Page 20

It was amazing to see how much Tresingale had changed in a few weeks.

Remin and his men galloped through the north gate under a clear blue sky, after nearly a week of riding in the rain.

The fields were more vividly green than ever, sweeping off to the mountains in rolling hills.

On the north side of town, the dark furrows of planting stretched farther away, and though he wasn’t farmer enough yet to guess acreage at a glance, he thought they might just get all the wheat into the ground after all.

Home.

“They’ve been busy,”

said Juste beside him, rising in his stirrups to look.

Even from the gatehouse, the two white lines of the north and south wall were visible in the distance, like arms stretching out to embrace the east road.

If his horse had been a little fresher, Remin would have gone straight to look.

He wanted to see everything and know every detail of how the town had grown in his absence.

But he owed it to man and beast to let them refresh themselves before he put them back to work, so he grudgingly trotted them all to the stables and tended to his warhorse, who the stableboys still regarded with popeyed awe.

Another year or two of peace and he might finally be able to make himself name the beast.

Then he went home to give himself a scrub.

After two weeks in the saddle and sleeping by the roadside, the layers of filth were about to crack and fall off, like flakes of shale.

But when he opened the door to his cottage, he stopped.

Stepped back.

Looked again.

This was his cottage, wasn’t it?

Yes, that was his trunk under the window, and his bed.

But there was a new awning on the north face of the cottage housing a collection of buckets, tubs, and the princess’s bath cauldron, and a small room added to the opposite side that turned out to be a privy closet.

He’d forgotten he’d asked Edemir to have that built.

And there were several other minor construction projects he had not authorized: sturdy shelves were mounted above the bed bearing the princess’s books, and the washstand was a tiered marvel of shelves and cubbies, with a mirror that could be put on a shelf at his own height.

It didn’t look like a single surface had escaped unscathed.

There were bunches of flowers in cups on the table and windowsills, new blankets neatly folded at the foot of his bed, and under the bed were two little pairs of slippers, neatly lined up.

The princess’s smaller trunk and battered valise were underneath the other window, and a tin kettle hung on a hook beside the hearth.

Which now had a mantle.

And more flowers on the mantle.

Remin stepped inside and let the door close behind him.

Most of the shelves on the washstand contained all the soaps and lotions and strange little jars the princess had acquired in Celderline, but one shelf had his own things, along with a bar of plain soap.

He put water on to heat in the kettle and stripped down to wash the filth of the road from his body with hot water and soap, then shaved with more hot water in an absolute orgy of good grooming.

It all felt so amazing, he was almost ashamed.

His horse needed rest after weeks of hard riding, but it felt good to stretch his legs and he didn’t mind beginning with a look at those projects within walking distance.

All weariness had fallen from him at the sight of Tresingale.

He was clean, freshly shaved, and reenergized, and now his men were going to pay for it.

Like all other valuable things in town, Edemir and all his records and plans were housed in the storehouse.

“You’re back,”

said the stocky knight, looking up from his worktable in his closet of an office.

Edemir was a compact and efficient man, economical with word and motion.

“I guess we’re lucky you didn’t come straight from the stables.”

“Tell me everything,”

Remin ordered, dragging over a stool.

With Edemir, it was a long list of arrivals and departures.

A dozen cows had arrived and departed immediately for a new field adjacent to the horses’ paddocks, and Tresingale officially had its first cowshed.

More masons had arrived.

Bricklayers.

Carpenters.

A third architect, the renowned Master Sousten Didion, had arrived, seen the cottage prepared for him, and pitched a fit that required an additional bribe of gold. He had been obsessively surveying the proposed site of the manor house ever since.

Remin was willing to forgive a tantrum.

Several of the craftsmen and masters he had hired were best described as charmingly eccentric, and Sousten Didion had a reputation not just for building beautiful houses, but unfolding them in stages, planning years of gradual growth as new parts of a noble house became necessary.

It was exactly what Tresingale needed.

“…seed for the kitchen garden, shipments of medical supplies, and two new journeymen to work under Genon,”

Edemir continued.

A single surgeon was not sufficient for the growing population.

“And you saw the work in your cottage? The Duchess asked for a few things, and I didn’t see why not.”

“That’s fine.”

Remin waved this away, though he was surprised his shy wife had actually gathered the courage to request something.

“And if you see her today, you can tell her we’ll be sending a crew to dig the third well tomorrow,”

Edemir added.

At Remin’s blank look, he explained, “They need water on the wall.

You’ll see when you get there.”

With the warnings about demon wolves fresh in his mind, Remin had been planning to go to the wall anyway, but what did new wells have to do with the princess?

“The folk in Ferrede said the devils might be coming out early,”

he said, shaking it off.

He had been working to push the princess out of his mind since the day he left, but she insisted on peeping back in.

“Someone there saw a wolf demon.

It’s early, but it’s been a warm spring.

Has anyone here seen anything?”

“Not that they’ve reported.”

Edemir’s eyebrows lifted.

“They’re sure it wasn’t just a big wolf?”

“The man who reported it doesn’t have a reputation for exaggeration.

And they’ve seen their share of Andelin’s new wildlife by now.”

This was not good news.

They took some time to talk through various preparations, from increasing the night watch—which meant decreasing the number of men available to work by day—to the supplies needed to keep torches and braziers lit.

“The wall is proceeding on schedule, though,”

Edemir noted.

“You ought to take a look, Rem.

In a month or so they’ll start work on the gatehouse, and we can send a third of the workforce immediately to start on the north wall.

I took some men off the palisade since it seemed we’d finish the wall in time, but with your news…should we have them close the gap? It’ll slow building the permanent wall if we have to rip up all the earthworks.”

