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“Noble lady.”

The four women of Benkki Desa bowed a greeting, and as the doors of the bathhouse slid open, the warm, sweet air wafted forth like the gentle breath of exotic lilies.

“Thank you,”

said Ophele, stepping out of her shoes and into the warm waters of the pebble stream.

A dreadful afternoon yesterday and a sleepless night last night had left her with a thundering headache, and Lady Verr had—in the politest and most deferential way possible—offered a choice between a visit to the baths or a visit from Genon Hengest.

“I would like to bathe separately, please.”

Any other day, she would have felt guilty for the request, especially when Lady Verr had walked all the way down to the bathhouse with her.

But bathing was a communal activity in Tresingale, and the last thing Ophele wanted was to be examined without her clothes on.

“As you wish,”

said Madam Sanai, waving to Bilaki and Huvara, and Lady Verr offered a small curtsy before she was escorted in the opposite direction.

Madam Sanai insisted on serving Ophele herself, and always seconded Pili, who had a light touch and cheerful manner.

“The Grace’s hands are healing,”

Madam Sanai noted as Pili deftly removed Ophele’s gown and chemise, lifting one hand gently and turning it over to look at her palm.

The callouses she had acquired over the summer were slowly fading.

“Though this is new.

From your work? ”

“Yes.”

Ophele automatically twitched her hand away, though she was not as ashamed of the indentation from her quill.

“I was re-reading what I wrote, and I wanted to…tidy it up a bit.”

“About the devils?”

Pili was particularly fascinated by the subject.

“Yes.

Sir Edemir ordered more books for me, and I have learned so much—thank you,”

Ophele added as they slipped a light robe over her shoulders and shepherded her toward her bathing room, the one with the lovely pink carp on the wall.

“Doesn’t Benkki Desa have a great many devils?”

“There are a hundred kinds of devil in every country, noble lady,”

Madam Sanai said, a rather grave and philosophical answer.

“But in our home, we call such creatures itare and they are not all evil things.

Dangerous, but not always malicious.

Like a bear, so?”

“Are they magical creatures?”

Ophele asked as she stepped into the deep wooden tub, hissing at the heat of the water.

It was always just at the edge of her endurance, but after a few moments resting against the smooth, flat stones in the bottom of the basin, it felt as if her bones were melting like wax.

“I am not sure,”

Madam Sanai answered.

She and Pili drew up their wooden stools on either side of the tub and the madam filled a bucket, pouring a stream of hot water over Ophele’s head.

“What the lady seems to mean by magic is not clear.

It is true that the…energy of my homeland is weak in this valley, and I cannot weave it.

I do not know if that is magic. In Benkki Desa, there are leopards we call Shibu who walk at night and vanish into the moonlight, but that is not accounted strange. Is it magic that makes your devils burn in the sun? The Grace says this means the devils are not of this world, but the Shibu have been with us always.”

“Maybe I don’t know what I mean, either,”

Ophele replied, closing her eyes.

What was magic? “The leopards really vanish in the moonlight?”

“They walk in places where moonlight touches,”

Madam Sanai answered.

“Dangerous, but not evil.

Sometimes a Shibu comes in the form of a young man, perilously beautiful, followed always by two white leopards…”

She and Pili knew Ophele’s interests by now, and their conversation wandered freely from these legends to stories about Benkki Desa itself, a mountainous country of steep gorges and rushing rivers, where swinging rope bridges stitched cities together.

Their tales breathed life into the paintings on the walls: those were the landscapes of Madam Sanai’s home, expressed in stark silhouettes.

Between their talk of manipulating natural energies—which Ophele would certainly have called magic—and the uncanny creatures of the mountains, both Pili and Madam Sanai also gently noted the condition of Ophele’s energies and body, from small items like the scrape on her elbow to the more concerning fact that she had still not had her bleeding.

Madam Sanai had inquired about this on Ophele’s fifth visit, with such respectful interest that Ophele had found herself confessing the truth.

“It may be some time,”

Pili agreed as they ushered her into the cooler bath, the water fizzing against her skin.

“In Benkki Desa, when a woman wants a baby, there are many things to strengthen her.

Hot baths in the morning, the red flower tea, and of course many offerings at the shrine of Teyyi…”

But Madam Sanai had a different opinion, and after the bathing was done and Ophele was stretched out on the cool white pallet in the massage chamber, the Benkki Desan woman traced a gentle pattern on her flat belly.

“I think the problem is not here,”

she said, her eyes closed as if she were seeking something with her fingers rather than her eyes.

