Page 61

“You’ll be careful?”

“As ever I am when there’s work to be done,” said Sir Miche, standing on the pier of the River Brede in the September sunshine. He was about to make use of the river’s first ferry. “Though I’m just going to Aldeburke, my lady, not the Undebige Valley.”

Ophele would rather have faced the undead than Lady Hurrell. But as much as she would miss Sir Miche, it was also exciting to think of his return, laden with the entire contents of Aldeburke’s library, as well as her seal and a few of her mother’s things. By the time he got back, she and Remin would already have moved to the manor.

“Please give this to Azelma,” she said, handing him a thick letter. “And make her write me back, even if it’s only a few words to say she’s doing well. She hasn’t answered any of my letters. I hope nothing happened to her.”

“The scary lady in the kitchen?” Miche tucked the letter dutifully into his saddlebags. His horse was also making the voyage across the river. “If she’s willing to face down a knight with a ladle, I expect she’s well enough.”

“She did used to hit me with a spoon,” Ophele said hopefully, and lowered her voice to a confidential whisper. “I almost forgot, there’s a nook above the bay window in the library, all my favorite books are hidden up there, I expect no one’s touched them. And I left a few in my bedroom, just ask Germain to fetch them, I don’t want anything else. And I had a stack in the barn, Tam can show—”

“Wait, wait, wait,” Sir Miche interrupted, looking amused. “Master Gibel! Lend me your scribe, if you please.”

The dockmaster was trailed by a journeyman with a lap desk, and the two of them were charged with tracking all arrivals, departures, and shipping manifests. Miche signaled the stocky young man to pull out his desk and looked expectantly at Ophele. Blushing, she repeated her requests, though Sir Miche’s look of exaggerated amazement made her start giggling halfway through the recitation.

“Like a squirrel,” the blond knight said, shaking his head as he took the list from the scribe. “Sure there’s nothing else? I’ll ransack your mother’s chambers, if you say the word.”

“No, you don’t have to.” That hurt was so old she barely felt it. “Most of it belongs to Lady Hurrell.”

“Hmm.” Borrowing the quill from the scribe, he scratched his own addendum to the bottom of the list. “Lady Rache…Pavot’s…belongings,” he said, sounding each word out with a little relish as he wrote. “I’ll see what I turn up. Rem!” he bellowed abruptly, striding down the dock toward the slip where Remin was conversing with the captain of the Asphodel, one of six ferry boats. “Where’s your seal?”

“Oh, no, but Lady Hurrell won’t like it,” Ophele protested, hurrying after him. “I don’t want to cause trouble—”

“Is she going to come at me with an axe, my lady?” he asked, glancing at her over his shoulder, though he did slow his long strides before she tumbled off the dock in her haste to follow.

Put that way, it did seem ridiculous. What exactly was Lady Hurrell going to do to a Knight of the Brede? But there was a great deal she might say, including the unspecified crime of Ophele’s mother, and Ophele’s hands bunched anxiously in her skirt. All at once, she regretted this whole mad venture.

“No,” she said anxiously, subdued. “I don’t know…”

It was impossible to explain. No one could understand Lady Hurrell’s viciousness unless they had suffered it. With outsiders, she was more subtle, ruling her small social circle with an iron fist in a silken glove. Ophele had been unwilling witness to a number of smiling social assassinations, and some of her victims would likely have preferred a straightforward stabbing.

That was what she had threatened to do to Remin, Ophele remembered, feeling a chill that had nothing to do with the wind off the river. To tell. That was what Lady Hurrell did. She knew things, and told them to the right people at the right time.

“I don’t know,” she repeated, her hands knotting together with a familiar blend of shame and dread. “Sir Miche, she’s…not very nice sometimes.”

“Miche,” he corrected, handing the list to Remin.

“Please be careful,” she said, her stomach knotting with anxiety.

“Please be careful, Miche,” he said remorselessly, and grinned when she made a face at him.

“Miche,” she repeated, accepting the comfort of Remin’s hand on hers. The sight of the list in his hands might as well have been a declaration of war. “I don’t really need any of it,” she said desperately. “It’s not really mine, the library was there even before I was born—”

“Every time she says that, I want to steal something else,” Miche told Remin. “You will need dishes, won’t you? Blankets? I could empty all the linen closets. Is there any particular horse you fancied?”

“No,” Ophele said, her eyes widening.

“Are you sure? I remember seeing some very nice carriages. We have roads now.”

For a second she considered it, and yelped as he reached for the paper in Remin’s hand.

“No! No, I don’t want any carriages! Remin, make him stop,” she pleaded, torn between laughter and panic. Her fears seemed ridiculous when she was standing with Remin and Miche, two of the most renowned knights in the world. What could Lady Hurrell possibly do to her, or to them? Remin had said he wouldn’t blame her for anything her mother did, he promised…

“Stop,” Remin ordered, glancing down at her with a flicker of humor in his eyes. “Why are you so worried, wife? All of it’s yours.”

