Repentance flushed with pleasure. He was her friend. She'd never had friends.
"And who might this friend be?" a man asked.
"The new maid. She's from my village."
Plates and silverware scraped and clanked.
"We have no new maids," Cook said.
"You do. I saw her Monday."
"I think I'd know. Only fresh belly I've had to feed for quite some time is Master's new concubine. Oh ... she's sitting right—"
"This was no concubine," Sober said. "She was in the washroom scrubbing suncloths."
Several people laughed.
"That'd be the new concubine," Generosity said. "She's a bold one. Scolded the king for killing his button mate. Called him a warthog. To his face. I do not jest."
Cook said, "She's sitting—"
"The king killed his button mate?" Sober asked.
"The new concubine thought he was in his two-hundred-and-fiftieth year," said a male voice.
More laughter.
Repentance shrank down in her chair, her cheeks burning.
A woman said, "And he let her off easy. For punishment all she has to do is to wash the suncloths on the fifth floor. But that's enough to bring the fine Lady Arrogance—erm, I mean Lady Repentance—down a rung or two on the ladder of self-importance."
Repentance stiffened in her chair.
"That's enough," Cook said.
"She's not arrogant," Generosity said. "And she'll get all those suncloths washed, too. You watch. She's a tough one, is the king's new concubine."
"Repentance is the king's whore?" Sober asked in a dazed voice.
"Hush," Cook said. "She's a slave same as you and me. We don't get to choose our duties."
"But she's different from most," Sober said. "She did have a choice. She chose to come up the mountain."
"How did she do that?" Generosity asked.
"She refused to button."
Still more laughter.
"She was promised to me, and she refused me at the ceremony."
"She never, Sober Marsh," Generosity said. "Lady Repentance is too smart. And you're too handsome. You'll have to come up with a better story if you want to have a joke on us."
"Well, either Lady Repentance is not as smart as you think, or I am not as handsome," Sober said with a bitter laugh.
Repentance squeezed the buttons she held as if she were squeezing the life out of him. You are not as handsome, Sober Marsh.
"No jest, Sober?" Generosity asked.
"Hush now," Cook said. "You don't know what you're about. She didn't choose her job. She's the king's possession like the rest of us. Next one to speak a word about that child loses his lunch."
Repentance rose. "Thank you, Cook," she said, "but I don't need you to make excuses for me."
A collective gasp rose from the servants.
Repentance continued speaking to Cook, "Sober is right. I turned him down. It stings him, but the wound will heal in time, I'm sure."
She walked out the door, her head high and her back straight.
But inside, in the privacy of her own chest, her heart trembled.
She ran down the hall, chased by the memory of their ugly laughter. It seemed that no matter where she went, people would laugh at her and hate her. She wasn't one of the servants—she was lifted above them by her position. But she wasn't an overlord, either. To the overlords she was no better than a yak.
She was nothing.
She fit nowhere.
Sober's words cut her more than all the others. She thought he had forgiven her. She thought he was her friend. His bitter words swirled through her mind like so much fog, dampening her spirits and choking her with gray hopelessness. Once in the safety of her room, she collapsed on her bed in tears.
After a time, the tears washed away the dark, moldy feeling of despair that had seeped into her heart. She dried her face on her blanket.
Sober was nothing to her. She'd never loved him. She didn't care what he thought of her.
But he was her only link to home. The only one who knew what growing up in Hot Springs was like. And he had pronounced that ancient blessing at the slave market. And his face ….
She sat up. She would just have to get him out of her mind.
Taking her parchment pad from her smock pocket she sat in the chair by the windows where the sunlight streamed into the room. She would write a poem. She looked around her room, thinking.
A glint of gold winked at her from the cityscape carved into the wall across from her. She rose to investigate. It was the gold roof of the palace, shining in the sun. She looked over the city, which spread below the palace in ever-widening semi-circles. Several blocks from the palace was the slave market with its frozen fountain in the square. And its swing frame. She leaned closer. There were even little bodies on the frame. Little, naked, slave bodies. A sob broke out of her. How dare they? How dare they make the murder of slaves into art?
She stormed into the bathing room and got a glass of water, then she flicked drops onto the wall and used the handle of her hairbrush to gouge at the carving until the bodies disappeared into lumps of mottled ice.
Standing back, she studied the effect. Surely no one would notice. It was only a small part of a great big map of the city of Harthill.
A map of the city ... she searched the wall carefully. A few blocks from the slave market was a tall building with a red and orange flag at that top. Lord Carrull's house stood as she remembered it, bordered on the front by a main street and on the side by an alley. The map was accurate, then. Maybe she wouldn't always be a slave. One day she might run. She'd wait until Comfort and the boys were
