Her heart made a happy little bounce at that familiar phrase spoken in the Hot Springs accent. It made another bounce when she noticed the smile in his eyes.
"What are you doing?" he asked pointing to the vat behind her.
She turned back, following his gaze, and the load of heavy material fell off her paddle into the boiling water. "Rats!"
"Where?" Sober peered into the boiling water.
She bumped him with her shoulder. "It's hardly funny. That was a heavy load. Now I have to dig it out all over again."
He took the paddle from her and, with one quick flick, plunked the sopping load into her basket. Hot water streamed out of the loosely woven sides and ran toward the ice pit where it would cool and freeze and, eventually, be shaved off and carted away.
Repentance bent to retrieve the load.
"I'll get it." Sober scooped up the basket.
She felt a rush of affection for him. A face from home. He looked different than she remembered, though. What had changed? Same square chin. Same curly black hair. Same crooked nose.
"Lead on," he said.
She knew. His shoulders seemed broader. Or his waist narrower. Work on the farm suited him.
He smelled good, too. She closed her eyes and breathed in the scent of soil and sunshine.
He cleared his throat. "You were right. This is heavy. Are you inclined to show me where to take it?"
Her cheeks flamed with heat. "Sorry. Right back here." She led him to the drying rack.
"This is amazing material," he said, dropping the basket. "And the mooncloth. Have you seen that?"
She nodded.
He grabbed the wet suncloth, but she pulled it from him.
"I have to do it myself."
"Why are you doing this at all, let alone by yourself? I assumed the prince would ... I assumed you'd have other duties."
"The prince is not my master." She smiled, happy to share her trickle of good fortune with him.
Sober stared. "Well," he said after a moment, "it does seem as if Providence is answering my prayers. But if the prince is not your master, what are you doing at the palace?"
"I came yesterday from the healing house at Hot Springs." Yesterday? It felt like she'd aged ten years in her first night.
"I've looked for you here these two months. I often imagined you were up in one of the palace windows looking down. And all that time you were in Hot Springs?"
"What do you mean you've been looking for me for two months?" she asked. "You can't live at the palace. That farming woman bought you."
"I come twice every week to deliver potatoes. And on Fridays I bring greens, as well, for the yaks." He motioned to the frozen courtyard outside the windows. "You can't grow vegetables here on the mountain."
"Sober!" An old voice called out. "What are you doing, boy?"
Repentance looked over her shoulder. Calamity, the old slave from the slave market, stood at the kitchen doorway.
"Will you be at lunch on Friday?" Sober asked. "Cook feeds us on Fridays, because it's our long day here, what with delivering the yak feed and all."
"Come you along, young man," Calamity said, "My whiskers sprout as you loiter."
"See you Friday?" Sober asked, walking backwards toward the kitchen as he looked at her.
She nodded and grinned at him.
He winked and turned to join Calamity. "I'm coming, old man, tell your whiskers to cease and desist."
A few minutes later, as she stood watching out the window by the drying rack, a skim wagon loaded with produce emerged from the front of the palace, and headed down the drive. Sober looked back from the driver's seat and waved.
As Repentance lifted her hand, the prince rounded the corner of the palace and looked back as if to see who Sober was waving at.
Repentance ducked behind the hanging suncloths.
At noon she entered the kitchen for lunch to find only Provocation and a young, overlord tutor by the name of Skoch at the large wood table. Generosity wasn't present—the maids and the groundsmen ate last, Provocation explained.
The smile Repentance had worn since Sober left, disappeared. He would eat with the groundsmen, no doubt, when he came on Friday. So be it. If he was on the grounds, she would find a way to visit with him.
A few minutes into her meal with the housekeeper and the tutor, she was missing Generosity's chatter. Provocation was too busy eating to speak more than a few words, it seemed, and Skoch didn't speak at all—just nodded when Provocation introduced him.
Still, Repentance sipped her onion and potato soup slowly. She was in no hurry to go back upstairs and get more cloth to take to the washroom. There were a hundred and fourteen rooms on the fifth floor, but she had the rest of her life to get them done.
And Sober would come again on Friday.
There was that.
She sighed, content to be alive.
"I hope that sigh doesn't mean you're too weary to p-p-pay attention to my lectures this afternoon, my Lady," the tutor said.
Repentance eyed him skeptically. His yellow hair stood in short spikes all over his head, reminding her of a porcupine. And why was he eating lunch with two slaves?
"Lectures?" This was the first she'd heard about any lectures.
"History and de-p-p-portment," he answered.
She shook her head, stupefied. Who would pay a stuttering man to give lectures?
"You're to sit in classes with the young p-p-princes. Did no one tell you?"
"You're telling her just fine," Provocation said. "No need to tell people things before they have need of knowing."
"I'm to go to school with little boys? I've already finished my schooling." And she didn't have any desire to go to school with the young princes.
