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“No, it was her idea,”

Miche said at the stable that evening, as they stood at the far end of the long aisle and watched the princess brush Master Eugene, who kept affectionately butting her with his head.

“At first, she was just worried about getting the water to the lads on the south wall.

But then she wondered whether the stream on the north wall dries up in summer, which apparently happens to the stream in Aldeburke.

Next thing I know, she’s consulting with Guisse on the placement of wells, and then the day before the first one was due to be dug, she suddenly wondered whether or not someone else might have plans for that bit of dirt.

She’d caught sight of Nore’s sticks on the east side of town.”

“And you gave her a donkey.”

“She was right.”

Miche spread his hands helplessly.

“I can’t argue with her math, Rem.

On day two she was counting her footsteps and taking averages of how much ground she could cover on her own.

She’s a smart girl.”

Remin knew that.

He had sometimes glanced at the books she was reading on the way to Tresingale, everything from her favorite The Will Immanent to histories, poetry, plays, and one book that was more diagram than prose.

But he had never expected her to start applying her intellect the minute his back was turned.

“Sort out the bandits?”

Miche’s eyes twinkled, as if he were enjoying himself.

“We did.

Supplied by a miller and his granddaughter, out of Ferrede.

I’ll tell all of you the rest over supper.”

At the end of the stable, the princess was crooning as she brushed the donkey, her voice rising and falling musically as she assured him that he was the handsomest and cleverest and most darling creature alive.

As if the donkey understood a word of it.

Remin folded his arms, scowling.

“You could go help her,”

Miche suggested, following his eyes.

“She’d be happy, Rem, if you just—”

“Any trouble while I was gone?”

Miche sighed.

“Nothing major.

Accident on the north wall, one fellow took a tumble and broke his arm.

We’re trying not to tell the men to hurry.

Hurried men make mistakes.”

It would be nice if they could accomplish as much in two weeks as a single princess apparently could.

But for all Miche’s assurances, it was still hard to believe.

Her greeting for Remin had been as timid as ever, accompanied with something that might have been I’m glad you’re safe.

And even then, she had looked as if she had expected to be scolded for saying so.

“I need to get washing water from the well,”

she said when they reached their cottage, hanging up her hat and veil on a nail by the door.

Her hair was almost gray with stone dust.

But she paused, her fingers knotting together, and asked softly, “…do you like it?”

She clearly meant the cottage.

And for some reason, he just couldn’t make himself say it.

“It was good of Edemir to spare the men for the extra work,”

he said.

“I hope you thanked him.”

“I did.”

And she slipped back out the front door without meeting his eyes.

The thought of awkwardly not speaking to each other when she came back with the water did not appeal.

“I’ll fetch you for supper when it’s full dark,”

he said when she returned, lugging a pair of full buckets, and departed without looking at her.

That was more or less his plan for the foreseeable future.

But it was difficult when his own men persisted in bringing her to his attention.

At supper, Edemir wanted to talk about the blasted wells, Juste had heard about the donkey and wanted to know how much weight he was hauling, and Miche teased her endlessly, albeit with a gentler version of his usual biting wit.

All of it made Remin feel like he had been away for much longer than a few weeks.

“It turned out as well as it could have,”

he said, when Miche inquired after the bandits.

“I don’t think we’ll have any further problems with Ferrede, but we’ll need to send them some builders, Edemir.

They had a couple stranglers crawling in their windows last year and I promised them a safe place to sleep.

They’re cooperative, but we should send a few armored men along, just in case.

And maybe one of the squires.

Who do you reckon, Huber?”

“Rollon,”

the quiet knight said, after a moment’s consideration.

“Folk generally like him, and he’s ready for a small command.”

“We’ll make it eight men.

That’s the other trouble.”

The cookhouse was emptying by now, but Remin still spared a glance at the men nearby, who quickly found somewhere else to be.

“I already mentioned it to some of you, but a man in Ferrede said he spotted a wolf demon.

