Chapter 5 – Knights of the Andelin #5
If only she could have gotten a better look. That thought had jerked her awake before dawn and startled Remin out of a dead sleep: why hadn’t she asked to examine the corpse? She could have learned so much from the wolf demon’s body, and it had been right there.
“You’re not poking at dead devils,” Remin had said, grumpy at being awakened early, and dragged her back under the covers.
She would ask Sir Justenin next time. Or maybe Genon. Had he ever examined one of the devils?
Ophele hummed, scribbling on. She only had a little time to record her observations and hypotheses; her other project was much more important and time-sensitive, as underscored by the fact that the first thing Remin did every morning was snap open the shutters, looking critically at the progress of the snow on the mountains and the leaves on the trees.
And the stars knew she had enough other demands on her time, not the least of which was—
“Your Grace!” Elodie’s voice piped from just outside the open door of the cottage, and Ophele turned to find her pagegirl waiting, clutching her sewing sampler and bobbing curtsies like a manikin bird.
“Elodie! Come in, set your things down,” Ophele said with genuine pleasure, corking her ink bottle and rising to wash her hands. “We’re going to the market today. Have you got your shawl tied properly?”
Elodie had a distressing tendency to abandon her shawl in the oddest places, which had required more than one frantic return to the market.
But Ophele did not chasten her for it. Maybe Sir Leonin looked askance at her, allowing her nine year-old pagegirl to accompany her on these errands, but Elodie was delightful company and made a helpful medium for questions that Ophele could not dare to ask herself.
“Oh, look at that, my lady,” said Elodie when they arrived in the market square, where stone statues were being removed from large crates. “Can we go see? What is it?”
“Those are for the fountain,” Ophele replied, inwardly pleased with the excuse to go watch.
They were a few minutes early for their appointment anyway.
“His Grace said it will be shaped like a sword, and I think those are supposed to be stars. Master Didion’s sculptor used His Grace’s sword as a model. ”
“And water will come out the top?” Elodie asked, craning her neck.
“No, from the bottom, young lady. Those pipes there,” said another voice, and Ophele looked up to find Master Nore Ffloce approaching with the usual fluttering of city plans.
“It will appear the sword is smashing into the earth of the valley and sending out a scattering of stars, a metaphor for our recent history. How are you, my lady? I hope I have not kept you waiting.”
“Not at all, we only had a moment to admire the fountain,” Ophele assured him. “And…are those the lamp-posts you mentioned? Look, Elodie, remember we saw Master Procher and the other blacksmiths making all the metal scrolls for the sides?”
“Yes,” said Elodie, surveying the lines of lamps. “They’re all right, I guess. ”
Elodie Conbour was a difficult audience.
“I will hope for greater appreciation when they are strung with banners on a festival day, Miss Conbour,” Master Ffloce said good-naturedly.
He was an amiable grasshopper of a man, the third of Tresingale’s master architects and the level-headed balance between the surly Master Guisse and the flamboyant Sousten Didion.
“Though it will be some time before that happens. Can you guess why?”
Elodie despised guessing games.
“No.”
“This,” he said, and it was surely for the little girl’s benefit that he produced a crystal sphere from his pocket with a flourish. But when it suddenly glowed in his hand like a lesser sun, Ophele fought the urge to applaud.
“Oh, what makes it do that?” she asked, and only just remembered to glance at Elodie, implying the question was on behalf of the child.
“It is a Norveni invention, Your Grace,” the city architect explained. “Rather too bright for use by day, but by night it will catch the light of moon and stars and reflect it into the many prisms within, magnifying it greatly. A simple marvel, is it not?”
“I have heard of them, but we never had any in Aldeburke,” Ophele replied, beaming as he offered it to her. “How wonderful!”
“Unfortunately, we will still be without this marvel on the Feast of the Departed,” Master Ffloce said, moving neatly to their other business.
He had managed most of it himself, but he still made a polite fiction of consulting Ophele’s opinion.
Master Wen just shouted at her to get out of his kitchen.
“Torches should do,” Ophele agreed. “His Grace said we would only need them for the main roads, and we will have candles at the tables.”
“I will need some help with those,” Master Ffloce replied, nodding.
“I believe we will have enough places for all the Tresingale residents, but if His Grace could send some fellows to haul the tables from the cookhouse, it would be a great help. And there is still the matter of laying the fields to rest…”
“Oh, is there?” Ophele asked, listening with outward politeness and inner consternation.
