Except for the prince.
If Providence was fair He wouldn't send her to the healing house.
Was he fair? Every fiber of her lowborn soul screamed the answer. Providence favored the overlords. She could expect no help from Him. If she was to escape the prince, she had to find her own way. She dropped her hand into her pocket and worried her buttons around in her fingers as she considered her situation.
It came down to making a choice, really. She could walk docilely along beside the troopers and let them take her down to the fog, down to Jadin, down to the prince. And she'd be no better than the girls in the swamp, breeding for the overlords like a herd of dumb cows.
Or she could run.
The troopers were afraid to bruise her. What could they do if she ran? They wouldn't dare beat her as they had done to Sober.
She dropped the buttons, extracted her hand from her pocket, and picked up the skirt of her robe. She didn't know what kind of distraction she was looking for, but when it came, she'd be ready.
If they caught her—and they probably would—what then?
She saw in her mind's eye the dead boys on ropes and shuddered.
Determined, she clutched her skirts tighter. She'd rather die than entertain an overlord prince.
She tested the ground, dragging her feet, trying to slide. The ice was dry and sticky. Fine for running. She took that as affirmation from Providence that her plan was a good one.
Halfway down the block, the troopers stopped next to a skim carriage, this one very different from the open-bedded wagon that had carried her up the mountain. She climbed in to find cushioned seats covered with buttery-soft, warm material. She sank into the seat by the door. The troopers took places up front—the big one, moving levers, sat looking out the wide, front window, and Earless, holding his dragon stick at the ready, sat by the side window.
The carriage lifted off the icy street and set off with a whisper. Repentance pulled aside the curtain and peered out. As they turned into an alley in back of the slave market and approached an intersection, a boy darted from behind a stairway, screeching.
Both troopers tensed. The driver banked to the right while Earless took aim. A second boy charged out from a gate across the alley, hitting the first boy with ice pellets shot from the muzzle of a toy dragon stick.
Earless cursed, but relaxed. "Get on out of here, you alley dogs," he shouted out his side window. "You came this close to losing your heads this day."
The next street their narrow alley crossed was a wide, busy thoroughfare. The driver stopped the wagon. Repentance blinked at the sunny scene. A man on one corner played a mountain pipe, a bowl in front of him. Men walked by, few stopping to give the man any attention at all. Some women stood, swaying to the music. One, her hair tucked into a fur-lined hood and her body sheathed in a velvet cloak, dug in a handbag, extracted some beads, and dropped them into the bowl.
Skim carts of varying shapes and sizes sped up and down the street, swishing back and forth to pass one another. The movement made Repentance dizzy. She'd never seen so many people at one time.
One wagon seemed to be disabled just in front of her alleyway. It blocked the street partially. Two men lay next to it, studying the underside. A tendril of smoke twisted out from underneath on the street side.
Repentance's driver leaned out his side window. "Move that pile of dragon dung! I'm on the king's business."
One of the men crawled out from under the disabled wagon and approached. "Sorry, sir. We're trying." He leaned around the driver slightly so as to get a view of Repentance. He was a handsome overlord with sky blue eyes and a scar across one eyebrow.
"Mind giving us a hand?" the man asked the troopers. "We'll push our piece of dragon guano back into the alley and be out of your way."
The wind shifted and Repentance smelled something delicious. Juicy broiled meat, perhaps. Or maybe a thick, hot stew. She spotted the source of the smell across the street. An eatery—The Plump Partridge. A sign in the window claimed they served the most succulent squabs and cheepers on the summit—flash-fried to sear in the juices.
She sniffed greedily. Her stomach felt all caved-in.
And that made her mad. They hadn't even fed her but one bowl of thin soup in two days.
The troopers had their attention on the man with the broken wagon. Repentance grabbed the lever on the door. But where would she run too? She couldn't go home even if she did know the way, and she had no friends on the mountain who would take her in.
The big trooper and Earless, both cursing, climbed out and followed the man with the sky blue eyes.
Repentance sat alone in the wagon. If Providence wasn't giving her the perfect chance to run, what was He doing? Maybe He'd changed His mind and was going to be nice to her for once. Maybe He'd show her feet the way to go, if she'd only start out. She whispered the fifth Guidance Precept to herself. Walk and you will see what's around the bend. Stay still and you will never know the places Providence would have taken you.
She opened her side door, sprang from the seat, and took off running.
She ran past the man playing pipes, knocking a smartly-dressed overlord lady on her rear end, as she flew by. She ran past a shopkeeper who was raking a grid-pattern into the ice on his front stoop, past a nanny with a baby stroller, and around the corner into an alley.
Angry shouts followed her, drowning out