It’s early, but I don’t want to take any chances.

We’ll have guards in the sleeping areas, braziers, and the new arrivals need to know what to watch for.”

“We’ll need to get the animals out of the field before nightfall, then,”

said Juste.

“I’ll go now.

They’ve been leaving the sheep and goats out overnight in the near pens.”

“Any livestock missing?”

Bram asked suddenly from the end of the long table, and Juste stopped.

“Yes,”

he said slowly.

“They told me today.

A goat and one of the ewes.”

“It could be regular wolves,”

said Remin into the silence, but none of them believed it.

“Go on, Juste.

And hurry back.”

“I guess we’re moving some men back to palisade building tomorrow, then,”

Edemir said, resigned.

“Blast it.

We were just starting to get ahead on the wall.

If the wolves are out, the others won’t be far behind.

We’ll need to put some nursemaids on our more delicate masters, Rem.

Some of them don’t have the sense to come in out of the rain. I wouldn’t like Sousten Didion to take it in his head to get a midnight view of Tresingale. Which he might do.”

“Tell him what happened to that mason last year,”

said Huber flatly.

“The one that decided to get drunk and take a walk outside the north gate.”

“That was a wolf demon, wasn’t it?”

Bram tossed a bone into the bowl in the center of the table.

“All but gutted the poor bastard, I’d sooner a pack of ghouls got me, at least they can’t take my leg off with the first bi—”

“Rem,”

Miche said sharply, and Remin glanced over to find the blond knight radiating extreme displeasure, his eyes flicking pointedly at the princess, who was listening to the talk with round, horrified eyes.

“Excuse me,”

Rem said abruptly, taking her elbow.

She’d barely done more than pick at her supper anyway, and she didn’t need to be sitting in on their councils.

“Come with me, Princess.

Edemir, send word to the night watch.

They need to be warned.

I’ll be back.”

The pools of torchlight lining the path outside hadn’t seemed so insubstantial in quite some time.

Last year, their defenses had been fewer, but they had also been a much smaller target.

The Andelin devils only came out after nightfall, and Remin’s men were wary and disciplined.

It was almost worse this year.

They were a sprawling settlement of hundreds of craftsmen, journeymen, and apprentices, many of them sleeping in tents, and folk wandering about in the dark like it was a summer festival.

“You’ll be safe here,”

he said as he ducked into the cottage behind the princess, bending his head under the rafters.

Sometimes he felt like he lived half his life in a crouch.

“Don’t go outside, for any reason.”

“Do Yvain and Dol know?”

she asked, looking at the window nervously.

“If a wolf demon can bite off a leg, couldn’t it come through the wall? And surely the folk in Ferrede have shutters on their windows, how did—”

Ah.

This was why Miche had been glaring.

“My guards know what to look for,”

he interrupted, before she finished that thought.

She needed to know the danger just as much as Sousten Didion, but there was nothing to be gained from terrifying her.

“We’ve been dealing with them for three years.

Go to sleep.

I’ll be late tonight.”

“Oh, but…”

She caught his sleeve.

Her eyes were enormous, shining gold in the lamplight and so vulnerable that he had to look quickly away.

“Couldn’t you just…I—I know you must…”

Her fingers slipped from his sleeve.

“At least warn the stableboys,”

she said, her head bowing.

“Eugene isn’t as big as a horse, and he’s old, and he doesn’t even have a proper door on his stall…”

“You’re worried about the donkey,”

Remin said incredulously.

She nodded and went to sit on the bed, her arms wrapping around herself, and at once he wanted to go to her and recoiled at the sight.

Everything in him rose up and roared a warning.

A trick. A trap.

“I’ll have a word with the stableboys,”

he promised, and shut the door.

Normally guards pretended not to overhear anything, effectively blind and deaf to everything that passed in their presence.

But tonight, both of the house guards were waiting for him as soon as he came outside.

Guards with whom the princess was already on a first-name basis, Remin noted.

