Chapter 10 – The Duchess of Andelin’s Salon #7
Even as he was loudly lighting candles, opening the curtains, and tidying away the remains of Huber’s breakfast, Miche looked the silent man over, lying in bed with his face averted.
Much of the fine bronze glow was gone from his skin, but at least his clothes looked fresh.
Tounot had taken charge of managing such things, and Genon came to the barracks every few days to examine the progress of the healing stump of his left arm.
And though Miche could not imagine how he himself might cope with such a loss, he did hope someone would come stir him up, if he needed it.
“As it happens, I could use your help,” Miche went on, setting quill and ink on a table.
“You know, of course, that I am a man of many virtues. Thoughtful, kind-hearted, merciful—up you get, now—with a certain…generosity of spirit,” he decided as he hauled Huber out of bed and shoved him toward the chair.
“I have just never been able to tell people no.”
“Is that what you tell yourself?” Huber asked flatly, a muscle clenching in his jaw. The jostling hurt, but he was too proud to let it show.
“It must be, it’s the only possible explanation for why I find myself so consistently behind.
Now, these are from Juste. He’s been focused on matters in the capital just lately, so he hasn’t had time to consider matters of the stables, but it seems a pity to miss a year’s breeding when we’ve just had some likely horses come in… ”
This would have rightfully been Huber’s work anyway.
Miche kept up a constant stream of conversation as he leafed through the papers, because when he had acquired Regal and Dancer—née Innuendo—from the Aldeburke stable, he had also seized their breeding papers, which were the equivalent of a patent of nobility for highbred horses.
There were a dozen such beasts in Tresingale, with bloodlines more noble than most of Remin’s knights, and come spring, the mares would be in season.
Miche had no idea what they might get, if they bred a Regal with a Dancer, but Huber had done as much lying in bed as was good for him. Soon he’d be able to wander all of Tresingale without worrying about running into Rem, if that was his trouble.
“You don’t need to invent work for me.” Huber looked down at the papers spread before him, unmoving.
“I didn’t invent this work. I traveled halfway across the Empire and stole it for you,” Miche retorted. “They looked like good horses to me, but what the fuck do I know? You have a look and tell me what the best crosses are.”
“Did Rem put you up to this?” Huber asked, his copper eyes hardening, and Miche gave him a loving slap to the back of the head.
“No. I thought of it all by myself because it’s time you stopped lying about, expecting people to come dress you and feed you.
You’ve still got your writing hand. You can still work a bridle and bit.
You’ve got two pages that you haven’t looked at in a month and they need you.
If you don’t make yourself useful, I’ll let Her Grace come and find occupation for you.
She’s already put all those footless fellows from Selgin and Isigne to work.
Would you prefer making pots, or learning to weave? ”
Miche leveled him with a remorseless stare and let the silence stretch.
To him, Huber would always be a snot-nosed little brother, one of the Ereguil pageboys that Miche had bullied and brought up when he himself had just become a knight.
And while Remin and Huber needed to sort out their problems themselves, Miche would only indulge them so long before he started knocking heads together.
Huber glared back. Three, two, one…
“…I’ll go get her,” Miche said, rising from his seat. “Her Grace has been so worried, you know? Only the other day—”
“Oh, fuck you, Miche,” said Huber, with feeling. “I’ll look at the honorable fucking beasts.”
“Her Grace will be relieved.” Miche clapped him on his good shoulder, rising. “And since you’re up and dressed for the day, I have a couple more little beasts that need your attention.”
He was pulling the door open before Huber could protest, revealing Lege and Nicco in the hall outside. Both pages looked as pale and wan as if they too had been missing the sunshine.
“Go gently, boys,” Miche cautioned, and left them to look after each other.
* * *
By noon, Miche was back at the manor again, settled in the solar and helping Juste with all the work where penmanship mattered. Juste was enjoying that so much, he was teaching himself to write with his left hand.
Miche was beset by prickly people.
But he didn’t mind. It was entertaining to watch the comings and goings from the Duchess of Andelin’s eclectic salon, amusing to see her fussing over Juste, and Miche was quietly very proud of how far she had come. She was so like her mother.
It also gave him an excuse to overhear any amount of gossip, and unlike Juste—who would have been perfectly happy as a hermit—Miche was a nosy so-and-so.