“I want… our things,” she said lamely, which was technically true, though certainly not the primary reason for her objection. “Things of our own. ”

Remin gave her a look but took her at her word, affixing his seal with her signature to the page and adding it to the scroll of orders. They looked terribly official, wrapped in black and silver ribbons and sealed with Remin’s RA stamp. And enclosed in that scroll was a letter.

Greetings to Lord and Lady Hurrell, Lisabe, Julot, and everyone at Aldeburke, she had written. I am sending this letter with Sir Miche of Harnost, who you may remember from his visit earlier this year, with the rest of the Knights of the Brede. Please extend to him your kindness and hospitality. He has offered to bring a few things from Aldeburke to me, which I do not believe will in any way inconvenience or discomfit you…

That was why she had only asked for books. She could not recall any of the Hurrells ever visiting the library, but she knew she was treading a fine and dangerous line. Everything in Aldeburke was hers, but she had no right to any of it. It was a ransom she owed for her mother’s ruin of House Hurrell. Didn’t she owe them every last page in the library?

As I have reached my majority, I am encouraged to take an interest in the estate and will be sending Mr. Thiry Cambert to manage the books going forward. This is only to relieve you of the burden you have assumed for my sake all these years and I hope will only give you more leisure to enjoy yourself, in gratitude for your work all these years.

Remin and Sir Edemir strongly encouraged this interest. Implacably, even. Remin because he took the responsibilities of a lord very seriously, and Sir Edemir because the thought of not collecting the money she was due apparently ate at his soul. The normally articulate knight had been so befuddled by her reluctance, he had been reduced to repeating but it’s yours over and over, as if he thought the problem was one of intonation.

She didn’t want it. The income from the plantations, the estate, she would forego all of it if it meant she never had to think of that place again. Her handwriting had been noticeably more wobbly on that paragraph, and even as she watched Remin and Miche make the final preparations, her breath felt tight in her chest, her heart pounding in her ears. Maybe it would be all right. Miche was clever, and strong, and she hadn’t asked for anything that Lady Hurrell wanted or used…

“Be careful,” she told him again at their final parting. The ferry would shave some miles from his journey, but it would still be December before he returned. “Come back safe. ”

“Never fear, my lady,” he told her, taking both her hands and squeezing them. “I’m only returning what’s yours. Take care of His Grace.”

He and Remin exchanged nothing more than a brief clasp of hands, and all too soon the ferry was sailing away, a little caravel skimming across the treacherous river as lightly as a water strider. A dozen men had gone with him, including Squire Barnabe, to the rejoicing of the pageboys.

“We’ll be back tomorrow, seeing Darri off,” Remin noted, pulling her to his side and adjusting the silvery fur cloak over her shoulders. He was nearly as worried about her getting cold as he was about her being too hot. “Unless it’s too early for you, little owl.”

“No, I’ll come,” she said, giving herself a shake. It was very early, with the sun just winking to the east, and this close to the wall she could hear the raspy chuckling of ghouls, snorting away on the far side of the stone.

Even as she and Remin stood together, black sails appeared to the south, the first supply ship of the morning bearing the thousand things that arrived daily. They must have set sail as soon as it was light enough to see the end of the dock.

“The river will be busy, until the snow flies,” Remin said with some satisfaction.

“I wish Sir—Miche could have stayed for the feast,” Ophele said as he lifted her into the saddle a little while later. The Feast of the Departed was only a few days away.

“It’s better that he leaves now, so as to return before winter,” Remin replied, nudging his horse up the steep road on the riverbank. “Once the snow falls, no one’s getting in or out of the valley.”

“But that means the devils will be gone soon, doesn’t it?” she asked hopefully.

“In a month or so. But we’ll be right on their heels,” he said, glancing with foreboding toward the mountains. “I will find their dens.”

Ophele did not like this idea for many reasons. She would miss Remin and worry about him and the men who accompanied him, but it seemed a very risky proposition to her, following the devils back into the mountains. The Berlawes curved northeast for a hundred and fifty miles, an enormous territory to hunt through, and even she had heard about parties stranded there by snowstorms, and glaciers so rotten they sheared away like jagged glass. If anyone could survive, it would be Remin, but …

She could give him a destination.

Or kill him.

The butterflies in her belly turned at once to lead, a sickening plunge in the pit of her stomach. Because yes, that was a possibility, too. If he believed her, and she was wrong, then he and everyone who went with him might die.

“Where do you want to go?” Remin asked.

“Home, please,” she said, nestling into his warmth. She needed to look at her notes again.

