"I'm going to the festival with the king?"
"Did I not tell you, Skoch? Ignorant as a block of ice."
Lectures started right after lunch. Skoch showed her to the schoolroom.
There were four other students—Lord Malficc's sons. Three of them were small replicas of their father with pale blue eyes, golden hair, straight noses, and perfect chins. The fourth, the youngest, had hair that was more orange than golden and eyes the color of jade.
"She's sitting in on our lectures?" the biggest one asked, in an offended tone. "Why is she not in school with the slave children the king insists on educating?"
They stood at the front of the class, by the tutor's desk, staring at Repentance.
"Boys," Skoch said, "it's imp-p-polite to stare." Then looking at Repentance, he introduced them. The tallest—a boy eleven or twelve years—was Gaylor. Next came Baeler, then Tigen, and finally, little redheaded Rrow.
Tigen, she remembered was the boy who had been in the hall with the prince.
"Boys," Skoch said, when he was done naming them all, "meet Lady Repentance."
"Lady?" Gaylor said, with disgust. "Are you mad?"
"Her p-p-position requires the title."
Gaylor turned a cold eye on the tutor. "She's my old-uncle's whore."
Skoch blushed. "For deportment today we'll discuss how to address p-p-people.
"And she's a slave, besides." Baeler nudged his older brother. "Do you call a slave, lady?"
"I don't," Gaylor said. "I call slaves, scum." He laughed at his little joke. Baeler and Rrow joined in.
Tigen, second from the smallest, looked at Repentance with serious eyes and said, "I think she's beautiful."
Baeler rolled his eyes. "She's a slave, dragon dung. Slaves can't be beautiful. Not really. Even if you clean up their outsides, they still have dirty innards. Like animals, is all they are."
Repentance wanted to slap him, but she looked at her red, chapped hands and remembered that she was on a new path. She wasn't going to strike out rashly anymore. She had to stay with her plan to save Comfort. The king hadn't sent her to the swingman, but the Prince ... she wasn't about to test him by slapping one of his sons.
"Dirty innards," the littlest one sang.
"Sit!" Skoch said.
"I am not sitting with a slave," Gaylor said.
"The king, has commanded her to attend lessons. Sit or l-l-leave."
Gaylor and Baeler turned toward the door. Tigen scuttled over and sat in the chair next to Repentance. Little Rrow stood looking between Tigen and the other two.
"If you go, I'll have to t-t-tell your father."
"You won't have to t-t-tell," Gaylor said. "I'll t-t-tell him myself. And I can promise you, he's not going to like this." He grabbed Rrow by the collar and yanked him out of the room.
I tried to walk on Providence's road and found the going hard. The rewards were little to none. Or is it that I haven't been on His road, after all, but on a man-made road all along?
~Repentance Atwater, Mountain Journal
Chapter 18
Skoch lectured for two hours—one hour on deportment and one on history—amazingly without the stutter. He seemed to forget to be nervous once he was teaching. Repentance heard very little, though. Gaylor's sneering voice played over and over in her mind. Her cheeks burned, the soup in her stomach turned sour, and her neck muscles ached from holding her head up, high and defiant.
When the lectures ended, she shot out of her chair and made for the door.
Tigen jumped up, too. "Where are you going, my Lady?" His voice held a hopeful note as if she might invite him along.
She glanced down at the boy. He was in seventh year or maybe his eighth. Around the age of her brothers. But he looked so much like his hateful older brothers and his father. She left the room without answering him. It was the kindest thing she could muster.
She went to the washroom, as if to collect her dried suncloths, but slipped from the palace through the back door.
The sun was sliding toward the peaks in the west. Chilly air bit at her nose and made her eyes water, but it felt good. It felt free. She could breathe on the mountain in a way she never breathed before. They didn't really own her. She might have to bow down on the outside, and drop her gaze as if she weren't good enough to look them in the eye, but on the inside she was cursing them, and they were powerless to stop her. She just had to remember to keep that cursing from bursting out of her mouth and getting her in trouble.
She walked past the kitchen courtyard and past the outbuildings—the dairy and a freeze barn. After that were three more barns—one for sows and two for yaks. She stopped when she reached a bluff overlooking the city only because she could go no further.
She stood by the lone pine tree on the cliff, using it as a shield against the wind, and looked out over the land.
Below her, Harthill lay in a half circle, snuggled in against the face of the mountain, in a series of rings. The outer wall and the houses built against it, formed the lowest ring, and each street was a little higher as the city worked its way up to the palace. She gazed out at the wall, hazy in the dying light. She was safe in the palace—for a while, for as long as the king lived—but she was not free.
Out past the wall was the freedom she longed for. No, not past the wall. Sober was past the wall. And Rebuke. And her family. None of them were free. She looked at the ridge of sharp-toothed peaks behind the valley. Maybe on the other side of that range. Lord Carrull had said he smuggled slaves to other states. Montphilo, he'd mentioned. A place where overlords and lowborns were equals.
Repentance sighed and tucked the thought of freedom away. She needed to be content where she was—content with a hateful little boy saying she was no different from a yak—and she needed to make the king content with her. Because in two years, Comfort would be coming up to the slave market.
