Page 19

“My lady?”

“My lady.”

A gentle poke.

“My lady, wake up.”

“Lady, it’s morning…”

“Ophele.”

Ophele’s eyes snapped open, meeting a pair of bemused hazel eyes.

Sir Miche straightened.

The donkey.

“Oh, no,”

she said, bolting upright in bed and clinging to her blankets.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry!”

“Another slugabed,”

he said, but he was smiling as he headed for the door, which he had left carefully open.

The duke’s knights were scrupulous that there would be no opportunity for misunderstandings.

Ophele flew to get dressed.

She hadn’t even wondered how she would wake up on time in the morning; she had never had to, and the duke hadn’t been the least bit shy about shaking her awake when he wanted her up.

Stumbling out of bed, she tugged a dress out of her trunk and put it on the right way round on the second try, then buried her face in a basin of cold water until some of the fog cleared.

In ten minutes, she was outside with her veil and hat in hand, and had only fallen over things twice.

“I thought Rem was exaggerating,”

Sir Miche said, amused.

“No, don’t trouble yourself to apologize, my lady, I knew someone else who had the same trouble.

Stable’s this way.

Sure you’re awake?’

“Yes.”

Her eyes were open very wide.

She had often visited the stables in Aldeburke, so she was familiar with the smells, the sounds, the stomping, blowing, curious horses.

There was a lone donkey in a small corner at the back of the stable, an elderly little fellow whose head was roughly level with Ophele’s.

“Hello,”

she said softly, holding her hand under his muzzle and wishing she had a treat for him.

“Do you know his name, Sir Miche?”

“Just Miche.

Drover said they called him Eugene.”

He looked like a Eugene.

He lipped at her fingers, searching for food, but didn’t bite, and Ophele looked him over.

She would feel horrible if he were hurt or too old and she made him work anyway.

“Some of the masons used him to carry their kit on the journey,”

said Sir Miche, who seemed to intuit something of her thoughts.

“But he’s too small for most work around here.

They were talking about putting him down, but he makes do with scrub, so it’s not like he’s costing us in feed.

I think he could handle a small cart.”

“Of course he could,”

she crooned, stroking his ears.

He needed a good brushing.

“Can’t you, Eugene?”

The donkey seemed a little shy of hands around his head, but she gave him a few minutes to get used to her, moving her hand from his shoulder to his neck so he would know where she was.

Tam had told her it was like that with horses; they were big animals, and they couldn’t see what was around their sides unless they turned their heads to look.

Tonight, she would give him a good wash and scrub.

“Let’s get him hitched up.”

Sir Miche straightened and untied the ropes that blocked the donkey’s improvised stall.

“Most days I’ll have the stable boys get him ready for you, but you’ll need to learn to manage his tack yourself, just in case.”

Two helpful stableboys were nearby to explain the harness and cart, a tiny four-wheeled wagon that showed signs of hasty repair.

The leather harness looked like a tangled mess until they got it on Eugene, but Ophele soon saw how it all fit together, with an additional bit of complex strapping in the wagon to keep the barrel from bouncing out.

She was delighted with all of it.

Not just because of the donkey—though she already considered Eugene a gentleman and bosom friend—but also because this meant she really was doing something valuable, however humble.

“He can start by carrying my shovel,”

said Sir Miche, cheerfully pitching the tool into the back of the wagon as they set off.

His sword was strapped in its usual place on his hip, never absent even when he was digging ditches.

“I finally got one with a decent handle yesterday, they’ll have to pry it from my cold, dead hands.”

“Can we see if there are carrots or apples in the kitchen?”

Ophele asked as they approached the cookhouse.

They were already a little late; the sun was a finger-width above the horizon, but she could make up any lost time now that she had Eugene.

“I’m sure there are, but you’ll have to talk Wen into parting with them,”

Sir Miche said dubiously.

“If you can do it in five minutes, my lady, I’ll make friends with Eugene in the meantime.”

Ophele blanched.

She had secretly been hoping that he would get them for her.

And he likely suspected as much; there was a teasing look in his eyes as he reached for Eugene’s lead rope, and before she left, he sketched the sign of the stars’ blessing over her head and intoned, “When you find yourself in the void, may the light find you.”

