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The duke and his men marched out of Tresingale the next day.

Ophele did not see them go.

She didn’t even realize she wouldn’t see him again until he handed her over to Miche and said I’ll be back in a few days.

She thought there would be more…ceremony.

Marching out the gates, cloaks fluttering, while she at least got the chance to tell them to be careful.

Maybe she had just read too many romances.

She had little to say as she walked to the wall with Sir Miche, so stiff from yesterday’s work that she could barely move.

She had never had to do work like this in her life, and while she assumed her soreness was normal—she could hypothesize cause and effect well enough—the intensity of the pain still seemed excessive.

When the duke woke her up that morning, she felt like someone had cast her in clay, fired her in a kiln, and then pushed her off a tower.

Dressed in a long-sleeved gown, with a hat, veil, and gloves to protect her skin, the only thing before her was more of the same, and the depressing thought that maybe the duke would never realize what she was trying to do for him.

It was one thing to resign herself to brutally hard work in the name of atoning for her parents.

But it would be nice if the person she was doing it for appreciated it just a little.

“I know where he keeps his other pair of boots,”

Sir Miche offered, and it took her a moment to realize what he was suggesting.

“No, that would just mean I have to smell it until he gets back,”

she said without thinking, and then clapped a hand to her mouth as Sir Miche roared with laughter.

“I do like a practical girl,”

he said, wiping his eyes.

“Feel better? And stretch yourself out before you begin, my lady.

It takes a bit to get used to this sort of work.”

“Did you have to get used to it?”

she asked, a little plaintively.

The thought of hauling buckets was making her wish her arms would just fall off right now.

“I’m not used to it now,”

he said frankly.

“I’ve been a knight thirteen years, my lady, it’s been some time since I used my ditch digger muscles.

Right this minute I’m so sore I’d sooner throw myself in the pit than dig it.

But here, watch me.

Stretch your arms out before and after you work, like this…”

It did make her feel better.

And even if he was sore, and a knight, and hadn’t had to dig ditches in thirteen years, he was still pitching in and doing it cheerfully.

She might be fit only to fill buckets of water, but she would try to do her best with it.

Ophele nodded to the men on their way to the wall as she gathered her buckets, smiling when she saw friendly faces from the oath-taking last night.

“Thank you, lady,”

said one of them, marching past with a shovel over one shoulder.

“Good of you to help.”

It was interesting to watch everyone at work, like a complex machine with many parts.

Ophele tried unobtrusively to stretch, as Sir Miche had advised, looking with pleasure at the length of wall that had been completed only yesterday.

But that meant it would be a farther walk to the well today.

She hadn’t thought of that.

And it would continue to get further, as the wall got longer; it would take her longer to carry the buckets every day, and she would have shorter periods to rest between rounds.

As she returned with her first bucket, Ophele tried to measure the distance with her eyes: there was the oak tree she had sheltered under yesterday, and there was the wild lilac bush that had shaded the water for the builders, but today would be used by the men filling the gap between the walls.

And tomorrow, would not be used at all.

After she finished setting out buckets, Ophele went to go see Master Guisse, a middle-aged man with splendid gray muttonchops.

He had a worktable set up under a canopy, with all his parchments weighted down by tools she didn’t recognize.

“Master Guisse,”

she began hesitantly.

“How much longer does the wall get each day?”

He looked delighted to be asked.

“An average of two hundred feet per day on the south wall, my lady,”

he said, puffing out his chest.

“The north wall averages only a little less.

There are certain techniques we are pioneering that have been most effective, you see the pulley system we have devised—”

Ophele nodded politely as he rattled off a quantity of information about pulleys and levers and slides, but for once she wasn’t interested in the details; there seemed to be a more immediate problem.

The blacksmiths needed water, too; they were rolling it back and forth by the barrel.

Two hundred feet per day? But surely someone else must have spotted the issue, there were masons and builders from all over the Empire here, but maybe just in case…

“Sir Miche,”

she began as they walked back to town at the end of the day, “are there any horses that might be spared?”

“Not without a da—very good reason,”

he said, looking at her curiously.

“And you can call me Miche, my lady. Why?”

“Nothing.”

