Page 59

This might be what it was like when she had her own solar. A little.

Sitting in her cottage with Elodie with the windows and doors flung open to the afternoon, Ophele imagined it with far more pleasure than she had expected.

Master Didion was very good at painting pictures with his words, and in her mind’s eye she could see the warm, sunny room with its diamond-paned windows, and Remin sitting in a huge armchair, like the soft chair in her mother’s bedchamber at Aldeburke.

Natural colors, she thought, charmed by the vision of leaves and berries.

The idea of being mistress of so vast a manor was daunting, but it was easier to cope when it was one room at a time.

Her solar, and the rooms for Sir Miche and Sir Justenin and Lady Verr, and then the offices, and the dining room, which would only hold a dozen people at most.

She could do that.

The high table in the cookhouse had more than that every night, and she wasn’t the least bit nervous there anymore.

“And they’re already digging out the hill, too,”

she told Elodie, who devoured stories of the Big House like they were sweets.

“I didn’t know what that huge pile of dirt was, it’s so big it looks like Master Didion means to add another hill on the river, but do you know what he’s doing? Inside the hill, there will be the kitchen, the pantries, the larders and butteries and scullery and servants’ quarters, storehouses and cellars, even an icehouse.

All of the servants will live and work inside the hill.

Like rabbits.”

“With tunnels?”

Elodie asked, her eyes bright with interest.

“Very big tunnels.”

Really, huge sections of the southern face of the hill would vanish altogether, with many tiers of entrances and windows and varying levels of security, every floor insulated with earth to prevent fires from spreading.

Remin was fanatical on the issue of safety.

“On the back of the house, there will be a tunnel so big, horses and buggies can drive into it.”

“You should have little ones too.

Secret ones,”

the girl said, nodding sagely.

“Me and Pirot are digging one under our house, just in case we have to hide from devils.

Mama doesn’t know though.”

“Maybe you ought to tell her,”

Ophele suggested, wondering if she had some grown-up obligation to warn her.

She and her erstwhile page spent a few hours of every afternoon in the cottage, where the ever-growing pile of Remin’s torn clothes threatened to rage out of control.

Talking to Elodie was a pleasant diversion from the frustration of sewing, but Ophele couldn’t help sighing as she turned his shirt right-side out and saw the mend was every bit as messy as she feared.

She always hoped that by some magic, her straggling stitches might look better from the outside.

“You ought to use a hem stitch, m’lady,”

Elodie said, leaning over the table to examine her work with a judicious eye.

Ophele froze.

“You know what hem stitches are?”

she asked carefully, mindful of the open doors and windows.

Sir Leonin and Sir Davi were right outside.

“’Course, I’m great at sewing,”

the girl boasted.

“Mama makes me do all my samplers, otherwise I can’t come see Your Grace.”

“Well, if you want,”

Ophele began, feeling as if her fingers had just brushed a rope in the midst of drowning, “you could bring them here and do them with me? ”

“Could I?!”

Elodie was delighted.

“Yes!”

Ophele was even more delighted.

“If your mama says it’s all right, you can bring them next time you come.”

Not long after that, she sent Elodie home rejoicing, and Ophele rinsed out the teacups and hung them over the fire, then collected her oilskin of papers.

She had begun carrying the whole pile of interviews and reports home with her every day to work on whenever she had a spare moment, so absorbed in her project that sometimes she dreamed of it.

“To the storehouse, my lady?”

asked Sir Davi as she shut the cottage door, making an effort to mind his speech.

Sir Leonin had been at him about it.

“Yes, one of the sawyers is coming in for an interview,”

she said, falling into step between the two men.

It was still a little awkward; she nominally set their course, but for the first few days she had been all but tripping over them.

“He fought in the mountains, too.

I can’t help but think there is something to the belief that the devils come from the mountains.

But there can’t be enough caverns for all of them to hibernate over the winter, can there?”

“We never found a nest of the creatures,”

Sir Leonin replied, only a little reluctantly.

He took his vocation seriously and felt that even casual conversation was a dangerous distraction from guarding her.

His eyes scanned the nearby area as if he thought an assassin might leap out of the gorse bushes.

“Half the difficulty of mountain fighting was extracting the Vallethi from the caves.

But there weren’t really that many,”

he added thoughtfully.

