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When they finally saw smoke, it was coming from the wrong direction.

Ophele tried not to think of it that way, but Remin was more than a week late.

She saw the smoke with her own eyes, a green column in the sky to the northwest that everyone said must be Sir Ortaire returning from Meinhem. Over the last few days, she had learned what she could of the other villages, ashamed that it had not occurred to her to do so sooner. Meinhem was a small village on a tributary of the Brede that had once given a memorable fish fry to Remin’s Second Company. In her imagination, it was a tranquil place under the huge trees of the old forest, with people in straw hats fishing from the grassy banks of the stream.

The thought of a confrontation with such people filled her with dread. If they shouted at her, or hurled angry accusations, she hadn’t the least idea what she would say, and she was very afraid of what she might do, which could plausibly include bursting into tears.

But the people that finally appeared on the road before the cookhouse did not have the energy to be angry.

More than a dozen wagons had been dispatched to collect them, but at least half of them were empty. Soldiers stretched along the road in a line, dirty, bloody, but marching in good order, and Sir Ortaire rode at the front on a bay horse that had a number of healing gashes on its flanks. Dismounting, he dropped to his knees before her .

“Your Grace,” he said, and he looked so very tired.

“Sir knight,” she said, trying at once to remember every relevant speech she had ever read in every single book and then yielding to impulse, taking his arm to help him up. “Oh, rise, please. Welcome home. You’re not hurt, are you?”

“No, Your Grace.” She had only known Sir Ortaire a little before he left, but he had aged a great deal over the last few months. “We have a few wounded—”

“We are ready for them,” she said, her eyes going to Genon and his journeymen, already hurrying toward the wagons. “We have brought everything we could think of.”

There was an entire welcoming delegation waiting, with Ophele at the front and Sir Edemir and Sir Justenin behind her, impressive in their armor. To her right, Lady Verr, Emi, and Peri were already moving to the wagons, trailed by both Mistresses Conbour, and all the Benkki Desans, tall and dark-eyed and compassionate. Ophele’s heart was in her throat as she stepped forward, reminding herself to speak up.

“Welcome, all of you,” she said, as the people from Meinhem climbed down from the wagons. Stars, they were so thin! “I am so terribly sorry for everything you’ve been through. There is food waiting for you, so please sit and rest. You are safe. We will look after you now.”

Ophele had spent ages composing this little speech, but the survivors only looked at her with dull eyes, offering stiff, painful bows and curtsies and murmuring thanks . Beckoning Lady Verr and the rest forward, Ophele watched as they were shepherded through the wide doors of the cookhouse, where tables and benches were waiting for them between roaring fires.

She had forgotten to give her own name. Oh, well. Ophele’s hands twisted together as she watched Wen’s boys moving among them with bread, porridge, and a rich broth. She would have liked to help, even with something so menial as ladling out porridge, but everyone had flatly vetoed the idea of her going among so many strangers.

“Your Grace,” said Sir Ortaire, recalling her to her other duty. “Thank you very much for coming to meet us.”

“It’s the least I could do,” she said, feeling keenly that this was the truth. The soldiers before her were only a little less thin and ragged than the refugees, but they formed up in tidy rows nonetheless, inspecting their gear and setting it out neatly for transport to the barracks. Remin’s soldiers took a great deal of pride in their order and discipline. “Thank you for going, and even more for coming back,” she said. “I know it meant a great deal to His Grace. Was it very terrible? In Meinhem?”

Sir Ortaire’s eyes flicked to Sir Edemir and Sir Justenin in silent question, and Ophele’s lips pressed together. Her ignorance of these terrible things was a form of innocence, and perhaps Remin would have wanted them to preserve it, but she disagreed. She would not allow them to keep this from her.

“How many died?” she asked, lifting her chin.

“Seventeen of my men, most of them on the journey there,” Sir Ortaire said reluctantly, and she marked again the bloodstains on the men behind him, waiting patiently to be seen by Genon. “And two hundred and twenty-six in Meinhem.”

“Oh. Stars,” she said, and fell silent.

She didn’t know what to say to that. She didn’t know what to think. And looking up at him, she knew he understood, they all understood. Was there really nothing they could have done? What it must have been like in Meinhem, night after night! She had been so terrified of the devils, when she first came here, but these poor people had been living every one of her worst nightmares.

