"Repentance Atwater," she whispered.
The man spun his chair around to face a bank of file cabinets. Cabinets made from some honey-colored wood Repentance didn't recognize and polished to a high gloss. Because of the heat in the room, Repentance expected to see a few drips running down the ice wall behind the cabinets, but it was smooth and dry.
The clerk stood and pulled out the top-most cabinet drawer on the left. "Atwater, Atwater, ah, here you are. Repentance Joyous Forgiveness Abounding Atwater?"
She nodded.
"Hmmm, fancy name. Maybe that's why you can't think too well. Brain gets a little tired carrying around such a heavy name, no doubt." He chuckled, as he pulled several sheets of parchment from the file and shoved them across the desk. "Take them into the first room on your left. The attendant will help you."
Repentance looked back at Sober as she pushed through the door. He was the last familiar thing in the world, and all of a sudden she was terrified to let him go. He wasn't looking at her; he was talking to the clerk. The door swished closed, blocking him from view.
"Come along then, child," someone said.
Repentance turned from the door to face the attendant. She was not an overlord. Her dark hair and eyes pegged her for a slave.
"Take your clothes off," she said. "Put them in the basket there to be burned."
Repentance took her parchment book and char-stick from her pocket and unbuttoned her britches with fat, numb fingers. Her mind felt as sluggish as her fingers. She couldn't stop thinking about the dead boys swinging outside.
"Hurry up, child. I've not got time to dally with you."
"I'm going as fast as I can." She yanked her blouse over her head. The thought that leaving the swamp had been a terrible mistake crawled into her heart and settled down like a holler frog digging into a mud bank for winter. Cold and heavy.
She tossed her blouse in the basket. It landed with the heart-shaped button on top. Fishing the blouse back out, she asked in a trembling voice, "May I save my buttons?"
The lady squinted at the blouse Repentance held. "You have a button blouse? You thought you were going to be buttoned?"
"It's a long and tiresome tale."
The attendant reached into her pocket and pulled out a small pair of scissors.
Repentance snipped off her three gray buttons. She'd keep them to remind her of why she left. Gray buttons to remind her of her gray home and the gray tunes her mother hummed and her baby brothers' gray faces as the overlords carried them off. If she hadn't left, she'd have drowned in the gray.
"Where are you from?" the attendant asked.
"Hot Springs." She handed back the scissors.
"I'm from Crooked Crick, myself," the woman said. "But it's been many years since I've been there." She directed Repentance toward a sunken pool in the middle of the room.
Repentance crossed the floor, this one covered in thick, red carpet, and stepped into the pool. Three steps down. She sat on a shelf, steaming water lapping at her neck. "What brought you up the mountain?" she asked the attendant. The woman seemed friendly enough. Not like Rebuke and Woeful.
The attendant laughed causing two deep dimples to form in her cheeks. "What brings anyone up the mountain? The slave wagon, of course. Ain't no other way to get up here, is there?"
"What did you do to be taken by the slavers?"
"No one to button. Short on boys, our village was. Tilt your head back, now. If I don't get the dirt off, you'll not fetch a high price at market. And then it's the strap for my back." The woman poured water over Repentance's head, and followed that with a healthy dollop of sweet smelling soap, which she worked through her hair. "Hey, now, what's this?" she asked scrubbing at a spot on Repentance's neck just behind her left ear.
"Ow! Leave a little skin if you're willing."
"You've got some smudges of dirt here that don't want to come off."
"Not dirt. That's a birthmark and it's not coming off no matter how hard you scour. Would you please stop?"
The woman bent to look. "Ah, a birthmark," she muttered. "An unfortunate blemish, but with a fortunate placement, anyway. No one will see it. That's alright, then." She set in again, scrubbing Repentance's scalp.
They didn't like birthmarks on the mountain? Repentance didn't want to ask. She was happy the attendant had quit scrubbing her neck raw and didn't want to set her off again. A tremor went through her, though, at the thought of how ignorant she was of the ways of the mountain. Birthmark blemishes and skim wagons and ice cities. Everything was strange and dangerous.
"You're trembling, poor child," the attendant said. "I'll tell you what I tell every new girl what gets off the slave wagon all big-eyed and shaking. Work hard. Obey your master. You'll be fine as a sunny day in Harthill Square."
Repentance remembered the three bodies swaying on the frame not fifty feet outside the building. "And don't run away, right?"
"What's that?"
"Work hard, obey your master, and don't run away."
"Oh well, that goes without mention. Don't never run away. It's the swing frame for the runners."
Suddenly Repentance was filled with an urge to run. Suddenly she realized it was not the fog that she'd been choking on down in the village. It was the fact that she was owned by the overlords. She could never be content under their rule, whether she was in the swampy village or on a sunny farm. She was going to have to run one day.
She'd found a way out of the swamp and one day she'd
