Chapter 15 – Stardust Child
Ophele was going to tell him the truth.
She just wasn’t sure when.
It felt cruel to thrust it upon him when he had only just got home and was still upset about what had happened to Nandre and Meinhem.
He didn’t want to talk about it. She had made tentative offers both to talk and to listen, whichever he would like, but he had shut both down so thoroughly she couldn’t offer again.
And she didn’t blame him; she could have no wisdom to offer on such a weighty matter.
She just hated to see that look in his eyes.
He had so many weighty matters to worry about.
So many burdens. Until she sat through the deluge Sir Bram, Sir Edemir, and Sir Juste had loosed on his head, she had never realized exactly how busy Remin was, and how many things waited on his word.
The list of things requiring his personal attention went on for pages.
Literally. There was a list, she had seen it.
But the matter of Lady Hurrell would not grow any less urgent, and she was already receiving some very pointed looks from Sir Justenin and Sir Edemir, reminding her that while she dithered, they were withholding crucial information from their liege lord.
“What are you doing today?” he asked over breakfast, putting away his food like he was filling in a pit. Even though he was busy from sunup to sundown—and, she suspected, sneaking out of bed at night to do paperwork—he was adamant about sharing his meals with her .
“I’m going into town to help Sir Edemir with accounts, and discussing the new devil with Sir Justenin, and a few other errands.
” Her eyes shifted toward the fireplace.
Actually, she was helping Sir Justenin experiment on the devil’s quills, which she really thought ought to involve Master Forgess, but Remin was still militant on the subject of the scholars and everyone agreed it was best to let things calm down for now. “What about you?”
“I’ll be in town and at the wall most of the day,” Remin replied, pausing between massive bites for a gulp of tea.
“We’re discussing some improvements to the defenses around town.
We’ll get the gatehouse done over winter if I have to use the masons for mortar, but I don’t want to rely solely on stone. Not after Nandre.”
“I want to talk to Amalie and her brother, if Sir Auber thinks it would be all right,” Ophele agreed, pouring him a fresh cup with just the amount of milk and sugar he liked.
Remin had a surprising sweet tooth. “It sounded like the new devil went through the grilles rather than the stone, and I was thinking—it was big, but it didn’t try to climb, or jump to reach you, did it?
If it was the same devil you heard. It might have been two devils, you know. ”
“That is true,” Remin said thoughtfully, and bent down to kiss her forehead. “Never stop thinking, my wife.”
His praise still made her throat feel tight. After he was gone, Ophele lifted her hand to her forehead to feel the phantom sensation of his kiss and wondered how she could ever tell him the truth.
In a way, they were lucky he was so distracted; there was a great deal of clandestine activity underway all over Tresingale.
Craftsmen hastily flung blankets over objects at his approach.
Sousten Didion, who could not keep a secret, had been forbidden to speak to him until after his birthday.
The soldiers at the barracks had been forced into a number of last-minute diversions to keep him from prematurely unveiling their gift.
Ophele herself had had a few narrow escapes.
Only yesterday in the storehouse she had been helping Sir Edemir cache away some of Remin’s presents when the man himself had appeared in the doorway, wanting to discuss ordering more steel.
There had been no choice but to fling herself at him and kiss him in full view of a half-dozen men while one of Sir Edemir’s secretaries belly-crawled down the aisle and around the corner, clutching Remin’s new saddlebags .
It was with this same air of secrecy and danger that she rode to the carpenters’ workshops on the east side of town, watching for Remin and feeling like a fugitive.
She even went as far as hiding Brambles around the back of the shop, off the street, and coming through the back entrance. She arrived just in time.
“Your Grace. You asked me to come?”
Sir Jinmin had to crouch to get through the door of Master Sharrenot’s workshop, and straightened to his full, vast height. She had always felt a certain sense of awe for Remin’s biggest knight, and bizarrely, the feeling seemed to be mutual. Sir Jinmin had never once looked directly at her.
“Yes,” she said, trying to give him a charming smile. “It’s for His Grace’s birthday. Master Sharrenot, he’s here!”
“Coming, I’m coming, m’lady,” said the master carpenter, grunting as he brought forth the object. Ophele had never forgotten how everyone had come together to hand-make gifts for her birthday, and had attempted to do the same for Remin.