It was presumptuous to think she knew anything.

“Well, now I’m curious,”

he said, offering an encouraging smile.

“Go on, I won’t tell another soul.”

“Well, I just thought maybe there might be a problem with fetching water soon,”

she said hesitantly.

“It’s not that I don’t want to, but I asked Master Guisse how much longer the wall gets every day, and I was doing some sums, and I think I refilled all the buckets nine times yesterday and ten times today.

And I kept track, I averaged seven minutes per bucket, going to the well and back, at about thirty seconds per hundred feet of wall, so if we keep adding two hundred feet per day, then in a few days …”

He was looking at her very oddly.

“I don’t think it will be mathematically possible,”

she finished, small.

“No,”

he said slowly.

“No, you’re right.

On the north wall they’ve got a stream handy, so water’s not an issue.

I wonder if in all his pioneering Guisse has got a plan for hydrating his work crew.”

“The blacksmiths were complaining, too,”

she said, encouraged.

“That’s why I wondered, I could do it if I had a horse to pull the wagon.”

“You can’t lead these horses, my lady,”

Sir Miche replied seriously.

“War horses are dangerous.

Trained to bite and kick if anyone but their handler gets close.

That’s why Rem wouldn’t let you near that black monster of his.

But I’ll look into it tonight.

Could be I could scrounge up a donkey.”

“Oh, a donkey!”

Ophele forgot all about being sore, filthy, sweaty, and so tired she could have laid down in the grass on the side of the road and gone to sleep.

She whirled toward him, clapping her hands together with excitement.

“Really? We have donkeys?”

“I think I saw a couple in the stable.”

Sir Miche looked amused.

“Most people don’t think much of the creatures.”

“They look like a rabbit and a horse had a baby,”

she said, bouncing beside him.

“And I’m really not trying to get out of working, you know, it’s just that if you do the math…”

“No, no, I can’t argue with your reckoning.”

He laughed, shaking his head, though Ophele didn’t see what was funny.

“Could you manage a donkey by yourself?”

“I think so.”

Though now that it looked like a real possibility, she wasn’t entirely sure.

“I had a friend back at Aldeburke who had the sweetest donkey…”

She told him about Rou and Anzel as they walked up the lane into town, and how Rou had always saved some new books or some small surprise for her whenever he visited.

Usually, they walked together all the way from the manor to the gates, and once she was old enough, he let her lead Anzel a few times.

Of course, that was a well-trained donkey over a paved road, but still…

“We didn’t get to see much of you in Aldeburke, when we were there,”

Sir Miche remarked.

“I suppose you must miss it.”

Ophele looked away, searching for an answer that was both truthful and innocuous.

The fact that it took some time to produce one spoke volumes.

“I—I miss the library,”

she said finally.

“And Azelma.”

“I…see,”

he replied, and was quiet until they reached her cottage.

“I’ll come collect you for supper at full dark,”

he said at the door.

“Don’t go anywhere else, and if anything frightens you, run to the cookhouse.

Wen is always there.

But you’re safe here,”

he added, meeting her gaze with unusual seriousness.

“If anyone looks at you crossways, you tell me, and I’ll set them right.”

“All right…”

she said dubiously.

She had no doubt Master Wen would be there, but it seemed to her that she could stagger through the doorway with a knife in her back and he’d yell at her for bleeding on his kitchen.

Supper came with the news that there was indeed an elderly donkey that might be fit to haul water, and inside Ophele hugged herself with delight.

She had always loved animals; they were easier to talk to than people.

“We’ll go see him in the morning,”

Sir Miche promised.

“Tounot, will we be getting any more human assistance on the south? We’re having to recruit donkeys now.”

Sir Tounot sat down on the other side of the table and reached for a platter of roasted meat.

“Maybe next week,”

he said.

Ophele hadn’t had much opportunity to exchange words with him, but Sir Tounot looked friendly enough, ruddy and curly-haired, with a cleft in his chin.

“Your Grace,”

he added, with a nod of his head for her.

“I hope you’re well.

A lovely lady at table makes even the humblest meal a feast.”

“Y-yes,”

she stammered, reddening.