She could do it.

Hadn’t she just been telling herself last night that she could make her own way? Ophele hurried to the kitchen at the back of the cookhouse, braced herself, and opened the door.

The massive cook did not have a knife in his hand.

That was a good omen.

“Master Wen?”

she asked timidly, remembering not to cross the sacred threshold.

“Excuse me?”

His vast back to her as he stirred something over the fire, and he showed no sign that he had heard.

“Master Wen?” Louder.

He didn’t so much as twitch.

Ophele bit her lip.

“Master Wen,”

she said loudly.

“Excuse me!”

“What, what, what what what?!”

He went off like a volcano.

“Your Grace, I am stirring.”

“I—I just wondered if you had some apples or carrots to spare,”

she stammered.

“If you point to where they are, I won’t trouble you—”

“You are not setting foot in me kitchen,”

he said, pointing at her as if he were a Vallethi sorcerer about to level her with a curse.

“What d’ye need them for?”

“A donkey.”

This answer did not impress him, and she hurriedly explained.

“They gave me a donkey to help at the wall.

He’s old and he’s just been living on scrub brush and he’s going to be hauling water for everyone all day.

So I want to give him something good to eat.

Like carrots? Even old ones. Please.”

The words tumbled out in a cluster of fits and starts and Master Wen looked more incredulous with every syllable, but she had to try.

“His name is Eugene.”

“The donkey’s name is Eugene.”

She nodded, petrified.

“What a coincidence, me sainted mother’s name was Eugene,”

Wen said, hands on his vast hips.

“Well, I suppose if it’s for Master fu—bloody Eugene, of course, of course.”

It was a soaring fit of sarcasm, but he still abandoned his stirring and reached into a cupboard to produce a small bundle of ancient carrots.

“Not one foot in me kitchen,”

he warned, and tossed them.

Ophele clung to the doorframe with one hand and snatched them out of the air.

“Thank you!”

She said breathlessly.

“Thank you, Master Wen!”

“You’re a blooming duchess, me name’s just Wen!”

He roared after her as she escaped, clutching her prize.

“You actually managed to wheedle it out of him?”

Sir Miche looked impressed.

“Carrots for Master Eugene,”

she said, tickled by the title, and broke off a bit of one to present it victoriously to the donkey.

They spent the day getting used to each other.

It was a different routine, only a little less arduous even with the barrel.

It was a relief not to have to haul buckets up and down the hill, but her hands were blistered from the windlass after she filled the barrel for the third time, and Ophele tore up her handkerchief to bandage her palms, hoping no one would notice.

The cart and barrel were also just short enough for her to reach on tiptoe, and she didn’t dare to climb on the cart.

In the first place, it might fall to pieces, and in the second, Eugene sometimes took it in his head to start walking while she was busy with the buckets.

“No, no, not yet,”

she admonished, hurrying to grab his lead rope.

He might be elderly and small, but he was still surprisingly strong; when she tried tying the lead rope around her waist to keep him from wandering while she refilled buckets, she found herself being dragged along with the cart for a dozen paces, to the amusement of the watching masons.

“Need help, m’lady?”

called one, as she snatched at a passing gorse bush.

“No, thank you!”

But she didn’t hold it against him.

Master Eugene was learning his new job, he was bound to make a few mistakes.

And he was such a sweet and grandfatherly little fellow, a little absent-minded perhaps, but he never shied once from the racket on the wall.

The smiths also approved of this new arrangement.

At the noon meal they sent a delegation to propose that Eugene haul their own water barrels to and from the well, and in exchange they would spell her on the windlass.

As Ophele was working assiduously to hide her blistered hands from the eagle-eyed Sir Miche, she happily agreed to this arrangement.

“That was wise,”

he said approvingly from behind her, where he was lazing against a tree.

“Never give away anything for free, my lady, or the next thing you know these swindlers will have you begging for an hour of the donkey’s time.”

“Never,”

Ophele vowed, feeding Master Eugene another carrot.

She bathed and brushed him before she bathed and brushed herself that night, and only left after the stableboys had promised to look after him as respectfully as the big war horses.

It had still been a hard day.

She would almost have preferred to skip dinner rather than leave the steaming comfort of her cauldron, where the boiling water was the only thing that soothed her aching legs.

