Page 72

“Stars and ancestors, where’d the leaves go?” a dumbstruck Remin demanded the next morning, flinging open the shutters and gaping out the window. “Was there a storm last night? We should have had weeks before this.”

“Is there? What?” Ophele sat up in bed, eyes half-closed and hands fumbling for an imaginary windowsill. “There’s leaves?”

“No. There aren’t,” Remin said savagely, stooping to yank his trunk open and flinging on some clothes. His breath puffed white as it passed the open window. “This shouldn’t happen. It’s too soon. The snow isn’t halfway down Long Pennitt, there’s nowhere for the devils to hide, the sun’s going to cook them all before we can find out where they’re going—”

“Find out—oh, no!” Ophele gasped, scrambling for the window herself. “No, it’s too soon! Remin, you promised you wouldn’t go for another two weeks!”

“The leaves never fall this early,” Remin said, guilt smiting him as he stomped into his boots. “I have to talk to Tounot. The spike frames aren’t ready yet, the carpenters haven’t finished the platforms, there’s no way we could go today—”

“Today?” Ophele shrilled, scurrying after him. “No, you can’t go today, it’s not ready—”

The alarm in her voice made him stop short, and Remin had to catch her as she ricocheted off his back.

“I know we’re not,” he said, drawing her against him in a tight embrace. “There’s no point in going if we’re not prepared to come back. I know we’re not ready, wife, and we’re not leaving until I am satisfied we are. I promise.”

“All right. Then…then you have to go get ready,” she said, pushing him toward the door. Her lower lip quivered. His little owl was trying so hard to be brave about it. “Will you come home for supper?”

“Yes. Even if I am just coming to bring you a basket,” he promised, lifting her to her toes for a kiss. “Don’t be afraid, little owl. It will be all right.”

It would not be all right. It was too soon.

Outside the cottage, he shot a black glare at the nearest tree, the trailing shadows of its bared branches like the grasping fingers of a strangler. That was not enough cover for devils. And for a moment he turned east, craning his neck toward the old forest, wondering whether that might not be a good thing after all. Denied the cover of the trees in the valleys and the snow in the mountains, then maybe all the devils would just burn away, and that would be the end of them. An ignominious conclusion to the evil that had so devastated his people.

But when he pictured those enormous, ancient trees and the permanent gloom of the deep wood, Remin didn’t think so.

He broke into a trot, heading for the stables.

“Are we still planning to use the watchtowers?” asked Auber when Remin arrived at the barracks, where a line of tall box wagons was rolling into the courtyard. Auber, Tounot, and Jinmin had guessed which way the wind was blowing—or had already blown—and the barracks were a hive of activity, preparing for this last and most dangerous expedition.

“Yes,” growled Remin resentfully. “But plan to spend some time in the mountains, too. Supply for ten days. If the devils give us a direction, I want us prepared to follow it.”

“Then we’ll want a base camp in the foothills, and signal smoke,” said Tounot from a rough table nearby, where he was inventorying the equipment as it was packed into each wagon. “And someone coordinating between the mountain climbers and the watchtowers. Do you want your command tent? ”

“No.” Remin wasn’t fooled. They’d pack it and then stuff him into it with guards at the first opportunity.

“Early for us to be leaving,” said Jinmin, lumbering into the courtyard beside them. “Early, early, early.”

“With the manor half-done and Her Grace not moved in yet.” Tounot shook his head. “The servants not even arrived…”

“To say nothing of the supplies—” agreed Auber, who was wrangling a crate of them.

“And Sousten drowning her in house plans—”

“And scholars from the Tower due any day—”

“Early, early, early,” sang Jinmin, rocking back on his heels, and Remin’s temper snapped.

“That’s enough,” he snarled. “I am going, and I will not hear another word about it. Auber, make sure the blacksmiths finish the spike frames today; they can start looking over everyone’s armor tomorrow. Tounot, talk to Bram and make sure the river defenses will be completed while we’re gone. The Third can terrace off the river road if they need something to do. Jinmin, see to our supply and report to me on the state of the city walls later today.”