Her people. They belonged to Remin, and so they belonged to her.

“My lady,” Sir Justenin prompted, and Ophele started and hastily wiped her eyes, embarrassed.

“You did well,” she said again, looking up at Sir Ortaire. “How many—how many did you save?”

“Seventy-six.”

“Seventy-six.” It was very cold comfort. “Thank you for bringing them back. You and your men must be tired and hungry. We have food for you, too, and there are baths waiting. Unless you must speak among yourselves,” she added, glancing back at Sir Edemir questioningly. She had no idea what business the knights might have to discuss; did he have to report, or something?

“We can talk later.” Sir Edemir offered his hand to the other man, and Ophele accepted his bow, releasing him and his soldiers .

“Was there really nothing we could do?” she asked, once he was gone.

“None of us could think of anything,” Sir Justenin replied softly. “All we can do now is learn from it, my lady, and hope to prevent such a circumstance in the future. But it does no good to dwell on it. It will not bring back the dead.”

There was a murmur of agreement from the men behind her, and no doubt they were right. They would know, after all these years. It couldn’t be a purely mathematical question, but she couldn’t help trying to understand it, wondering at the calculus that judged the worth of such sacrifices. How had Remin decided such a thing? Seventeen men dead out of fifty; one third. Would the numbers be better, from the other villages? Or might it be even worse?

Silently, she stood and watched as the people of Meinhem were fed, and she could see Madam Sanai and the other Benkki Desans pointing up the road in the direction of the bathhouses. It would be a long walk for such exhausted people, and Ophele called for the horses and wagons to be brought back, to transport anyone who wanted to go there. To be sure, they must all be so very tired, but they would sleep better when they were clean, and the warm water would soak the chill from their bones.

Was there anything else she should say? Ought she to go with them? She didn’t know. It was the sight of the children that really upset her, ragged little starvelings limp as dolls, with sticks for limbs. The sight shocked her so badly that she had to turn away, covering her mouth to stifle a sound of dismay. Those wasted little legs with their bulging knees were the worst thing she had ever seen.

“I’m fine,” she said, waving Davi away hastily. “I’m fine, there’s nothing wrong with me. Oh, stars above, those poor babies…”

When she was certain that she could do nothing more for them, she let Lady Verr and Leonin usher her away. At least many of the refugees had chosen to go to the baths, and Elodie’s family would see them settled in the cottages afterward, where fresh clothes and blankets and beds awaited them. From their windows, they would be able to see the high white walls of Tresingale, and tonight there would be soldiers posted on the ground outside, with instructions to murmur among themselves about how there wasn’t the least sign of any devils.

It had made Ophele feel better when Yvain and Dol used to do that, on those endless nights when Remin did not come home until dawn .

Would it have been worse, in Selgin and Isigne? And how terrible it must have been in Nandre, which was so close to the Spur.

Where Remin had gone.

If only Remin would come home.

She was dreading his return. Hoping for it, longing for it, fearing it with an intensity that left her sleepless by night and frozen by day, searching the skies with the guilty anguish of a child awaiting a terrible punishment. She would have to tell him about Lady Hurrell and the Emperor. She would have to tell him the truth about herself. And then she would have to endure whatever followed.

Ophele would never forget that night in Granholme. It was seared into her soul like a branding, the night that she learned Remin could show her love and joy and passion in one moment, then turn on her with blackest hate. Lady Hurrell had pretended to love her for years and smiled when Lord Hurrell slapped her bloody.

She didn’t know what she would do if Remin did that again.

“Have you started something new, my lady?” Lady Verr asked when they sat together later that afternoon, before Ophele’s fire.

“A handkerchief.” Ophele took care to hide the pitiful object behind Remin’s mother’s embroidery box. “For His Grace’s birthday.”

“How nice. I used to make all my husband’s handkerchiefs,” Lady Verr said reminiscently. It never seemed to trouble her to talk about her dead husband. “The emblem of House Verr was not terribly impressive, I’m afraid, some sort of extinct spotted cat…”

She was so good at talking, Ophele thought enviously. Light, amusing, and endless, leaving room for Ophele to participate or not, as she liked. And little though she enjoyed sewing, it was this humble handkerchief that held her together through the darkest hours of the night.

