A sob escaped her. "Have you gotten the ... bodies from the lake, yet?"
He nodded. "My men went down several hours ago."
"I'd like his button scarf, please. Did you recover it?"
The king smiled and patted her knee. "You shall have that button scarf, Repentance. Come with me."
She hesitated. She didn't want to see Sober's body again. She'd been trying to wipe the memory of his frozen corpse and misshapen face from her mind. She wanted to remember him the way he looked at Lord Carrull's house.
"Come, Repentance," the king said. "You'll catch cold sitting out here. We'll have a cup of hot wine and get the scarf."
She didn't feel like drinking hot wine with anyone. "I'm afraid I won't be very good company."
"I won't make you talk to me," he answered, holding out his hand to her. "But ... I do know someone who would like to talk to you. He's injured and I know a visit from you would cheer his heart and speed his recovery."
Tigen. She really wanted to see him. But—"I don't want to see his brothers."
"I'll make sure no one bothers you."
Together they walked slowly back into the palace.
Once inside the king asked, "So will it be the patient first, or the hot wine?"
"I want to see Tigen," she said.
He led her to a room on the first floor. "When you are done, come find me in my small library, and we'll see to that wine."
She opened the door and slid in quietly in case the boy was asleep.
The chamber was softly lit with mooncloth.
She looked at the bed and gasped. Whoever was in the bed was much bigger than Tigen.
Hearing the gasp, he turned his head.
"Sober!"
Gladness comes after the battle,
and the old wounds and the myriad scars
make the victory all the sweeter.
~Lawful Atwood XV, in the year of emancipation
Chapter 39
He smiled.
She stared, dumbstruck.
His head was bound in white bandaging, stained red at the ear, and his face was swollen and bruised.
He was still the handsomest man she'd ever seen.
"But I saw you. You were frozen. I saw the floor gaping open." Tears sprang to her eyes as she stepped to the bed and picked up one of his hands, needing to touch him to see if he was real.
"I was pretty weak-minded. But after I told you to open the king's door, it occurred to me that I could take my trousers off, dip the ends of the legs in the lake and freeze them, like a sling, across one corner of my cell."
She swiped at the tears on her cheeks. He was so smart. "It makes one wonder what amazing things you might come up with when you aren't half-dead."
"I had to move quickly. The floor was sliding by the time I got the pants frozen in place. I barely made it, and I managed to burn my skin pretty thoroughly in the process."
She gently touched his bandaged arms with her own blistered fingers. "Who was in the water, then? I saw someone," she shivered, "—a dead someone—with your button scarf."
"No, no, no. Don't cry." He pulled her fingers to his mouth and kissed them. "That wasn't me. That was the Prince's assassin—Consecration. I had climbed into the sling seat I'd made with the pants, just in time. The floor slid all the way into the wall, and all that was under me was lake. My back was burning, and I was trying to wrap my lava-cloth blanket around me so I could lean against the wall for a little stability. I was wobbling all over in the sling, trying not to fall, and my scarf slipped off."
Repentance sat gingerly on the edge of the bed. "I can't believe you were saved by such a flimsy sling. But why didn't you call to me? I looked in the window."
"I must have lost consciousness. I was dizzy. My leg wasn't splinted, and I was in a lot of pain. I remember getting the lava cloth wrapped around me and my scarf falling, but I remember nothing from that point until I woke up to dead silence a few hours ago." He shuddered. "If I never feel that way again, I'll be happy. I was still hanging in my cell, so I assumed you had not been successful in freeing the king. I thought you must be dead. When the king's troopers finally came and told me—" He broke off, his words catching in his throat.
She leaned against his chest and he kissed the top of her head with its short, short hair. "When the King's men went down this morning to retrieve our bodies, they found that the prince was done with his, but I was still using mine. They found the assassin's body, too. I'm sorry for the old guy. He was kindly holding onto my button scarf for me.
"Oh, the button scarf." He rolled to one side and came back with the scarf in his hand. "Repentance Atwater, will you finally take my button scarf?"
Two weeks later, Repentance sat in her silk buttoning blouse, facing the crowd in the ballroom. On the mountain they didn't have one Button Day a year—people buttoned whenever they wanted to. She smiled. Sober had barely been willing to wait long enough for them to gather their families.
His mother was in the front again, this time smiling.
The servants were a few rows back—Cook, crying; Generosity, beaming; Shamed ... sitting awfully close to Comfort!
Lord Carrull sat with his arm around Mistress Merricc—both looking quite pleased.
Her mother and father were up front with the little boys. Mother was humming
