Paying the Price (6 page)

I turned to the food and began eating. I had intended to only eat some, but it was well prepared and I was exceedingly hungry. I finished my plate and washed it down with the water in my mug.

I looked over at Dareena. I couldn't stand being in the same room with her. I nearly retched, knowing what the collar was doing to me regarding her.
"Your highness," I said. "May your slave attend to her duties?"

Her expression actually carried some pain. "Yes," she said.

I got up and straightened the room, starting with the bed. I had sweat
ed
it in earlier. I stared at it, not at all sure how to go about doing laundry. I walked over to my clothing that I had washed last night. They were still damp. I couldn't even imagine how long the bedding might take to dry.

"I was mistaken, your highness," I told her. "I do not properly understand my duties. I don't know what to do about the bedding. It should be changed."

She stared at me. "You don't know how to change a bed?"

"I have never done laundry, especially aboard a ship. I have only been on a few voyages, and it always included the privileges of my position." I nodded to my clothes hanging up. "They are still damp, and I wrung them out as well as I could before I hung them up."

"When the cabin boys come to clear the meal, I will ask one of them to show you what you need to know."

She shook her head.

"Yes, your highness, I admit it. There are things even a cabin boy knows that I don't. Does that really surprise you?"

"I'm sorry," she said. "I was shaking my head at myself. I shouldn't have assumed you would know."

I straightened the rest of the room. Then I realized her sextant was starting to tarnish as was some of the brass in the cabin. "I presume there are supplies for polishing the brass in the wash room?"

"Yes."

"Do I have permission to retrieve them?"

"Yes."

I stepped from the room, walked down the passageway, and stepped into the wash room. It took me a while to find what I needed. When I got back, I showed them to Dareena. "Is this right?" She nodded.

I looked at the sextant dubiously. It was hanging from a hook on the wall. "That looks like delicate equipment, and I have never touched one." I paused. "I don't even want to think what will happen if I damage it. I could scratch a mirror or put something out of adjustment. If you aren't in the room to forgive me, it will be another torture session."

"Your duties do not include the sextant," she said.
"Nor do they include my own laundry."

"Thank you."

I walked over to the bed. It was secured to the wall. The brass around the windows needed polishing. I crawled across the bed and, kneeling, I began polishing the brass.

I was still working on the windows when the cabin boys returned to collect the remnants of our meal. "Francis," she said to one of them. She spoke in Tendaria to the boys. I heard my name but didn't understand any of the rest. One of the boys responded, then the two collected the plates and left.

"I don't know enough Tendarian to understand them," I told her, still polishing the brass.

"Francis will show you all the duties. If you have questions, I can translate or answer them."

One of the boys returned several minutes later. Dareena talked to him for a moment. He responded. Then he crawled across the bed and knelt next to me. I looked down at him, kneeling to my left. He was so young. I wondered if he knew who I was, and whether he was afraid of me. I wondered what he understood.

He watched me polishing for a minute. He said a word.

"That means 'good'," Dareena said.

Francis had his own cloth. He nudged me further to the right, and the two of us working together
to finish
polishing the brass around the window. He was much faster than I was. I watched, and it didn't look like he did anything dramatically differently than I did. When we were done, both sides of the window shone properly. He nodded and said "Good" again.

Then the two of us went over the remaining brass in the room. Francis polished the sextant. He was extremely careful while he did it.

He exchanged words with Dareena then pulled me by the hand back to the wash room. He made sure I knew where to put the polish away. He looked at both rags and decided they didn't need washing. They went back where I had gotten mine. Then he led me to a storage cabinet and opened it. There was fresh bedding. He pulled out fresh sheets and handed them to me. I followed him back to the captain's cabin.

He pointed to the bed. I stripped it, separating out the sheets from the blankets, then used the sheets we had brought with us to make the bed. Francis frowned when I was done and said something to Dareena. She responded.

"He asked why you don't know how to make a bed. I told him to teach you."

Francis pulled apart the bed I had made, then remade it. It looked a lot better when he was done. Then he pulled it apart again and pointed at me, and then to the bed.

"I'm not going to do any better the second time," I told Dareena.

"He'll correct you as you go," she said.

I stepped up to the bed and tried to make it. Francis corrected me in several places. When we were done, it was adequate. I started at it woefully. He shrugged at me.

He was kind of cute, the way eleven year old boys can be.

We collected the used sheets and returned to the wash room. Francis showed me how to wash them. He almost had a cow when he saw how much soap I was going to use. He made me put most of it back. We washed the sheets together. He showed me how to use the wringer, which I had already figured out, then he bundled all the sheets, still wet, in my arms, and led the way out of the cabin. We turned left and exited the poop cabin. He did a U-turn to another door
and opened it. It led down below decks. He started down.

"Francis!"

I couldn't go down there. He turned around. I pointed and shook my head. "I can't go down there."

He kept gesturing for me to follow. I kept shaking my head. Finally he came back up the stairs, grabbed the sheets, and took them from me. He disappeared below decks.

I closed the door behind him and returned to Dareena's cabin.

"We just had a communications difficulty. He tried to take me below deck."

Dareena smiled. "To dry the clothes. We keep a stove going."

"Did you set me up?"

"No. I'm sorry, I didn't think of it."

