Chapter 6 – A Poisoned Sweet
His wife did look as if she could fit in very small spaces.
Remin woke up early his first morning back in the Andelin, when the outlines of his furnishings were just visible in the morning gloom.
A cottage floor was an improvement over the side of the road, but he grimaced as he sat up, rubbing the back of his neck.
For a moment, he wondered if he’d overindulged the night before, but then he spotted the small shape in the middle of his bed.
The princess was a nester. Even with the whole wide bed to stretch out in, she was curled up in the center, hugging a pillow and burrowed into the blankets so only the top of her head showed. The Emperor’s daughter, sleeping in his bed at the far end of the empire. Alone.
This was what he had wanted.
There was a small washstand next to the hearth, and he took the opportunity to strip down and wash, then brushed his teeth.
He had long waged an internal debate between fashion and practicality; he had been born the son of a duke, but he had grown up as something worse than a peasant; more like a particularly insidious species of vermin that the Emperor just couldn’t kill.
The affectations of nobility most often felt like a waste of time—for example, shaving—but people set store by appearances.
One of the reasons he had brought his wife to Tresingale was to begin civilizing the place.
Beginning with himself.
Grumbling inside, Remin shaved. They needed a public bath.
There were such places in the capital, everything from practical and minimalist facilities for peasants to luxurious places where nobles met to socialize and connive while they were scrubbed, massaged, and beautified.
The princess was too polite to show it, but the stink from his men last night had singed his own nostrils, never mind what it must have done to her aristocratic little nose.
Maybe he’d bump the bathhouse up a few spaces on the list of priorities. Genon had been nagging about personal hygiene for months anyway.
Tugging a fresh shirt and pair of leather breeches on, Remin went to wake the princess, who generally needed some time before she was sensible.
He had applauded himself for his restraint the night before, but as soon as she sat up, foggy-eyed and disheveled, with her chemise slipping off one slim bare shoulder, it all came roaring back.
“…time izzit?” she mumbled, squinting into the middle distance.
“Almost dawn.” Remin’s jaw tightened. Why did she have to look like that?
He refused to confuse himself or her any further.
They had a political marriage, and he knew he was already dangerously soft-hearted toward her, or her tears wouldn’t make him feel like he deserved nothing more than a hanging. “Get up and get dressed.”
“Mmm.” She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, yawning, and he turned away to build a fire so he wouldn’t forget himself.
The thing about traitors and spies was that one had to consider the work from their point of view.
Assassins were lightning bolts, but traitors and spies were chameleons, blending in, biding their time, wearing the face of a trusted friend, servant, or sweetheart.
He would rather face a hundred assassins than one spy.
He had never once felt guilty for killing an assassin.
Killing a spy who wore the face of a friend was something that haunted.
Remin was sure that traitors didn’t think about their treachery every moment of the day.
They couldn’t; no one could live that way.
Those moments of friendship, affection, and trust had to be real, part of a complex web of manipulation and—he was sure—cognitive dissonance from the traitor.
They would do whatever it took to get close and stay close, and then await their orders.
It might be days, weeks, or even years, but the order would come.
It had always come. He knew how these things worked. He was a fool if he let himself forget it.
“Usually we go to the cookhouse for something to eat in the morning,” he said as he lit the kindling and slowly added larger branches to the blaze.
“Food isn’t allowed in the cottages to minimize vermin, though you’ll still hear field mice in the thatching.
Between Wen and Genon, we mostly keep them at bay, but I hope you’re not afraid—”
He glanced back to see if the temptress was dressed yet and stopped talking.
She was asleep.
Sitting up. Her elbow on her knee and her chin propped on her hand, with her eyes closed and the curves of her breasts plainly showing at the neck of her chemise. Through her parted lips, she was very softly snoring.
This sort of thing was why he had to lecture himself about assassins and spies. Bending, he shook her shoulder, trying to keep the corner of his mouth from twitching. This was not funny. It was not cute.
“Wake up.”
She sucked in a breath and her eyes opened up wide.
“I’m awake.”
“Lies,” he said, pulling her bodily out of bed. He had seen her do that trick before, her eyes would slam shut again just as quickly. “Get dressed.”
