
"Finish the story."
"The barns would be the last to be attacked. So any trooper escaping the palace could come to the barns and find weapons. Now there's nothing there but straw for the occasional roll between a stable boy and a kitchen maid."
"You and Biased have tried it out?" She pictured the old maid and Shamed and couldn't help but laugh.
He punched her in the arm.
She pushed him then whispered, "Has the trooper who brought the yaks in the middle of the night come back at all?"
"Been here every day. Comes just before dinner. Says he wants to make sure I'm taking good care of his yaks."
"So he might be bringing someone food."
"Might be," Shamed said.
Repentance returned to the kitchen to peel her chignet of potatoes.
Cook stuffed and baked the pork pies, and froze several trays for the Moonlight Festival, but she kept out a couple of trays, fresh and steaming, for dinner. They smelled glorious.
Repentance hated to miss out. But Shamed had said the trooper went to the barn before dinner. So she had no choice in the matter.
"I'm not feeling well," she said, rising from the table before the meal was even served.
"The heat in here?" Cook asked.
"Headache. I think I'll grab a breath of fresh air and then go to bed."
Earlier Shamed had promised to leave the tack room door ajar. He hadn't wanted to, but she'd worn him down. He didn't want any part of any secrets in the barn, and he'd done his best to dissuade her from meddling in matters that didn't concern her.
These things the prince was doing did concern her. She was sure of that. And his schemes meant no good for anyone.
Feeling her way through the dark tack room, she slipped into the barn's central corridor. The yaks knew her scent. She prayed they wouldn't start to bawl and give her away.
Peeking toward the bales of greens at the end of the barn, she saw no one.
She tiptoed along, heading toward the secret room.
Before she got there, the back wall split apart. A door she'd never seen before, its seams blending in with the natural seams of the wall, scraped open.
Repentance dodged into the closest stall. The yak gave a startled little jump. She looked at his face. Bramble.
He sniffed at the large pocket of her work smock.
Oh, please Providence. She hadn't brought him anything.
He snuffled and snorted.
"Tonight, then," A man's voice. "I had the brew delivered to the gatehouse an hour ago, and I've ordered their dinner. The guards should be drunk and distracted by the time you leave. Your yak will be tethered down the lane."
"Finally," a second man said.
The first man laughed. "Ah, anxious for the kill, I see."
"Anxious to be done with the evil deed and to get home to my family."
Bramble snuffled at Repentance's pocket.
"Oh, well then, pardon me, dear Consecration, for making you wait. I could have let you kill him the first night, of course. But then I couldn't have allowed you to escape. We had to wait for the prince's feast, you see. It takes a trickle of time, not to mention expertise and cunning, to execute a flawless assassination."
Repentance sucked in her breath and slammed a hand over her mouth. Her heart beat faster than a thumping hare on race day.
Bramble nosed her pocket, throwing her against the door of the stall. A pitchfork that was leaning on the wall nearby, clattered to the floor, but, praise Providence, the door latch held.
"Who's there?" one of the men said.
Repentance crouched in one corner. Bramble hunched over her, still snuffling about for a treat.
Footsteps approached.
"Just the yak knocking over a pitchfork. What about the prince?"
"He'll be in the company of lords and ladies at his dinner—very much in view of many witnesses who are beyond reproach. He'll go, with a select group, to the king's library at precisely nine o'clock and be shocked and grieved to find his uncle dead."
"I don't care about that. I meant what will he do with me? Will he send troopers to search for me?"
"Of course."
"How do I know the prince will keep his word? How do I know that I won't hang for an assassin on the morrow?"
Bramble, finding nothing to eat, snorted crankily. Repentance held her hands up for him to sniff an
d lick.
"You can't trust him. Why would you think such a thing? Still ... let me sketch this out for you plainly, Consecration. You can do as he asks and maybe live, or you can refuse and I'll kill you now. After I kill you, I'll go down and take care of your button mate and slavelets. So what will it be? The choice is yours." He laughed. "There you see? You do have a choice. And all those silly anti-slave people, those Deliverance Day pieces of dung marching at the Hall of Justice with their "Free the Lowborns' signs, say we never give you people any choices."