They were just settling to the afternoon’s work when there was a commotion in the hallway, and Juste turned with a definite snarl as the door opened to admit Ophele, Lady Verr, and a tall Benkki Desan woman, her ivory cheeks pink with cold.
“Your Grace. Ladies,” Miche said, rising to offer his courtesies and nudging Juste to follow. “Here to escort Grandfather Tree upstairs at last?”
“Great-Grandfather, noble lord,” Madam Sanai corrected, with a half-bow and quarter-smile for both men.
She was tall for a woman, almost equal to Juste, willowy and long-limbed and dressed in a long-sleeved tunic that fit her very well.
“Sir Justenin. I hope I am not disturbing. Great-Grandfather needs a little more sun.”
“All of us could use a little more sun,” Miche agreed, ignoring Juste’s warning glare. His smile widened, broad and charming. “Juste, where are your manners? If we cannot have the sun, we may at least be grateful for these other, lovelier lights that come to brighten our afternoon.”
Lady Verr shot him a disgusted look.
“Good afternoon,” Juste said stiffly. “Madam, any guest of Her Grace’s is welcome. My secretary is regrettably easy to distract.”
“It is a sad failing,” Miche agreed, which made Madam Sanai smile, Ophele giggle, Lady Verr roll her eyes, and Juste stab him with a quill once no one was looking.
There was a great deal of work before them.
Stacks of candidates for key positions in the manor, all of whose qualifications, connections, and convictions had to be investigated.
But though Miche and Juste were accustomed to working in the chaos of a war camp, they both turned again as Sim and Jaose appeared, grunting with effort as they hauled Grandfather Tree through the door.
“Yes, by this window, please. Careful of your fingers!” Ophele said anxiously, dancing out of the way as the two footmen maneuvered the immense planter pot into place. The ancestor tree was taller than the diminutive Duchess of Andelin. “It really is lovely. Why is it called an ancestor tree?”
“It may only be a decorative tree, if you wish,” Madam Sanai said carefully. “But for us, it is the memory of the Great Tree, that was once Mother to us all. And so we shape these trees with the growing of our own families, our tali—I think that is your word for House?”
A pair of pale blue eyes were pressing dagger-like into the back of his head.
Miche bent obediently to his letters. They still needed a housekeeper and head laundress, and now that Tresingale had survived its first year with the devils, it seemed everyone had decided that Remin’s generous terms of employment were worth the risk.
But the wider pool of candidates didn’t make it any easier to fill these posts.
They hardly needed more spies and assassins in Tresingale, and Remin and Ophele both had difficult temperaments.
It would be a challenge to find a housekeeper with the spine to stand up to His Grace who wouldn’t also trample all over the inexperienced duchess.
Miche had written dozens of letters that were polite variations of, thank you very much for inquiring, but…
The musical chorus of female voices was far more interesting. Ophele, chirping questions. Madam Sanai’s liquid accent rolled in answer, and every so often there was Lady Verr’s aristocratic tones, carefully cultivated and perfectly shaped syllables that tolled like bells.
Glancing up, Miche was amused to find that Juste’s head was subtly angled toward the conversation. Well, what might he be looking at?
It was Juste. It was possible he was admiring Grandfather Tree.
But Lady Verr and Madam Sanai were both in that direction, like two wildly different species of flower, and much to appreciate in both.
Lady Verr was a classic Imperial beauty, from the oval of her face to the perfect drape of her skirts, and Madam Sanai was an arresting sight for a man of the Empire, especially with those trousers clinging to her lean hips.
There was a hunting grace about her as she crouched, her long hair falling loose past her thighs, explaining some point of lichen to a spellbound Ophele.
Women were so marvelous.
“Juste,” Miche repeated, measuring the angle of Juste’s pale blue eyes and tucking this delightful bit of gossip away. “This one. Look, I know she’s from the capital, but she was in charge of the household livery—”
“We are hoping to avoid filling His Grace’s household with people from Segoile.” Juste took the page, inscrutable.
“It might be worth having Edemir interview her, if she knows what she’s about.”
“The matter of livery is pressing,” Juste acknowledged. It wasn’t just a question of aesthetics. The reason servants wore uniforms was to make it easier to tell if someone—an assassin, for example—was somewhere they ought not to be.