The overlords wrapped themselves in blankets. Repentance shivered in her thin swamp clothes. She glanced back at Sober, her teeth chattering. He sat on the floor of the wagon with his arms wrapped across his chest.
After a time, the sun slid behind jagged mountains on the left, painting the snowy ridge on the right with a peach-colored brush as the sky faded from blue to pink to pearly gray. Repentance, in spite of being numb from cold, stared at nature's canvas in bliss. The driver stopped the skim wagon in a field beside a small, stone cabin. "Perfect timing, as always," he said, glancing at the nub of sun still visible between two peaks.
"Chain them," the slaver said over his shoulder as he headed for the cabin, apparently unimpressed by the driver's punctuality.
"There's no chance they'll make it down the mountain if they run," the driver said. "Not in this cold."
The slaver turned around, his hand on the doorknob. "But they may be foolish enough to try, and frozen corpses bring no beads on the slave market, do they?"
The steel bands of the shackle burned into Repentance's ankle when the driver clamped it on. She cried out.
"Use the blanket," the man growled. He threw a scrawny piece of material over her. "Better drink something, too." He tossed a canteen so that it fell between Repentance and Sober.
Sober grabbed it up and sucked down a long draft.
Repentance waited.
Finally he finished drinking and she held out her hand. He shook his head and tucked the canteen under his leg.
She gaped at him. What a warthog! But he was too big to fight and it would be pointless to beg. Fine. If he wouldn't share the drink, she wouldn't share the blanket.
As she had done the night before, Repentance again turned her back on Sober Marsh.
She scrunched under the blanket, cocooning her body against the cold. The strange material was thin but heat radiated from it, like steam rising from the hot springs, and within a minute she was all toasty—even her shackled ankle.
She turned over to lie on her back and saw, for the first time in her life, stars sprinkled across the darkening sky. She gasped. Let Sober keep the canteen if it made him feel better to punish her. She didn't need to drink. She was drunk on the beauty of the night sky, the nectar of Providence, Himself.
On his side of the wagon, Sober shivered.
He blew on his fingers.
He rolled over.
He scrunched up in a ball.
His teeth chattered.
Repentance sighed. She couldn't let him freeze. "Lie over here."
He hesitated.
"I'll share the blanket with you."
He didn't move.
"Your choice," she said. "Either share or go without. You're not getting it from me to keep for yourself."
He stared at her, maybe trying to decide if he should take the blanket by force.
"You can stop blaming me," she said. "You had five chances to button and you failed every one. I shouldn't have to take all the blame simply because I was the last to turn you down."
He didn't answer. He lay on his side of the cart, his teeth chattering like woodpeckers.
"You hate me so much? Didn't you hear the overlords? They said this cold doesn't just feel bad. It can kill you. You'd rather die than share the blanket?"
He scooted over next to her.
She covered him with one side of the blanket.
After a minute his shivering stopped. A moment later the canteen landed beside her face.
"Did it ever occur to you that I wasn't trying to get buttoned the first four years?" Sober asked. "Did you stop to think that I might have been waiting for someone?"
She took a swig from the canteen. Milky, frosty liquid ran down her parched throat. "Oh, that's rich," she whispered.
"That's rich? That's all you have to say?" He turned his back to her and pulled the blanket up over his shoulder.
Repentance took another drink. What was Sober carrying on about? Her heart gave a little trip and stumbled against her ribs. He'd waited for her?
She glanced over at his back, solid and unmoving. No. He was waiting for someone else. He only settled for Repentance when his true love turned him down. Still, the fact that he'd waited for someone was kind of romantic.
She drank again. And again. And then she lay down to let the stars lull her to sleep and when she slept she dreamed a gray flannel scarf swirled around her like a thick fog. It wrapped around her nose and mouth, smothering her.
The next day Repentance and Sober rode side by side, the blanket wrapped around their shoulders. The slavers gave them a little to drink. Nothing to eat.
The scenery was not as varied as the day before. Snow. Lots of it.
The wagon swerved and jostled Repentance against Sober. Without looking, he gave her a shove with his shoulder.
"Sorry," Repentance said. "At least the skim wagon is not bumpy like the cart was. How do they make this thing go with no horses, though?"
"Sunlight," Sober answered.
"How can sunlight make a wagon move?"
"I don't know how. All I know is that I saw four men pushing this wagon from a dark barn and the minute it got out into the sunlight, it began to hover, like a dragonfly over water. Then, last night when the sun went down, the wagon set itself down on the ground."
"You saw it being pushed out from the barn? But you weren't looking. You were talking to Rebuke."
"I'm not blind, Repentance, or stupid, much as that may surprise you."
"I never said you were stupid."
He threw her a scathing look.
She quit