“Yes, my lord,” they said together, and Remin departed in a fury.

It was his duty to go. Nothing could shake him from that conviction. If there was some way to discover where the devils were coming from, he must find it, lest they return next year with even greater fury. Even Ophele had resolved that he must go, believing with all her heart that he would find the way, if anyone could. And it wasn’t as if he was abandoning her. She would be perfectly safe, with guards to protect her and a lady to wait on her and even— finally!— maids to serve her, once the party from Ereguil arrived.

But they were strangers. He didn’t know these people. How could he leave her with strangers, and trust them to take care of her?

There were lines of temporary cottages built on the west side of the manor, so Remin went there next, and spent the next hour under Juste’s censorious blue eyes, trying to think of every possible misfortune that could befall Ophele in the next two months. It was just bad luck that the leaves had decided to fall at the time of greatest upheaval, with refugees coming back from the villages, waves of newcomers coming across the river, and everything else needing to be put in its place before winter .

Including Ophele herself, who would move up to the Big House alone.

Remin took a few minutes from his busy schedule to terrorize Sousten and the plasterers, but he already knew this battle was lost. The sheer quantity of plaster dust—and the fact that all of them were staring at him with cloths tied over their faces—was inarguable proof that the house was not ready for habitation. Harassing them wouldn’t get it done any faster.

Forced to capitulate, Remin settled into his other errands. He generally had a good memory for the various projects underway in the valley, but today he had an actual list, collected from Edemir after he had issued all his other orders and endorsements, including signing a new will. He made provisions for the ferries to be docked once the river began to freeze, dispatched a secretary to begin investigating the new port on the Cliffs of Marren, and was halfway down the street before he remembered to retrieve Lancer’s armor from the storehouse, so the blacksmiths could inspect it tomorrow.

He dropped by the hospital. He had a long visit with Nore Ffloce, who had completed the plans for townhouses to accommodate new merchants and several of Remin’s knights. The geese eyeballed him from either side of the road as he turned back for the barracks, fat and hostile and insolent, and he wondered when exactly they were supposed to migrate.

“My lord!” called a voice as Remin turned at the crossroads of the barracks, and Remin turned to find one of the porters from the harbor racing toward him, red-faced with exertion.

“Slow down,” Remin said, as Lancer snorted and swung to face the potential threat. “What is it?”

“Cleric—crossing the river now,” the man gasped. “Beg pardon, Master Gibel said you’d want to know, m’lord, as we weren’t expecting any Celestial Brothers. And the captain signals he’s sick.”

“Bastard devils,” Remin swore. “Why the—send a messenger from the barracks to fetch Gen, would you? I’ll go down to the harbor now.”

“Yes, m’lord.”

The ferry was just gliding into its slip as Remin galloped onto the pier, abandoning Lancer at the nearest hitching post. Master Gibel hurried toward him with his journeyman at his heels, pulling his beard in agitation.

“Stars and ancestors, I am glad you have come,” said the harbormaster, bowing without slowing. “I’d no notice that he was coming, and I’ll have words with the captain, transporting him without a pass. Were you expecting anyone from the Temple, my lord? I can hardly send him back over the river, it looks like another trip will finish him off.”

“That’s all we need,” Remin replied, wondering whether the Temple of the Celestial Divine might be trying to frame him for the murder of a cleric. Brother Hemelot Oleare had had to be carried off the ferry in a litter, and the man was old, exhausted from his journey, and apparently prone to motion sickness.

“How old did they say he is?” Genon asked when he arrived, crouching beside the sick man with a grunt.

“Eighty-three.” Remin bared his teeth. He had some respect for the religion of the stars and had even found some consolation in its teachings. But the Temple itself was inseparable from the sacred Emperor, the Divinity, the godhood made manifest, and therefore to be suspected at every possible turn. And even if the clerics of the Holy City of Jaen hadn’t meant to lay the man’s death at his door, it was an expression of contempt to send him someone so old, and cruel besides. What had Brother Oleare done to deserve a long, rough journey to the far end of the Empire at his age?

