He sat and sucked in a big breath full of fog. "Ah. It reminds me of home. I come here every chance I get."
"I hate fog."
He chuckled. "I think we established that fact in the slave wagon that first day. What was it you said? You felt like you were made for sunshine?"
She shivered and tucked her hands into the front pocket of her smock. "I kind of liked the sunshine further down the mountain."
"It is beautiful. You were not mistaken on that count."
She glanced over at him. "Your farm is beautiful?"
"Very. And I like working in the soil."
"And your owner?" She winced when she said the hateful word.
"She's good to me."
"I'm glad."
"What about the king? Does he treat you well? Everyone says he's fair-minded."
She frowned. If only he would come back. "He's been away for a whole week."
He grimaced. "And that bothers you? You miss him?"
"I do."
Sober pursed his lips and nodded.
"What?"
"Can we talk about something besides your master and how much you miss him?"
If you will wait, friends will find you.
Common bonds will safely bind you.
As long as you breathe, there is hope for a day of deliverance.
~Repentance Atwater, The Fawlin Palace Poetry Collection
Chapter 21
The mist from the lake closed in around them, muffling the world, and filling Repentance with a deep longing for home. For her family. For a place where people loved her. Comfort had loved her. And her mother and father. She could see that from her new vantage point of being a lady and also a slave. On the mountain, she was more of an outcast than ever.
"I'm sorry," Sober said. "I wasn't going to bring up the king again."
Repentance shifted uncomfortably. It was always going to stand between them—the business of her being a concubine. She thought nothing of it and Sober, apparently, thought of nothing else. "Sober, can you keep a secret?"
He shrugged. "I managed to fool the village through four buttoning ceremonies. In the end, though, I wasn't half as good at keeping secrets as you turned out to be."
She searched his eyes, trying to see if he was telling the truth. "You never wanted to button those first four times?"
"I told you before. I was waiting for someone."
She blushed. "The king and I aren't ... we don't ... I'm not his concubine, really."
He looked puzzled.
"He doesn't like to look weak. But he's really sick. He coughs every night. Coughs and coughs. He can no more have button relations than a fish can walk."
A look of relief crossed his face. "I'm glad to hear that." A smile broke out and he nodded. "Yes, I'm very glad to hear that."
A moment later, he said, "The king never took a concubine before. Why now?"
She shivered, remembering how sick and afraid she'd been that day at the healing house, waiting for the prince. She'd thought she wouldn't survive. "He took me to save me from his nephew, who has a reputation of not being kind to his concubines."
"Thank Providence. He answered my prayers for your protection."
She looked up at him, startled. "I'm not sure how much Providence had to do with anything. The king said he took me because I reminded him of someone he once knew."
"That doesn't make much sense. How many lowborns could the king have known in his life?" He gazed over at her. "And there I was in the kitchen calling you a whore. I'm so sorry."
"You were right, Sober. I chose badly." There. She'd admitted it. And it felt like a weight had rolled off her shoulders. "If it weren't for chance I would be a whore."
He smiled. "It was hardly chance. Providence has been watching out for you. But about that choice …. " He nudged her with one shoulder. "Do you mean you wish you'd chosen me? You wouldn't mind being buttoned to me?"
She blushed, "Sober!" She hadn't even thought about what it would be like to be buttoned to him. And she wasn't ready to discuss it. It didn't matter what she wanted, anyway. She was concubine to the king. She could never button Sober.
"I'm sorry," he said. "I was teasing."
Still blushing, she thanked Providence for the fog that cooled her hot cheeks, and, looking at the lake, she changed the subject to a less embarrassing one. "Why doesn't the water ever freeze?"
"It's fed from an underground spring—a hot spring. By the time it gets to the surface it's ice cold, but the spring keeps it a trickle warmer than freezing."
"I don't understand how the palace is sitting on top of the water."
"Ah, it just happens, my Lady, that I can explain that to you. Calamity told me all about it the first time I drove up here with him. He's a living history book, that one." He threw one arm across the back of the bench and leaned across her to point to the spot, barely visible through the mist, where the lake disappeared underneath the palace. "The palace sits on top of six feet of ice, which sits on top of the water. Or the ice originally sat on the water, I mean. The water level dropped a trickle each year so now the lake is five feet below the ice on which the palace sits."
She could smell him and feel his warmth. "The lake froze at that end but not at this end?" That made no sense to her but she wasn't sure if that was because it really made no sense or because her senses weren't functioning normally.
"The hot spring is at this end of the lake. The water at that end cooled and froze over, and