She headed back. A chill wind snatched snow from the ground and blew it against her back and down her neck. Shivering, she picked up her pace. If she hurried she could have a bath before dinner. She would present herself as the perfect companion for the king.
Two hours later she entered the dining room, shyly.
The king was already there. He looked up from some parchment he was reading and nodded his approval. "Ah, I see you wear your punishment well," he said.
She raised an eyebrow as the manservant seated her.
"The work has done you some good, I think," the king continued. "Your face is peaceful. Dare I hope you are a little more mature tonight than you were last night?"
"King Fawlin, I'm sorry for my outburst last night. And I want to thank you for being lenient with me."
"Well, in the end, by the grace of Providence, it worked out for the best. If it hadn't been for your outburst, I might not have learned of my nephew's scheme for training an army of slaves and attacking Westwold in ten years' time. But I did learn, thank Providence."
He smiled. "But I do hope you learn some wisdom soon, young Repentance. You've been here but two days and you've thoroughly worn me out."
The serving woman scooped a plump cheeper onto her dish.
Repentance cast a sideways glance at the king. "I am surprised to hear you say that I'm wearing you out, your highness. You are looking quite lively to me."
He laughed. "It's true. It's true. I'm finding that I enjoy our encounters."
He set his fork down and laughed some more. "I'm quite sure that many people have cursed me behind my back, but never has anyone called me names to my face. Not even my nephew."
Her face burned. She didn't see anything funny about it.
He looked at her face and let his laughter taper off. "It's just this, Repentance. You don't know how to lie, do you? You always speak what's on your mind. And even if you kept your tongue in line, your face would give you away. You would never make a good statesman, but at least I'll always know where you stand. I must tell you, it's not altogether unpleasant to have someone speak honestly to me." He
took a bite of his cheeper.
"Oh," she said. "So shall I—"
"Don't you dare!" He pointed his fork at her. "Never speak disrespectfully to me again."
After dinner he walked with her to her room. He brought along a bottle of wine. They spent the evening before her fire, reading.
At ten o'clock, he rose and approached her chair. "I must get to my bath and bed." He bent down and kissed her forehead. "Goodnight."
He left before she could snap her slack jaw shut.
She touched the place where he'd kissed her.
She couldn't understand him. But praise Providence, the king seemed bent on being kind to her and she was not going to tempt him to change his mind. No more outbursts.
She was still by the fire, reading and listening to the king splashing in his bath, when her door flew open. The prince glared at her.
She darted a look at the bathing room.
The prince followed her gaze.
"He can't help you," he said quietly. "If I wanted to kill you right now, I could. And there wouldn't be a thing he could do about it."
She stared at him, trying to swallow her terror.
"I warn you. He's not going to live much longer."
"You're going to ... kill him?"
"Not if I can achieve my goals in a less drastic manner. The people love the good king. If I killed him I would have a rebellion on my hands. And why should I bother to kill him when he allows me to run the kingdom as I see fit?"
She couldn't believe he would speak so easily about killing his own uncle.
"But think about this, little concubine. If the king keeps interfering with me, I will be forced to rethink the risks involved in assassinating him. So you might try to encourage him to rest, to go the hot springs, to go back to sleep. I will be your master for many more years than he will be. Maybe you ought to rethink where your loyalty lies."
"I don't know why you tell me this. What influence do I have over the king?"
"Apparently enough influence to make him deny me the right to take more slaves from the villages." He pointed a finger in her face. "I need an army to invade Westwold and I intend to get an army. Whether the king is alive or dead when I gather my troops makes little difference to me."
"But surely you don't need my brothers for your army."
"That's what drives you?" He gave her a measuring look. "I'll do this for you, then. You make the king keep his peace with me and I'll leave your two brothers in the village with their mother."
She nodded.
He flashed a nasty smile. "Oh course, you know, when I take the other boys and your brothers stay, they will be hated by all the rest of the villagers."
He left without waiting for an answer.
The little princes weren't at school the next afternoon.
Or the next.
Or the one after that.
Not even Tigen.
Repentance wasn't sorry they were absent. She didn't want to bump into their father. She didn't even want to see their faces—didn't want to be reminded of the prince. She told the king nothing about Malficc's threat. The last thing she wanted was for the king to push the prince. She had no doubt about which man was stronger. She determined to do her best to keep the king calm and happy so the prince would let him live.
Her life settled quickly into a new routine. Mornings she washed suncloths from the fifth floor, afternoons she was in lectures with Skoch, and evenings she spent with the king, reading, talking, and sipping wine by her fire.
She found that Skoch, as irritating as he was with his blushing and stuttering every time he looked at her, had a passion for history, so his lectures were interesting.
He was teaching ancient history that year, he told her. He'd already covered how Providence created the tribes, the Windsong Ceremony where He cut the Precepts into the face of the cliff at Seaport, and the great eruption at Pernick. Repentance was familiar with those events, but Skoch spent the first three days of her schooling giving abbreviated lessons on them. Then he moved on to the next major world event, the granting of the gifts.