* * *

It was a season of departures. Everywhere Ophele looked, the valley was bustling in a last burst of frantic activity before the long quiet of winter. Whenever she was in the office, there was an endless stream of incoming reports, and every night Remin and his knights sat down at the supper table and ate like they had been starving for weeks, then fell asleep over their plates. It was a good omen if the harvest was in before the Feast of the Departed, so Remin had shoved every man into the fields, including himself.

This year, he was determined that all the omens would be good.

Though she had known it was coming, Ophele was still saddened at the departure of her students, bound to the barracks to resume their proper service to their squires and knights. The dormitories had finally been completed and the boys groaned dismally at the thought of domestic chores, but were very excited to be picking up their swords in addition to their cleaning rags.

“Will you come watch us practice, my lady?” asked Legeriot as they were taking their leave from the cookhouse, with a series of bows, compliments, and scruffy little bouquets that proved they had learned well the lessons of Sir Miche. “I beat Gavrel last time.”

“You kicked me,” Gavrel objected. “Knights don’t kick.”

“Sir Miche did,” Legeriot countered. “Remember? He kicked Sir Picolot in the—”

“I would love to come watch,” Ophele intervened, before the argument could build up steam, though she had mixed feelings about watching boys whack at each other with wooden swords. “But you must promise to be very careful, won’t you? And practice hard. ”

“We will, my lady,” said Denin, with his manliest air. He had just turned twelve and was lording it over the other boys. “We’re going to be Knights of the Andelin one day. Sir Bram said we could, if we earned it.”

The thought of what these boys would have to do to earn such a thing struck her tender heart like a small blade, and as little Valentin approached to make his farewell, Ophele couldn’t help herself. She did what she had been wanting to do from the moment she saw those big brown eyes.

“You must be very careful, too,” she said, bending to embrace the eight year-old. He only resisted for an instant before his arms crept around her neck, wiry little limbs and hands already roughened from the hard work he did. How had his mother been able to let him go? “Mind your teachers,” she said, stroking his brown hair as she looked at the others. It reminded her of Azelma’s farewell to her, all those months ago. “Be brave, and don’t tell lies.”

After that, nothing would do but for the other boys to be similarly distinguished, though Gavrel and Legeriot hung back for a moment, eying each other, and Denin was shockingly tall up close. He had only just turned twelve, why was she suddenly looking him in the eye? Hadn’t he been shorter only a few months ago?

Jacot sidled toward the cookhouse doors as if he were afraid she would capture him next, but Ophele only offered him a smile and a tiny nod. He would continue to come and see her several times a week, at least until the north wall was finished.

The builders wanted to have it done before winter, if only because a good number of them were hoping to leave the valley by then. Remin was prepared to feed as many as he had to, but soon they were going to have to make the expensive choice between continuing work on the wall versus building something better than tents to endure the coming blizzards.

Ordinarily, Ophele would have been happy to offer her own hands wherever they were most needed, be it the wall or the harvest or the dormitories of the barracks, but she was hard at her own task, wading through hundreds of interviews until the letters jittered before her eyes. Initially, Remin was pleased by the success of his gambit. This was safe work that kept her indoors and was both useful and interesting. But now he was taking the quill from her fingers almost every night and grumbling about eyestrain.

It was far preferable to the other strain on her eyes.

Sewing.

If Lady Verr hadn’t already been on the way, Ophele would have wallowed in her papers from morning til night. She hated sewing. She was so far behind, she didn’t know how she could ever catch up, and Remin’s birthday was only two months away. She wanted so badly to give him something she had made herself, if only to prove that she could fulfill this simple, minimal requirement of a noblewoman.

“Show me again,” she told Elodie, watching avidly as the girl demonstrated various stitches. As promised, she had brought her sampler, a little square of linen with dotted marks to show where the stitches should go. But not, to Ophele’s despair, how they got there.

“Blanket stitch, hem stitch, chain stitch, whip stitch,” Elodie chanted in her piping voice, her small silver needle flying. She knew a number of sewing songs that had at least taught Ophele the names of the stitches. “Mellie sews an odd stitch, a back stitch, a cross stitch…”

“And one to bless the stars…” Ophele warbled tunelessly along, with no more idea of notes than stitches. Her own sampler, which she tried to hide from the stars as well as everyone else, was decidedly rumpled and bloodstained from multiple pricks to her fingers. “Is your family coming to the feast?”

“I think so, Mama said we might,” the girl said happily. Remin had just issued his invitation to the permanent residents of the valley, and the new farmers had been vacillating. “Last year we stayed home ’cause Papa said His Lordship always set his table with other people’s food, and Mama said he shouldn’t say that, and then Papa said fine, we just won’t go.”

Ophele blinked. “The Count of Engleberg?”