But… had the Temple sent him? He wore the blue and white cassock of a Brother of the Path, a mystic brotherhood that contemplated the stars as a language of revelation. He also had the longest beard Remin had ever seen: thick, luxuriantly white, extending all the way down to his rope belt, and currently a mess of sick.

“Well, he’s not dead,” said Gen, as the cleric vomited again. Beckoning for a bucket, he washed the worst of it away. “Brother, can you hear me? I’m the camp surgeon, just going to take a look at you.”

Brother Oleare looked beyond hearing anyone. Remin stood back as Genon produced a clean sponge to press to the old man’s lips, so he could wet his tongue without provoking more vomiting. His color was poor, chalk-white, and with his mouth open the bones of his skull were unsettlingly prominent.

“Nothing wrong besides the obvious,” Genon said, rising and beckoning two waiting porters to carry the cleric over to a nearby wagon. “Needs sleep and feeding up, but he might drop dead any second of old age. Wonder why he came. ”

“Hopefully we’ll get a chance to ask.”

“At least we’ve a hospital to put him in,” Genon said philosophically. He and his journeymen spent most of the last two months outfitting a small stone building to serve the need, now that there were so many people in the valley. Remin’s population was mostly young but very active, and they averaged a serious injury every few days, to say nothing of the usual illnesses, sprains, and contusions that occurred in daily life.

“Welcome to the Andelin, Brother,” said Remin, bending over the back of the wagon to sketch the blessing of the stars. Gently, he touched chest, forehead, cheeks, and then covered the cleric’s eyes with his palm and lifted it in the gesture of revelation. “It would be a shame if you never got to see it.”

“I’ll send a runner if anything changes.” Genon mounted the front of the wagon and gave the reins a snap. “Give my regards to your lady.”

It would be some hours before Remin had time to give regards to anyone. He was still only two-thirds of the way through his list by suppertime, and swung by the cottage to find Ophele buried in her papers and ignoring a perplexed Lady Verr. Setting down a hamper of food, he served Ophele himself, admonished her to eat, and then went back to the kitchen to remind Wen to bake a few treats for her while he was away. It seemed all too likely that she would closet herself off with some new project and live off tea.

Jogging up the stairs to the storehouse office, Remin sat down with Edemir to make still more lists.

It was his own fault. How many times had he told his men that no one should be irreplaceable? And yet he had never made plans to delegate his own work, in case he was injured or fell ill, for who could replace the Duke of Andelin? Ophele? Now he had reason to regret it as he sat and racked his brains, scribbling pages of instructions for Juste, Edemir, and Bram, trying to anticipate a season’s worth of trouble in the space of a few hours.

His head was aching by the time he finally went home, to find Ophele asleep at the table.

They were going to talk about this tomorrow. She was not going to be working all hours of the day and night, falling asleep at the table, and skipping her supper while he was gone. She didn’t so much as twitch as Remin lifted her from the chair, her head lolling over his arm, and her bare feet were like ice as he tucked her into bed.

He didn’t mean to look. Even if it was galling that she still hadn’t let him see whatever she was working on, and he was about to leave her for months. But as he bent to blow out the lamp, his eyes happened to fall on her papers long enough to recognize the map of the Andelin, which he knew as well as the palm of his hand. Eight copies of that map, each one dated in the upper right: Spring 822. Fall 822. Spring 823, Fall 823. Spring 824…

Remin frowned, flicking through the pages. A map for each fall and spring for the last four years, all of them dotted with small, unevenly shaded circles, identified by a number and date. Turning, he skimmed the topmost set of notes, scrawled in Ophele’s messy, childish handwriting. It took only a minute for him to understand what he was reading.

Slowly, he sank into the chair.