“There are six mines in the Berlawes and only one natural cavern of significance, the Aven Bede.

And half of that is underwater.”

“Then where are the devils coming from?”

Ophele asked rhetorically.

None of them knew the answer, but her guards were as interested in the puzzle as she was.

“Might be more Vallethi witches we don’t know about,”

said Sir Davi darkly, preceding her into the storehouse.

“It could be.”

She didn’t like that idea, though, if only because it would be nearly impossible to prove and almost as impossible to remedy.

That would just be unfair.

“I wish I had books about magic,”

she said, a lament already familiar to her guards.

“There weren’t any books in the library at Aldeburke… ”

But the issue of the Empire’s lack of magic was a separate problem.

Technically, she had already satisfied Remin’s requirements; she had pages upon pages about the devils’ appearance and behavior, and all the sketches Master Didion could possibly want, extensively annotated and carefully ordered.

She was beginning to compile the information into something like a treatise, but was so anxious about structuring it properly that she had already rewritten the beginning six times.

In all that sea of information, however, she had yet to prove her own hypothesis.

“Do you think we might get some of your fellows to come in?”

she asked the sawyer when they had completed the interview, trying not to sound too eager.

“You have been so helpful, if I could just speak to a few more people…”

“Don’t think so, lady, sorry,”

he said, gruff but not unkind.

“Sight o’ buildin’ to be done afore winter, to say nothin’ o’ firewood.

Takes time to get over here, y’know.”

“I do,”

she said, trying not to sigh.

“Thank you so much for coming.”

“No reason why we can’t go see them ourselves, lady,”

Davi said when the man was gone, rousing himself from his usual corner.

“My lady,”

Sir Leonin reminded him, for all that Davi was seven years his senior, but did not otherwise contradict him.

“We could?”

She looked from one to the other, her heart leaping.

“His Grace wouldn’t mind?”

“Only a few places he said not to let you visit,”

Sir Davi replied with a shrug.

“Seems to me that means everywhere else is fine.”

“So I could go to the wall? And the north gate? And talk to the woodsmen? Or maybe the barracks, all of His Grace’s soldiers are there, but oh, he did say he didn’t want me to hear them swearing…”

Ophele trailed off with rising excitement rather than disappointment.

She had never imagined that having guards might afford her more freedom.

“They’d be pleased to help, my lady,”

Sir Davi assured her.

“Though probably best to ask His Grace all the same.”

“It would only take a few minutes each,”

she said, mostly to herself as she looked down at the notes from her most recent interview.

“Even if it were just a moment, when they stopped for a drink…how many men are at the barracks? ”

“About four hundred this time of day, lady. My lady,”

Sir Davi corrected at Sir Leonin’s basilisk stare.

She could cut her list of questions down.

All the men had begun telling her the same thing over and over again anyway; packs of ghouls, solitary wolf demons, clever, cowardly stranglers.

She didn’t think that pattern would change greatly no matter how many men she interviewed.

Now she wanted dates, places, numbers.

Five minutes per man? How many questions could she ask in five minutes?

Gazing into the middle distance, Ophele pondered the problem.

It wasn’t just the matter of asking questions; it would take quite a bit of research afterward to turn their vague answers into something useful, but…oh, if she could do it!

In her excitement, she found herself standing in front of Sir Edemir before she had a chance to think better of it.

“Sir Edemir, would it be possible to have maps of the valley made?”

she asked.

“Ones that I could write on? With labels of all the major battles and towns and forts, and natural formations? And the mines.

And the caves.”

The ideas popped into her head as she spoke them.

“Eight copies?”

“Eight.”

Until now, Sir Edemir had given her whatever she wanted, but this time he paused.

“That’s at least two days’ work, my lady.

Is this the work you’re doing for Rem?”

“Yes.

I don’t think I could fit it all on one map, it wouldn’t make sense,”

she said hesitantly.

“I need a map for each spring and fall for the last four years.

But the scholars will like it, I think.”

“Even if we have to send it to them by post,”

he replied, a wry smile creasing his broad face.

“Very well.

I’ll lend you Devranot this once.

Rem will have to tell me what work he wants delayed before I give you more.”

She nodded.

She wouldn’t dream of asking for Remin’s work to be delayed for hers.

“Oh, but…the almanacs?”

she remembered, hoping this did not constitute another favor.