Her mother had died when she was too young to participate in most religious rites, and thereafter such ceremonies had been solitary affairs: a small offering to her mother, a stolen pinch of incense, a lonely prayer before the fire.
Until she was twelve, Ophele had thought the Feast of the Departed meant everyone left the manor but her.
“Putting the fields to bed?” Elodie said, when consulted later that afternoon. “We did that in the garden, for Auntie Jacinthe and Grandma and Grandpa and my cousin Corin. Mama said they’re all in boats in the sky, so we took the food and buried it in the garden, so they don’t get hungry.”
“Buried it in the garden?” Ophele repeated, with a flicker of fear. In all the years since her mother’s death, she had never heard of this. Had her mother been starving all this time, among the stars?
“From the feast.” Elodie eyed her curiously. “Mama said they eat the feast with us. Don’t they?”
“Oh, yes,” Ophele said, relieved. She and Azelma had at least done that much in the kitchen, setting a place for Ophele’s mother at supper. “What did you do next?”
Grudgingly, Ophele set her own work aside to tackle the problem again the next day, darting back and forth between the office and the square to ferry suggestions between Master Ffloce and Sir Justenin.
It seemed to her that they ought to at least bring the remains of the feast as far as the north gate after supper, so as to save time the next morning, and Sir Justenin said that the dead could only draw sustenance from it before sunrise.
It would give them the largest window of time between the departure of the devils and dawn.
“I’m sorry to run you about,” she apologized to Sir Leonin and Sir Davi, hurrying her steps toward the stable. She still tried to make time for Master Eugene at the end of the day, even if she was busy; the donkey would never say that she was a fickle friend.
“It’s not a problem, lady. My lady,” said Sir Davi, as easygoing as ever. “At least we’re not fighting off geese today.”
“You don’t need to mind us so much,” said Sir Leonin, stiff and formal, as if he’d never heard of geese in his life. He was beginning to remind her of one of Julot’s tin knights. “We are your guards. We are meant to be your shadows.”
There was an undercurrent in his words that made Ophele’s smile fall away, and she looked up with sudden anxiety, wondering if she was being rebuked .
“Leonin means you ain’t troubling us, lady,” Davi said, glancing at the younger man repressively.
“I mean that we are meant to be watching for danger, not socializing,” Leonin replied, with a flash of cool blue eyes.
“I can work me mouth, me legs, and me eyes all at the same time,” Davi retorted, his accent thickening with irritation.
They lapsed into prickling silence, and Ophele walked a little faster, wishing she could leave them behind.
Sir Davi was quite nice, but Sir Leonin made her feel like she had some species of raptor trailing her everywhere she went.
A falcon, she thought, recalling the emblem of his House.
A judgmental falcon, peering perpetually over her shoulder.
And she would not think of geese, it was disrespectful.
Fortunately, they were approaching the stables, and the uncomplicated affections of Master Eugene were far preferable to wondering again if she had somehow betrayed her ignorance.
Ophele hurried into the stable yard, pleased to see that the water cart wasn’t even there yet. They must be working late on the wall.
“M’lady!”
Jacot’s shout came from entirely the wrong direction, the cottages rather than the north gate, and Ophele turned in surprise to see him running toward her, his bright blue eyes wide.
“I’m sorry,” he panted as he drew up to her. “M’lady…I’m sorry, been looking everywhere for you. I swear, Master Eugene was fine this morning…”
Ophele’s stomach dropped.
“He didn’t seem anything but sleepy, I had to keep waking him up every time I stopped to fill the barrels—”
“He always goes to sleep if you let him stand still,” Ophele managed. Her eyes were starting to burn. “He’s old, he just likes to nap.”
“Yes, m’lady,” Jacot said miserably. “But…Your Grace, I’m sorry, he died. I’m sure it didn’t hurt him none, he went quick, he wouldn’t have noticed anything at all—”
She must not cry. People were streaming up and down the road this time of day, heading to the baths or the cookhouse for supper, and they should not find their duchess sobbing on the side of the road.
Ophele’s throat locked tight as Jacot apologized over and over, the words ringing distantly in her ears.
Eugene had seemed exactly the same as always, right up to the moment he collapsed in his harness next to well seven.
He never got up again.
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