Generosity tucked the pie into her pocket and picked up the soup bowl.
"Tell him, I forgive him."
"For what?"
"No one would have believed him if he'd told them I was innocent."
Generosity leaned over and kissed Repentance on the top of her head. "Don't give up. Providence will make it all come out right in the end."
Repentance pulled back and looked at the girl's face. She had never told Generosity that her mother used to kiss the top of her head and say that exact thing. Providence alone had known how she was longing to hear those words.
Generosity came three more times, with the ever-present Tigen tripping along behind. They smuggled in good food for Repentance, which she, in turn, shared with the slave next door.
She wanted to ask Generosity for news of the outside world. Particularly she wanted to know when she was scheduled for execution—every time she heard the key grate in the lock she was sure the swingman was coming for her—but she couldn't bring herself to ask.
Between visits, Repentance sat in her dim cell remembering her life in the swamp. Picturing her mother as a young woman with an overlord lover. How devastated she must have been when he didn't come back for her.
But what would have become of her father if her mother had moved to Montphilo with the overlord?
Life was not neatly laid out the way Repentance wanted it to be. She loved her father. And her mother, too. What if they'd never buttoned? That would have left a hole too big to mend, for there would be no Comfort in the world.
It hurt to think about Comfort, but she couldn't stop herself. Childhood memories flooded in nonstop. She and Comfort picking persimmons. Comfort drawing pictures in the mud with a stick, down by the hot springs. Her mother laughing again after Fullness was born. She remembered her father teaching her to catch fish and her mother teaching her to cook them.
She was sorry she'd hurt them. So sorry she would never see them again.
As the memories washed over her, she laughed and wept and prayed.
Yes, she prayed. She wasn't sure that Providence could hear her, but she hoped he could, because she was going to die and she hadn't made anything but a mess of her life. She saw, in that dark cell, that her life was like a bunch of loose marsh grass, scattered on the ground. All it needed was time and wisdom to weave it into a worthwhile basket. She was going to die before she was formed. She hadn't figured out what to do with the pain she'd suffered. She never understood why one man was born a master and another man was born a slave. She had learned from her mistakes, but she wouldn't live long enough to put the learning into practice. In the end her life was worth nothing, then. After she died the world would go on as if she'd never lived. Her parents wouldn't even know to mourn. They wouldn't know she was dead.
But maybe she was looking at things the wrong way. Maybe she wasn't a pile of straw. Maybe her life was one strand of straw in a larger work. She would die alone and unjustly accused. A slave. Unloved. But it might be that in her coming to the mountain and befriending Tigen, she was going to effect change that was worth more than her own personal freedom. Her mother might be right. Maybe everything would come out right in the end. Maybe she wouldn't get to see it, because she wasn't part of the end. Maybe she was part of the middle.
The key in the lock jerked her from her thoughts.
She watched the door, sure that this time it would be the swingman. Her heart sped up and drops of sweat sprang forth on her forehead.
The door swished open.
And there, in the light, which flooded the cell, stood Sober Marsh.
She gasped and covered her face with both hands. He was the last person she wanted to see. Or the last person she wanted to see her, tired and filthy as she was.
"Why are you here?" Her voice was muffled.
"I've brought your food." Pulling one of her hands down so she could see him, he made a shushing expression with his lips. "Cook ordered me to bring it and the dungeon master, the nice fellow outside the door here, has been kind enough to allow me to deliver it."
Tigen sashayed in. "No one is outside the door but me. The dungeon master has gone back to his quarters."
Repentance yanked her hand from Sober's grip. "Go away," she moaned.
She would rather die than have Sober see her this way.
And then it hit her.
She was going to die.
And everyone would see her this way—and worse.
When her body hung in the square by the slave market ... she would be naked and missing her fingers and toes. Her eyes would be burned out. And everyone would see. New slaves would be forced to look on her as she swayed in the wind.
She ran to the hole in the corner and threw up.
Sober crossed the room and stood by, holding her hair back and rubbing her shoulders.
As soon as she finished retching, she wiped her mouth and screamed. "Get out!" She stood and beat on his chest. "It's your fault. Your fault! You told. Why did you tell?"
He dropped the soup bowl, grabbed her hands, and held them still. "I never told anything."
"You didn't come to lunch. You were avoiding me."
"My mistress wouldn't let me come. Calamity told her trouble was blowing on the mountain. He told her you were involved and I needed to stay home so no one would connect us."
"You told