Yvain was a short, sturdy man who would never win a race, but who could march to the ends of the earth, and Dol was taller and weedy-looking.

“They’re back, Your Grace?”

Yvain asked.

“It looks like it.

I’ll send someone with extra torches.

Keep your eyes and ears open.”

He did send someone to warn the stableboys to lock up, but only because it was good sense.

It would be devastating if the devils got into the stables.

“And tell them to make sure that donkey is put somewhere safe,”

he added before the messenger departed.

It was a late night.

Remin and his knights occupied Edemir’s small office long past midnight, wrangling over which men could be spared for what tasks, and whether or not they needed to build some sort of hardened structure for the masons’ camp.

They had a duty to protect the folk of the valley, but there was also a concern about provoking panic, or even an exodus out of town.

If such a thing happened, it would take years to recover.

“The worst part is, it will slow down the wall,”

Edemir said grimly, surveying his new lists.

His secretaries had been writing their fingers off, keeping pace with the flow of orders.

“It’s going to be full summer before they even begin the northern stretch.”

“At some point we’re going to have to find out where the devils go during the winter, and why,”

said Juste.

“Are they hibernating? Breeding? Or one spring night we may find they’ve bred up more than we expected over the winter.”

“Maybe that’s what they did this winter,”

said Huber, who was always good for a bad thought.

“Let’s not make any assumptions,”

Remin said firmly.

“We know what we’re dealing with, if not how many.

Let’s call back a reserve force from the Vallethi border, and we can discuss tracking the devils to their burrows come fall.”

With the next day’s work divided between them, they broke for the night, far more warily than usual.

The devils feared the sunlight and avoided torchlight, but it wouldn’t stop them.

Outside the cookhouse, Remin found Miche leaning against the wall, waiting.

“She was scared,”

Miche said, without preamble.

“I told you to take her home because she was scared, Rem, not so you could get her out of the way.

I know you’re an idiot about women, but you’re verging on being cruel.

If she’s scared, you stay with her until she’s not.”

“My wife is not your business.”

“You made her my business.

And you’re my business too, you giant git.”

Remin had been at odds with his men before.

It was inevitable; all of them were accustomed to command, all of them had strong opinions, and though Remin bore the title of the Duke of Andelin, it wasn’t a card he cared to play often.

He wanted his knights to argue with him if they thought he was wrong.

But this was the first time Miche had ever cared enough to have an opinion.

“I know we’ve always had to be wary of the Emperor’s gifts,”

he was saying.

“But she’s not a knighthood or a duchy.

She’s a seventeen year-old girl and no one asked her if she wanted to come to the edge of the Empire and listen to devils howling.

And she’s a good girl, she’s been working like a dog, which you would know if you ever talked—”

“It does not please me to find her hands in the kitchen, in Nore Ffloce’s planning, in Guisse’s construction, and managing the water supply for both the north and south wall.”

When Remin was angry, it came out in the all-but-forgotten tones of his father, stiff and icy and snapping like a whip.

“Have you considered for an instant how much damage she could do?”

“We’re talking about the same person, right? Five feet tall, timid, calls Bastard Wen Master?”

“The one who has you eating out of her hand.”

Remin leveled a black stare at him.

“You’ve never cared about a woman before, why does this one matter so much to you, Miche?”

“Don’t even try to tell yourself that lie.”

Miche glared right back.

“You’re the one that handed her off to me.

I’m telling you that if you’re wrong, you’re going to be sorrier than you’ve ever been in your life.”

There wasn’t much more to say, after that.

Remin stalked into his cottage and stripped down in the dark, rolling out his bedroll with a snap.

The last straw would have been a timid question from the darkness, but if the princess was awake, she had the sense to hold her tongue.

In the morning, he found out where the flowers infesting his cottage were coming from.

“What the hell are these?”

he asked, turning back through the cottage door with several ragged bundles of wildflowers in his hands.