"Funny how often things like that can happen. I wonder what the torture session would have been like if I'd tried to follow him."

"You've made your point."

"And yet you haven't offered to turn this ship around and return me to my home so I can tell my former sister exactly what I think of her."

"Fair or not, you will stand trial."

"I'm sure you'll excuse me if I continue to remind you what a hypocrite you are."

She stood up, glaring at me. "Am I a hypocrite for wanting peace? Or you the hypocrite for offering to die if it meant peace, but then acting like this when you find yourself facing the prospect?"

"I am not afraid to die," I told her. "It is the treachery involved that I am angry about."

She was silent for a while. "That is a fair complaint. I am sorry, but I do not believe anyone will be paying for the treachery acted against you. I know that isn't fair. Life isn't fair."

"Don't offer me platitudes. You are the engineer of the treachery, even if you aren't the worst of the offenders involved."

We glared at each other. Francis walked in and stopped dead, staring at us. Then he said one word. It sounded like a question.

Dareena stepped back from me and talked to him for a moment. Francis nodded to her. He walked over to me and took my hand, pulling me back to the wash room. He showed me a supply of black boot polish, then handed me the polish, a brush, and a cloth. He took a brush and cloth for himself then led the way back to Dareena's cabin.

Dareena was sitting down again. Francis gestured at her boots. Dareena smiled sweetly and held a foot out. I looked back and forth between them. Francis was talking, but I didn't understand a word.

"More petty revenge, your highness?"

"Yes."

"Hypocrite."

I knelt down in front of her and began polishing her boot. When I looked over, Francis was working on her others from the storage locker. I finished the first boot and asked, "Is this adequate, your highness?"

She examined her boot critically, agreed it was, and gave me the other foot. I began polishing. When I was done, I joined Francis and helped him with the remaining boots. When we were done he pointed at my own. They were scuffed and needed polishing. I sat on the floor of the cabin and removed both boots and began polishing one. Francis grabbed the other.

"No," I said. "You don't serve me."

He didn't understand me, although "no" is the same in both languages. He looked over to Dareena. She said something, which I presume was a translation. He said something back and took my boot anyway. I looked at her.

"He is happy to share the work," she said. "I think he has a crush on you."

"Very funny," I told her. I finished my boot about the same time Francis finished the other. I pulled them both back on.

There were a few other minor duties, which Francis showed me, and then we were done. I thanked him for his help, which Dareena translated. He smiled and disappeared.

"It wasn't petty revenge, Meorie," she said.

"Excuse me?"

"Asking you to polish my boots. It wasn't petty revenge."

I didn't respond.

"Do you think it is beneath you to serve as a cabin girl?"

"I am a princess."

"So am I. I served as a cabin girl for a year."

"How old were you?"

"Twelve."

"I am not twelve. I am your prisoner of war and a princess of Norinia. It is not proper to treat me like a servant. But, as you say, life isn't fair, and I am sure watching me kneel in front of you amuses everyone aboard ship."

She watched me for a minute. I stared back at her. "Did it bother you making the bed?"

"No. We're both using it, and while it wasn't entirely my fault, I was the one that caused the bed to require changing."

"Did it bother you to polish the brass?"

"Somewhat, but only because I wasn't responsible for the brass needing polishing. That was more than a day or two of tarnish."

"So when you polish it again, it isn't going to irk you?"

"Not enough to complain. I don't have much else to do on this voyage beyond getting under your skin and attempting to escape. A change of pace doesn't bother me."

Her lips quivered at that, then she returned to a stern expression. "Did it irk you to polish the boots from the storage locker?"

"Somewhat. I reject the notion I am your servant in spite of the collar you have made me wear."

"I didn't make you wear it. You had a choice."

I stared her down. She looked away first then looked back. "Polishing the boots I was wearing bothered you a lot."

"Yes."

"Why?"

"Because I knew you were sitting in that chair feeling smug while a princess of Norinia knelt at your feet."

I turned away and looked out the stern windows. The sun was setting. "May I please go watch the sunset?"

"We'll go together," she said. She led the way to deck. We turned to the west. Somewhere over the horizon, the sun was setting over Norinia. We stood silently at the rail watching the sun disappear below the sea.

"The order regarding annoying me is
rescinded
," Dareena said.
"You will not voluntarily engage in actions likely to annoy me."

She had added the word "voluntarily" to the order. I thought about it. It was a marginal improvement. Involuntarily annoying her by, for instance, screaming because the collar was punishing me, wouldn't trigger the order and subsequent punishments. It also eliminated one route for convincing the collar to kill me. I wasn't sure if it was an improvement or not.

"Thank you," I told her anyway. "I am choosing to believe you are not attempting to silence me." I paused. "Even though my words are annoying."

"You are correct."

"You could order me to stop."

"I could, but I am not going to. I can't understand you if you can not talk freely."

"Why do you care if you understand me?"

"How else can I convince you that you were wrong?"

I didn't respond to that, but came up with a new plan. I wasn't going to spar verbally with her anymore. I would keep my lips buttoned.

The sun set and the stars came out. She left me standing at the rail. As soon as she was gone I tried to jump over the edge again, but I couldn't bring myself to do it.

I wondered whether the collar would allow me to take risks. I couldn't climb the rigging. I had already tried that.
I started testing the limits.