“I think…here.”

“Oh,”

Ophele said involuntarily, blinking as she rubbed her forehead.

Madam Sanai’s fingers flicked again, lighter this time, against her temples.

“Pili is right,”

Madam Sanai went on.

“In Benkki Desa we say that serenity is the best cradle for a baby. Here,”

she said, her hands cupping the bones of Ophele’s pelvis.

There were light cloths covering her breasts and hips, but this matter-of-fact touch was somehow not embarrassing.

“The cradle, so? But the Grace must seek it.

Serenity. Quiet.”

No doubt this was true.

But serenity had never felt farther from Ophele’s reach, and she was learning that quiet was a dangerous thing.

Every moment of every day, she was cramming new knowledge into her head, filled with quiet desperation that it was already too late, she could never catch up when she was so far behind.

Dreading the day that Remin realized it, as he certainly would now .

“It is very quiet, at home,”

was all she said, closing her eyes to avoid meeting Madam Sanai’s penetrating purple gaze.

“Maybe the wrong kind of quiet,”

the other woman said softly, but for a while her hands worked in silence, skilled manipulations that reminded Ophele of what Remin had said on the day of the tourney.

Madam Sanai understood the body, joint and muscle and nerves, and knew how to search for the pain.

It was the thought of Remin that hurt most.

No matter how busy she kept the forefront of her mind, Ophele was always aware of the dark and churning waters beneath the surface, the storm of anxiety that rose up to drown her every night.

Madam Sanai’s quiet sympathy was making those turbulent waters rise, and Ophele squeezed her eyes shut as tears leaked below her lids, streaking toward her hair.

Really, she had known the truth all along.

From the day she met Remin, she understood that she was not what he needed or deserved.

She had known it for certain when the Knights of the Brede knelt and swore themselves to her, for her life and her honor, and she had promised that she would make them proud of her.

But the more she learned what that would take, the more she heard of the treacherous society of Segoile and the role of a lady and the thousand things she had yet to learn, the more she despaired of ever fulfilling that promise.

And yet she couldn’t stop thinking about it.

No matter what she did, her mind circled it endlessly, obsessively, trying to find a pattern, a solution, some way to forge a path for herself between the thing she was and the thing she must become.

Madam Sanai’s hands worked.

Cradling the back of her head, they stroked upward along the back of her neck, gliding over the slender tendons, drawing the warmth of her body upward.

And then they returned to her forehead, smoothing, pressing, sometimes almost to the point of pain.

“I see your tears, noble lady,”

she murmured.

“Sleep.

Be still for yourself.

I will tell you more of the Shibu, who walk the moonlight on velvet feet, and sometimes, one will come in the form of a beautiful young man…”

Her voice murmured on, low and gentle, the tale of the sacred Shibu, who was searching for something, but no one knew what.

It was a beautiful story, and sad, and somehow that made it all right as her tears flowed on, silent and endless, until she fell asleep.

Sometime later, they woke her, and she mutely underwent the final polishing as they dressed her and brushed her hair and offered her sweet mint tea.

“Has your serenity increased?”

Madam Sanai asked formally at the door.

It would have been easy to simply say yes, but somehow, looking up into the dark purple eyes, Ophele understood that unless it was true, it would be an insult.

“I feel better,”

she said instead.

Madam Sanai bowed, Benkki Desa fashion, and showed her outside.

They had been so long at the bathhouse, it was nearly midday, and Ophele hurried up the road with Lady Verr, Davi, and Sir Leonin behind her.

She did feel a little better, if only for the nap.

The air was clear and the day was chilly, the November afternoon filled with the scent of dry leaves.

Soon, she and Jacot would have to hold their lessons indoors.

They met her pupil on the way back to the manor, racing up Eugene Street as if he had wings on his heels.

He wasn’t even panting as he drew up.

“My lady,”

he said with a bow and nod for Ophele’s entourage.

“Thought that was you.

Not poetry again today, is it?”

“It is, and you will learn to like it,”

Ophele said as he groaned theatrically.

He was coming along so marvelously.

Ophele couldn’t help glancing at him as they walked up the hill together.

He was almost fifteen now, and it seemed like he grew another inch every time she took her eyes off him.

He stood straighter and spoke better.

His bare arms were tanned and taut with lean muscle, and in his face she could see the bones of the man he would become. The knight. He had swum the Brede to come here. He had become a page when most boys his age were becoming squires. Jacot had begun his learning late, too.