A few minutes later, the realization that there was nothing like a privy in the cottage and the Duchess of Andelin could hardly go in the bushes thoroughly woke them both up, and Remin once again regretted the lack of a maid.
It was time to consider more fixed sanitation facilities anyway.
“Don’t be sorry, it’s not your fault,” he said gruffly, closing the door of the cottage behind them. He genuinely didn’t mean to keep embarrassing her this way.
His decision to bring her to the valley had not been entirely spiteful.
Even a man like Miche didn’t know all the things that were needful for a woman’s comfort, and Remin had thought the Emperor’s daughter should face a little deprivation.
He had expected her to tell him—often, loudly, and at length—exactly what was lacking.
Never in his wildest dreams had he imagined the daughter of Emperor Bastin Agnephus would look at a woolly bed in a crofter’s cottage and tell him she could curl up smaller.
In every other way, though, she perfectly suited his purposes. She looked like a shepherdess from a pretty pastoral painting in her green wool gown, even if she was a little red in the face, and the men outside were falling all over themselves to doff their caps and bow.
“Good morning, Your Grace.”
“Morning, m’lady.”
“Good morning,” she said, looking a little startled, but nodded graciously and left them staring, with very foolish expressions.
This was the other reason he had brought her here, over the objections of the Duke of Ereguil.
After years of war and questionable female companionship, his men badly needed civilizing.
He wanted to give them the first opportunity to settle his lands.
He wanted the veterans of the Vallethi War to send for their wives, their children, their sweethearts and their extended families, and spread out across the valley for which they had bled.
They had earned it. But right now, Tresingale was a rough and dangerous place, and someone had to be the first.
If the Duke of Andelin was willing to bring the Emperor’s sacred daughter to the valley, then surely it was safe to bring their own families.
It was going to be a little rough for the princess, though.
“Get out of me kitchen and stop nibblin’ at me cheese before I take a cleaver to ye!
” Wen the cook shouted as Remin entered the kitchen.
Where Genon was massive, Wen was just fat.
Enormously fat. The fact that he could fit in tiny camp kitchens seemed to defy all natural laws of space and physics, and Remin’s personal theory was that Wen’s bulk was just more fungible than the average person’s.
He didn’t squeeze into tight spaces so much as ooze.
“Shiftless bastard, ye’ll do without bread today and see whether ye go filching my fine aged cheddar, ye skiving arse—”
At the far end of the galley-style kitchen, a boy vanished out the door, accompanied by the cook’s curses.
“Wen. Wen. Wen!” Remin raised his voice and fought the urge to cover the princess’s ears. Taming Wen was going to be her version of crossing the Brede. “Watch your tongue.”
The cook drew a breath as if he were about to treat His Grace to a similar diatribe, but then he spotted the princess. His eyes narrowed.
“So,” he said, inflating like a frog. “It begins.”
“My wife,” Remin warned. “This is Princess Ophele, who is now your duchess.”
“I don’t care if she’s now me bloomin’ Empress.
I told ye, I won’t have women in me kitchen.
I’ll quit.” Wen slapped a grubby wet towel onto the counter as if to punctuate the point.
“I will quit. Next thing she’ll be asking for pudding and saying where’s the coriander and I won’t have it, I tell ye, I won’t have it. I do good plain cooking me own way.”
“She’s not here to cook,” Remin growled. “I told you yesterday I would be bringing her by so you could pay your respects.”
“Oh aye, an honor,” said the cook, glaring. “Then what’s Her Highness got to do with me, eh?”
“Princess, sometimes you’ll come here to fetch lunch for the men.” Though Remin was reconsidering the wisdom of this course. “Wen will have it packed up in a basket.”
“Will I get lunch, too?” she asked anxiously, so soft he wasn’t entirely sure he had heard her right.
“Of course you will,” he said, insulted. Did she think he planned to starve her? “Wen will have something fit for a lady, as thanks for saving him a walk.”
“In a pig’s—” The cook began, but cut himself off at Remin’s warning glare. The duke was willing to tolerate certain liberties from his men, as long as they did their work well, but his tolerance only went so far.
“The princess doesn’t need to hear your filth, Wen.”