He and his men had been wracking their brains for months , trying to think of a way to find the devils’ dens, and this infuriating little creature had gone behind his back and done it!

“Ophele,” he said, going to shake her awake. “Wake up. Explain this to me.”

* * *

The next morning was quite busy.

The sun had barely touched the horizon before Remin was up and about, pushing a half-conscious Ophele into Lady Verr’s hands with orders to make her look like a scholar. The bare thought of his wife made Remin simultaneously want to laugh and shake her, bursting with pride at what she had done and intense irritation that she had kept it to herself until the final hour. It was both unbelievable and entirely in character that she would have been working quietly at something like this for weeks without breathing a single word about it to anyone.

“But I asked you where the devils came from, remember?” she had protested the night before, bewildered. “I wanted to find out.”

That had set off another explosion of laughter, and by the time he stopped, she had looked a little sulky .

“No, you did, you did,” Remin had agreed, wiping his eyes and laying a hand on her head, the small, delightful casing for her busy brain. And then he had taken her back to bed and made enthusiastic and very slightly vengeful love to her, to make sure she passed out until morning.

For his own part, Remin was off to Juste’s cottage at dawn, with Ophele’s maps and several pages of interviews clutched in one hand. He hadn’t gotten halfway through his explanation before the generally imperturbable Juste let out a short, violent exclamation.

“That’s what she meant?” he demanded, as if Remin, her husband, had been granted any special insight at all into the mysteries of her mind.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said acerbically. “But it would work, wouldn’t it? At least for a general vicinity.”

“I need to see the rest.” Juste’s pale eyes moved rapidly over the pages of interviews. “How many did you say she had?”

“She said four hundred something.”

“She is thorough,” Juste muttered, and added belatedly, “my lord. Please give me a few minutes and then I’d like to see them myself. The idea has a great deal of merit, I will say that much.”

For his own amusement, Remin interrogated the only two other people who might have known what Ophele was up to, as soon as they arrived. Both Leonin and Davi unsurprisingly professed ignorance, though Davi was as smugly pleased as if it had all been his own idea.

“I knew she was up to something,” he said, clapping the expressionless Leonin on the shoulder. “Didn’t I say so? The wall all over again, ain’t it.”

It was. And just like that day all those months ago when Remin had returned from Ferrede to find that Ophele had been quietly organizing things to her own satisfaction in his absence, he felt a certain amount of chagrin as he followed her backtrail, this time mingled with admiration. If he had any complaint at all, it was just that she hadn’t spoken sooner. He had asked. And something like this, at the last moment, with no time to consider, no time to plan…

Well, he had commanded armies into battle with less time to prepare than this. Huffing to himself, Remin led the way back down the hill to collect his beautiful, clever, close-mouthed wife.

He had half expected Lady Verr to squeeze and powder and frizzle Ophele within an inch of her life, but it was nowhere near as bad as he feared. Ophele looked much the same as usual, except somehow a little tidier. Her long hair had been pulled into a complex knot on the back of her head, a heavy weight on the flower stem of her neck, with a scrap of dark blue velvet snugged rather sweetly over the top of her head. He thought that was the same wine-red gown she had been wearing for months, but the flashes of blue and embroidery were new, and Lady Verr had done something so it fit her differently, somehow. Better.

“You look…well, wife,” he said, stiff with Lady Verr present. “Are you pleased?”

“Yes, I like it,” she said, approaching as he beckoned her near for a closer examination. Pearl and gold earrings dangled from her ears, and he darted a sharp look at Lady Verr.

“Did she pierce your ears?”

“Pierce?” Ophele repeated, alarmed.

“No, Your Grace,” Lady Verr replied, unperturbed by his black glare. “They are only clips.”

“Please do nothing of the sort,” Remin said shortly. Ophele glanced uncertainly between them, and the lady seemed to sense that this was the moment to make a graceful exit, tumbling her things into her valise and bowing herself from the cottage.