“I still say it don’t make no sense,”

he grumbled as they delved further into punctuation.

“Doesn’t make sense, I mean.

Semi-colons, now?”

“They’re meant to be a longer pause than commas,”

she explained.

“My mother told me that punctuation shows you how to read the words aloud. ”

Frowning, she tried to remember all the various places she had seen semi-colons, to extrapolate a pattern.

She was certain there was one, but she had never tried to set down rules before—

“Your Grace,”

said Sir Leonin, warning, and Ophele glanced up to see a rider coming up the long drive to the manor on a lathered horse, dressed in a messenger’s blacks.

“Duke Andelin?”

he called, and she shook her head, rising from her seat.

“He is away,”

she said, with a thrill of trepidation as she spotted the black and silver ribbons on the message.

And yes, that was Sir Miche’s seal, an impatient blot, smudged from the stamp being removed too soon.

A message from Aldeburke.

* * *

To Duke Remin of Andelin, at Tresingale Manor in the Duchy of Andelin, from Sir Miche of Harnost, at Aldeburke in the Duchy of Leinbruke

Rem,

Making fantastic progress on the library, especially as there are no Hurrells about to protest.

They packed up and left back in August, apparently, with a single carriage and no forwarding address.

I’ve sent Darri a message to see if he can turn anything up, as that’s a family I’d prefer to keep my eyes on…

“I didn’t want to wait until it was too late this time,”

said Ophele from the other side of the parchment, standing on the step outside Juste’s cottage.

Her eyes were wide and frozen, with shadows that had deepened to near-bruises beneath them, her face pale with a strain that had only deepened over the last few weeks.

“I am glad you did,”

Juste said reluctantly, re-folding the paper.

“I think I had better take this to Edemir, my lady, if you will—”

“Did he mean Sir Darrigault?”

Ophele asked in the same breath, looking hopeful.

“Is he in the capital? Do you think maybe they went to the capital?”

“—come with me,”

Juste finished with a sigh.

That was not how he had planned to end that sentence.

“Please do not wonder where Sir Darrigault is, Your Grace. ”

“I will try,”

she said, blinking, and Davi smirked as Juste led the way to the stables, where four horses were shortly saddled to convey them to the storeroom offices.

Edemir was not pleased to be pulled away from his mountains of paper.

“It’s not an emergency yet,”

said Juste, handing over Miche’s message and pulling over a chair for Ophele.

“But it would behoove us to prevent it from becoming one.”

Gesturing for Davi to shut the door, he took his own seat.

Both door and office were new; until last week, Edemir had kept a common workspace with his secretaries, which would not have done at all for such sensitive conversation.

And at that thought, Juste eyed Leonin and Davi for a moment, considering.

Loyal men, to be sure, but not yet the hallows of the duchess.

Ophele still refused to swear any oaths.

The Duchess of Andelin was another problem altogether.

“There are many things we have not told you, my lady,”

Juste began bluntly.

“Partly because you are so young, and partly because they are the sort of things most lords prefer to keep from their ladies.

Not from any lack of trust or capability in yourself, but because secrets are unquiet things.

They need guarding, and we would not wish that burden on you unnecessarily.”

But they had discussed this possibility before Remin left.

There was always the chance that something might occur in his absence that required the duchess’s attention, which meant explaining some of the more surreptitious work underway elsewhere.

Opinions had differed as to how much she should be told.

“Likewise, amongst ourselves,”

Edemir put in, frowning at the message.

“I have all the secrets I want.

The more I have to know, the more I have to lie.”

“But there is a secret,”

Ophele said, looking between them.

“Darri is in the capital,”

Juste answered.

“He is one of His Grace’s lesser-known knights, and he can conduct business where Edemir or I would be noticed and remarked upon.

And that is why we would prefer no one noted his absence from Tresingale, or wondered where he has gone.”

She nodded, her face solemn .

“Which places him nicely to learn any rumors of exiled noble families,”

Juste added.

“The Emperor did not spare many for exile after the Conspiracy, and I do not know why he would forgive them now.

Would you have any idea, my lady?”

“No.

They would never tell me,”

Ophele replied, so promptly that Edemir looked over the top of the page.

“I mean—because of my mother.”

“Do they have no other family? Acquaintances?”

Edemir prodded.

“Lord Hurrell’s mother died before they came to Aldeburke.”

Her shoulders hunched.

“And Lady Hurrell’s family lost their holdings in the Conspiracy.

I don’t think she spoke to them anymore.”

“Would she have gone to them, after you left?”

