Provocation studied her. "How old are you, child?"
"I am barely in my sixteenth year."
The old slave shook her head and clucked her tongue. "What possessed him to take a concubine now? At his age!"
Repentance gave a slight shrug.
"Yes, you have a maid." Provocation said. "Poor child. You know nothing of the ways of the mountain, I'll wager."
"I would not be opposed to someone sharing the particulars with me."
Provocation nodded. "You will grace his dinner table. You will go with him to parties. You will laugh at his jokes and hold on to his arm and gaze into his face as if there is nowhere you'd prefer to be."
She smiled sadly at Repentance. "You'll dance with him. And when he requires it, you'll go to his bed and keep his old bones warm."
Repentance said nothing. What could she say to such an embarrassing statement? But she was happy that, at least in one particular, Provocation was wrong. The old king did not like to share his bed.
"You'll eat well. And you'll not do any work. You won't even dress yourself. But don't get used to it, child. It won't last. It never does with these nobles. A summer. Maybe a year. Another one will take your place and you'll be sold to another man or put into service in the household."
Repentance's heart jumped. "How long has the king kept his other concubines?" She had to keep him happy, at least until Comfort came up in the slave cart.
"And why now?" Provocation asked, ignoring Repentance and apparently speaking to herself. "He's never taken a concubine before." She looked at Repentance as if to see what it was about her that would make the king act so uncharacteristically. "We all assumed he was unable to ... unable to ... well, with his illness, we assumed he'd never take a concubine. Why now?"
He said he was trying to save her, but she couldn't tell anyone that. She had to convince this old woman that the king really wanted a concubine.
Provocation stood staring, as if waiting for an explanation.
"Maybe he was waiting for the right girl," Repentance offered, meekly. "Maybe he was being careful and that's why it took so long for him to choose. Maybe now that he's found me, he means to keep me."
Provocation harrumphed. "Yes, well, that's a lot of maybes all strung prettily together like gemstones on a necklace. In all my life I've yet to see a situation hanging on so many maybes turn out for good in the end."
She left then, thank Providence, and took her grim predictions with her.
Still, Repentance couldn't help but notice that the room was a little grayer and colder than she'd first thought.
The old housekeeper had been gone only a moment when the door swished open and the prince stuck his head into her room. Without knocking!
"Ah, getting nicely settled?" he asked.
Fear coursed through her. She stared at him mutely.
He smiled. "You are far too young and pretty to be stuck with a smelly old man like my uncle."
She hadn't noticed an odor on the king. "Thank you, your highness," Her voice was no more than a whisper. "But I cannot accept such a compliment. It is untrue, and it comes at the expense of my master, besides."
"And you're loyal as well." He nodded. "An admirable quality in a concubine. Very good. He can't live forever, can he? And then I'll inherit his throne. And his concubine. And I'm not sure but I'll enjoy the one as much as the other."
He bowed and left her.
She collapsed onto the floor in despair. The prince was apparently going to take her brothers and make them go to war. He would put them up front like peons in a game of Kings and Conquest, to be sacrificed for a cause they had no part of. And she could do nothing to stop him. She was stuck with an old king who did nothing but sign papers like an obedient child. And when he died?
As hard as it was to comprehend, when the king died, things would get even worse for Repentance and her family.
A harsh word, rashly spoken, can't be snatched back once it's been released upon the world. Consider carefully, then, before you open your mouth to instruct others.
~Mercy Atwater, wisdom passed on from
mother to daughter and largely ignored
Chapter 15
Repentance had one hope. She might please the king and make him want to save her and her family. Surely he could tell the prince not to take Repentance's brothers. They were just two boys. The prince could live without two little slave boys. And the king could save Comfort, too, when she came up on the slave cart.
If he lived that long.
And if he lived long enough and she served him well enough, he might even let Repentance and her family go to one of those places Lord Carrull had spoken of. One of those states where slaves went free. He could do that before he died.
Repentance pushed herself off the floor, went to the bathing room, and washed her face. She would work hard for the king and make him want to help her.
She was leaving the bathing room when the maid arrived and drove the prince and his evil plans from her mind.
Generosity was everything Provocation was not. She was young—in her eighteenth year—and jolly and talkative. She'd been sold as a slave when she'd failed to button. She told Repentance