“You do like it?” Ophele asked as soon as the door shut behind her, looking up at Remin. Her eyelashes looked darker and her lips redder than usual.

“If you are happy, then I am content, except for the earrings,” Remin replied. “Only very fast women pierce their ears, in society, or so Juste says. Talk to me before you do anything of the sort.”

“Oh,” she said, allowing him to propel her toward the door. “Should I take them off?”

“Not if you like them.” Annoyed, he yanked the door shut behind them. Damned Segoile nonsense. “Come. We must speak to Juste and Edemir first.”

“It’s not too late, is it?” Ophele asked, hurrying to keep pace beside him. “I only thought, if I am wrong, then maybe someone could get hurt, or you might go to the wrong place and not find the devils, and then maybe next year they’ll be even worse.”

“It is very late,” Remin said bluntly. “If I had known what you were about, I would have made sure you had help. Next time, tell me, whatever it is. There’s no shame in being wrong if your idea is good. ”

“I will. I’m sorry,” she said, and he caressed the back of her slender neck.

“It is not too late,” he said, relenting. “Juste said your method is good, and he is particular.”

It was on the tip of his tongue to say that he would give her whatever she wanted to sate her every curiosity: cartloads of paper, almanacs going back to the arrival of Ospret Far-Eyes, fleets of secretaries in livery, but now was not the time for that. Inside, he was bursting with pride, but for now he needed to temper both their expectations so she wouldn’t be too disappointed if there was some flaw in her work.

Above all else, he did not want to discourage her from trying things like this again.

Edemir looked up with surprise as they came into the busy office, far earlier than usual. Remin normally came to collect breakfast and correspondence well after dawn.

“Come and take a look at this, if you would,” Remin said, beckoning him over to an empty worktable. “Her Grace has something to show you.”

He gave her shoulder a squeeze, resisting the urge to say my wife again. Everyone knew that Ophele was a superior wife. He didn’t need to keep rubbing it in their faces.

“I might be wrong,” she said, almost pleading as she clutched her papers to her breast. “I just thought, if I talked to enough of your men, maybe there would be a pattern, but there’s no way to know if I talked to the right men, or enough of them—”

“Perhaps you could explain your idea to us first, my lady,” Juste suggested gently. “We can hear your arguments against it afterward.”

She nodded, with another beseeching glance at Remin. It was hard to hold his tongue and step back to let her explain, especially when she was so clearly nervous. But this was her idea. The credit was hers, and likewise the responsibility to explain and defend it. It was just like one of the squires, Remin told himself firmly. He couldn’t do this for her, or she would never learn to do it herself.

“W-Well, I wanted to know where the devils came from,” Ophele began, laying out her maps with spring on one side and fall on the other. “I thought, if the devils were going to the mountains to hide for the winter, then it would be all over the mountains, wouldn’t it? And that means the soldiers nearest to the mountains should see them first every year, while everyone else saw them later.”

“That’s what we believed,” Edemir said slowly, bending to look closer.

“But that’s not what happened,” Ophele replied, warming to her explanation. “The men with His Grace in 823 were on the Talfel Plateau all the way up here, and they saw the devils three weeks before Lord Balloren’s men down here, near the Gellege Bridge, even though that’s right in the foothills. So, when I saw that, I started asking everyone else when they remembered seeing the devils, and I used the phases of the moon as the markers on the map, and look! It’s the same every year, isn’t it?”

Her fingers traced the bands of moon markers, repeating the same pattern year after year: the full moon to the furthest south and west, then the three-quarter moon, the half-moon, and the new moon, black and foreboding. Every sighting earlier as the markers marched north and east, leading inexorably to a place about thirty miles northeast of Nandre, where the mountains curved back on themselves in a hook shape. The Spur was a tricky bit of country that technically still belonged to Valleth, but was so inaccessible it might as well belong to no one.

The place where the devils came from. Without stirring a step outside the city walls, Ophele had found it.