She had done the math as she walked endlessly back and forth at the foot of the wall, and she reckoned she had walked nearly fifteen miles that day.

Only the thought of Sir Miche having to fish her out of her cauldron kept her from falling asleep in the water.

She was almost asleep later that night when her remaining trouble popped into her mind, and she jerked instantly back to wakefulness.

Turning over, she faced the wall behind her bed.

“Dol?”

There was a moment of silence, and then… “Yes, m’lady?”

“Can you do me a favor?”

“Might do,”

he said cautiously.

“Could you wake me up a little before dawn?”

she asked.

“I’m sorry to trouble you, but I don’t wake up on my own, and I don’t want to be late.

Could you bang your sword and shield together or something?”

“Folk in the cots next door would hang me if I did that, lady,”

he said.

He sounded like he was trying not to laugh, but at least he hadn’t refused.

And he was right; she didn’t want to trouble the neighbors.

But she could hardly let him come into the cottage, the duke could have his head for such an outrage.

“Just call, as loud as you dare,”

she said finally.

“And maybe have one of the other guards knock on the door? Who else is out there?”

“Yvain,”

said a new voice from the wall at the foot of her bed, startling her.

“Sorry, lady.

Walls are thin.”

“Oh.

Nice to meet you,”

she said, glancing from one wall to the other.

“Would you mind knocking, Yvain?”

“Don’t mind.

I’m a heavy sleeper myself.”

“Thank you both.”

She burrowed back under her covers with a lighter heart.

“Good night.

I hope it’s not too boring, just sitting out there.”

“We like boring,”

Dol assured her.

“Good night, lady,”

said Yvain.

* * *

They met Bram a few miles outside Ferrede five days later, and Remin was impressed again by the sheer size of his own duchy.

“No wagons in or out of town,”

Bram reported as they sat together at dusk, forgoing campfires to avoid arousing suspicion in the nearby town.

It was better if the townspeople didn’t know they were being watched.

“My Meinhem scouts reported back yesterday, no movement on their side, either.

These towns are just too far apart to communicate regularly, Rem.”

He agreed.

These were small towns, backwaters.

There was only one road in Ferrede.

Forty-some cottages spread across the countryside surrounded by acres of planting, a windmill creaked on a lonely hilltop, and eight houses clustered together in a hollow and were likely considered “the town.”

It was an isolated place that had survived a century of armies tramping by mostly because it wasn’t near anything of tactical value and the people were too stubborn to leave.

He wondered how they’d been coping with the ghouls.

“What do you think?”

asked Huber.

There was a glint of copper in his eyes in the sunlight, the legacy of a Noreveni ancestor.

In the distance, they could see a single horse and wagon trundling from the town toward the mill.

“I don’t think the whole town was behind it,”

Remin said slowly.

“If they were, then we would’ve seen more contact between them and the bandits.

I’m betting there’s an old man and a girl somewhere in town.

Might be someone’s sister or sweetheart that just wanted to help the deserters.

We’re far enough from the border that they’re more Vallethi than Empire up here.”

“Rem,”

said Huber.

“If it’s a girl and an old man—”

“I offered them amnesty.”

And if the girl had been helping her sweetheart, or her brother, she would have done better to tell him to build a hut and start farming.

The deserters could have settled anywhere in the valley, and Remin would have looked the other way, as long as they were peaceful.

But they hadn’t done that.

“I need to talk to them first,”

he decided.

“As their lord, I’m worried about the bandits that have been harassing other villages in the area.

I also want to help them prepare for what’ll be coming out of the mountains in a few months.

We’ll see how they respond, and keep our eyes open for an old man and a teenage girl.

Juste, you go to the mill while we’re making our greetings in town.

See who’s in charge of the grain.”

He suspected that that was where they would find the pair in question.

And the behavior of the townspeople would determine whether he took the betrayers away quietly or hanged them from the larger of the two trees in the town square.

There was no hint of trouble from the village elder, a very elderly man named Yewen Brodrim who was a little hard of hearing, but seemed in full possession of his wits otherwise.

“The Duke of Andelin?”

he said loudly, looking automatically toward Remin, who had a nobleman’s bearing even when he was in the middle of dismounting his horse.