A number of them had been lying on the front step.

The princess was sitting up in bed and her eyes were open, but that was all the progress she had made so far.

“The flowers?”

She rubbed her eyes.

“Someone leaves them.”

“Who?”

“I don’t know.”

She wilted visibly under his stare, her voice shrinking.

“They’re just there in the morning…”

Under the codes of courtly love, there was nothing inappropriate about anonymously leaving flowers for an admired lady.

Indeed, it wasn’t even necessarily romantic; knights frequently left small tokens for a lady that struck them with her beauty, grace, or skill at some noble pursuit.

Remin was effectively clutching notes that said, you have a fine wife.

Most men would have been proud that she was so—

Remin’s arm snapped back to strike before he could think about it, and Ophele, who had materialized at his side on her light little feet, ducked backward with a gasp.

Name of all the stars.

He had almost struck her.

“I—I was just—”

she began, her voice high with fright.

“It was just a reflex,”

Remin said loudly.

He set the flowers on the table and retreated, looking at her small white face.

He hadn’t hit her, thank the stars.

But his mouth was dry, and his heart was hammering so hard, he was almost dizzy.

“Please do not…surprise me, wife.”

“I won’t,”

she whispered.

“I’ll send Miche to take you to the wall,”

he said, backing away, unable to take his eyes from her hands.

Empty.

Of course, they were empty.

But for a second, from the corner of his eye…

“Get dressed,”

he said, his stomach churning.

Whatever Miche said, he wasn’t a complete idiot.

He could see that she was frightened, and hurt, and it gave him no pleasure.

This was why he was doing his best to keep away from her.

To train his eyes to pass her by.

But no matter what he did, she persisted in being seen.

* * *

That was how all her days began.

“Get up.”

Black eyes.

Thick black brows.

Chiseled lips pressed tight together, stern and forbidding.

Every morning the same frowning face swimming above her, as if sleep were an affront.

“Uh?”

“Up,”

the duke repeated, pulling her into a sitting position.

Left to her own devices, Ophele would have kept going straight over onto her face.

It felt as if she had barely closed her eyes.

“…izzit?”

she mumbled, rubbing her face with her hands.

“It’s dawn, time to get up.”

Blearily, she watched him put on a kettle to heat washing water and then strip off his shirt, dirty and sweaty and a little blood-spattered from guarding against the devils.

It wasn’t his blood.

It was never his blood.

And he had been very careful to wash the worst of it off before he woke her ever since that first time, when she had opened her eyes to see him glaring at her through a mask of devil’s blood.

Half the town had heard her shriek, to her lasting humiliation, and it had taken some time before she could be sure it wasn’t all a nightmare.

To be fair, he had been sorry about that.

Ophele understood something of her father’s frustration, watching him shave.

Didn’t he ever get tired? Was he even human? Night after night, he was standing watch, sometimes returning at dawn to wake her and wash before he went to work for the day.

She knew this because often she was still awake when he came home.

Yet somehow he looked as fresh as if he had come from a good night’s sleep, while she was so exhausted she was starting to believe in the Bhumi night hags, ephemeral demons that rode on the shoulders of their victims, whispering nightmares in the dark and leeching away warmth and strength by day.

Hands gripped her shoulders and lifted her bodily out of bed, standing her on her feet, and she had to catch herself.

She had almost fallen back to sleep.

“Awake now?”

His finger pushed her chin up to look at her, and Ophele shrank away.

She knew she was nothing to him, neither wanted nor useful, nothing more than a chore.

Once, she had wanted to say so many things to him.

Apologies, explanations, and an endless number of questions.

Now she just felt paralyzed in his presence, afraid to do or say anything.

Sometimes it seemed as if just the sight of her infuriated him.

He had made it very clear that he wanted nothing from her.

Not even her help.

That hurt her more than almost anything else, including the incident with the flowers.

Ophele had unraveled that mystery inside twenty minutes; of course he would not want her near him, and would see her as a threat: her father had spent almost twenty years making sure of it.

