Chapter 7 – The Council of the Well #6
“I can look in on everyone once more before bed, Your Grace,” Emi promised. “Isn’t Mr. Adelan already getting better? I’m sure there’s naught to fear.”
“Thank you, Emi. Make sure you dress warmly.” Ophele tried to smile. It was true, Adelan did seem better, though Magne’s voice had been hoarse and querulous with fever. The valet was a small man going dry with age, just as Master Sharrenot had been.
Who else would die tonight? How many more would die before the sickness ran its course?
Inside, a hot and choking lump swelled in her throat and Ophele covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a sob. People died. She knew that. But she was supposed to protect them somehow, only she didn’t know how, and how was she ever going to tell Remin what had happened?
The high, grand halls were cold and still, and filled with the soft sound of weeping.
* * *
For a long time, Remin knew nothing.
His sleep was long and deep, like falling into a pit.
He dreamed. Sometimes of Ophele, often of the war, sometimes of long-ago summer days.
Sometimes it was the same dreams that had haunted him ever since the Emperor’s messenger had arrived, horrible visions of the Place of White Stones.
He woke up calling for Ophele, terrified when she did not come, but he was so hot, it was never long before he fell asleep again.
He dreamed of that, too, the day in the Brede when Ophele had had her sun sickness.
Maybe this was how she had felt, broiling as she labored under the merciless summer sun.
Maybe this was how Bon had felt as his guts writhed inside him until he died.
There were many awful things that he might have seen in his fever-dreams, but the one that left tears on his cheeks was the fleeting vision of his boyhood in Ereguil, with Victorin shoving him awake and Miche’s voice drawling from the door…
“My lord,” said a voice. Sometimes it was Juste.
Sometimes it was Genon. Most often it was Ophele.
They gave him sweet tea and foul-tasting medicines.
There was cool water and Ophele’s soft hand touching his face, the scent of her skin, and Remin was tired of being sick, he wanted up, but he just couldn’t seem to stay awake…
And then one afternoon, he sat up in bed with a watery winter sun shining through the windows and looked around.
For the first time in days, it didn’t feel as if his head was going to fall off and shatter on the floor.
Squinting, he found his bedchamber in the usual configuration and a fire crackling in the wide hearth.
The house was utterly silent. Though he was not often home in the middle of the day, Remin knew that the manor should be a hive of activity, with builders, carpenters, and plasterers busy on every floor, servants moving up and down the stairs, and Ophele in the solar, cramming knowledge into her head as fast as she could.
Ah, but Ophele had said that everyone was sick.
The memories came back to him in stages as he rose and tottered off to the bath chamber, and he felt almost human again after a bath and a shave.
And since he was unsupervised, he dug through his wardrobe to pull out his oldest and rattiest clothes, which he had carefully concealed from Magne.
To be sure, his appearance had improved considerably with the attention of a valet, but formal clothing always made him feel faintly harassed, as if he must account for every lost button.
Where was Ophele?
Remin felt like a bear lumbering through the chilly house, a headache thumping behind his eyes. He had told her she should stay home, he didn’t want her out in the cold, breathing sick air. She was so small, what would happen if she got sick herself?
In the bedchamber, he found stacks of papers on the table by the fire, maps of the town that looked almost like the plan of some campaign.
Someone must have taught this to Ophele; he recognized the movement of supplies at a glance, and the division of the town into quarters.
What on earth had she been doing while he was ill?
“Ophele?” he called, and heard only the echoes of his own outburst of coughing.
He found more clues in the solar. All the food and medicine in the house was being distributed there, with many small earthenware crocks and beakers lined up at one end of the long table.
But Ophele herself was nowhere to be found, and neither was anyone else.
Even these small exertions laid a film of sick, slippery sweat over his skin, but Remin wrapped himself warmly with a thick muffler around his throat and went outside.
He wasn’t going to do anything drastic, like fetching Lancer and riding into town to demand a report.
Yet. But as he stepped out into the cold and looked through the naked trees to the town below, with smoke rising from the many chimneys, he had the infuriating sense that important things had been happening without him, and his hands had been forcibly removed from the reins.
