The wagon wound its way up the mountain. Several times it rounded curves and revealed something ahead, glinting in the sun. The overlord city of ice.
The sun was still high when they drew close enough to see the city sticking out of the fold between two mountain peaks.
"Behold your new home," the slaver said over his shoulder. "You will work there in Harthill until you drop and die."
The city shimmered, all silver and shine. Repentance shielded her eyes, as she stared at the peaks and spires poking the sky. They drew closer and saw houses with thick walls of white, blue, and purple ice and with windows made from thin, clear slices.
And this was the city of the overlords—they lived in such beauty but had hearts full of mud and muck. She shook her head, amazed.
Around the city ran an ice wall some ten feet high and several feet thick. The wagon pulled to, at a wooden gate. "Slaves, failed at buttoning," the driver called up to the guard on watch.
Once inside they followed a narrow road clotted with carts and wagons and overlords walking. The road was cut between houses of ice. On the outskirts, small, two-storied houses overlooked the lane. As they progressed the dwellings grew taller and finer, with towers and pinnacles and with intricately carved walls.
Half an hour after entering the city, they came into a deserted square at the center of which stood a frozen fountain—a wild spray of blue and green and purple ice. Off to one side of this fanciful sculpture was a wooden frame upon which three bodies hung. The bodies were slave men. No ... they were boys. Younger than Sober. The eyes had been burned out and the fingers and toes cut off. The bodies, stiff and gray, hung naked but for thin loincloths.
Repentance stared without understanding what she was looking at. They looked like real people, but they couldn't be. What could boys have done to make the overlords kill them in such a gruesome fashion?
No, they couldn't be real.
She looked from the ice fountain to the boys and back again. What was wrong with the overlords that they would want bodies, fake or not, hanging in their sparkling city?
The driver halted the wagon right beside the wooden frame.
A drip sounded.
One drip.
Repentance looked around. There was nothing wet or drippy in the frozen city.
Another drip.
Her gaze darted toward the sound. The next drip splashed into a reddish-brown spot, which stained the ice under the foot of the boy nearest to her.
The horror dawned. The boys were real. And they were not long dead for the blood in one had not yet frozen.
The little bit of drink Repentance had been thanking Providence for all morning, roiled in her stomach, threatening to come up.
The slaver shoved the first corpse with his dragon stick. It swung over and bumped into the second, which, in turn, bumped into the last. "You see these things that used to be slaves?"
Repentance bent her head down refusing to look.
"Get an eyeful, girl." The slaver pointed his dragon stick at her.
She lifted her head but lowered her eyes, trying to veil the evil sight. The ropes creaked as the boys swayed.
"This is what becomes of any who think they can cheat us by running away," the slaver said. "We catch the runners and we hurt them and we hand them over to the swingman. After that we go down and take their family into service." He paused, maybe wanting to let his words sink in.
Repentance couldn't really hear him. Her ears were filled with the dirge that the ropes were playing. What she wouldn't give for the sound of the swamp—the whisper of insect wings, frogs plunking into water, her mother's constant humming—she would welcome any of those noises. Anything to drown out the creaky, screaky sound of dead boys on ropes.
Washed and dressed, polished and pressed,
the mistress has spit on me and offered me up for sale.
Good or bad, happy or sad,
which master will bid on me, with bead-strings in his pail?
~Repentance Atwater, Slave Cart Compositions
Chapter 6
Horrified, sick from hunger, and achy from the long ride, Repentance dropped over the side of the wagon. Sober landed beside her, massaging the small of his back. The overlord slaver led the way across the courtyard toward a building on the north side.
Desperate to escape the gruesome square with its dead boys, Repentance stumbled after the man, moving as fast as her trembling legs would take her.
They entered the building through a wooden door set on metal hinges, which were frozen into an ice doorjamb. Repentance was surprised to feel a wave of heat as she passed through the door. She stopped for a moment to let her eyes make the adjustment from the blinding-white of the courtyard to the gloomy interior of the building.
Sober plowed into her from behind, knocking her off her feet.
Her knees and hands sank into a plush carpet from which radiated warmth.
"Enough nonsense!" the slaver said, as he grabbed a handful of hair and yanked her up.
She clenched her teeth to keep from screaming.
"Two from Hot Springs for processing," their keeper told a man sitting behind a desk just inside the door.
"Name?" The man looked up at Repentance. Then he glanced over at Sober. "A boy and a girl? What's their crime?"
"Failed buttoning," the slaver answered.
"How can you fail a buttoning when you have one of each available?"
The slaver laughed. "She refused him."
The desk clerk looked at Repentance again, his eyes large behind round glasses.
