Page 14

The cauldron His Grace had acquired from the kitchen was just large enough that they could have cooked her in a stew.

Ordinarily, Ophele would have found this very funny.

Heating bathwater was a tedious process, especially given the size of the hearth.

She knew how to manage fire and boil water, and she figured out the hearth mechanisms easily enough—there was a cast iron bracket that swiveled to hold the pot over the fire—but she was literally watching water boil, and by the time she got one potful steaming, the previous one was already beginning to cool.

A series of buckets marched from the hearth to the door of the cottage, waiting their turn over the fire.

That was fine.

All she wanted was to be clean, as if she could wash not just the road and aches of riding but the whole day from her body.

She didn’t understand what she had done wrong.

Her head throbbed dully as she gazed at the fire, trying to reason her way through the puzzle.

She had tried so hard to fix things, on the way to the valley.

She had kept quiet and stayed out of His Grace’s way, sick at the thought that she had delayed them so much.

The duke might have come home to find everything in ashes, of course he would be furious.

But then, why was he angry now? Hadn’t he said he wanted her to look nice, like a princess instead of a beggar’s brat? She hadn’t meant to complain, she wasn’t going to complain, it didn’t matter to her whether she lived in a cottage or a palace.

Either was better than Aldeburke.

But maybe it wouldn’t be.

Her stomach knotted as she glanced toward the window, wondering what hungry things would be coming out of the mountains.

Slipping out of her sweaty gown and chemise, Ophele climbed into her stew pot, ducking her head to soak her hair.

She still had all the soaps and lotions and sundries from Celderline, and she reserved a few buckets of cold water to rinse herself off, shivering.

There were no towels.

Wrapping her arms around herself, she went to stand by the fire, hoping no one would come to the door and nothing hungry would come through the windows.

Spread on the bed was the gown she would wear tonight, as beautiful as anything Lisabe owned.

It was an unlikely combination of bronze and dark blue, studded with pearls on the bodice and skirt.

She could dress herself as far as her chemise and the bronze silk kirtle, but there was just no way to put on the overdress herself.

The duke might say that there was no one here to wait on her, but ladies’ gowns were complex constructions with many layers, fastenings, and laces, and often there were pieces that had to be sewed on after the lady was dressed.

Imagining the duke clutching a needle and thread in his huge hands made her mind boggle.

At least he had brought her books to the cottage.

Ophele sat down at the table and hung her hair over the back of the chair to dry, then promptly fell asleep.

“Princess?”

She woke up to find the duke frowning down at her, as shaggy and black and bearlike as ever.

He had taken time to wash and shave, and it was strange to see him without a beard, his bare cheekbones high and arrogant.

“Sorry,”

she said at once, skittering nervously away.

“Sorry.

I fell asleep.”

“It’s all right.

You need help with your dress?”

he asked, taking in the many pieces laid neatly on the bed.

Ophele had already donned the kirtle, a simple underdress studded with topaz along the neck.

“Yes.”

Silently, she showed him how the overgown went over her head and how the slashed sleeves fit over her arms, puffing out to reveal her white chemise and held in place with bronze ribbons.

She couldn’t tie bows on her own arms.

Neither could the duke, apparently.

He scowled at the ribbons as if they had mortally offended him, and the final bows were decidedly lopsided.

“I don’t see why it’s so complicated,”

he grumbled, kneeling behind her to thread the laces through their eyelets.

“Princess,”

he added, more gently.

“I am sorry for what I did, earlier today.

You did nothing wrong.”

“I didn’t mean to complain,”

she said, not daring to look back at him.

“I know.

And you need to know that I will not strike you. Ever.”

She flushed.

Lady Hurrell had said he could do whatever he liked as her husband, and it was Ophele’s part to bear it.

But she had gotten scared, again.

Lady Hurrell used to scold her for cowering, like a little brown mouse.

“It’s all right,”

she said, subdued.

“No, it isn’t.

Look at me, wife.”

He turned her around to face him and took both her hands in his big ones, looking at her seriously.

Even kneeling, his head was almost level with hers.

“If I ever lay my hands on you with violence, then may the stars in heaven strike me dead.

I will speak that oath before every man in Tresingale, if you like.”

“You don’t have to do that,”

she said, alarmed at the prospect.