But she had thought he would be pleased, when he saw the other things she had done.

Wasn’t it better if Master Wen didn’t have to stop cooking to fetch things? And both Master Ffloce and Master Guisse had said they were glad she thought of the wells, especially with the stream by the north wall already drying up.

But maybe they hadn’t meant it.

She was their duchess.

Maybe they had been afraid to tell her she was wrong.

What did she know of wells and walls?

“Get dressed,”

the duke said as he shrugged into a rough jerkin, belting it around his waist.

“I’ll see you at supper.”

The cottage door thudded shut behind him.

Safflower.

That was the Bhumi remedy for night hags.

Ophele stood in the silent cottage, feeling the rushes with her bare feet, and then moved stiffly to dress.

There was always a bouquet or two of flowers on the front doorstep, and she put them in water and hung the old bouquets over the bed to dry, filling the cottage with the sweet scent.

There was no sign of Sir Miche yet, so she stood by the new road, looking with pleasure at the cobblestones.

They had just been laid yesterday; was it safe to walk on them? Did the mortar have to set, or something? Cautiously, she stepped onto them, feeling the rounded river rocks through her small, sturdy boots.

“Admiring the metropolis, my lady?”

Sir Miche’s voice said from behind her, and Ophele retreated guiltily.

“It will be, one day,”

she said, brightening as he approached with Eugene.

The donkey’s hooves clopped onto the road and the wagon wheels bumped upward with a sound that was like a touch of civilization.

“Do you think that’s the first time anyone’s heard wagon wheels on cobblestone in the valley?”

His eyebrows lifted.

“First time in a long time,”

he said, glancing back at the wagon with appreciation.

“Since the first invasion of Valleth, anyway.

That’s a milestone, isn’t it? The official opening of Harnost Highway.”

“I thought it was Tounot Turnpike.”

She fell into step beside him, petting Master Eugene.

The Knights of the Brede squabbled like boys over the naming of things.

He gave her a wounded look.

“Of all people, I never thought you would abandon me.”

“I would never,”

she protested.

“I think it should be Eugene Street, in memory of the first wagon to touch it.”

“We are not naming the first major road in Tresingale after a donkey, no matter how distinguished.”

Bickering amiably, they stopped for breakfast and carrots and then headed for the wall.

It was a fair distance, two and a half miles along the curve of the road that went south, then east.

But it gave them a chance to see the progress of all the new projects along the route, from two buildings at the end of a long lane by the river to the wooden frame of what Sir Miche said would be the town’s first store.

A merchant named Guian was already on his way to the valley.

It promised to be a fine, hot day as the sun rose in a clear sky, and Ophele was already beginning to perspire in her hot woolen dress as they reached the cob barracks, a prominent structure on a hillside overlooking the sheep pens.

“They’re putting in windows?”

she asked in surprise.

The building was made of white Brede River clay, and the large, regular gaps in deep sills could be nothing else.

It seemed foolhardy, with stranglers creeping about every night.

“One in every room,”

Sir Miche said, with mingled satisfaction and defiance.

“The east wall will be finished before the barracks are.

We’ll have all the windows we want, and laugh at the devils.”

“I like the tower.”

It wasn’t in her to laugh at the devils.

She didn’t even want to think about them.

“What’s it for?”

“That’ll be the council room,”

he replied, nodding to the large round tower on the east end of the complex.

“Have you heard of the Five Courts?”

She nodded.

They were the five bodies that supported the Emperor in Segoile: the Courts of Nobles, Merchants, Artisans, Scholars, and the powerful Court of War.

It would have been blasphemous to count the Temple of the Stars as merely a court, though the essential divinity of the Emperor made it very difficult for the Temple to oppose him.

“That will be the Andelin’s Court of War,”

Sir Miche was explaining.

“The Emperor considers us a buffer region against Valleth, expendable if necessary.