Juste asked, and she shook her head.

“No.

I don’t think they had much.

She always said how glad she was to go to the capital.”

They would have to learn more about Lady Bette Hurrell’s time in Segoile.

It would not be easy; so many families had fallen in the Conspiracy, there was some information that was simply not available.

“But there is something else,”

Juste said, cocking his head.

“Messengers to Aldeburke? Some other contacts?”

He already knew of at least one: someone at Aldeburke had been in contact with the Emperor, and not through his official couriers.

But there wasn’t the least sign in Ophele’s open, innocent face that she knew anything about that.

“There were some people that came to Aldeburke sometimes,”

she offered.

“But I don’t know who they were…”

There were a few names she remembered, but Juste recognized none of them.

She would have been a child in any case, with a child’s understanding of those strange grown-up gatherings.

But the mere fact of their coming was interesting by itself.

No respectable House would dare to defy the Emperor’s order of exile, when the penalty was so severe and the reward was House Hurrell, destitute and friendless.

And as Ophele described them, it became clear that the gatherings had been at Lady Hurrell’s instigation, rather than the lord’s, and began several years after the death of Ophele’s mother.

“I don’t remember when the guards left,”

Ophele said, her brows furrowing.

“There was one guard I liked, he used to play with me and called me little starling.

He said he was sorry they had to leave, and they had been called away, but he never said why.”

“Perhaps to hide you better,”

Justenin mused.

“A guard corps in a place like Aldeburke would attract unwanted attention.”

“Maybe,”

she agreed, but she did not meet his eyes.

Indeed, the more he questioned her, the more evasive she became.

Oh, she answered his questions willingly enough, but anything about her childhood or the Hurrell family was vague, and all irregularities excused by her exile.

As if an eight year-old child had decided all on her own to live in a library and forage in the forest for food.

Juste caught Edemir’s gaze, a silent instruction for him to take over, and sat back to listen.

It didn’t take long to start poking holes.

“You said, Lisabe’s tutor,”

he noted, a few minutes later.

“Did you have no tutor of your own, my lady?”

The way she blanched was as good as a confession.

“N-not of my own,”

she stammered, and it was telling that her eyes went to Leonin, her cheeks reddening.

“I was younger than Lisabe, so her teacher came first…I think in spring? After the guards left?”

It was a good excuse.

Likely true, too, if only because Ophele was an absolutely abysmal liar.

Juste let her talk a little while longer, noting the places where she hesitated, where she deflected the question, and where she glanced at Leonin and changed the subject, or rephrased Edemir’s questions into something she was more willing to answer.

He might have confronted her directly, and ended this little dance, but Juste was learning a great deal about his duchess this afternoon, who was much cleverer than even he had suspected.

“Leonin.

Davi.

Perhaps you will guard the other side of the door,”

he said, rising with the excuse of pouring more tea.

“Will you have a cup, my lady?”

“Yes.

Thank you,”

she said, so miserably that he added a dollop of honey to her cup as an apology for the interrogation.

“Your office will be unbearable in another month, Edemir,”

he said conversationally as Leonin and Davi exited, shutting the door.

His eyes went back to Ophele.

“I will not press you for confidences, my lady, but it is important that we understand the nature of your relationship with House Hurrell, so we may guess what might come next.

Did Lady Hurrell ever give a reason why you had no teachers? ”

“No,”

Ophele said reluctantly.

“I guess—I thought it was because it would cost money.

And my mother had already cost them everything.”

“So it was vindictiveness?”

Juste’s voice was quiet, outwardly calm.

“Punishing you for your mother’s crimes?”

“Yes,”

she whispered, a whole story laid bare in a single, wavering syllable.

Well, Juste had suspected as much.

“It is likewise curious that she retained some ambitions for Lady Lisabe,”

he observed, choosing to leave that line of questioning alone.

“A tutor and a dancing master? I don’t suppose you were allowed to attend lessons.”

“No.”

“And yet, Lady Hurrell bore the risk and expense of summoning them to her place of exile,”

Juste said, prompting her to ask the question.

“Yes? She did,”

Ophele replied, her brows furrowing.

“I thought…I thought it was what a lady should have.

But it would have been a risk, wouldn’t it? For them, and for her, since we were banished.”

“Unless she believed she would not be punished,”

Juste agreed.

“Perhaps there was some other game she played.

A scheme that ended badly, which forced them to flee? Or perhaps there came a summons, once her task was done.”

Her eyes lifted to his, stricken.

“But she was exiled,”

Ophele managed.

