Chapter 12 – A Taste of Poison #5
But even as she reeled off the charges, Mionet knew no one really believed them.
They were common knowledge, easy lies everyone in the capital repeated without thinking, but now it felt as if they cut her tongue to repeat them.
Oh yes, everyone knew Remin Grimjaw was the son of traitors, a violent and likely treacherous man who would sooner or later come to a bad end.
And everyone simultaneously knew that someone had been trying to kill him since he was a child. The Emperor always publicly and loudly denounced the attacks, of course.
“And so everyone thinks it’s fine if the Emperor keeps trying to have him killed?” The duchess asked stubbornly.
“No. No, but it is…difficult,” Mionet tried to explain.
“It is not something that can really be discussed in society, my lady. Because the Emperor is Beloved of the Stars, and we must not…it touches a great many areas. The Temple, the House Melun, the Five Courts, all of them must weigh in, and…it is hardly the sort of thing one would discuss over a banquet. It is not the proper…place.”
Duchess Andelin looked at her for a long time.
“So they all know, in the capital,” she said quietly. “I thought they just didn’t understand, like they don’t know about me. But they do, and no one will say anything because they are afraid it will happen to them.”
And with those large, clear eyes fixed on her, Mionet could not think of a single thing to say.
It was true. No one wanted to think too much about Remin Grimjaw.
He was such an unpleasant person, thoroughly unsociable, no sense of humor at all, a perfectly wretched guest at banquet.
His rank and accomplishments made him impossible to ignore, but no one really wanted him around.
His presence was a reminder of things no one wanted to think about. He spoiled everyone’s fun.
“It’s not…right.” Mionet was shocked to realize she had said that aloud. But looking at this young woman, she found herself reaching out, unable to help herself. “I think most people know that. But—”
“No. I understand,” Duchess Andelin replied, withdrawing. “I know. Thank you. Rem—His Grace said the same, that we have no choice but to go. And I knew…what they said, a little. Please excuse me.”
Her voice was quivering, and she had gone off by herself to cry a few times, over the last few days.
Watching her go, Mionet couldn’t understand why she herself felt so disturbed.
On a tactical level, this was good. His Grace was a dangerous subject; best not to say anything she might have to disavow.
And it was hardly a subject that they could laugh away, or forget with a new gown.
But it was still a bit of a slap in the face when Mionet found out who the duchess had chosen as a confidante instead.
“You sent for me, my lady?”
Coming out of the dressing room later that day, Mionet heard the familiar voice and froze. That man.
“Yes,” came the duchess’s voice from the solar, with unmistakable relief. “Davi, Leonin, would you excuse us, please?”
Neither of those benighted men had the sense to protest leaving the duchess alone with an unmarried man, let alone with Miche of Harnost. Mionet huffed out a breath and stole down the hallway on silent feet.
Now she had no choice but to eavesdrop. Easing to the end of the corridor, she peered through the crack in the door.
“I’m sorry to bother you, I know all of you are working so hard,” the duchess was saying as she allowed Miche to steer her to her armchair. “But I don’t know what to do, I think I did something terrible…”
“Why don’t you tell me first, and then we’ll decide if it’s terrible,” Miche suggested, pulling up a chair opposite the lady.
“It’s Remin,” she said miserably. “He won’t have meals here, since Wen got hurt.
I even asked Wen how he makes Remin’s food, and I had Azelma make it just like that, and I swear we tasted it and tested it and didn’t take our eyes off it even once, but it still made him sick.
And I don’t think he’s eating at all now.
Not even tea. I can hear his stomach growling even when he’s asleep, and it’s been five days, and I don’t know what to—”
“It’s been that long?” Miche scrubbed a hand over his face, his palm rasping against blond stubble. “I didn’t…I lost track. He’s not eating at the barracks?”
“No! I asked Justenin and he said he wasn’t, he’s not even eating in town anymore, I asked Master Noulen and Mistress Tregue…
” Tears filled her eyes. “S-so I tried to make him eat last night, it was just bread, but when I took a bite myself h-he…he knocked it out of my hand, and he was so mad, he yelled, and n-n-now…”
The words dissolved as she burst into tears, and as Miche scooted forward in his chair and pulled her face into his shoulder, Mionet had to bite her tongue to keep from instantly lodging a furious protest. It was the oldest trick in the book, the scoundrel—
“Now, now, it’s not your fault,” Miche murmured, in a very different tone than Mionet had ever heard him use before.