“Uh-huh. Lady Engleberg wasn’t nice either, she was old and mean and always had a face like—” Elodie scrunched her face in demonstration, an expression that implied she had just eaten something sour. “One time Auntie Lisset didn’t curtsy, and she got scolded.”

That meant Amise was Elodie’s mother. Amise Conbour. Ophele filed this knowledge away.

“Scolded?” she echoed .

“Uh-huh. You show your lady respect and how she didn’t curtsy right, and like that. Mama was soooooo mad…”

Well. Maybe that was why Auber’s relations hadn’t wanted anything to do with their new duchess. Ophele frowned, picking at her stitches. That was never the sort of lady she wanted to be. But thinking of her mother’s effortless graces and perfect manners, she was painfully aware how short of the mark she fell. And there was Sir Leonin’s shadow lying over the doorstep, listening as his duchess interrogated a child about sewing and noble courtesies.

Ophele had yet to reconcile herself to her guards. At least she had finally stopped tripping over them, but she didn’t think she could ever accept having them follow her everywhere she went, witness to every awkward, clumsy moment of her life. It seemed so unnecessary. This was Tresingale. No one wanted to hurt her.

Well, no person.

There was an unnamed road that stretched from the market to the barracks that she had reason to frequent of late, with wide stretches of grassy fields on either side that currently hosted an absolutely enormous flock of geese. Ophele had felt vaguely sorry for the creatures when Mosquito Pond was filled in, but their numbers had been steadily increasing ever since, and now she approached them with trepidation, wondering at the goose-y thoughts that lay behind those button-black eyes. She knew less of geese than she did of horses.

And they were butting up very close to the road.

“My lady,” said Sir Davi suddenly, as they were heading to the market the next day, where Ophele was meant to consult Master Ffloce about the ceremonies for the Feast of the Departed. “Stop walking, please.”

Ophele froze.

On her left, there was a low, sinister hiss. Two large geese stalked forward with their wings partially outspread, which surely could not be a good thing. Behind her, she felt a hand on her shoulder.

“Leonin.” Sir Davi’s voice sounded strangled. “You’ll hold them off?”

“I doubt I will have your finesse with the creatures, but it seems we have no choice,” the other man replied acidly. His sword slid free of its sheath with a snick of steel. “Go. My lady, please cover your head.”

“What are you—” Ophele began, and then squealed in surprise as Sir Davi suddenly flung his heavy cloak over her, snatched her up, and started running. There was a cacophony of honking and hissing and things thumping against her from the other side of the cloak, but Sir Davi was laughing so hard she couldn’t even be afraid. Through a small gap at the bottom of the cloak, she saw feathers, eyes, and the road passing underfoot surprisingly fast; Sir Davi was a tall man, and even with her over one shoulder, he was loping up the hill like a wolf.

“All right, my lady,” he said after a few moments, setting her down carefully and pulling the cloak off her. “Not hurt anywhere? Good. I think we’ve survived.”

“We have,” she said dubiously. Over his shoulder, Sir Leonin was still fighting his way through a storm of angry geese, his sword arcing grimly through the air as they flew at his head and pecked at his legs. Feathers and blood were flying everywhere.

“Maybe you ought not watch,” said Sir Davi tactfully.

Small feathers were drifting from Sir Leonin’s hair when he finally emerged and there was a purpling welt on his cheek, to say nothing of the injuries probably concealed by his clothing. Ophele bit her lips as he approached. That might have been her, if they hadn’t reacted so quickly. He had faced the wrath of the geese for her.

“Thank you,” she said, trying with all her might to face him with respect. “Th-that…looks like it hurt.”

Behind her, Sir Davi exploded into laughter, and she couldn’t help it. Sir Leonin glared at both of them as Ophele sagged down onto the road and howled, covering her mouth with both hands and shaking her head at him helplessly as tears streamed down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry, I’m…so sorry,” she gasped, laughing wildly. “I really am…so grateful…”

“By the stars, who would have guessed we would be tested so soon?” Sir Davi had to brace himself with his sword to stay upright. “My lady, it is our honor to have faced these foes on your behalf—”

“We are going to be late,” Sir Leonin said stiffly. Ophele made a monumental effort to pull herself together. “My lady, are you quite sure you are unharmed? His Grace will not be pleased if there is so much as a scratch.”

“No, I’m fine, really,” she assured him, and couldn’t help looking back at the milling geese. Their beady black eyes gleamed with malevolence. “Thank you, again. ”

“P’raps His Grace will give us honors for it.” Davi swung his sheathed sword over one shoulder and moved to Ophele’s other side. “Defense of the lady duchess. They can call you the Goose Knight.”

“I will know who to blame if they do,” Sir Leonin said frostily, and Ophele had to chew the inside of her cheek as Sir Davi shot her a naughty look, hurrying toward the town square.

* * *