Cloudtop

“This is beneath me.” I muttered under my breath. It was all the energy I had to spare. I set my feet, and grunted as I made every possible effort to push the handle before me. The thing may as well have been carved from stone. Experimentally, I gave it a pull, but to the same result. I huffed, and I puffed, and I pushed.

All the while, a girl in simple robes sat cross-legged and watched. Her hair was done up in an uncountable multitude of thin braids, and her too-full lips were pulled up in a grin. “Need help, your highness?” She put as much sass into the last two words as I’d ever heard anyone use.

“Will you stop calling me that?” I huffed and tried to blow a lock of my blond hair out of my sweaty face, but of course my sweat had glued it to my skin. “Why aren’t you doing this?”

“Because it is your chore, your highness, not mine. I already finished mine.”

I blinked at her, and tried to push down my annoyance. “Is there some trick to this?” I asked, gesturing at the winch.

If anything, the girl smiled even wider. “You could try unlocking it.” She gestured at something along the arm the handle was attached to.”

When I leaned in close, I put my hand to my forehead, then pulled the second handle. It pulled free with almost no effort, and then I pushed on the handle, and the confounded thing finally spun freely. “Were you planning on telling me about that at all?”

“Nope. Not until you got off your high horse and asked for help, which you finally did.”

The rope wound along the spindle as I cranked, and far too slowly for my liking, a bucket filled with water ascended until I could reach it easily. Relieved at having finally made some progress with my task, I let go of the handle to reach for the bucket.

Ever so obligingly, gravity pulled it beyond my reach instantly.

I dodged the winch handle as it started spinning in reverse. I felt the wake of air of its passage, but luckily took no damage. Drawing in a deep breath, I let it go. Rise above, Hopa, I said to myself. I had to repeat this refrain to myself again, multiple times, when the girl broke out laughing.

I put my hand on my hip and squared up to her. “Stop that this instant,” I said.

She waved her hand dismissively. “Sure thing, princess!” As ever, when she gave me a mocking title, she burst into laughter again. Despite her acquiescence, she took several minutes to stop herself.

I tried to put the heat out of my breast, tamp it down, whatever, as I winched the bucket to the top again. This time, I remembered to lock it before reaching for the bucket. I emptied it into a different bucket, then repeated the process. Six buckets hung from a yoke, filled with water by the time I finally finished.

“Sure you can handle that load?” Elaine asked. “I could take two of them off your hands.”

“I was sent to fetch six,” I said. I left my tone flat, lest I give into my anger and lash the girl. “Six, I will fetch.”

“Easy, girl.” Elaine unfolded herself and stood. “I was just offering to help. Anyone who sees your hands can tell you’re not used to honest work. Tell me something. Before you came here, did you ever actually scrub anything, or repaired a torn shirt or…”

“My education was quite thorough, thank you very much,” I said. Kneeling, I put the yoke across my shoulders and tried to stand. “I’ve been… ugh… I’ve been mending training jerkins since I was four.”

“Oh, for a whole year, then?”

I shot her an annoyed glare. “You know I’m fourteen.”

“Good to know you’ve got your numbers.”

My hands clenched as I fought for stability under my load. “Keep speaking to me as though I’m a fool, and you’ll see if you make it to sixteen.”

“Easy there, highness. I’ll start to think you dislike me.”

My eyes were halfway through a roll before I caught myself. “Would that irk you?”

“Well, you’re one of only two girls even close to my age I’ve ever met, so… yeah. Kinda.”

I stiffened at that. She’s never had a friend? I don’t know if I can say I have, either. I felt bad for the way I’d been acting towards her. “Look, just… stop mocking me, and we can try to be friends.”

Her eyes lit up, and she straightened to her full height as she stood. I tried to suppress the irritation when the crown of my head came up to the bottom of her nose. Sighing, I rebalanced my load and started across nearly-barren plateau towards the bath house.

“So, what would you do, anyway, if you should become Queen?”

I laughed at the thought. “Die of shock?” I suggested. “What would you do if they gave you the crown?”

She shrugged. “That’s easy. I’d make peace with the Ubuntan tribes.”

I staggered a little farther sideways than I’d meant. “Peace?” I looked over my shoulders, at my country to the south. “What’s that?”

“Something the land hasn’t known in a very long time. See, it’s supposed to be this thing where countries don’t fight each other, old hate is let go, and people on all sides of a conflict can have happy lives.”