“A chair?” said Sir Jinmin, his small blue eyes narrowing. It was a truly gorgeous object, dark wood polished satiny smooth, with a leather seat and back. Ophele clasped her hands together and suppressed an undignified squeal of delight.
“A chair!” she exclaimed. “Oh, it is beautiful! Look at the carving on the arms…”
“Ironheart oak.” Master Sharrenot grunted as he deposited the chair on the floor.
“Sousten showed me some of them Hora Vosi sketches, m’lady, to give me a feel for the shape of the thing.
Isn’t often I get a chance to do this kind of work.
Reckon it’s as good as anything you’ll see from some foreigner. ”
“I am sure it is,” she agreed instantly. “And it looks just the right size. Sir Jinmin, I was hoping you’d try it and see if it’s comfortable? His Grace is always saying the chairs are too low for him.”
The huge knight promptly thumped down into the chair, his broad bull face thoughtful.
“Seems all right,” he said, resting his platter-sized hands on the armrests. “Arms feel good.”
“And it’s high enough? Do you think His Grace will like it?”
Sir Jinmin actually gave an experimental wiggle .
“Yes,” he pronounced gravely. “Might want one myself. It’s good.”
There was a limited market in the valley for vastly oversized armchairs, but Ophele was so pleased, she asked Master Sharrenot to make another, certain that Remin would want one for the solar as well.
He loved things that were made in the valley.
Even the leather of this chair had come from an Andelin elk.
There were similar gifts under construction at the blacksmith’s, the weaver’s, the chandler’s, and the furrier’s, who had been painstakingly working on a shaggy black bearskin cloak. Ophele was excited to see how long it would take Remin to get the joke.
Was it too much, to wait until after his birthday to tell him?
Or would he feel doubly betrayed, knowing that she had been deceiving him even when she had given him such a celebration?
She didn’t know. Even when she tried to put herself in his place, all she could think was how important the truth was to him, and that look on his face, that night in Granholme.
“My lady?” Davi looked at her questioningly, one hand extended to boost her up onto Brambles. Ophele shook herself.
“Yes, sorry,” she said, trying to smile as her two guards mounted up on either side of her.
“We were wondering when we might speak with His Grace,” Leonin added, nudging his handsome gray even with Brambles.
It was hard to describe how Leonin had changed since their talk; he was still as politely blank as ever, but somehow he seemed to see her in a way he hadn’t before.
“There are some arrangements we ought to make sooner rather than later, my lady.”
“I know,” she said guiltily. Remin would make time for her whenever she asked, but she couldn’t shake the idea that maybe he wouldn’t want her to have hallows anymore, once she had told him the truth. “I will speak to him about it. He has been very busy since he got home.”
Leonin nodded, but there was an assessing weight in his blue eyes that reminded her she had asked for him to be her judge, as if her every word and deed would now be measured against whether it made her more deserving of a hallow.
That was how she spent the afternoon: going from one artisan to another, checking to be sure that all of Remin’s gifts were ready and were being moved carefully into place for his birthday festivities.
To her inexperienced eyes, every one of them was a wonder, the product of talented hands with decades of experience, each one more beautiful than the last.
And then she went home, waved away the maids and Lady Verr, and brought out her own pitiful offering.
It was the one thing she had tried to do by herself.
Spreading the scrap of silk over her hand, Ophele examined it again with a sinking stomach, as if it might have miraculously repaired itself overnight.
There were so many small mistakes, puckered places where she had pulled the thread too tight, crooked stitches she only noticed after it was too late to fix them.
But worst of all was the small but unmistakable hole by the corner of the R, where she had unpicked the same stitch so many times, she had torn the silk. There was no way to hide it.
It was ruined.
And the more she looked, the worse it looked, lumps and bumps and uneven lines, a message of failure at even the simplest task. She had pinned all her hopes on this silly thing. She had wanted to give it as a promise, rather than a plea for forgiveness.
“Wife?”
Ophele started and turned to find Remin in the doorway, more stealthy than a man his size had any right to be. Automatically, she snapped the embroidery box shut and crumpled the evidence in her hand, but it was already too late.
“What’s wrong?” he asked, crossing the room quickly at the sight of her tears. “Why are you crying?”