What would his men think, if he did such a thing?

“I mean it, nonetheless.”

His mouth pressed into a flat line, and he turned her back around, returning to the lacing in a businesslike way.

“We can at least be civil to each other, and I don’t want you to be afraid of me.

If you have questions, ask.”

She had many questions.

But she didn’t know how he would react, and she wavered for a minute before she finally ventured, “…what did you mean, about things in the mountains?”

“Devils,”

he said seriously.

“They didn’t used to be there, when Argence held the valley.

Maybe Vallethi magicians conjured them somehow, in the last days of the war.

They were pretty desperate.

But a few years ago they started showing up on battlefields, ghouls coming out to eat…to eat,”

he said evasively, as if Ophele wouldn’t guess what.

“There’s something else that comes after nightfall that we call stranglers, and there’s a thing that looks like a wolf and isn’t.

The men call them wolf demons, though I don’t know if they’re actually demons.

I’m not sure I believe in demons.”

“They say they are real in Bhumi,”

she said, trying to find some ground on which to meet him.

Devils.

Magic.

She looked again at the shutters on the windows, the wattle and daub walls, which basically meant sticks and mud.

That didn’t sound like it could stand up to wolf demons.

“Bhumi think there are ten thousand different kinds of spirits.

This ribbon is fraying at the end.”

His deep voice rumbled the complaint.

“If you singe the end, it will curl up.”

“So long as I don’t singe you.”

He stood and went to light a bit of kindling, searing the end of the ribbon and blowing it out before it caught fire.

“I didn’t tell you that to scare you, though,”

he said, returning to the previous subject.

“They’ve been quiet all winter, and we’re pretty sure they go up in the mountains to hibernate, then come back down in the valley once it warms up.

You’ll be safe.

I’ll be with you at night and you’re not to go wandering by yourself otherwise.

None of the nonsense you did at Aldeburke.”

Ophele was glad her back was to him.

Of course, he would be here at night.

This was his house.

Their house.

His bed.

And now that there was a bed again, did that mean he would want to…?

“Promise,”

the duke said sternly.

“No wandering off.”

“I won’t, I promise,”

she said, trying not to look at the bed.

The bodice of her gown drew tight and she carefully tugged at her kirtle, lining up the jeweled neckline to neatly follow the edge of the overdress.

Behind her, the duke stood, and she tilted her head back.

“Does my hair look all right? There was no mirror and it’s still a little wet…”

“It looks fine.

I don’t think we’ll do this every night,”

he said, looking down at her thoughtfully.

“Much as my men would like to see a real lady at table.

Up you get.”

And he swept her off her feet, never minding any crumples in her dress.

Ophele squawked.

“You don’t have to, I’m wearing my slippers, see?”

“So you can lose them in the mud?”

he replied, looking at the dainty blue slippers.

The cottage door banged shut behind them and he stepped out into a cool violet dusk, with torches lining the lane from the cottages to the cookhouse.

A few men were hurrying in that direction and paused to bow, eyes popping.

Ophele nodded, feeling dreadfully conspicuous.

“When will there be roads?”

she asked, remembering the firelight conversations she had overheard on the journey.

She felt him stiffen and hastened to add, “I don’t mean it like that.

I mean—sometimes I heard you talking about it with Sir Edemir and Sir Tounot and everyone, and I was interested, so I wondered—”

“They’ll start laying real road in a few months,”

he replied.

“It’s trickier than you think, you can’t just throw stones in the mud.”

It was hard to tell whether he was offended or not; pressed against his chest, she could only see the square line of his jaw and the fringe of surprisingly long black eyelashes.

“But we’ll begin as we mean to go on.

We don’t want the roads flooding, so we’ll plan for runoff and put in drains, grade it properly, and so on.”

She would have liked to know what and so on entailed, but the duke was already striding up the graveled path to the cookhouse doors, and when they stepped inside it was like walking onto a stage, a place filled with staring eyes and a sudden and profound silence.

The cookhouse was large and echoing, with rows of long tables extending far into torchlit gloom, and every table was filled with rough-looking men staring at her.

The pungent miasma of unwashed male struck her even from the doorway, but she would never let such a thing show in her face.