“Her task—you mean me? You think my father summoned them?”

“We know a messenger was dispatched to Aldeburke last winter,”

Juste replied.

“Unofficially.

We followed him.

At first we thought the message might have gone to you, but His Grace said you had no correspondence with your divine father.”

“No.

He never wrote to me,”

she whispered.

“Then who else would receive it, if all his guards had departed?”

Juste asked.

“Anything official would be directed to the lord, but what about something more clandestine?”

“Lady Hurrell.”

She was clutching her teacup in her hands.

“But…my father couldn’t have known, could he? Everything they did? She meant to give me to Julot, Lady Hurrell said my mother had cast them so low, they must accept even a star-cursed bastard.

But she would not dare tell that to my father… ”

There wasn’t much room to pace in Edemir’s closet, but she tried anyway, jerking to her feet with hands fluttering in agitation.

“But she must have planned it for so long,”

she said, almost to herself.

“It was two years ago when she hired the dancing-master, after His Grace had won through the mountains into Valleth.

We had a letter about it.

And isn’t that curious, too, that exiles had regular letters about the war? Lord Hurrell said it was all but won, and that’s when Lady Hurrell sent for them all, the dressmakers and the shoemakers and the jewelers, I never knew it took so many people to dress a lady, and Lady Hurrell always said we were poor.

But she was planning it even then, wasn’t she? She knew my father would protect Selenne, and give me away. That he thought so little of me, she could even dare to offer Lisabe to Remin in my place.”

Her voice had been rising with each dreadful new supposition, and now she looked between them beseechingly, as if begging them to deny it.

But Edemir was too shocked even to try.

“Lady Lisabe…Rem thought you were being kept from us on purpose,”

he said, outraged.

“That was a scheme of the lady’s?”

“Which you thwarted,”

said Juste grimly, addressing Ophele.

“Which makes it clear to me that Lady Hurrell always planned to go back to the capital.

And she meant to do it with a Daughter of the Stars for her daughter-in-law, and the Duke of Andelin for her son.

She very nearly achieved it.

She will not wish you well, Your Grace.”

“She never did,”

Ophele choked, and turned away.

Well.

That painted a much clearer picture of their enemies, but Juste would have spared her this knowledge, if he could.

Silently, he fetched her cloak and waved Leonin and Davi back into the room.

It was one thing to know that her divine father had chosen to protect his legitimate child over his bastard: hurtful, but hardly unexpected.

It was something else to think he might have known her guardians were abusing her, and chose to abandon her to them anyway.

“All those roads led you here, my lady,”

Juste said quietly as he laid her cloak over her shoulders, and dared a single squeeze.

It was all the comfort he could offer.

He did not speak again until they were ahorse and headed back to the manor, under gray skies and a snapping breeze.

It would take time to think through all the implications of what she had told him, but there was one that seemed critical to him, and he nudged his horse forward alongside hers.

“My lady,”

he began gently.

“In light of this information, I urge you again to accept the oaths of your hallows.

If there is some deeper game we do not know, there may be dangers we cannot see.”

“Sir Leonin and Sir Davi are always with me,”

she replied.

Her face was brittle as a mask.

“I forgot to tell Sir Edemir, but please do not say anything to His Grace about what I told you.

I will tell him myself.”

“Of course.”

Juste was nothing if not agreeable.

“And I hope you do not take my request to speak to you without your hallows as an indication of distrust.

I have no doubt that they will be as careful of your honor as their own.”

“The oath will only bind us more deeply to silence,”

said Leonin, who had spurred closer on her other side.

“But Sir Justenin is correct.

We would respect your privacy and secrets regardless, my lady.”

“I know you will.”

Ophele’s hands tightened on Bramble’s reins.

“It just means that we could protect you better, even from the Divinity himself,”

Leonin explained.

“If we are sworn as your hallows, then even defiance of the Divine Emperor could not be accounted blasphemous—”

“I don’t want you to defy the Divine Emperor.”

“They may have to, my lady.”

Juste was torn between irritation at her stubbornness and pleasant surprise that their meek lady could be stubborn.

“Hallows or not, if they must defend you—”

“I don’t want them to be my hallows!”

she burst out.

“None of you even asked if I wanted any, if I even deserve them! I don’t want hallows, I don’t—Brambles, git up!”

Wonder of wonders, the horse actually obeyed.

Davi gave a shout of surprise as the big horse sprang away, his platter-sized hooves drumming through the dry leaves as he raced up the road to the manor, leaving her astonished guards behind.