“I thought so, anyway,” she went on, mistaking their dumbstruck silence for skepticism. “And I…I thought maybe if they were all coming from the same place every year, then they might be going back to it. The same pattern as spring, but in reverse, I mean. But that’s not what happened, either. In fall, they do seem to go back to the mountains, and to particular places in the mountains, look.”

She pointed at the labeled dots.

“The Spur, the mines, and the Aven Bede,” she said. “So, you weren’t entirely wrong. They do go to those caves for the winter. They just…don’t come back out. Maybe they die there.”

She frowned at the maps for a moment, as if further contemplation might yield an answer there, too.

“I…I don’t see any other conclusion,” Edemir managed. He looked gobsmacked. “Show me how you produced these points, my lady, please. ”

“Well, most of the men couldn’t remember dates, when I asked them first,” she said, flicking through her papers to produce a neat index. “But they did remember who they were serving, and what battles they had just fought, and whether or not there was moonlight when the devils came. And once they told me that, then I could use almanacs and histories to narrow it down to a range of days…”

Remin didn’t have to say a word. Edemir and Juste were asking better questions than he would, and all he wanted to do was enjoy the sight of dainty Ophele between his two knights, looking from one to the other as she listened to their questions and then bent over the maps to explain this or that detail, and all the while her mind was working away behind those big, solemn eyes. How wonderful she was.

“We need to verify these points,” Edemir said when she had finished explaining. His broad face was flushed with excitement. “My lady. It’s not that I don’t trust your method, but for something like this we have to check the math, so to speak. And it still may not work out,” he cautioned, as much for Remin as for Ophele. “Your counterarguments are also valid. Four hundred men is the merest fraction of the ninety thousand that fought. These particular men might not be a true picture of what happened.”

“I did make notes of their lords,” she replied, tapping the stack of interviews. Remin had been present at supper when Juste taught her how important it was to try to invalidate one’s own argument, to strengthen it, and Ophele had done a thorough job of rebutting her own rebuttal.

“We can check this information amongst ourselves,” said Juste, with a rare note of excitement in his voice. “I was in Iverlach in 824. I remember our first sighting of the devils that year. It is consistent with the dates you show.”

“This is very, very good,” Edemir said, and his gray eyes flicked to Remin’s for an eloquent moment before returning to Ophele’s table of contents. “Rem, I’ll put my secretaries on this today. I don’t think we need to check all four hundred interviews, but we need to verify a good number of them.”

“And add our own timelines for the devil sightings,” said Juste, using Ophele’s terminology. “I’ll go to the barracks myself and tell Tounot and Auber to scrap the watchtowers. ”

“Do it,” Remin agreed, with deep satisfaction. It would upend every single one of their plans, but this was a better direction than anything else they had. “Hand me that quill, wife.”

“What are you writing?” Ophele looked at the departing backs of the other men and came around the table to hand him the quill. The color was high in her cheeks.

“I am going to be your four hundred and twenty-fourth interview,” he explained, adding his own timeline in his scrawling, jagged script. He vividly remembered where he had been every year when he first heard of the devils, though his memories of their disappearance were a little hazier. It was harder to notice when something wasn’t there, wasn’t it? He darted a black glance at her. “Four hundred and twenty- fourth,” he emphasized. “That’s how long you waited to tell me.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, but she could hear the humor in his voice and covered her mouth to hide a smile. “It still might not be right,” she added, worried. “And maybe if I’m wrong, it will be dangerous, or you will miss something you might have found otherwise, it was only a guess—”

“It wasn’t only a guess, and you know it.” He drew her to his side, hiding her behind the bulk of his body so he could kiss her. “I am so proud of you,” he said, low, wishing he had the words to tell her how much. “My clever wife. If you didn’t already have a library on the way, I would make a gift of one to you for this.”

He thought that would make her laugh. But she only smiled and let herself lean into him for a moment, and something flickered through her eyes, there and gone in an instant.

“I wanted to help,” she said, and there was a wistful note in her voice that he didn’t understand at all.

* * *