The duke’s hand pressed behind her, as if he sensed she wanted to retreat right back out the door.

“I’m glad to see all of you,”

he said, projecting his voice all the way to the back of the hall.

“I’ve already spoken with Genon, and he told me not one of you buggers managed to get yourself killed while I was gone.”

There was a low ripple of laughter.

“I won’t keep you from your meat, but I will remind you to mind your manners before your new lady.

Ophele, Daughter of the House of Agnephus, Princess of Argence, as was.

Now my wife, the Duchess of Andelin.

You’ll give her your oaths tomorrow.”

This was where she should speak.

Ophele swallowed, but all those eyes were looking at her and suddenly her mind was blank as sticky heat blazed along her hairline.

A lady’s first care was the comfort of others.

A lady should be gracious.

A lady offered honors to those who deserved it, and these men surely did.

But it felt as if her breath was stopped in her throat and her tongue was rooted to the roof of her mouth in abject terror.

“Eat,”

said the duke, as if nothing had happened, and Ophele’s ears burned as he led her through the rows of tables.

There was no high table, like there had been at the wedding feast, but toward the middle of the room, some men were budging over to make a space.

It was hard to climb over a bench in long skirts.

“Welcome, my lady,”

said one of them, and she nodded, trying to smile.

They all must be soldiers; most of them bore visible scars, and there was a much higher than average number of missing appendages, from ears to hands to whole arms.

“Thank you,”

she said, as one handed her a bowl of bread rolls.

It was a little easier to speak in a small group, but heads were still turning up and down the rows on either side of her.

The duke had not been exaggerating, there wasn’t a single other woman in sight.

“This is Josue Orris,”

said His Grace, gesturing to the man who had handed her the bread.

“He has charge of the hunters.”

As he spoke, he was heaping meat, bread, and spoonfuls of green things onto her plate, and Ophele looked from the dripping red joints to Josue, who laughed.

“Aye, though I probably didn’t kill that one personally, Your Grace,”

he said, bowing his head.

He had the flat, burring accent of the Midland Empire.

“Thank you, all the same,”

she said, looking uncertainly away as the duke sliced her meat for her.

It had never occurred to her that they would be lacking something as basic as utensils, but all the men nearby were tearing into their food using only fingers and belt knives.

She was fairly sure both methods were forbidden to ladies.

“How is the hunting?”

asked the duke.

“Better.

Fatter game since the last frost, though we’ve been trying to go easy, let them graze before we run them to sinew,”

answered the hunter.

The duke grunted.

“The first wagon of pigs should be arriving in a few months.

That ought to help.”

“With respect, Your Grace, I’d keep them penned up and domestic, you haven’t seen the tuskers in these woods,”

said Josue.

“Big as cows.

We’d be eating one of those fu—things for days, if we could kill it.”

Ophele nibbled on a bit of bread, wondering what word started with fu- that they were so reluctant to say in front of her.

“We were planning to coordinate a few hunts, if we could borrow some men,”

said the man next to Josue.

“It’s no fish story, there would be three hundred pounds of meat on just one of those boars.

But it’s not something one man ought to tackle by himself.”

This was fascinating.

Ophele had never considered how her food came to the table, much less how that small miracle fit into the creation of a town.

For weeks she had been listening to the duke and his knights plan how they would build the town, from the walls to the herds to the drains, and it made her wonder who had built Aldeburke, who had planned it, how all that stone and glass and plaster had become a house.

These men had built everything here.

The benches.

The tables.

The two stone hearths, blazing away at either end of the room.

It was such a monumental undertaking, and she wanted to know all about it, every bit of it.

She wanted to help, if she could. Even if it was only in a small way…

The sounds of their voices faded away as she drifted into the dream, and then into a doze, her head drooping over her plate.

“…wife home,”

said a deep voice close by, and she lifted her head, blinking owlishly.

“Oh, I beg your pardon.”

She looked around, trying to shake the fuzz out of her head.

For some reason she thought she had fallen asleep on horseback again.

“I’m sorry.”

“It’s time we left.”

The duke caught her elbow and lifted her over the bench entirely, minding her long skirts as he set her back down.

“Good night, lads.

Go easy on the ale, I’ll make you work it off tomorrow.”

“Good night,”

Ophele said over his shoulder.