“Juste?” He knocked on the door of Juste’s cottage, squinting against the brightness of the sun on the snow. It looked like almost every chimney in the servants’ quarters was working away, belching forth woodsmoke. “Juste, are you there?”
If Juste answered, it was too quiet to hear.
Remin jerked one shoulder impatiently and pushed the door open, shutting it before the heat could escape.
Juste was asleep in his bed, his angular cheeks hectic with fever.
Remin paused to make sure he didn’t look like dying and then went to build up the fire.
Whether it was a tent or cottage or apartment in Segoile, all of Juste’s spaces always ended up looking the same: comfortably disarranged, with stacks of books on every available surface and half-burned candles squeezed between them.
Juste had been carting the same shabby chair from place to place for the last seven years, much-battered, patched, and repaired, and Remin pulled it up to the hearth and laid a few logs in the grate, feeding the coals with some kindling.
“You should be abed, my lord,” croaked Juste, and Remin looked back to see his eyes were slits of awareness, dull with sickness.
“I came to see that you’re not like to die in yours.” And to find out what was going on. Remin dusted off his hands and dragged the chair beside Juste’s narrow cot. “You look wretched, Juste.”
“Still better than you,” Juste replied in a reedy whisper. “You made us worry for a little while, my lord.”
“It would take more than a fever to finish me off. Do you know what’s been happening?
” Remin managed to deliver this without coughing and then quit while he was ahead.
There was a basin of water on the floor beside Juste’s bed, and he soaked and then replaced the cloth on Juste’s forehead, feeling the heat baking from the man.
“I spoke with Her Grace last night,” Juste whispered. “Auber and Jinmin have been guarding her. But you ought not be alone either, my lord. Someone was in the house. One of the windows in the solar was left open, and Davi saw a print in the snow on the balcony.”
“No guards are assigned there,” Remin said slowly, his brows lowering.
“There are now.” Juste covered his mouth, coughing. “I thought someone would try for you, my lord. I didn’t realize they’d gotten so close.”
“I’ll have a care,” Remin promised, flicking open his cloak to reveal the mailcoat underneath. “How many guards down?”
“Six. But we will have a full complement tonight.”
“Good. I don’t suppose we managed to track who—” This time, Remin coughed. “—ever it was?”
“No, my lord. Dol said the footprints joined the paths to the library, and disappeared.”
“East rather than west,” Remin muttered.
But that was all; there was nothing more to glean from that information, and no further action he could take.
Yes, he could order Ophele home now, lock the doors, and harden the manor into a fortress, but all that would accomplish was informing the traitor or traitors that they had been detected.
And then they would lie low. And wait.
Because sooner or later, he would have to come out again.
“I’ll speak to the guards,” he snarled. The thought that someone had been so close, maybe even inside the solar when Ophele arrived home last night, made him want to break things. “Tell me the rest.”
“Genon has been spared so far,” Juste whispered. “Most of the town has it. Her Grace said two-thirds. They’ve set up quarantines.”
“And why does she know all that?” Remin asked flatly.
“Who was going to stop her? I heard her telling off Leonin this morning, when he tried to follow her.” A smile twitched at Juste’s mouth. “She shouted.”
“Ophele shouted?” Remin’s mind briefly boggled, until he remembered her glaring up at him as she blocked the bedroom door. That whole confrontation was rather fuzzy in his memory, but he was almost sure it had happened.
“Leonin had it badly. Water,” Juste said, gesturing to the cup on the table above his head, and sipped slowly as he conveyed the remaining details he knew.
It wasn’t much. He had heard Ophele and Emi moving through the cottages twice a day distributing food, and Emi came on her own to knock on doors and make sure everyone had fires and was taking their medicine.
Genon had visited several times and told Juste as much as he thought it was good for him to know.
“I see,” Remin said when he was done. He rose and added another log to the fire. “Go back to sleep, Juste. Get better.”
“You—do the same.” Juste was struggling to keep his eyes open. “Rem…she’ll be back soon. Just wait. Genon says…trust her…”
There was no one this side of the Brede that could stop him from going wherever he wanted, but Remin paused, scowling down at the sick man. Even halfway conscious, Juste made a compelling argument.