“Himself? Well, well, we must be honored, honored indeed! We will be pleased to offer whatever we have, Your Grace.”

He bowed, hands together in the Vallethi style.

“We heard there were bandits operating in the area,”

Remin said, equally loudly.

He wanted friendly relationships with even his smallest villages; Duke Ereguil was always saying that happy people were productive people.

“We won’t strain your hospitality, elder, but would you mind calling your folk together tonight? We also want to see how you’re coping with the new Andelin wildlife.”

“Bastard devils,”

Elder Brodrim declared loudly.

“It’s good of you to trouble yourself, Your Grace.

Folk are busy with the planting, but I reckon I can gather a few together.”

The size of the gathering that evening made Remin fairly sure that this was not a town with a guilty conscience.

The people came to the square dressed in their finest, lit lanterns, and generously offered the little food they had to spare after the long winter.

There was no sign of fear among them, and he and his men were careful not to give them reason.

Huber and Juste were at their most charming, the squires behaved themselves, and Jinmin kept out of sight.

The giant knight was alarming under the best circumstances.

As much as he preferred to be in Tresingale, it might be a good idea to visit his other villages, at that.

Remin listened gravely to their troubles as Juste sat behind him at a table, scribbling notes.

They had indeed been troubled by the devils, and lost seven people before the winter snows fell.

“Most of them from ghouls, while they were in the fields alone,”

said Elder Brodrim.

“Two of them were stranglers who crept through windows in the night.

And they are growing bolder, Your Grace.

Ronze over there, he says he saw a big wolf running through the trees at the end of his north pasture.

A very big wolf.

Ronze’s not one to exaggerate.”

Remin did not curse aloud.

“Seems early for that,”

was all he said, but in his mind, he was picturing the miles of empty land in Tresingale, where there was no wall.

“Folk don’t go anywhere unarmed, Your Grace,”

said the elder.

“And the doors are barred after dark.”

Except for tonight, when they had turned out to honor their lord.

“We’re taking many of the same precautions in Tresingale,”

Remin said, looking out at the packed square.

He supposed now was as good a time as any to address them.

He hardly needed to signal for silence; as soon as he stood, the crowd quieted.

“We’re as worried about the Andelin devils as you are,”

he told them.

“And we’re doing many of the same things.

I can’t promise that we’ll get rid of them in a night, or even a year.

And we can’t wall off your fields.

But I will see that you at least have a place to sleep at night where the stranglers can’t get you.”

Last year, in Tresingale, they slept in the cookhouse and the storehouse, and posted guards.

He could at least give them the option of doing the same.

Next year, they would have something better.

“That’s very generous, Your Grace,”

Elder Brodrim said amid murmurs of agreement.

After the terror Valleth had inflicted on the valley, the devils were just one more damned thing.

The people of the Andelin were realists.

Life was short, hard, and often ended violently.

That left one other bit of business.

Juste had pointed out the girl and her grandfather as soon as they arrived in the square.

The miller and his granddaughter were obviously of Vallethi stock, the girl almost wraithlike with her pale, thin hair and skinny frame.

They claimed not to have any grain to spare for their duke, even at a high price.

Remin had glanced at them from time to time, but avoided staring.

The old man hadn’t a word for anyone else in the square, and there was something off about that girl’s smile.

As much as he hated to ruin the mood, it would be best to deal with it before the wine started flowing.

“There is one other thing that brought me to Ferrede,”

he said.

He had already planned what he would say.

He did not want this place to fear him when he left.

“Five days ago, my men dispatched a large group of bandits, over a hundred strong.

They were marching to Tresingale.

They confessed that they meant to raid it.”

He paused, watching.

There was surprise on many faces, discomfort in a few, and anger on two.

“My men would have resisted,”

he continued.

“They’re soldiers.

They don’t know how to farm as well as you yet, but we have sixty acres planted so far.

We’ve been building homes.

I just brought my wife to the valley.

It may be that I will bring her here one day, to see how one of the oldest villages in the Andelin has endured a century of hardship and still prospered.”

He hoped he wasn’t laying it on too thick, but everyone was nodding; they liked what he was saying.

He was making them relate to his men, to his wife, to his fears for her safety.

