“Gift ... Gift ...” Winter shook me gently, calling to me in her soft but heavily accented voice. “This word ... what is the meaning?” She pointed at it in a big old book she was reading.

  I woke from my daydream and got closer to her to read the passage. By the Gods, she smelled nice...

  “Insidious...” That was a difficult one to explain. “It means doing harm in a very subtle way.”

  “Like assassin?” she asked, lightly tilting her head.

  “It could be an assassin, a disease, a poison, an evil person. Something that is bad, but also slow or methodical.”

  “Insidious ... insidious ...” she mumbled to herself and returned to her reading.

  In the servants' quarters, there were a few rooms used to teach children to read, write, and do basic math. We were sitting at a table in one of those rooms as I was helping Winter practice reading, which was a routine I cherished.

  As a personal servant, Winter had many duties outside Prince Allan’s bed. It was a survival necessity for her to master those, and several required a level of formal education and language comprehension that she simply did not have.

  Prince Allan buying Winter as a concubine was easily explained with just one glance at her. However, I fail to understand why he went to all the trouble of turning an illiterate barbarian into his main personal assistant.

  I admit that she was clever and hard-working. In only a few years, she had learned our language passably well, learned to read and write, and was surprisingly good with math. But it would have been much simpler to just buy someone already prepared.

  Winter was slowly reading a book I had curated for her: “Legends of the Frozen North.” It was a collection of folk tales from her homeland. Not an easy read, but it was a subject she would be familiar with, and I believed she would enjoy it.

  I usually used the opportunity to do some reading of my own, but I was not in the mood that day. I still needed to digest all that had happened in the forest, and every time I tried to focus, my thoughts would drift to my conversations with Garaktinur, my disobedience that ended up saving Uther, or my strange recovery.

  Winter closed the book and put her hands over it. She had a slightly downcast expression, and I feared that my recommendation had upset her.

  “You don’t need to finish reading if you don’t want to. I can find something else if you prefer.”

  She shook her head, risking a discreet smile. “I like book very much, but book make me feel ... sad happy...?” She looked up as if she was trying to find the right word.

  “Bittersweet?”

  “Yes, bittersweet.” She mumbled “bittersweet” to herself twice and continued. “I feel bittersweet. I miss snow. I miss cold.”

  It was the beginning of winter (the season, not the person), and I had two sweaters and thick wool pants under my dress. She was still in summer clothes, so I guess our concepts of cold diverged drastically.

  “I don’t know if it will get as cold as the North, but it will start to snow soon...”

  Our conversation was interrupted by a panting servant abruptly entering the room. She looked at us and emitted a sigh of relief.

  “Good thing I found you two here. Modesty is calling everybody to the Repentance Hall.”

  The Repentance Hall? This is bad news.

  “You know what she wants?”

  The servant looked around to confirm that we were alone. “Gossip is that Blueberry hurt the princess,” she whispered.

  “Blue?” I said in a voice louder than expected but regained my composure and continued in a whisper. “I hope this is a misunderstanding; she would never do something stupid like that!”

  The servant shrugged.

  “Raspberry knows?”

  “She and Strawberry are in the Hall already.”

  Raspberry was the mother of Blueberry and her younger sister Strawberry.

  Slaves don’t have fathers (legally speaking) or surnames, so it became a custom to name members of the same family under a unifying theme. Fruits, flowers, virtues, and gemstones were the most common, but there were some unusual ones like “things given to others.”

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  The girl left us in a hurry, resuming her search for the remaining servants.

  It was obvious from her expression that Winter did not want to go. Well, I did not want to go either, but there was no other real alternative.

  We walked the cold castle corridors, coming down a flight of stairs and entering a large room right below the servants’ quarters. Most castle slaves were already there, standing in attention like the crowd in a bard’s performance.

  The only way one could describe the Repentance Hall without a heavy coat of euphemisms is that it was a torture room. It was large enough to accommodate three times the actual number of spectators. There were two parallel poles with restrains in the center and a table with whips and canes. In the back was where the true horror lay: a rack, an iron maiden, several restraining chairs, and a wall holder filled with instruments of inventive agony.

  Sounds from this room would be carried by pipes to the slaves’ sleeping quarters, so they could hear the screams, begs, and whimpers. The early Old Empire was a big fan of Garaktinur’s motto of peace through fear and was devilishly creative when it came to cruelty.

  The treatment of slaves had improved drastically since then, and most of those instruments had not been used in generations. However, this room remained as a reminder and veiled threat.

