Chapter 1 – Segoile’s Newest Rose #2
No doubt it would be dangerous for His Grace to go to Segoile.
But it was hardly the first time; he had visited several times before and lived to tell the tale.
And while fashionable society would be a nightmare for the timid duchess, it was not the end of the world.
As His Grace noted, she would not go alone.
Mionet’s lips curved. It was early, no doubt; maybe a little too early for her own scandal to have faded away completely. But perhaps it would work out as she hoped after all. She had begun to think the duke and duchess would hardly be moved from the valley by anything short of an imperial command.
It was some time before His Grace appeared again, his boots thudding down the stairs to the first floor. Mionet put on a carefully sober expression.
“Your Gra—” she began, but he cut her off.
“I don’t know why Duchess Ereguil sent you,” he said, looking down at her with eyes like black ice.
“I am inclined to trust her judgment, for all that you are not the companion I would have chosen for my wife. I was going to wait, and give all of you a chance to get used to life here before I required your oaths. But we do not have that luxury. You will swear your life and your soul to my House now, or you will go out of this place tonight. I will provide passage to wherever you like. Choose.”
Mionet hesitated. There was a very good reason Duchess Ereguil had sent her, but it did not align at all with Mionet’s own plans.
And this was not an oath to be made lightly; she had never sworn such an oath even to Lady Carolen, it was one thing to serve House Andelin but something else entirely to be bound to them.
But life was a gamble and sometimes there was no choice but to roll the—
“I will swear it,” she said as his black brows lowered ominously.
Quickly, she gathered herself and knelt before him.
“Your Grace. I, Mionet Verr, swear my fealty and homage to the House of Andelin, to His Grace Duke Remin and Her Grace the Duchess Ophele. I swear to guard your honor and your secrets in this life and the next, and to offer my skills and abilities unstinting in your service. If I should ever violate this oath, or fail in your trust, then may my life and soul be forfeit.”
Stars above, may she not live to regret this.
“I accept your oath,” the duke replied. “I swear to reward service with honor, duty with protection, and I will kill you myself if you betray us.”
He paused, and seemed to find this insufficient. Mionet had a disorienting sense of darkness descending as he bent his head, those opaque black eyes looming above her, the broad face, the scarred cheek, and flashing teeth.
“That is not a threat,” he explained. “That is an oath. If you betray us, I swear before the eternal stars that I will kill you with my own hands. It will be my sacred duty, the shackle placed on my soul, that I will find you wherever you go and slay you. I will not be foresworn. If I even suspect that you will betray us, then I may decide to kill you before you can. Do not give me reason to doubt you. Do you understand?”
“…yes.” The word was faint, forced through suddenly numb lips. This was not Segoile, with its social posturing and theatrics. This was the Andelin Valley. And if Remin Grimjaw made an oath to kill her, it was because he would do it.
“Good. I will be out late tonight. Right now, I want you to go upstairs and sit with her, and no more foolish talk about how it will take a year to plan her debut or how difficult it will be to navigate society because she has four months to learn it and she knows nothing. She was taught nothing. Her father wants me dead and until now has never shown the least interest in whether she was alive. Understood?”
This was a lot to take in at once.
“I understand. Your Grace,” Mionet added, grasping the courtesy like a lifeline.
A month in the valley and a few tender scenes with his wife and she had forgotten that this was Remin Grimjaw, the butcher of Ellingen.
Men, women, or children, he could, would, and had killed anyone who stood against him.
And she had just sworn an oath to bind herself to his House.
“Good. Then go and keep your oath,” he said, and departed with the boiling air of a gathering storm, calling for Adelan as he went.
* * *
It didn’t take long for Remin to gather his men.
Most of them were on their way to supper anyway, so it was a simple matter to direct them to the offices above the storehouse and have food brought up.
As he waited for the last of them to arrive, Remin tried to calm the churning in his gut and assess the threat rationally.
There was no danger yet. He knew that, but after so many years of war, sometimes it was difficult to convince his body.
Ophele was safe. She was at home under the watchful eyes of Leonin and Davi, who would die before they allowed harm to come to her.