Such extravagant compliments were considered an art among knights, but having never received one, she hadn’t the least idea how she was supposed to reply.

But Sir Miche was happy to help her.

“This is where you say something like, ‘And your good company adds spice to every dish,’”

he said, bending his head and speaking from the corner of his mouth.

“Except it’s Tounot.

I’d only stretch him to salt.”

“Oh? Then what would you call your nonsense, Miche?”

Sir Tounot replied, without the least offense.

“Cardamom,”

Sir Miche said promptly.

“The spice of kings.”

Anise, Ophele thought.

An acquired taste.

It would have been funny, if she had said that.

Both men made a kindly attempt to include her in the conversation, but as the rest of the knights joined them at the table it felt a little too much like making a speech, with so many eyes on her.

And anyway, she was much happier just to listen as all of them talked about the planting, the wall, the horses, the construction, and the thousand and one other details of building a town.

She wanted to know everything.

Things felt less strange when she was sitting among the Knights of the Brede; she was used to them, even if she was still too shy to talk to them.

But once Sir Miche had left her at the cottage for the night, with the promise to pick her up early to go get the donkey, she realized just how far away she was from everything she had ever known.

It was amazing to think that this was only her fourth night in Tresingale.

And alone, in a house of her own.

Ophele kindled a fire and lit an oil lamp, then sat down with a book.

All she needed was a cup of tea and one of Azelma’s hazelnut cookies, and it would have been perfect.

For the first time in her life, no one would come to bother her.

No spiteful Lisabe, no sneering Lady Hurrell, no Julot saying strange things and standing far too close.

And, though it felt disloyal to think it, no duke hurrying her or scolding her or icily ignoring her.

She didn’t blame him for not trusting her.

Ophele tried to be fair about such things.

She just wished he would stop showing her glimpses of what he could be like, if he didn’t hate her.

When he talked to his knights, sometimes he even told jokes.

He wasn’t mean to anyone but her.

By now, she had been married for over a month.

She didn’t feel married.

She felt like she had acquired a very strict guardian.

Since leaving Aldeburke, His Grace had been with her almost every moment of every day.

He loomed so large in her life, figuratively and literally, and now that he was gone, she felt curiously bereft.

Especially once she put out the lights.

Ophele was sure she would sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow.

A day in the sun had left her feeling like a wrung sponge and her limbs were in such agony, movement seemed impossible.

But suddenly the cottage felt very big and shadowy without the shape of the duke on the floor, lying between her and the door like a small mountain range.

It was fine.

She wasn’t a child.

Ophele hugged a pillow to herself and shut her eyes, trying to empty her mind.

And when that didn’t work, she reminded herself how sorry she would be if she didn’t sleep, and that she was going to get a donkey in the morning, and she needed to hurry up and go to sleep so there would be time to stop by the kitchen and ask Master Wen for a carrot or an apple.

Outside, there was a very soft scraping noise.

That was just one of the guards.

The duke had said there were guards on every window and door.

But Ophele found herself wondering what a strangler looked like.

Sir Miche said they had long fingers—presumably for strangling—and that they could climb right over a wooden palisade.

And there were ghouls, too, that ate the dead on battlefields.

And maybe not just the dead; anyone that couldn’t get away, probably. And though both men said they wouldn’t come down from the mountains until it was warmer, it had been very warm today…

It wasn’t impossible for them to come earlier, was it? It wasn’t impossible that something could slip into Tresingale in the dark, creeping between braziers and torches unnoticed.

And it certainly wasn’t impossible that something like a strangler could creep up on her guards and strangle them, and they wouldn’t even be able to call out because they were being strangled.

And then it could sneak up to her window…

Another scraping noise.

“Is someone there?”

she asked, her voice quavering.

She was being silly, she knew it, but she was six hundred miles from home and all alone and people had been talking about stranglers ever since she got here.

No one answered.

She sat up.

“If you are, please say something,”

she said, clutching her blankets.

Turning, she addressed the daubed wall behind her headboard.

“It’s fine, I know I have guards, I just want to know what…who’s there.”

“One of your guards, m’lady,”

said a reluctant male voice.

“Just sharpening my sword.

