"But surely you don't need my brothers for your army."
"That's what drives you?" He gave her a measuring look. "I'll do this for you, then. You make the king keep his peace with me and I'll leave your two brothers in the village with their mother."
She nodded.
He flashed a nasty smile. "Oh course, you know, when I take the other boys and your brothers stay, they will be hated by all the rest of the villagers."
He left without waiting for an answer.
The little princes weren't at school the next afternoon.
Or the next.
Or the one after that.
Not even Tigen.
Repentance wasn't sorry they were absent. She didn't want to bump into their father. She didn't even want to see their faces—didn't want to be reminded of the prince. She told the king nothing about Malficc's threat. The last thing she wanted was for the king to push the prince. She had no doubt about which man was stronger. She determined to do her best to keep the king calm and happy so the prince would let him live.
Her life settled quickly into a new routine. Mornings she washed suncloths from the fifth floor, afternoons she was in lectures with Skoch, and evenings she spent with the king, reading, talking, and sipping wine by her fire.
She found that Skoch, as irritating as he was with his blushing and stuttering every time he looked at her, had a passion for history, so his lectures were interesting.
He was teaching ancient history that year, he told her. He'd already covered how Providence created the tribes, the Windsong Ceremony where He cut the Precepts into the face of the cliff at Seaport, and the great eruption at Pernick. Repentance was familiar with those events, but Skoch spent the first three days of her schooling giving abbreviated lessons on them. Then he moved on to the next major world event, the granting of the gifts.
"You mean Providence granted gifts to all the people?" Repentance asked, wondering why she'd never heard of such a thing. No doubt the village tutor had cut facts out of the lessons the same way he cut maps out of the books. Allowing lowborns access to certain pieces of knowledge would prove dangerous to overlords, she guessed.
Skoch nodded. "He gave gifts to all the tribes. To the eastern tribes He gave the ability to weave suncloth. To the western tribes, mooncloth. To the north, snowcloth and to the south, lavacloth."
Repentance frowned. Snowcloth. They could have used some of that in Hot Springs.
She wasn't good with directions, but she closed her eyes and tried to remember the map she'd seen in the library at the healing house. Which tribe had she belonged to? Her village had gotten nothing. Providence had left them out. Forgotten them. He seemed to make a habit of it.
"And there were more gifts, for the cities and villages. Your people received the dragon breath."
"Dragon breath?"
"The fog rising from the hot springs. It keeps you from disease and gives you long lives."
So Providence hadn't forgotten them after all.
"The people from Gatling Woods make boats capable of riding the wildest seas. The wood will not sink. The Harthillians, as you've seen, were given ice that refreezes faster than it can melt. Sutherland was given the ability to harness the sun to move their wagons."
"So Providence gave all these gifts, why?"
"The legends teach us that Providence gave gifts to all so no one city could claim supremacy. All would have something of value to offer the others."
Repentance frowned. His plan hadn't worked. One city ended up with all the gifts and one city did claim supremacy. "Legends?"
He shrugged. "Stories, myths."
"They are not true?"
"Who can say? They are the way some men have chosen to interpret history. Others choose another way. They believe the stories about Providence are merely stories and the gifts belong to whoever has the power to take them."
"Who is right?" Repentance asked, waves of anger and relief fighting for control of her emotions. She knew who was right. Now it made sense—the conflicting precepts and the unanswered prayers. "There is no Providence," she said simply.
"Of course there is," Skoch said. "He lives in the hearts of people. He's not real, like us. But he's as real as love and joy. He's an idea. A noble idea. And it would do the world good if more people believed in him."
"But if he's made up—simply some people's interpretation of history …." She shook her head. "Who decides?"
He must have heard the anger in her voice, because droplets of sweat gathered on his brow, and he started stuttering again. "Who decides w-w-what?"
"What we are to do. I think it's wrong to take slaves. Young Lord Gaylor thinks it's wrong to let slaves live in the house. He thinks they should be in the barn. Who is right?"
"You are r-r-right."
"How do you know?"
"M-m-my heart tells me."
"What makes your heart a better judge than anyone else's?" she blurted out in anger. "I feel ill." She fled and slipped down to the washroom and out the door, heading away from the palace in search of a place to breathe freely. She strode past the dairy, her head ringing with questions about Providence and the power that belonged to people who cared nothing for him or his precepts.
When she reached the yak barns, she heard the animals grunting inside and decided to go in and hide out until her lecture time was over. Skoch would never tell anyone she'd left early, she was sure. He