“Don’t do anything yet.

We’ll discuss it first,”

Remin decided.

The sighting of a single wolf demon might not justify going that far.

Leaving Edemir to his lists, he went to find some food, hungry enough to tolerate Wen’s shouting about how unreasonable it was to expect meals outside of mealtimes.

In the kitchen, the vast cook was taking a cleaver to what looked like the remains of a deer.

“A bit of bread and cheese will be fine,”

Remin said from the doorway.

“And a sausage.

And wipe the blood off your hands before you touch my food.”

“Well, welcome back, Your Grace.”

Wen glared and didn’t move from his spot.

“Ye can get it yourself, and welcome.

Right next to the door.

Ye know how to work a cupboard?”

“When did you get those? And you’re letting people over the threshold now?”

There were three tall sets of cupboards on the wall by the door, and Remin opened the doors to find bread, cheese, sausages, apples, carrots, and other portable items neatly stored in bins.

“Only so far as that white line.”

Wen jabbed his finger at a stripe of whitewash on the floor.

“No one crosses that line.

But it’s easier than having His Grace nagging when I’m up to me elbows in yesterday’s buck, innit? Ye can thank Her Grace for the favor, if you like it, she’s the one wheedled the cupboards out of that skinflint Edemir.”

“Wheedled? Her Grace?”

Remin echoed.

“Aye, like a tinker.

Came in asking for bloody carrots every morning, I was hearing Master Wen, Master Wen in me dreams.

And then one day she says, Master Wen, would it be easier to keep the apples and carrots here by the door? I don’t like to trouble you.

For Master Eugene.”

Wen produced a credible impression of the princess’s shy, start-and-stop speech pattern, though the batting eyelashes were a little over the top.

“Next morning it was bread for Miche, and then the ruddy stable lads wanting their breakfast, and so off she was to Edemir with a ration scheme worked out and just needing a new set of cupboards.

So put that box back where ye got it from, if ye please, now I’ve been fucking organized.”

“Her Grace did this.

The princess. My wife.”

He was sure he had misunderstood something.

“The Duchess,”

Wen corrected.

The foul-mouthed cook was a stickler for proper etiquette.

“Became the Duchess when you married her, didn’t she? And aye, t’was her notion.

So Your Grace, I can now say, get your own bleeding rations and sod off.

And close the cupboard doors, we’re not fucking animals.”

It wasn’t until he was some way down the road that Remin realized he hadn’t asked who Master Eugene was.

Gauging the progress of the wall from his glimpse at the north gate, he elected to head down the east road rather than the southern loop.

It was incredible to think that in a few months, he would already be seeing a stone gatehouse in the distance.

And he really needed to name the roads.

East Road was utilitarian, but an East Road could be located anywhere in the Empire.

Remin wanted people to know when they were in Tresingale.

Even if there wasn’t much to see there yet.

On the east road was the stick-and-string outlines that marked off the lots in the main town, with wide streets that would one day accommodate not just carriage traffic but foot traffic along the storefronts.

And, of course, the all-important drains.

Until the wall was done, Nore Ffloce had no one to actually build roads or drains, but he occupied himself with the surveyor in the meantime, taking exhaustive measurements to determine where digging—or filling—would be required.

“Your Grace!”

The gangly man hailed Remin happily, speeding over with his usual armload of parchments.

Three assistants were hot on his heels, laden with sticks, strings, and tools.

“How fortunate that you happened by! There are some revisions to our plans for the outer areas of town…”

Remin was just as happy to see the plans as Nore was to show them, and for an hour they bent their heads together as Nore explained where he had adjusted this road or that set of lots, and how he planned to terrace off the back of the temple gardens to get rid of Mosquito Pond.

“And I must say, Your Grace,”

he added as they were saying their farewells, “please thank Her Grace for me, when next you see her.

Those wells might have caused quite a mess in the artisans’ quarter, when we begin construction there.”

“What does the princess have to do with the artisans’ quarter?”

Remin asked, his black eyebrows drawing together ominously.

The princess seemed to have her dainty fingers in a lot of pies and he was beginning to think he was due an explanation.

“Just the wells, Your Grace.”

Nore was quick to see which way the winds were blowing.

“Really, it was Guisse that approved it, perhaps it would be best if he explained it…”

He escaped soon after, leaving Remin frowning at the distant walls.

On foot, he had the pleasure of watching them slowly loom ahead on both left and right, though the gap between them was still dauntingly large.

Both were wrapped in a lattice of scaffolding and so covered with people, they looked like vertical anthills, with the racket of hammering, chiseling, and yelling men audible a mile away.

The land on the outside of the wall was being cleared of trees for a hundred paces to make sure nothing climbed over, and Remin had to walk through a mile of forest before he reached the construction area of the south wall.

He wasn’t looking for the princess.

He was doing the opposite of looking for her, trying to dismiss her from his mind altogether, but she was the first thing he saw all the same.

A tiny figure in the distance with one hand on her hat and the other embracing a small gray donkey, her head tilted back to look up at a blacksmith.

Behind the donkey was a long, low wagon bearing three large barrels.

This by itself was sufficient to raise a number of questions.

Even as he watched, the blacksmith said something that made her eyes widen and she covered her mouth with one gloved hand, giggling.

Where was the silent, solemn little owl he knew? She was smiling.

Her eyes were so bright, so quick to see everything.

Even veiled, hatted, and covered in white dust, he couldn’t help thinking her beautiful.

She looked like nothing so much as the clearest and bluest of skies.

Until she turned and saw Remin.