Beg pardon, didn’t think you’d hear it.”

Ophele closed her eyes.

“No, please keep it sharp,”

she said.

“What’s your name?”

“Dol, m’lady.”

She slid back under her blankets.

“Are you here every night?”

“Aye, lady.

Night watch doesn’t change much.”

“One of the watchmen back home said that.

He said once you got used to being up all night, it was best to stay that way.”

It was easier to talk to a stranger if she couldn’t see him.

“His name was Alou.”

“I don’t mind it.

But you probably ought to sleep now, m’lady.”

Now that she knew she wasn’t about to be strangled, she thought she could.

It wasn’t just that she was alone in a strange and frightening place.

She had never been on her own before, ever.

She had never had any control over her life.

She had been born in fetters, pushed into marriage, with no choice in what she was and the inescapable destiny thrust upon her.

But maybe now, even if she couldn’t choose her own path, she at least could go down it her own way.

* * *

To call what happened in the hills west of Tresingale a battle would have been a wild exaggeration.

It was a slaughter.

Brisk and ruthless, a barrage of arrows followed by the thunder of heavy horse, with the dreadnaught Jinmin in the front.

People called Remin a giant, but Jinmin was nearly as tall, and so massive it was hard to find a horse that could carry him.

The hundred bandits had rough shields and threw them up after the first volley of arrows, but they might as well have been waving daisies at Jinmin.

Remin, seated on his black warhorse, watched from a nearby hilltop.

His participation wasn’t necessary, and there was always a small chance there could be a secondary force nearby, or a weapon hidden among the rapidly decreasing number of surviving bandits.

Years of warfare had taught him to always hold a force in reserve.

But in this case, it wasn’t necessary.

In less than fifteen minutes, the remaining twenty or so bandits had thrown down their arms and knelt in the bloody grass.

Then he rode down.

“Who is your leader?”

he asked curtly.

Almost every man before him had the pale skin and ice-blond hair of Valleth.

The bandits exchanged glances.

It was possible their leader was already dead, but curiously, there was one man that no one was looking at.

“Who supplied you?”

he asked in his adequate Vallethi, watching them carefully.

Again, they looked at each other, but the man fifth or sixth from the left looked at no one, and no one looked at him.

“Does that mean your leader’s dead?”

Remin asked conversationally, leaning forward over his saddle.

“Or ran away? I guess if you weren’t cowards, you wouldn’t have deserted in the first place.”

Now the man on the left was looking.

Glaring.

Remin sat up, nodding at Juste.

“That one,”

he said, pointing.

He wasn’t always right about this kind of thing, but even if that fellow wasn’t the leader, the others would wonder why he had been chosen.

The rest of his knights waded in to split up the other survivors, binding their hands and leading them off in small groups, too far away to see or hear each other.

Remin had learned the principles of interrogation when he was a squire.

It was filthy work that usually left him feeling drained and discouraged, no matter what the outcome.

But Juste was the best of his men at the task, and very rarely had to resort to actual torture.

It was he that had struck upon the idea of separating enemy units and pitting them against each other.

It left them wondering what was happening in the other groups.

Were they being tortured? Were they talking? Juste made the same offer to all of them, out loud, for everyone to hear: talk, and you’ll live. Or rather, talk first, and you’ll live.

Sometimes it was even true.

A disciplined unit could withstand the technique.

Remin did not believe he was looking at a disciplined unit.

“Huber,”

he said, waving over the master of his scouts.

“Send some men to Bram.

He should be in Ferrede.

Let him know we’ve wiped out the bandits and to expect us there in five days.

Send the rest of your men to make sure we haven’t missed anyone.”

The Iron Hills were four days from Tresingale, and the question he most wanted to ask the bandits was what they thought they would accomplish by going there.

It was true that if Remin had been away when they arrived, or if he had been incompetent enough not to send scouts out into the surrounding country, they might have succeeded in surprising and overpowering his forces.

Temporarily.

They had no hope of holding the town.

“We weren’t going to hurt anyone,”

said the bandit named Drazhake, in a Vallethi accent so thick that Remin had to look to Juste to interpret.

“We were just planning to take some things we need.