His hand stroked over Duchess Andelin’s hair, patting her gently.
“I’m sorry, I should have been watching.
He took it hard when Bon died. It would’ve scared the life out of him to see you testing his food for him. He told you about Bon, didn’t he?”
She nodded, hiccupping.
“Well, it took him a long time to get over that. It was weeks before I could get him to properly eat again, even with Wen cooking. He’d sit to supper, but at night he’d lie there and fret until he went off and made himself throw u—”
She should not be hearing this.
Mionet recoiled, literally, physically retreating a silent pace from the door.
She did not want to know this. She did not want to hear this, she did not want to listen to Miche explain that the Duke of Andelin sometimes starved himself because he was too afraid to eat.
She wished she didn’t know it. She wished she had never heard a word, and she wished even more that she could stop herself from thinking how priceless that knowledge would be in the capital.
How they would laugh, if they knew Remin Grimjaw had such a weakness.
“…can we do?” Duchess Andelin wept.
“It’s not a…rational thing,” Miche replied.
“Duchess Ereguil thought the less attention we paid to it, the better. The second time he got poisoned, she would just give Victorin a pocket full of apples and tell him, don’t say anything, just eat one in front of Remin and then leave the rest. And when he got hungry enough, he’d try one on his own.
Raw things like fruit and nuts, where it’s harder to hide a poison.
Rospalme had a lot of orchards, he felt safe if he went out and picked something off a tree, and the old man taught him to fish.
I’m sorry, my lady. I should’ve checked on him. I knew he’d have trouble, after this.”
“It’s not your fault.” Duchess Andelin sniffled. “I should’ve asked. I thought I was so clever…”
“Even the smartest people make mistakes,” he said, sitting her up straight and plucking a handkerchief from his pocket. “Look at me, I make them all the time.”
“You have saved me from a few,” she said with a watery smile. “Thank you.”
“I’ll have Azelma send up something simple from the kitchen,” he promised. “Eat it tonight in front of him, but don’t say anything about it. You just have to remind him that eating is normal and it’s nothing to be afraid of or fussed over. All right?”
“I will. Maybe we ought to have breakfast in our room again, for a little while?” she said, brightening. “And if you brought it? He trusts you.”
“I’ll talk to him about it. He’ll be all right, don’t worry,” Miche said, sounding more like himself. “We’ve all gone hungry for longer than this.”
“I’ll get Davi to bring up some apples right away,” she added, much cheered. “Thank you so much, Miche. And the hazelnuts, we picked those ourselves, I could roast them—”
“Remember what I said about not making a fuss!” Miche called after her as she dashed away, shaking his head.
It would be best if Mionet pretended she hadn’t heard any of this.
She immediately moved back a plausible distance down the hallway, as if she had just come out of Duchess Andelin’s dressing room.
But whatever else she might say of the man, Miche was not easily deceived.
Coming out of the solar, his eyes met hers and all that good-natured humor vanished.
“I suppose I should have checked both doors,” he said coldly. “Did you hear anything to your profit, my lady?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” she replied, sidestepping him, but he immediately moved right back in front of her, looming in the most unfriendly way imaginable.
“It might be too much to expect,” he began, “but at least during the time when the duchess is useful to you, it would be good of you to remember that all she wants is to be left in peace. That’s all either of them wants. You wouldn’t think it would be that much to ask, would you?”
The look in his tawny eyes struck her like a slap.
Not just anger and contempt, but something else, bent as furiously upon himself as her, and the last thing she would ever have expected to see from the scandalous Sir Miche of Harnost. It was a thing that she knew well.
A thing she had sworn she would never let herself feel again.
Shame.
* * *
With a crack like lightning striking, Remin’s practice sword struck Davi’s and shattered.
Ophele only had a second to blink before Leonin whirled to shield her from the explosion of splinters, yanking her to one side and turning to absorb the stinging cloud with his armored back.
“You’re all right, wife?” Remin asked.
“I’m fine,” Ophele replied, peeking over Leonin’s shoulder. “Do they normally do that?”
“His do,” Davi groused, picking splinters from his cheek.
“My lord, perhaps we ought to try steel,” Leonin suggested. “I don’t believe this is appreciably safer—”