But he also saw puzzlement, because what did this have to do with the people of Ferrede?

“Someone from this village was supplying the bandits with grain.”

The charge hit them like a rockslide.

Remin watched, waited, and sure enough, the girl from the mill turned at once as if she meant to slip away.

Jinmin was already there.

“You fools.”

Elder Brodrim’s voice trembled as he spun, searching the crowd.

“Jutte, Tymmon, you foolish old bastard, do you realize what you’ve done? After everything we said? Do you realize what you’ve done to all of—”

“I’m Vallethi, you craven dog!”

The miller suddenly roared.

He had a long white beard and was just going stringy with age, and he yanked ineffectually away as two of Remin’s men grabbed him.

“This bastard sweeps the valley clear and the lot of you can’t wait to drop to your knees! Maybe if more of you had—”

Juste shut him up with a hard knock to the head.

Remin was inclined to let the rest of the drama play out, and watch the reactions of the people.

It was clear that there was little support for the miller and his granddaughter.

Every face he could see was frozen in horror, and they drew back from the pair as if they had something catching, clearing a path for Remin’s men.

The girl spun around as Jinmin carried her off, livid, as if all the power and venom in her body were concentrated in her pale eyes.

“The Lord of Tales will be back!”

She screeched.

That false smile had vanished and now there was only rage.

“And he’ll punish you all, he won’t forget who the traitors are! You’re cowards, weaklings, worms!”

Shrieking, she was born away.

How old was she? Fifteen? Remin’s stomach twisted, but nothing showed in his hard face.

That girl had been barely more than a child when Valleth surrendered.

But there were holdouts after any war.

Before him, the townspeople were slowly sinking to their knees.

Clutching their children.

“Your Grace.”

Elder Brodrim’s voice trembled.

“I am sorry.

We knew their feelings, and we suspected—but we didn’t think they would go through with it.

I thought they had seen sense.

It was my error in not reporting it.

Please, punish me—”

“Stop.”

Remin lifted a hand.

“I offered you amnesty once.

I will repeat that offer now.

If any of you do not wish to live under the Empire of Argence, then you may go, now.

My men will escort you to the border, and you will be given coin enough to start you on your way.

I swear to the stars in heaven that no harm will come to you if you wish to go. This is the last time I will make this offer.”

He paused, giving them a chance to take him up on it.

No one did.

“Then any support for Valleth or further lawlessness will be punished accordingly.

You will give me your oath. Now.”

Every single person said it.

Even the little ones, kneeling beside their parents and looking around in confusion, but game to play along.

Shrill, piping little voices swearing their loyalty.

Their happiness was gone.

They were relieved; they were all but fainting with relief.

Other lords might have swept the square clear, and killed them to the last child.

But Remin knew what it was like to be the last child.

“In return, you have my oath to return loyalty with protection, and trust with trust,”

he said.

“I regret that we had to endure such unpleasant business tonight.

I will send men to build you a sleeping house safe from stranglers.

Elder Brodrim, I will hope to return after the harvest.

May our next meeting be under more pleasant circumstances.”

“Y-yes, Your Grace.”

The old man stood, slipping his hands into his wide sleeves to hide their trembling.

Great drops of sweat stood out on his bald head, but he gave a good bow all the same.

“I hope…I hope you will bring the Duchess of Andelin so we can offer our hospitality, Your Grace.

We will be honored.”

Remin offered them a cordial farewell, but kept it short.

He was about to execute two members of their village.

Regardless of their guilt, it would be insensitive to linger.

But when he returned to his camp in the hills, he found Jinmin had already beaten him to it.

“That’s them,”

said the knight, pointing to the two corpses a short distance outside the camp.

The girl’s pale hair was stained red with blood.

“Didn’t see any point in delaying.”

“I did not order you to kill them.”

Remin’s voice was frigid.

The giant knight met his gaze squarely, small brown eyes in a flat brawler’s face.

“What if I had wanted to question them?”

“Then I’d say sorry,”

said Jinmin.

He bowed, his face expressionless.

“Meant no disrespect, Your Grace.”

“If I can’t trust you to withhold your sword, then I won’t ask you to draw it.”

Remin said it quietly; this was only between the two of them, not a show for the consumption of the camp. “Go.”