“Happy lives?” I shook my head. “The war was old when my mother’s grandmother’s grandmother was born. I had an expensive education, and not a single one of my tutors could tell me any details of a time when there was no war.” I sighed. “Still, were I Queen, there is naught I would refuse to do, if it meant giving my subjects a chance at this happiness you speak of.”

“Even those who are Ubuntan born?” Elaine asked in a soft voice.

I would have touched her shoulder, if I could. I was almost to the bath house, a simple building of thatch atop mud bricks. Despite almost no contact with men, traders aside, the monk-sisters insisted on having privacy when they bathed.

They were, after all, still Caliman, in fact if not in blood. So was I. It would be a hot day in Svartlheim before I took a dip without the privacy of walls.

One by one, I emptied the buckets into one of the tubs. Three were needed to fill the larger receptacle. Swallowing my pride, I cleared my throat. “I fear at this rate, finishing on time will not only be a challenged, but impossible.” I made my eyes rise and meet Elaine’s far darker orbs. “If I may ask a favor? I would have you build and stoke the fires beneath the tubs.”

An eyebrow raised, Sister Elaine made me wait until I felt my patience about to break. “Well, what are you waiting for? Fetch more water.”

“I was waiting for you to say you would help me.”

She smirked. “And doing so directly in front of the rack of firewood.”

I jumped and looked behind me. “Oh. Thank you, Sister Elaine.”

“Just Elaine, to my friends.”

I made two more trips, and filled four more tubs, before I got to work helping Anba manage the flames. Smoke went out the hatch at the very pinnacle of the ceiling.

“Sister Maria?” Elaine asked from the next tub over, whose flames she tended at the moment a tall, thin blond entered. “Welcome home. Have you any news?”

The woman gave a ready smile and laughed with a nod as she started to undress. “There are rumors flying every which a way. I say, which of these is the hottest?” She waited for one of us to gesture. When we’d indicated the first one we’d lit, she walked over, letting her robes hit the ground carelessly behind her. “Some yokel says the Princess isn’t in Blackstone anymore. Another said the Queen had her own child assassinated. Yet another says she’d never do that, and not for the reason you think. Oh, no, it’s because then she’d have to lay with her husband and get another girl. Simply letting one of the Princes rule simply wouldn’t do, and damn them being only minutes apart in age.”

“No man has ever ruled Calima,” I volunteered. “If the Queen fails to mother a daughter, rule will pass to the eldest Prince’s wife. If more than one prince is the same age, the wife of the First Prince of the Sword will be Queen. If—”

“We get it,” Sister Maria said. The woman waved her hand as she slipped into the water with a contented sigh. “You know how the laws of succession work. Anyway, to answer your question, Sister Elaine, there are hundreds of rumors, all but a few of them involving the Royal Triplets, but little solid news.”

I shook my head. Gossiping about the Royals’ business seemed to be the favored pastime of rumormongers. Other women from the monastery were filing in, which meant they were done with morning chores, and morning exercises. There were only six tubs, but twenty-nine women, counting myself.

My sigh fought to escape, but lost. I kept it inside. This shall be a long day, yet. Once I had the fires crackling merrily beneath their tubs, I picked up the yoke again, and set about fetching more water for additional baths. Again, I made many trips, the day wearing on.

“Are you doing alright?” A gruff, male voice asked as I was finally nearing the end of my task.

“Never better.” I wheezed before, between, and after speaking those words. I forced my aching body to keep moving at a speed I had seldom done anything at. I swear, if I survive the rest of my year, I’ll never criticize a maid for being slow again.

The old man walked with me. “If you need a hand, I’m more than happy to pitch in.”

I shook my head. “It’s my task. I’ll see it done.” I smiled at the man, and restrained an impulse to tug on his long, gray mustache. Though he wore no beard, the hair flanking his lips fell down until it brushed his chest if he looked down. “A wise old man keeps telling me it’s the mark of a good man, or woman in this case, to honor their commitments.”

“Who are you calling old, you stripling?” Brian put on an air of mock affront. “I’ll have you know, that when I was your age…”

“The Empress (may her name never be remembered) still sat athrone in Galamourne?”

He narrowed his eyes at me. “Careful, girl. You’re not too old yet for me to turn over my knee.”

After I set the yoke down again, I turned and cocked my hip at him, one hand resting on my pathetic curve. “Don’t threaten me with a good time.” I had no idea what that was supposed to mean. No one would tell me. But every time I used it as a counter to such a statement…

Brian’s face turned beet red. He cleared his throat and backed off. “I uh, I think I’d better go and see about some dinner. Don’t be late for it!”