“For the last four years.”

“I already sent for those,”

he said, looking amused.

“Anything else, you’ll have to wheedle it out of Rem yourself.”

“I will, thank you!”

She was barely paying attention to the last part and almost bumped into Sir Davi in her hurry to get back to her desk.

She had work to do .

She was still at it when Remin returned to the cottage that sunset.

Relocation had barely put a dent in her concentration; Ophele didn’t even hear him open the door.

“Wife?”

he said, and almost made her heart burst from her mouth and plop into her teacup.

“Oh! Remin,”

she said, turning to accept his kiss.

He was still sweaty from training, and she squawked and squirmed away as he tried to embrace her.

“No, you’re all sweaty! I’m sorry I didn’t hear you come in; I was working.”

“So I see,”

he said, noting the many ink-blotted papers scattered across the small table.

“Is all of this about the devils?”

“Yes.

It’s a treatise.”

It sounded ridiculous to her own ears; what did she know about a treatise? “Like The Will Immanent.

Mr.

Aubriolot defined the divine in the first treatise almost like he was talking about an animal, what it looks like and its behavior and so on.

Though maybe that’s not nice to say,”

she added, wondering what exactly constituted blasphemy.

“Would you like tea?”

“Yes,”

he said, sitting down to remove his armor as she bustled over to the hearth.

“Davi said you want to go out and interview more men.”

“Yes, I do.

Even if it’s just for a couple minutes each.

It would be better if they didn’t have to come all the way to the storehouse, wouldn’t it?”

Setting the kettle over the fire, she came to help him with his armor.

He could manage it himself, but he had to use his teeth to undo the straps of his vambraces.

“If you have guards with you, then I meant for you to go wherever you like…”

His black brows drew together, a silent but.

“I don’t like the idea of you walking that much, though.

Especially outside the walls.

And we don’t have horses to spare yet…”

“I don’t know how to ride,”

she reminded him, crestfallen.

“Yet,”

he repeated, pulling off his breastplate and setting it on its stand.

“There’s going to come a time when I can’t let you go anywhere without guards,”

he said, looking at her with an apology in his eyes.

“And maybe one day you’ll only be able to go out in a carriage, even if I’m with you.

Especially if I’m with you.

It won’t be safe.

I’m sorry for that.”

“That’s not your fault,”

she said, touched by the apology and wondering why he thought he had to give one.

It was her father’s fault for trying to kill him .

“But I’ll teach you to ride.

There will be more horses once the harvest is in, and then you can go wherever you like, at least for a little while.

Though I’ll miss having you ride with me,”

he admitted, and was surprised when she promptly slid into his lap.

“We still have to think of a name for your horse,”

she told him.

“Even after I learn to ride, I still want to ride with you sometimes, just like we do now.”

“I’ll buy you a horse of your own.”

His arms wrapped around her and his lips brushed her forehead.

“What about an Anglose? Have you heard of them?”

She shook her head.

“They’re a lady’s hunting horse, I saw them in Segoile.

Gentle as kittens, with feathers on their feet.

And they’re light as a cloud.

Their gait,”

he explained.

“I’ve never seen a horse so soft-footed.

What color do you want?”

“Black,”

she said instantly.

He smiled, the corners of his black eyes crinkling.

“All right.

And in the meantime, if you want to go talk to my men…”

She could almost see him wrestling with himself.

“I know it won’t hurt you to walk,”

he admitted reluctantly.

“But if you get hot, or tired, stop.

If you feel sick, tell Davi and Leonin.

Promise me.”

“I will.”

“You almost died,”

he said seriously, looking her in the eyes.

“I was in the Brede with you for six hours, wife, wondering if you would ever wake up again.

And once you have sun sickness, it’s more likely you’ll get it again.

Promise me you’ll be careful.”

“I will,”

she repeated, softer.

None of what he felt showed in his stern face, but she had learned to see it in his eyes, the depths of things he never let himself say.

She hadn’t thought about what that day had been like for him.

“I really will.”

“All right.”

He sighed and looked again at her papers.

“You never do anything halfway.”

“I want to protect your men from scholars,”

she told him, trying to make him smile.

“And…I want to try to talk to as many as possible.

Sir Davi said there are over five hundred at the barracks, and I was doing some sums…”

* * *