  For obvious reasons, I didn’t like that place.

  A girl in her fourteens, with teary brown eyes and reddish-brown hair, was at the center of the commotion. Blueberry was a mess—red eyes, trembling lips, tear streaks on her face—bravely trying to maintain what little remained of her composure as she stole glances at some of the room’s “furniture.”

  Blue, as most called her, was a teenager born and raised within the castle walls. She could be moody at times (she was a teen, after all), but she was mostly a shy and discreet girl, well-liked by the other servants and ignored by everyone else.

  We waited under the sound of sobs and murmurs until an imposing woman wearing a particularly ornate slave collar entered the hall.

  Modesty was a tall, beautiful woman with long black hair and green eyes. She was probably in her mid-50s but could easily pass for her 30s. Despite been just a slave, her soft power rivaled that of most nobles.

  Not only had she been the personal servant of the late king and was the confidant of the queen, but she also had made friends with many important people, partly due to her influence, but mostly because of her charming personality.

  Her collar marked her as an official representative of the royal family, a rare privilege. So rare, in fact, that she was the only one currently bestowed with such an honor.

  In the unofficial structure that governed the internal affairs of the castle slaves, she was the undisputed leader, responsible for passing judgement and administering punishment.

  "I have good news," the woman stated, addressing Blueberry but loud enough for the entire audience to hear. "The burns on Princess Isabella's lap were very mild. The medic advised against using a healing potion and instead gave her just a cream to help with the pain. She will recover in a few days."

  "I'm so happy. I'm so, so happy. Thanks, Modesty," Blueberry blurted amid sobs and sighs of relief. “It was an accident, I swear it was an accident! The handle of the teapot broke. I would never, ever want to hurt the princess. I’m so, so sorry.”

  Modesty put a hand on Blueberry’s face and, with a compassionate smile, gently wiped a tear with her thumb. “I talked with a witness who confirmed it was an accident; you had no fault.”

  “Thanks, Modesty. Thank you so much. I swear I will be more careful in the future.” Blue had a smile of relief amidst tear streaks.

  “This is why I will only give you 30 lashes.”

  There was an instant of silence.

  “What?” Blueberry asked confused. “But … but … you said it was an accident.”

  “Of course it was an accident! If there was even a suspicion that you did that on purpose, you would already be locked inside that iron maiden," Modesty pointed at the gruesome device in the back of the room, “and the discussion would be about the punishment your mother and sister would receive for your actions. You hurt one of the masters; you need to understand how serious this is.”

  That shook Blueberry like a slap, and she resumed crying with full force. Modesty hugged her in an almost maternal way.

  “I am sorry, but this must happen. If not, the noble servants will use that as an excuse to erode our autonomy. They will say we are covering for you, that maybe that accident was not an accident after all, that maybe the guard should take a look, and the guards would frame you without a second thought just to avoid additional work.

  “This will put you and all of us at risk, and I can’t have that.”

  “But... but... the princess saw what happened!” Blueberry desperately tried to plead her case.

  “You burned her, you caused her pain. If you are not punished, she might hold a grudge and turn your life into hell out of spite.” She stared at Blue as someone that lived three times longer than her. “You should never bet your life on the mercy of people that have power over you.”

  Modesty kissed her forehead and let her go. “This is the smallest punishment I can give you. It will hurt, but after that it will be over.”

  Blue dried her tears with the back of her hand and emitted a defeated whimper. She tried to regain some of her composure, which somehow only made her look more wretched and pathetic.

  "This is so unfair…” she let slip this last pained protest as she started to unbutton her bodice with trembling hands.

  "You are right," Modesty said, retrieving one of the whips from the table. "It is."

  Blueberry lay limp, quietly sobbing. She was held upright by her open arms that were tied to the poles in the center of the hall, naked except for her slave collar. Her back was marked by neatly spaced lines of red and purple, starting two fingers below her neck and ending at her lower thigh. The strikes were masterfully delivered by Modesty, incredibly painful but without breaking the skin, so they would leave no scars. In her body, at least...

  The slaves watching the scene had expressions that were a mix of fear, pity, and relief that it was not them. These were very normal responses, except for Winter. Her face showed a subtle frown, almost as if she was... disappointed.

  She mumbled something in Northern that I pretended not to understand, but even if my comprehension was not perfect, I was certain I had grasped the meaning: “I receive so much more than that, and I never even hurt him…”