The border wasn’t so bad. Just tedious, with many thousands of tiny, looping stitches to make a rounded edge. It was so hard to make it look even, she was sure there must be a better way, if only she knew it. It had taken her eight tries to sketch a large R in one corner with a bit of charcoal, using Duchess Ereguil’s perfect script as a model.

The handkerchief had come to symbolize many things. It was the first and most obvious gift a wife might give her husband, and she knew Remin wanted one; she had caught him rummaging in her embroidery box more than once, casually inquiring if she was working on anything in particular. It was the promise she had made to him and his mother, and proof that she could keep her promises, and learn.

The thought made her throat tighten, and she quickly looked down to hide her eyes. She loved him so much. Was it normal to feel this way? Lady Verr and Lady Hurrell did not seem to care so deeply for their husbands. But she missed him, she wanted him, she was so mixed up and upside down and there was a knot in her stomach that wouldn’t go away. Ophele could not have defined love any better than magic, but she knew she had come to understand it better, after he was gone.

She did not think he would kill her, no matter what Lady Hurrell did. But the secrets remained, invisible traps waiting to be sprung. The things that she knew. The things she would tell him.

And the things she did not know, that Lady Hurrell would reveal at a time of her choosing.

* * *

Some days, life in the Andelin Valley was so strange, Lady Verr was certain she was watching a play.

Not one of the spectacles from the Golden Leaf, to be sure; that theater was known for the splendor of its costumes, and she knew exactly how limited the options were for an Andelin Valley production. And really, it couldn’t be a proper romance without at least one rival and Constant Misunderstandings. But watching the flurry of activity in anticipation of the duke’s return, she felt very much a spectator, and the genre could be nothing but romance.

It was entertainment of the highest order to see the doll-faced little duchess suddenly come to life.

“It may not be him,” Duchess Andelin said, lifting her arms so Emi and Peri could pull her green silk gown over her shoulders. Sir Justenin had come in minutes before to announce smoke had been spotted to the northeast, and suddenly she cared very much about what she was wearing. “The people from Nandre will be coming that way, too, and Sir Edemir said they might come back first, Sir Rollon left ages ago, it mightn’t be Rem—His Grace at all.”

“We will have to wait and see,” Mionet said diplomatically, moving behind the lady to tie the sash at her back. The gown was unquestionably a summer dress, far too light for the cold, but the silk was of decent quality and the deep green and gold very flattering.

“But he promised he would be back by now, perhaps they ran into each other and are coming back together,” the duchess said hopefully, sitting down at the dressing table. “I wonder if we could go out to meet them? I have been outside the city before, and it should be quite safe now. Do I have any green ribbons?”

“Many, my lady.” Mionet bent with her to examine the options. The ribbons were a godsend, almost infinite in application, and since the duchess did not own a single piece of jewelry other than an unremarkable wedding band, Mionet had had to be very creative indeed.

That would never have flown at the Golden Leaf.

“I do like the jeweled ones.” The duchess glanced at herself in the mirror, her eyes anxious. “Should I…maybe a little lip dye? If it isn’t vulgar?”

“There is nothing vulgar in a little cosmetic,” Mionet agreed, and decided to take the reins. This was what she had been hoping for, all these weeks; even with limited resources, it was easy for women to bond over making each other lovely, and she finally had a willing subject. “You have lash powder as well, but first I think you ought to have a cold compress, my lady.”

“Yes, please,” Duchess Andelin agreed, and sat up straight as Mionet went to work on her hair. With her cheeks flushed and her eyes glowing like that, she really needed no cosmetic at all. “He liked the curls you did last time, and the way you did the ribbon? And maybe we could use that jeweled ribbon about my neck.”

“It will look lovely, but you do need proper jewelry, my lady,” Mionet remarked. She had been waiting weeks to say this. “I know several excellent shops in the capital that work on commission. Imagine a pendant and earrings to match this gown, perhaps in emerald and topaz, with small diamonds for brilliance.”

“Oh, I couldn’t…” The protest was automatic, but Duchess Andelin’s fingers lifted to brush the bare skin above her neckline.

“His Grace will never think of it unless you hint it to him,” Mionet replied, with a conspiratorial wink. “Men are so blind to such things. But it makes them happy to give gifts, you know, especially when he sees how much you like it. ”

“Does it?” This cast a different light on the matter.