Remin congratulated himself for his foresight there; the thought of her hallows relieved his mind considerably.
The devils had done him the dubious favor of scouring the valley of any other possible threat, and Juste had men searching the Empire for any signs of forces mobilizing. They were safe. They were safe.
As they gathered, the summons from the Emperor passed from hand to hand, fine paper and many more words than necessary to say what the messenger had conveyed in a single sentence. The phrase Emperor’s beloved child had appeared no less than five times.
“These are current as of last month,” said Lord Edemir of Trecht without waiting to be asked, setting maps of the Empire and the capital on the table. He served as Remin’s Court of Merchants and Exchequer, and knew exactly what Remin was planning to do.
In many ways, they had been preparing for this for years. Sir Jinmin of Oskerre appeared last, summoned from the North Gate where he commanded the night watch. The chair creaked beneath his weight as he took his seat at the long table.
Six men, his closest and most trusted knights.
All of them had had opportunities to betray him over the years, and had steadfastly refused.
Remin keenly felt the absence of Sir Huber Adaman, who would have asked the most uncomfortable questions, and Sir Miche of Harnost, who would have laughed Remin’s fears down to a manageable size.
“This may be nothing,” Remin began, trying to settle himself. “It may be just an inconvenience. It might be that we will go to Starfall, have our audience, and then come home. Or it might be an attempt to abduct or kill the Duchess of Andelin, the mother of my House, a child of the stars.”
Viewing the Emperor’s invitation as merely a threat to himself and his wife robbed it of its significance. She was a duchess, a princess, the mother of his heirs and his rightful partner in society and politics. An attack on her was not merely a crime. It was grounds for war.
“In either case, we have already been making preparations,” he said, his mouth hardening. “Juste.”
“Darri has been working on placing people into key positions,” Sir Justenin said readily.
His was the most dangerous and clandestine work in the capital.
“Inside and outside Starfall, and within certain noble Houses. They are distributed in the structure we discussed, small units and individuals who are unknown to each other. We intended our decoys to be discovered early next year, but we will move that forward. The Emperor will never believe you are idle, my lord.”
“Good. Before we arrive in the city, I want them to have secured routes in and out of Starfall,” Remin said, looking at the map of the small island.
Starfall was smaller than Tresingale, nine square miles, but far more secure.
The city walls went right up to the river, and the Emme was wide and deep. It was a fortress.
“There are two bridges and four piers,” Edemir said, tapping their locations on the map. “The piers are for deliveries. Servants in Starfall all wear livery and have to provide a badge to go in and out of the delivery entrances.”
“I want eyes on all of them. Put guardsmen on the walls and workers on the docks, if we can.” Remin studied the map, mentally listing priorities.
He had long considered how he might break Starfall, if he had to, but it was a different prospect when he and Ophele might be inside it.
“While we are there, nothing goes in or out without being observed.”
Quills scratched as he spoke. Each of his men were accustomed to their own areas of authority, and it saved a great deal of discussion. It went without saying that this sort of clandestine, small-scale work was only possible while everyone in the capital was still being nice.
“Estimates of the forces inside Starfall, and estimates of the forces inside Segoile,” Remin continued, examining the routes in and out of the city, the wide avenues that divided the estates of the Wold.
The sprawling estates of the noble quarter of the city had changed since his parents’ time.
The nobility of Segoile had voted to convict and sent his whole family to the block, and only afterward realized that if one noble House could be extinguished overnight, so could another.
Those estates now had high walls and many guards.
“Make that Darri’s second priority. He should be monitoring the numbers of every guard force in the city, and their movements. ”
“He has been working on that already, Your Grace,” Juste replied, and Remin plucked up his own quill as he totted up Juste’s numbers, rattled off from memory. Darri had not been idle in the capital.
“Bram, you will augment our forces.” Remin jabbed the tip of his quill at his final figures. “I will send some of our men to the capital in ones and twos, but we dare not move any force of significance. You will have to acquire more. Move them into Waterside, no one will notice them there.”