Tawnic led her through the archway, grabbed a torch from the wall, and proceeded down a narrow stone stairway. They were going underground. The healing house was not the wooden building it looked like from the outside. That building stood in front of a huge cavern in a cliff. In the cavern, walls had been erected to make separate rooms and a second story had been built.
Repentance, even in her light swamp clothes, began to sweat as they descended. She understood why when Tawnic threw open a door at the bottom of the stairs.
"The hot spring," Tawnic said in a bored voice. "This water is for healing." A large pool—easily four times the size of the swimming hole in the swamp, bubbled in the floor of the cave.
"Is it boiling?"
Tawnic rolled her eyes. "How would people swim in boiling water? It's bubbling out of the underground spring."
Along one wall of the cavern were several doors. Tawnic waved toward them. "Those are the guest rooms."
There were three more large pools, two were warm-water springs and the third was fed from a cold mountain stream, which came down through the cliff.
Behind the last pool were more doors.
Tawnic threw one open to reveal a small, dark, damp, stinking-of-mold-and-sweat room with furnishings consisting of mats on the floor. Plus nothing. Three mats, each one with a small pile of night clothing folded up where a person's pillow normally lay.
"The slave quarters," Tawnic said, a nasty smile marring her beautiful face.
Repentance stepped into the stinking room where the slaves slept. "Which bed is mine?"
Tawnic stared at her, unanswering.
"Jadin said I was to have a bed. Which one?"
The overlord girl rolled her eyes. "Wouldn't I love to leave you down here? You'll get your stench all over the upper floor." She turned and led the way back up the stone stairs.
Repentance followed.
On the next level Tawnic pushed open a door in the back of the room with the settee. "The kitchen," she said.
Repentance had already seen the kitchen. She'd eaten a bowl of soup there before she'd gone to see Comfort.
"Jadin's quarters." Tawnic waved down the hall, then turned the other direction and led the way up a flight of wooden stairs which ended in a wide hall with rooms on both sides. She threw open the third door on the right.
Repentance slid past Tawnic, who didn't bother moving out of the way.
The room was huge compared to the slave quarters downstairs. Bright yellow walls. A bed—off the ground and with a thick mat—was shoved against the far wall. Against another wall stood a desk with a reflecting stone above it. A wardrobe stood in one corner.
Repentance swelled with a tiny feeling of hope.
Yellow walls.
When the prince came, she'd deal with him. Until then, she had yellow walls.
I gaze into the midnight gloom; an evil fast approaches.
I steel my heart to face my doom; a devil now encroaches.
But lighting rends a peaceful morning,
with ne'er a sound or hint of warning.
A danger bursts forth from a quarter unseen.
And I am undone.
~Repentance Atwater, Healing House Poetry Collection
Chapter 11
"The prince is coming, the prince is coming!" An excited chattering and nattering swelled through the halls of the healing house.
From bits of overheard conversation, Repentance understood that the girls were happy because the food and wine always improved when the royals visited.
Tawnic, especially, was looking forward to the visit. She'd apparently not been able to enjoy the festivities on prior occasions because of the prince's strenuous demands on her. She'd taken every chance, over the previous three weeks, to let Repentance know how much she was looking forward to the next royal party.
Repentance pulled her blanket over her head trying to drown out the whispers in the halls.
Despite Tawnic's cruel gloating, life had not been hard on Repentance the past few weeks. She and Jadin had come to an understanding. Jadin had complete control over her life. Repentance had gagged on that truth but finally choked it down.
It had been driven home the last time she worked in the kitchen. The potatoes she was paring had put her in mind of Sober on his potato farm. She wondered how he was doing and tried to picture him working in a sunny field. She remembered his earnest face and his sorrowful smile.
Thinking about Sober, remembering his eyes and his kind look, instead of concentrating on the task at hand, she'd slipped and jabbed the paring knife into the center of her palm.
Jadin had quickly slathered ointment—onion milk and hog's grease—on the wound.
"Clumsy girl," she'd said. "Don't you dare damage the merchandise, or I'll be forced to take sweet Comfort."
Repentance had cringed. Jadin had been treating her well—teaching her how to eat at an overlord table and how to drink and walk and sit. In the end, though, Jadin was an overlord slaver, same as any other. Repentance heaved a world-weary sigh.
"Oh, surely it isn't as bad as all that," Jadin said. "You have the richest of foods and the softest of beds."
"I was merely thinking how different my life would have been if I'd been ugly. Had I known what my beauty would cost me, I'd have scarred my face on the day before the Button Ceremony. Then you would not have purchased me. I'd have gone for a lady's maid or a nanny, perhaps."
"Hmm." Jadin studied her. "Yes, I do believe you would have taken a knife to yourself. You're that stubborn. But you didn't scar your face, and I did buy you. Your job now is to take care of yourself so I get a good price from the Prince. If he buys you outright—Oh please, dear