“Try him and see,” Mionet said wisely, taking up her curling tongs. “And you are a duchess, a little glitter is only to be expected.”

“I suppose,” Duchess Andelin said, with a thoughtful look at her reflection. “Emi, would you please tell Sim or Jaose to go and ask Wen to send supper up to the house tonight? Something that will keep? I know he will be hungry, you wouldn’t believe how much he can eat…”

“Especially after such a journey,” Mionet agreed with mingled amusement and chagrin. Perhaps she had erred in thinking the duchess was a sly creature, keeping her secrets. The lady must have just been very unhappy, all this time; seeing her now, she had less command of her expression than most children. Even with a cold compress over her eyes, she radiated a transparent happiness that would have mortified the most back country society debutante.

Most of the women of Mionet’s acquaintance had been married long enough to have a more…realistic idea of their husbands’ characters. Every marriage had a sweet season in the beginning, when both husband and wife were putting on their best faces. Mionet remembered those days, waking up to find flowers beside her bed, planning her husband’s supper with care for his every preference, and then basking in his appreciation. Going out together in that first blush of married life was so exciting, when it was still new to say the word husband.

Hopefully it would not be too hard for Duchess Andelin when it ended.

Outside, the wind was bitterly cold, and Mionet burrowed into her cloak as she stood behind Duchess Andelin on the portico, her breath puffing white. The duchess only had one cloak, a pale blue that did not look terribly well with the green silk gown.

“Bram has already gone to meet them,” said Sir Justenin, dismounting his horse and coming up the steps. There was something in his pale, cool gaze that made Mionet uncomfortable; she had heard all the tales about his visits to the capital, but even if she had not, he had the air of a man who was difficult to deceive and unwise to cross. “It is likely to be some hours before they arrive, Your Grace. It may not even be today, after so much rain.”

Duchess Andelin’s eyes flicked toward the sky, which was already clouding over again. A little colder and it might have snowed .

“We still ought to meet them, as we did the folk from Meinhem,” she said. “They will be cold and hungry, and perhaps hurt.”

“I do not believe His Grace would like you to sit out in the rain and cold all day,” he replied firmly. “Nandre is a small village. Edemir has prepared room for them in the cookhouse. There will be plenty of time for someone to come and fetch you there.”

“Very well,” she conceded reluctantly. “We’ll have spare clothes and blankets waiting. I don’t suppose there will be another signal, as they approach?”

“No, Your Grace.” That won an actual smile from Sir Justenin. “But we will send a messenger as soon as there is any news at all.”

It was a very long day. It was impossible to carry on a conversation when the duchess twitched at every noise, and at least once an hour, she went to the window to peer out into the rain as if she expected to see a parade of horses clattering down Eugene Street. Whatever she was thinking, it periodically made her turn very pink.

“He may not come today, my lady,” Mionet was finally forced to remind her, on humanitarian grounds. “Travel will be difficult in this weather, and it might only be the people from Nandre in any case.”

“I know,” Duchess Andelin agreed, only to bolt to her feet a moment later when Sim appeared with another armload of firewood.

“You should not pin your hopes on him too much,” Mionet said, with the conviction of experience.

The skies opened up that afternoon in an icy, drenching downpour that effectively quenched the last of Duchess Andelin’s enthusiasm, and she lapsed into withdrawn silence, her head bent over her sewing. Mionet could not even pretend to make conversation. It was painful to see the sudden, wild hope in the duchess’s face at the sound of steps outside the door, followed by disappointment when Sir Justenin appeared with supper.

“Thank you,” she said, accepting the heavy hamper from him. She was adamant that no one should approach His Grace’s food except herself, his knights, and the vulgar Wen. There was more food inside than two ladies could have eaten in a week, stowed in earthenware containers and wrapped in thick blankets to keep it warm.

“Don’t worry yourself, my lady. They have camped out in far worse than this,” said Sir Justenin, as if this were any sort of consolation. Mionet gave him a flash of cutting gray eyes, but held her tongue .

“Emi, please set places for the duchess and myself,” she instructed, gathering up her sewing and setting the box aside. “Would you care to join us, Sir Justenin?”

“No, thank you,” he said wisely, and departed with a bow.