“We don’t have to go,”

she added, looking up at the duke as he strode toward the doors of the cookhouse, opened to admit the cool night breeze.

“You were falling asleep in your seat, Princess.”

He didn’t sound annoyed.

Outside, he lifted her up into his arms again, his boots crunching down the gravel path to the lane.

“Besides, the wine is flowing, and they’ll soon be in their cups.

It’s no place for a lady.”

Would he take her to the cottage and then go back to the cookhouse himself? Or would he stay? Heat washed through her, reddening her cheeks, and she was glad the darkness hid her face.

It hadn’t hurt at all, that night in Granholme.

She had liked it.

He had been so tender, so passionate, but then the assassin had come, and ever since, he looked at her as if she were his enemy.

What if that was what he wanted, though? Should she ask? Should she try to apologize for her father, as little as that would mean? The duke was silent, carrying her up to his cottage.

Its front window glowed golden from the oil lamp she had forgotten to blow out, and it didn’t look so bad like that.

It looked like a home.

“Stand still, I’ll unlace you.”

Once inside, he set her down gently.

“We’ll put this in storage tomorrow, and find another trunk for your things.

If there’s something you need that you don’t have, tell me.”

“I will.”

His hands moved over her back and she lowered her head, standing perfectly still.

She remembered how he had pushed his face into her hand like a huge dog, and that look in his black eyes, and…why had he done that, if he hated her? How could she bear it if he touched her again tonight, and then pushed her away in the morning?

Silently, he removed her overdress, hanging it over the back of a chair.

His hands settled on her shoulders, such big, warm hands, his rough thumbs gliding over her skin to undo the fastenings of her kirtle.

It slid off her body in a whisper of silk, and he laid it with the overdress.

For a moment, she was sure she would feel his lips on the back of her neck, and even imagined she felt his breath, a tickling warmth against her skin.

“I’ll sleep on the floor.”

He said into the silence, low.

“Go to bed, Princess.”

“Oh.

Oh, but…but no, it’s your bed,”

she stammered, turning to look up at him.

His expression was unreadable.

“You’ll get cold, and…you don’t have to sleep on the floor.”

“No,”

he said quietly.

“It’s too soon for children.”

She had forgotten that.

Of course.

Of course, that was what she was for.

That was why he had married her, to have children with the Emperor’s blood.

In time he would touch her again, but only to get a child in her.

This was what he wanted from her. This was all he wanted from her.

“You don’t have to do that,”

she said through the tightness of her throat.

“It’s your bed, too.

I can sleep on the edge.

I don’t take up much room at all, I’ve slept in very small spaces.

You’ll get sick if you sleep on the floor.”

There was a peculiar look on his face.

“No.

Go to bed,”

he said, turning his back.

“Don’t argue with me.”

And that was that.

He couldn’t stand her enough to sleep beside her, but soon enough he would put a child in her.

Silently, she turned away to slip under the blankets.

The mattress was filled with lumpy wool, but it was soft, even if the bed was so big she felt like a single potato bumping around in a very large barrel.

She didn’t look at him as he laid down the same bedroll he’d been using for more than a month, but she heard the rushes rustling under him as he stretched out.

There was barely enough room for him to lie down in the small room.

“If you wake up and hear something outside, don’t be afraid.”

His voice rumbled from the dark.

The coals in the hearth had burned down, and there was only the faintest glimmer of starlight through the cracks in the shutters.

“It’ll be one of the lads.

There’s always a guard on this house, watching every window and door.”

“All right.”

Despair would have been easy.

And for a time, she indulged it, and let the tears streak her cheeks in silence, well-practiced after many years of soundless weeping.

But Ophele’s mind was a busy place, and her life had never been her own.

No matter how limited her options, no matter how cramped her prison, she had never been able to stop seeking a way out.

A pattern she might exploit.

A solution to the problem.

The Will Immanent said there was a purpose to everything, especially in this imperfect creation.

Purpose was the gift of imperfection.

The divine world was perfect, flawlessly ordered, but in a perfect world there was no purpose, no reason to learn, to work, to grow.

There might be debts owed in an imperfect world, but they could be paid.

An imperfect world was a work in progress.

An imperfect world could be changed.

She could change it, if she was brave.