"You leave my children alone."
"Then quit complaining and do the deed. Give me five minutes to get back to the party."
Footsteps padded back down the corridor. The secret door scraped shut.
She held perfectly still while Bramble nibbled her ear and dribbled on her hair.
The double doors at the end of the barn slid along the rolling tracks once, then again. Open and shut.
She waited in the dark.
So the prince had decided the king had sufficiently fallen from favor with the people. An assassination! This was how Lord Malficc was going to take care of the king and move her back to the queen's chamber. The truth hit her like a mudslide.
She pushed Bramble away and slid out of his stall. And then paused in indecision. She wasn't sure she wanted to warn the king. If he was so weak that the prince had ordered the assassination, it would be unwise for her to throw her lot in with his. Besides, he'd accused her and cast her aside, not caring if she lived or died.
But, mad as she was, she didn't want him to be killed. She was fond of him. He'd saved her from the prince, once upon a time. She didn't hate him. But even if she did, she'd still have to warn him. If he died, Malficc would gain the throne. And she was willing to risk anything to keep that from happening.
She turned to go warn the king but stopped before reaching the door. He wouldn't listen to her. He'd throw her out.
Maybe she could tell Provocation. The king trusted her. Repentance had never been to her rooms but she knew which hallway they were on.
The door to the secret room behind the feed bins began to scrape open.
No time.
Repentance grabbed the pitchfork, sprinted to the end of the barn, and crouched behind the bales of greens.
Justice is hard to come by in the palaces where rich and powerful men decide the course of the world. We all know that's true. But she is just as hard to find in the back alleys. There is no honor among thieves. Wherever people gather, bringing their sinful hearts along, justice will always be hard-pressed and scrabbling for a hearing.
~Judge Bekkett, Nobody Knows the Trials I've Seen
Chapter 26
An old slave, his pockmarked face looking especially gruesome in the dim light of the barn, shuffled by her hiding place.
Once he was past, Repentance sprang from the shadows and poked him in the back with the pitchfork. "We need to talk," she said.
He stopped and turned around, his arms held out to show he meant not to fight. "Who are you?" he asked warily.
"I want to save you and your button mate and your young ones."
"A pitchfork in the gut is to be my salvation?"
She lowered the fork a trickle. "You can't kill the king. Once the prince takes the throne, he won't leave you for a witness. He'll need someone to blame. You know that. You'll hang for an assassin."
"What are you babbling about? I know nothing of killing the king."
"So the trooper was talking to someone else. Is that it? Another assassin named Consecration is hiding behind that wall?"
The old man narrowed his eyes. "You are entering deep waters, child. Be careful you don't drown."
"You and I are going to the king so we can tell him the whole plot. Because letting the prince ascend to the throne will be worse for me than drowning."
He shook his head. "I'm not going anywhere with you."
She jabbed at him with the pitchfork. "Turn around and start walking. I'm not going to sit here all night and bandy words while you look for a way to disarm me."
He headed for the double doors. She followed, the pitchfork at his back.
"The king will reward you if you tell the truth," she said as they left the barn.
"How would you know that?"
"I know him. He's a just man."
"You are gambling with the lives of my young ones. With my goodwoman's life. Put the pitchfork down and let me go."
"Be a man," she said. "Make your young ones proud. Dare to change the course of history. Maybe your children will see the day when there are no more little slavelets." She spit the hateful word out. Tears stung her eyes as she thought of the bodies of the boys hanging in the square by the slave market. It wasn't right that boys should be born into slavery and killed at the whims of other men.
"You are ill, child. You speak nonsense. Whether I kill the king or not, my young ones are still slaves. What I do tonight won't change the course of the kingdom's history. But it may change the course of my own family's history. If I don't kill the king, the Prince will have me killed and my family as well."
"Think, man!" She jabbed the pitchfork at him.
He jumped forward.
"Think!" she said again. "Why would the prince have a slave for an assassin? He's a rich and powerful man. Why go to the trouble of smuggling you into the palace? Why didn't he have his trooper kill the king?"