We’re not going to count on the House of Agnephus for support, if it comes to it.

We’ll have our own Court of War, our own standing army, and our own Academy.

Just in case.”

Ophele digested this.

The ramifications might have escaped most seventeen year-old girls, but she had read a great deal of history.

No one in Segoile could protest if the duke maintained his own army, not with Valleth sitting on his doorstep.

But she couldn’t help wondering if anyone in the Five Courts had considered that Remin Grimjaw, son of an extinct House, might not think that Valleth was his only enemy.

“The Brede belongs to the duke, doesn’t it?”

she asked.

“Even the docks on the south side of it?”

“Every mile,”

Sir Miche agreed, looking at the dark water churning beyond the trees.

“Nothing moves on the river without Rem’s permission.”

They were so clever, the Knights of the Brede.

Had anyone thought, when the duke claimed the river as part of the Andelin, that it would mean his duchy was all but impregnable? Everyone said Remin was a genius, and he must be; the greatest military commanders in Argence had been trying and failing for a hundred years to take back the valley.

And now the genius held it to the south bank of the Brede.

Was that what the duke was planning? Or maybe planning was too strong a word, she thought, frowning.

He was maneuvering.

He was putting himself in the most advantageous, unassailable position.

The House of Andelin would be very difficult to destroy the way his original House had been.

Had Remin really thought of all that when he was only seventeen?

“My lady?”

Sir Miche asked, and Ophele looked up, startled to see they were nearly at the foot of the wall.

“I’m sorry, I was thinking of the Court of War,”

she said, which was the truth.

“It’ll be some time before it’s ready.”

Retrieving his shovel from the wagon, he saluted her with it.

“I wish you luck with the windlass.

Sit down if you get tired.”

“Be careful,”

she replied, as she always did, and turned the wagon south to the well.

Ophele knew her routine now.

She knew where water would be needed and had found the patterns in the men’s work, slow and uneven in the morning, accelerating into a perfect, humming machine as everyone woke up.

“Wayyyy I wake up, up high on the hill,”

called one of the foremen from the top of the wall, raising his voice over the clatter and clang of all the tools, and all the men on the wall sang the answer.

Wayyyyy I wake up, before the sun

Got a cup and a bite against the chill

Got a mountain to climb before day is done.

“Wayyyyy I wake up, down in the valley,”

came Sir Miche’s voice from the trench, and there was a ripple of appreciative laughter from his fellow ditch diggers before they called back.

Wayyyy I wake up, under the stars

Got to grab my shovel, no time to dally

Got a mountain to shift, so far…

“So far!”

called Sir Miche in answer, as all the shovels bit into the wet earth at once, dirt flying up in a wave from the trench.

Stone thwacked into place on the wall, and there was the scrape of mortar, trowels flicking, a rhythmic accompaniment to the music.

After a few days, Ophele had learned these songs well enough to sing along, softly because she had no more notion of music than a sheep.

But that was the time she liked best, when they all sang together so that the wall almost seemed to assemble itself.

She nodded and smiled and waved as the men went by, fetched their tools when they dropped them, and before noon, she topped off everyone’s water and then turned back to town, where Wen and his kitchen boys were waiting to load the noon meal onto the wagon.

“No, they’ll load it, you’re a bleeding duchess,”

Master Wen barked when she tried to help.

The irascible cook stood in the door of the kitchen with his hands on his hips as he watched the proceedings, red-faced in the afternoon heat.

“Do ye think they need consultation on stacking their baskets? Go.

Sit. Eat!”

The abrupt bellow made her jump, and Ophele scuttled over to a pair of tree stumps set in the shade of a nearby tree.

There was a trencher of bread, cheese, and a sliced apple waiting for her there, covered with a cloth.

Wen glowered at her until she was done, and when she rose to return the plate and cloth, he looked pointedly at the remaining bit of bread and cheese.

“Does it not suit your palate, Your Grace?”

he asked, soft and dangerous, like the warning gust of a tempest.