To be fair, this was no fault of Sir Justenin, nor even entirely the fault of the duke. The signal from this morning might not have even been His Grace; there were two parties coming from the same direction. And this was not like missing a dinner engagement. The duke and his men were facing far greater hazards than Segoile market day traffic.

“The hardest part is waiting,” Mionet said as she nibbled at her own tasteless supper. “There are many things that might delay them. It might not even be something dangerous. A horse may throw a shoe. A wagon axle might break.”

Sometimes wagon axles broke twice in a week. Mionet closed her mouth firmly. There were an infinite number of excuses a man might offer when he was not where he promised he would be. But the Andelin Valley was a truly dangerous place.

The sight of the Meinhem refugees had shocked her as much as it had Duchess Andelin. She had seen beggars in Segoile, but only from a distance and most often through the windows of a carriage. Perhaps this was not a romance at all; maybe it was a morality play, or an epic from the Age of Heroes. Knights and devils. Peril and self-sacrifice. These things were quaint relics of a bygone age on the stages of Segoile, but here they were inescapable reality.

“But if they were close enough to signal, then the worst of the danger must be past,” Duchess Andelin said hopefully. “Even if they cannot come today.”

“I am sure that is so,” Mionet replied, jabbing her fork into a bit of roast pork and wishing the duchess would manage her face just a little. There was a reason for the bored, bland society masks donned by the aristocrats of the capital. When one lived in close quarters, constantly observed every moment of the day, it was both dangerous and rude to make a parade of one’s every emotion.

Night fell, and the genre transitioned to tragedy.

“They will come tomorrow, my lady,” Mionet told the duchess in the dressing room some hours later. Peri was putting the green gown and slippers away, and Emi was carefully removing the ribbons they had so artfully used to ornament the duchess’s hair, gown, and throat.

“I know.” The blank-faced doll was back again.

“But you should not count too heavily on such promises in future,” Mionet went on, brushing the curls from Duchess Andelin’s brown hair with sharp, angry jerks. “Men will say a great deal, but you will often find yourself hurt, if you set your heart upon it.”

And the duke had promised. Why did men never think before they said such things? It was so easy, wasn’t it, to blithely say, I’ll be home in a month, with no thought at all for how their wife would feel when the month had passed and there was no sign of the delinquent. Night after night, worrying and wondering, that cruelest curse upon women: to wait.

Mionet had seen this play dozens of times. Sooner or later the husband would arrive, often clutching a bouquet of posies which would not undo any of the hurt he had caused. When flowers failed to console, then there would be jewels. And more apologies. And more lonely nights, and the stars forbid a lady should ever be ill-mannered enough to actually complain. A cycle of escalating disappointment, culminating in the realization that it was better to have no expectations at all. One’s wardrobe was a much more reliable source of satisfaction. Many noblewomen drowned their unhappiness in society, or a string of lovers, and occasionally in a bottle.

But Mionet was not quite heartless enough to tell this to Duchess Andelin, who was unlikely to believe it in any case. It was a lesson that every woman had to learn for herself.

“Emi, please make another compress,” she said briskly. “Peri, fetch the cold cream. We’ll give your face a light scrub and tend to your skin tonight, my lady, so you will look all the lovelier tomorrow. There was a fragrant steam one of my ma—”

Distantly, there was a noise.

The doors of the dressing room and hallway were thick and muffling, but it grew louder as it approached, a rapid thudding of footsteps that were not the quick footsteps of Jaose or the staccato tread of Sim, and a man’s voice called.

“Ophele?”

The sight of Duchess Andelin in the mirror was like a flower bursting into bloom .

“Remin?!”

His Grace was coming quickly up the stairs and into the hallway, and Mionet turned just in time to see the white blur of the duchess in her chemise, racing out of the dressing room and flinging herself into the tall man’s arms, nearly sobbing with joy.

“Oh, Remin, Remin!”

“I’m sorry I’m late,” he said as he caught her, lifting her off her feet altogether and burying his face in her hair. “Oh, wife, how I missed you…”

It was only polite to look away. Such an excess of emotion was unseemly. And a moment later, the door to the bedchamber banged shut and locked with a definitive click.

That was how a Segoile stage romance ended. Mionet pressed her lips together and went to clean up the dressing table.

* * *