"You mean Providence granted gifts to all the people?" Repentance asked, wondering why she'd never heard of such a thing. No doubt the village tutor had cut facts out of the lessons the same way he cut maps out of the books. Allowing lowborns access to certain pieces of knowledge would prove dangerous to overlords, she guessed.
Skoch nodded. "He gave gifts to all the tribes. To the eastern tribes He gave the ability to weave suncloth. To the western tribes, mooncloth. To the north, snowcloth and to the south, lavacloth."
Repentance frowned. Snowcloth. They could have used some of that in Hot Springs.
She wasn't good with directions, but she closed her eyes and tried to remember the map she'd seen in the library at the healing house. Which tribe had she belonged to? Her village had gotten nothing. Providence had left them out. Forgotten them. He seemed to make a habit of it.
"And there were more gifts, for the cities and villages. Your people received the dragon breath."
"Dragon breath?"
"The fog rising from the hot springs. It keeps you from disease and gives you long lives."
So Providence hadn't forgotten them after all.
"The people from Gatling Woods make boats capable of riding the wildest seas. The wood will not sink. The Harthillians, as you've seen, were given ice that refreezes faster than it can melt. Sutherland was given the ability to harness the sun to move their wagons."
"So Providence gave all these gifts, why?"
"The legends teach us that Providence gave gifts to all so no one city could claim supremacy. All would have something of value to offer the others."
Repentance frowned. His plan hadn't worked. One city ended up with all the gifts and one city did claim supremacy. "Legends?"
He shrugged. "Stories, myths."
"They are not true?"
"Who can say? They are the way some men have chosen to interpret history. Others choose another way. They believe the stories about Providence are merely stories and the gifts belong to whoever has the power to take them."
"Who is right?" Repentance asked, waves of anger and relief fighting for control of her emotions. She knew who was right. Now it made sense—the conflicting precepts and the unanswered prayers. "There is no Providence," she said simply.
"Of course there is," Skoch said. "He lives in the hearts of people. He's not real, like us. But he's as real as love and joy. He's an idea. A noble idea. And it would do the world good if more people believed in him."
"But if he's made up—simply some people's interpretation of history …." She shook her head. "Who decides?"
He must have heard the anger in her voice, because droplets of sweat gathered on his brow, and he started stuttering again. "Who decides w-w-what?"
"What we are to do. I think it's wrong to take slaves. Young Lord Gaylor thinks it's wrong to let slaves live in the house. He thinks they should be in the barn. Who is right?"
"You are r-r-right."
"How do you know?"
"M-m-my heart tells me."
"What makes your heart a better judge than anyone else's?" she blurted out in anger. "I feel ill." She fled and slipped down to the washroom and out the door, heading away from the palace in search of a place to breathe freely. She strode past the dairy, her head ringing with questions about Providence and the power that belonged to people who cared nothing for him or his precepts.
When she reached the yak barns, she heard the animals grunting inside and decided to go in and hide out until her lecture time was over. Skoch would never tell anyone she'd left early, she was sure. He was too busy feeling guilty that his people had enslaved her people. But she didn't want to be discovered and questioned about her absence from class.
She shouldn't have run out. Skoch was on her side. Why was she angry with him?
Because if Providence wasn't real, then she had no one to blame for her troubles, maybe.
The yak ba
rn was dim and cool, the beasts' breath hanging in misty clouds above the occupied stalls. Two things stood out for their absence. No lavacloth carpet and no suncloths. The floor was made of rough planks, but with the heat from the yaks' bodies and breath, the barn was warm enough.
Light spilled into the barn through narrow windows high in the walls—just enough for Repentance to see the shaggy animals in their stalls. She wandered down the center corridor, peering at yaks on either side, afraid to get too close lest the animals gouge her with their sharp horns.
One, a black fellow with friendly round eyes, grunted at her as she passed.
"What are you saying?" she asked, approaching cautiously.
The yak didn't answer.
"You can pet him." The voice came from behind her.
She spun around to face a boy—a slave, maybe a couple of years younger than she—exiting a stall, a pitchfork in his hands. "You scared me," she said, holding a hand to her chest. "I didn't know anyone else was here."
"I'm always here," the boy said. "These yaks and me, we've been together as long as I can remember."
"Are they friendly? I'm afraid of the horns."
The stable boy smiled. "That's Bramble. He'll never gore you. Worst he'll do is chew the pocket from your work smock, looking for something to eat." He rested his pitchfork against the wall and walked over to scratch Bramble's forehead.
Repentance shivered.
The boy laughed. "You're that scared?"
"It's a little chilly in here," she said, defensively.
He nodded. "No lava cloth in here to warm things up."
"It would make it too hot for the yaks?"
He laughed again. "It would make the floor too messy. Yaks don't care much where they do their business."
"Speaking of cleaning stalls, my pitchfork and I are itching to get done before dinner." Reaching into his pocket, he pulled out a small bunch of wilted broccoli, and offered it to Repentance. "Feed him this, and old Bramble will be your friend for life."
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