Ophele stuffed the remainder into her mouth and escaped.

It was hard to eat when she was so hot, and so very tired.

Sir Miche had said that eventually her body would adjust to the work, like he had gotten used to his ditch digging, but it had been weeks and still she was just barely keeping up.

Her hands were blistered, blisters on top of blisters, and she washed and bandaged and padded them under her gloves, wincing as she dragged the buckets out of the well.

The burn of her aching muscles blended with the heat of the day until it was as if she moved through a waking dream, where everything hurt and nothing was real and it was impossible to tell one day from the next.

Unfortunately, the nights were all too vivid.

“I’ll be back late,”

said the duke after her supper, just as he did every night, clanking and jingling in his armor.

He kept it on a stand in the cottage, battered steel that was disappointingly utilitarian, though he carefully cleaned and inspected it every day.

His sword was an object of fascination to Ophele, who had been nourished on fantastical tales of legendary weapons forged in magical fires and engraved with sorcerous writing.

His Grace’s two-handed broadsword was nearly as tall as she was, but it didn’t look the least bit magical.

“Be careful,”

she said from the furthest corner of the bed, where she was already trying to hide behind her book.

She couldn’t let him go face the devils without saying something, even though she knew he would have preferred that she didn’t exist.

“Go to sleep,”

he said, as if she hadn’t spoken.

“You’re safe.

Nothing will harm you.”

And he was gone, slinging his sword into its place on his back.

Outside, the light was fading.

For the first week after he returned from Ferrede, it hadn’t been bad.

There had only been the occasional noises of devils, faint and faraway, quickly dispatched before they could approach the town.

But their numbers had grown with the heat of the days, and Ophele knew about every one of the gaps in the town’s outer perimeter because she heard the duke and his knights discussing them over supper.

The palisade wasn’t completed on either the western or eastern ends.

There was a gap of nearly two miles in the middle of the stone wall.

Stranglers climbed over the palisade, exploiting the least shadows to slink into town.

Every night, there were more of them.

Every night, they came closer. Louder.

Why did they make those noises? Ophele sought patterns as naturally as she breathed, but she did not have enough information to make sense of these nighttime horrors.

Why did stranglers make that sound? It was a high and cackling eh heh heh heh that echoed through the night air for miles.

Were they communicating with each other? Could the devils talk amongst themselves? It seemed to her that it would be more sensible to go after forest animals than to face armed and armored men, but the hunters reported no shortage of game.

The devils wanted the flesh of men.

And occasionally livestock, out of pure spite.

She could find no patterns in their behavior.

The deafening howls of the wolf demons came nearer and nearer, and only two days ago she had heard a pack of ghouls down the lane, like a particularly hoarse and raspy dogfight.

She had never seen these creatures, and no one would describe them to her, and it let her vivid, well-stocked imagination run wild.

Ophele tried to be brave.

She tried to be logical.

She lit lamps and blew them out, unsure whether lights might not attract the devils.

As the night wore on, she moved from her bed to the table and back again, trying to reason out where the safest place in the cottage was.

From her bed, she could see all the doors and windows at once, so if a strangler crept inside, at least she would have time to scream.

But she had also seen the damage a wolf demon could do.

A creature that could rip the front box off a wagon would think nothing of a bit of wattle and daub.

It could tear off the whole corner of the cottage if it wanted to, and take her with it.

And she hadn’t any idea how strong stranglers were, either.

It was entirely possible that one night, as she tried to squeeze herself back into the corner of room, two hands might smash through the walls and wrap around her throat.

Could they hear her breathing? Could they smell fear, the way people said dogs could?

Hiding behind her book, she tried to be deaf.

“Strangler!”

The call was distant, but not that distant.

She heard running feet heading up the road to the north, somewhere further along the line of cottages, and suddenly she hardly dared to breathe.

Her ears strained.

“Don’t see it,”

said another voice.

It was hard to tell how far away.