Jinmin lumbered away, a small mountain.

Sometimes he thought that Jinmin had only chosen to follow him on a whim all those years ago, and if he hadn’t, then Remin likely would have been obliged to kill him.

They had been together for the entirety of the war and Jinmin had been a loyal and formidable weapon; he had once taken a crossbow bolt intended for Remin, and killed the assassin without so much as a twitch.

But for all that, Remin still felt sometimes that he hadn’t the least idea what was going on in that giant skull.

They camped under the stars, though this time they lit fires.

There was no need to hide their presence, and the warnings about wolf demons had them all on edge.

When the moon was high and the middle of the night was passing, Juste came to sit with him.

The rest of the camp was quiet.

In the distance, Remin could see the massive shape of Jinmin in his bedroll, snoring like a congested ox.

“Sometimes I think he’d do anything I ordered,”

Remin murmured to Juste.

“Anything.

And then he goes and does something like this.”

“Fortunately, the rest of us are here to argue with you,”

Juste replied.

“In this case, he saved me the trouble, my lord.

I was on my way to do it myself.”

“What? Why?”

“You weren’t going to question them.

They know nothing,”

Juste said curtly.

“But you were going to force yourself to kill that girl.”

“Why would I do that?”

But the question lacked his usual conviction, and Remin looked into the fire as if he might find the answer there.

“To prove that you can, if you must,”

Juste said, with quiet sympathy.

“It is unnecessary, my lord.

We will not ask this of you.”

“You know.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Yes.

I saw you after you killed that girl in Ellingen.

It did not seem like a new trouble, so I asked Huber about it.”

Huber was the least likely of all Remin’s knights to gossip, or indeed to talk at all, barring some pressing need.

Remin understood and allowed it when he would never have tolerated it in anyone else.

But trust Juste to sniff it out and know exactly where to go for an answer.

Miche would laugh and laugh, and never tell the truth.

Thoughts of Ellingen always filled Remin with a complicated mix of guilt and horror and shame, and the belligerent sense that he should feel none of those things.

He had offered them a chance to surrender.

He had promised that if they returned Ludovin, and opened the gates, he would do them no harm.

Instead, they had tortured Ludovin for three days before he killed himself, and so Remin had knocked down the walls, killed everyone who resisted him, and tore down the city until not one stone stood on top of another.

Ellingen was destroyed for all time.

Valleth had done far worse, when they invaded the Empire.

They had rained terror on the Andelin Valley for a century, offering its cities and its people to the Lord of Tales.

But all that history and self-justification evaporated like smoke when Remin heard the word Ellingen, for that would only ever conjure a girl of fourteen, maybe fifteen years old, who had come at him with a broken sword.

And he had killed her with one blow of his fist.

It was only afterward that he realized what he had done.

He could have disarmed her.

He should have just taken the strike; the stars knew it wouldn’t have been more than a scratch.

But he had seen that shape, that motion from the corner of his eye—

Remin had wrenched off his helmet and stumbled away to be sick in an alley, revolted by what he had done.

And that was where Huber had found him, alternately sobbing and heaving his guts up, and guarded him until he had recovered enough to go on.

“And you fear it will happen again,”

Juste said softly.

He was not speaking from idle curiosity.

Juste had always been simultaneously the gentlest and most vicious of Remin’s knights.

He never hesitated to take on tasks that would have kept Remin awake for weeks afterward, and he did them with an air of gentle regret that made even the ugliest work seem sadly understandable.

“Do you really think it will be necessary?”

This was a dangerous gift.

It would be far too easy to rely upon it.

“I don’t know,”

Remin said, and drained his cup in a single gulp.

“I can’t tell anymore.

I don’t…think she would.

I don’t think she would want to.”

But he knew all too well that the Emperor had ways of bending people to his will, and even if he hadn’t found a way yet, there was no guarantee that he would not, in time.

In his dreams, Remin had already seen the shape of a girl lying broken on the stones of Ellingen, with a face like a solemn owl.

Juste nodded.

His pale blue eyes were as placid and peaceful as a pool of water.

“Then rely on me,”

he said, as he had for all that other unpleasant work.

“If it comes to it, my lord.

I will do it.”