He stopped and turned to look at her, the moon throwing light on the pain in his eyes. "I know they will hang me for an assassin. You cannot let a well-loved king be killed without finding and punishing the killer. If Prince Malficc were to take the throne without punishing someone, the people would never forgive him. I still have hope that he will spare my goodwoman and our young."
Tears slipped down Repentance's cheeks. It was so unfair. "You'll go to Providence with the king's blood on your hands. You don't want that."
"Of course, I don't. Better that than having the prince slaughter my family, though."
She lowered the pitchfork a trickle. "I'm sorry to force you. But I can't let you kill the king. You'll see. It will all turn out in the end. We'll tell the king and he'll believe us."
He closed his eyes for a moment, as if he might be praying, then set off again.
"Up this way," Repentance said, poking him toward the track she always took to the washroom door.
He shook his head. "The prince left the door open on the king's porch. At his library."
He shuffled off across the icy courtyard, bathed blue in the light of the moon.
She followed without argument, anxious to reach the shadows that pooled along the palace walls.
When they arrived at the wall, she breathed more freely.
The slave led the way around the back of the palace, ducking under the windows he passed. He slowed, walking close to the wall, and inched his way up to a door from which issued a sliver of yellow light. The king's library, apparently. Repentance and this assassin were going to walk right in and tell him that his nephew was trying to kill him. And if she had to spear the old slave to make him talk ... well, she was prepared to do that. Maybe. She sent a prayer to Providence. She wasn't above taking help from any quarter at that point.
The slave stopped to peer through the crack in the door. Repentance eased up behind him. The king was sitting at his desk, his back to the door.
She prodded the slave with her pitchfork.
He pushed the door open, and stepped into the room.
Repentance plunged in after him.
It happened so quickly—an arm shot out from the side, grabbed her hair, and jerked her off balance. Someone wrenched the pitchfork from her hands.
She cried out as she lurched forward, trying to keep her head from being ripped off her shoulders.
The king stood and turned to face her, his face as white as his hair.
Anger burned in his eyes. And something else. Pity? Disappointment?
She wanted to yell. To warn him. But she
was too late. Obviously the old slave wasn't working alone. Others were here to help him.
"What did I tell you, Uncle?"
Repentance looked from the corner of her eye and saw him standing on the far side of his uncle. Prince Malficc. He should have been at his dinner party.
"Release her," the king said.
The trooper let go of her hair.
Two troopers guarded Consecration.
Repentance stood, rubbing her scalp.
"Why?" the king asked, looking at her.
Why? Why indeed? Why was he giving orders and why were the troopers obeying him?
"Why do you think?" the Prince said. "She's proven herself to be vindictive and hot tempered. She's never respected you. Talking back to you. Calling you names at your own table. She thinks nothing of killing you. You are her enemy."
"Me?" She glared at the prince. "It was your plan to kill him." She looked at the king, then. "Your Highness, I found this man in the yak barn. I overheard him talking with a trooper. They were planning to assassinate you upon order of the prince."
The prince chuckled. "She's a sly one, Uncle. And her tongue moves like hot water over the skating pond—all slippery-smooth. You must at least admire her for that."
The king gave him a hard stare. "Yes, well, I'm glad someone finds the night's activity amusing."
"Your Highness," Repentance said. "You cannot believe that I—"
"You sneak into my library in the darkness with an intruder and a pitchfork, and you expect me to believe you meant me no harm?'
"The pitchfork? No! That wasn't—"
"It doesn't take much discernment to see it," the prince said. "And if I'd not seen her from my window, and gotten here first with the troopers, she'd have succeeded in her wicked scheme. That pitchfork would be buried in your chest, my Lord."
"My scheme? Tell him," she said to the assassin. "Tell the king who ordered you to kill him."
"Yes," the prince said. "Do tell us. You will die either way, but you can save your family if you tell the truth here."
"You're threatening him!" She looked at the king. "The prince is threatening his family."
The Button Girl Page 21