The walls of the cottage muffled sound a little, but not much.

“Well, he’s dead, you nit, it’s somewhere close by,”

said a third voice.

“Weren’t you watching? Search the crofts.”

Ophele clutched her knees to her chest, curling up as small as she possibly could, as if she could eventually collapse on herself and disappear altogether.

She wished she would.

Oh, stars, someone was dead.

A strangler had killed someone right outside.

This second it could be outside the cottage, killing Yvain or Dol.

“Dol?”

Terror turned one syllable into three.

“Are you all right?”

“You’re not asleep?”

Dol sounded displeased.

“We’re both here, you’re safe, my lady.”

“They said someone is dead.”

“Dunno who yet, lady.

Oh, but it’s not His Grace,”

Dol added quickly.

“He’s on the east watch tonight, at the gap between the walls.”

But he could die there.

He could already be dead.

And Sir Miche might die, or Sir Justenin, or Sir Tounot, any of them could die, all those men she saw at the wall or sat with at supper.

They tried not to let her see the devils they killed, and every time someone died on the wall, they moved heaven and earth to make sure she didn’t lay eyes on the corpse, but she wasn’t stupid.

The devils were there.

Men could die. A man had died. She could die.

They kept saying she was safe.

The duke said it every night, that no devil would ever get so far as the cottage, but how could they know that? It was only May and all anyone could talk about was how there were more devils than they had ever seen before.

In her mind’s eye she could picture dozens of shadowy goblin-shapes crawling over the palisades, wolf demons smashing through the barricades that lined the main road, and frothing packs of ghouls charging behind them, snarling and slavering.

One night, they might come in like the tide.

No one could say it wouldn’t happen.

No one could know.

“…lady? Your Grace?”

Dol repeated, and Ophele started, turning in the direction of his voice.

“Are you there?”

“Yes,”

she breathed. “Yes?”

“Don’t be scared.

You’re safe.”

“How do you know?”

She wanted him to know.

She wanted desperately for him to make her believe it.

“If we ever thought there was danger, our orders are to take you to the storehouse, my lady,”

said Yvain, who was standing at the opposite side of the cottage, outside the door.

“Stone walls.

No windows.

If we thought it was necessary, even for an instant, that’s where you would be right now.”

“All right,”

she whispered.

She shouldn’t be talking to them anyway.

They needed to watch and listen.

There was a strangler outside, and while she was distracting them, maybe it would creep up and kill one of them.

Would she even know? Did people make noise when they strangled to death? Ophele strained her ears, her heart lodged in her throat.

At that moment something howled so loud, it seemed it would shake the roof off the cottage, and she clapped her hands over her mouth to keep back a scream, tears of terror streaking down her cheeks.

She wanted to go home.

She wanted to go home.

She didn’t want to be here anymore, even Aldeburke was better than this.

Would she even be able to run if she had to? Oh, she could imagine fleeing to the storehouse, with the snarling shadow of a wolf demon barreling after her to rip her apart.

Sir Bram said they could rip off a man’s leg with one bite.

“Try to go to sleep, my lady,”

said Dol, once the howl had faded into ringing silence.

“I swear under the light of the stars, no harm will come to you.”

Ophele wished she could go to sleep and never wake up again.

Burying her head under her covers, she called herself a coward and a mouse and still couldn’t argue herself out of her fear.

Knuckles pressed to her mouth, she silently sobbed, and some hours later, her tears accomplished what logic, reassurance, and sacred oaths had failed to do.

A little bit before dawn, Ophele sobbed herself to sleep.

It felt like minutes passed before a hand gripped her and sat her up.

Black eyebrows.

Black eyes.

A firm mouth, set in a disapproving line.

“Wake up,”

rumbled the duke’s voice, and Ophele rubbed her face with trembling hands.

The Bhumi night hags were very much clinging to her shoulders, even after he shook her.

“Are you well?”

“I’m fine,”

she whispered, at the dawning of another day.