We’re in a bad way and we can’t go back to Valleth.”

That was a third option: they could have been planning to raid, then retreat.

But it was a lie to say no one would have been hurt.

Remin’s men would have fought to the death to defend what they had worked so hard to build.

“The war ended a year ago,”

said Juste.

“You could have accepted the amnesty.”

“No, we couldn’t.”

Loyal enough to Valleth to refuse an amnesty, but not quite loyal enough to finish their service.

Remin might have been sympathetic; most of Valleth’s army was composed of conscripts by the end of the war, and it was hard to blame a man for not giving it his all when he was a slave in all but name.

And all a deserter would find in Valleth now was an execution.

But Remin had offered them a way out.

They could have settled peacefully in the valley, or gone anywhere else in the world, and had chosen to stay and be his enemy.

“Who was supplying you?”

Juste asked.

“We know you didn’t survive the winter on your own.

It will go hard with you if you lie to us.”

“Do we look well-supplied?”

Drazhake spat.

He had a point.

The bandits were long-haired and unshaven, with ragged, patched clothing.

But they weren’t starving.

“Jinmin.”

Juste turned to the behemoth knight standing a few yards away, arms crossed and silently observing.

“How many did we capture?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Twenty-two.”

Juste crouched in front of Drazhake, somber as a confessor.

He even looked sympathetic.

“I’m going to go and ask the other twenty-one men this question, and promise to spare anyone that tells me the truth.

Do you think all twenty-one are going to give me the same answer? The stars have blessed you with the opportunity to answer first.”

He let that sit there.

The sun beat down on the bare hills, brown rock and iron deposits.

Interrogators were gamblers at heart, playing the odds, watching for tells.

“Very well.”

Juste stood up.

“I’ll go and speak to your friends.

Truth is important.”

“You’re going to kill us anyway,”

Drazhake said angrily.

“Why should I tell you anything?

“No.

It may be that we will spare someone useful.”

This was a lie.

Drazhake knew it was a lie.

But he wanted to live.

“We went to Ferrede,”

he said, bitter, angry.

“Twice, over the winter.

They have a mill.

We ordered them to give us grain and said if anyone complained, we’d come back and burn it all.”

That was a good one.

It might even be true.

And Juste knew it, too; he gave Drazhake a long look and then turned away without another word.

He had been asked and answered.

Now they would see what the other bandits had to say.

Over the next hour, the source of the grain was variously given as theft from a grain cart they encountered on the road, theft from a mill, supplied voluntarily by an elderly man and a teenage girl—which made everyone else glare ferociously at the man who said it—and supplied directly from Valleth.

That last was so transparently impossible that Juste only looked sadly at the man who had said it, as if he were ashamed for him.

They might have gotten more details if they had tortured a few of the men, but what they had was enough.

This did not look like a complex conspiracy.

Remin took his own turn killing the bound, wailing men.

There was no glory in it, he didn’t like it, but he wouldn’t ask his men to do anything he wasn’t willing to do himself.

His knights and squires silently performed the same task further down the line, lifting their swords to plunge them into dirty, squirming backs, the heavy steel slamming through flesh and bone, aimed for the heart of a man who was doing his level best to wiggle away.

Remin had to put his boot on the back of one dying man to wrench his sword free before he went on to the next.

He reminded himself that the bandits had chosen to march on Tresingale, where he and those loyal to him were breaking their backs to carve homes out of the wilderness.

His soldiers had laid down their arms and deserved some peace.

There were hundreds of other men who had come to the valley at his invitation, who might have been injured or killed.

And one seventeen year-old girl.

What might these bandits have done to her, given the opportunity?

Remin’s jaw tightened.

That thought made it easier to do what was necessary.

In less than half a day, they had positioned themselves to intercept the bandits, killed them, questioned the survivors, and left over a hundred corpses on the bare crowns of the Iron Hills.

Remin left a few men to search the dead and dispose of them, sent his archers home, and moved on with his remaining force for Ferrede, five days away, riding hard.

Remin had all but forgotten Drazhake’s name by the time they were on their way.

There were so many other names and faces in his memory already.

And when he arrived in Ferrede, he suspected there would be at least two more.