Chapter 10 – Defensive Structures
To Mistress Azelma Bessin in the kitchen of Aldeburke, in the duchy of Leinbruke, from Ophele in Tresingale:
Dear Azelma, I hope you are keeping well. It feels like so long since I saw you, and it’s been so busy here, it hardly seems the same place as when I arrived. Right outside my window, there’s a new granary and six new cottages, and a new stretch of road that’s almost a mile long.
None of these things were visible, at present. Ophele was writing by the uncertain light of a candle, and the shutters of the cottage had been reinforced so that not a crack of the torchlight outside showed within. His Grace’s carpenters had added iron bars to them that morning.
She couldn’t decide whether to be reassured by this or not.
But that is nothing, compared to the bridge.
They started work on that last month, and let me tell you, what a monument is a bridge!
Sir Tounot—that is Lord Tounot of Belleme, but he styles himself as Sir—says that when it is done, it will be wide enough for four wagons to go abreast, and will span the whole width of the river.
That is almost a mile long too, but a much grander undertaking, as you might imagine.
At the same time, they are building the footings for the port, and I have gotten to see them at it a little bit.
Sir Edemir says it will be even bigger than the ports on the Emme.
They are always boasting of the Brede here, and how it is so long, so wide, so wild, more dangerous than any other river in the world, so they must build strong to stand up to it.
You will think it is funny, but what I like best is seeing how all the work fits together here, like a puzzle.
I told you about how they are digging those huge trenches for the foundation of the wall, but until yesterday I never wondered, what do they do with all that dirt?
Well, it turns out they carted a lot of it away to fill in other places around town, like the pond where the temple will be.
Isn’t that marvelous? To think that building the wall also means building the temple?
Sir Miche says they are to begin laying stones for that next year, and when it is done, our temple will have a spire two hundred feet high, the Point of the Valley Star.
The Temple will come and tell us which star looks most kindly upon us, and then the final spire will be aligned to point to it, and catch its light.
Unfortunately, filling in the pond displaced the geese and their babies, but Sir Miche says they are all right; the goslings are old enough to fly, so they have all decamped to the field by the barr—
There was a sudden outburst of howling and Ophele’s quill jerked, spattering the page.
The noises of the devils were familiar now, but no less terrifying for it as they circled around the cottage, sometimes to the north, sometimes to the east. It made her mouth go dry and her heart thumped painfully in her chest, jerking in spasms of fear. The nightly chorus had begun.
Sometimes she heard familiar voices outside in the road.
It might be Sir Miche’s voice, drawling and unconcerned, complaining about being bored.
Or Sir Edemir, commanding the nearby defenses with the same calm competence he ordered his secretaries.
Ophele had learned all their rhythms by now, measuring her nights by the comings and goings of the heroes outside her door.
It amazes me that I may write so familiarly of them, the Knights of the Brede.
But they are even better men than we knew, I assure you, always chivalrous and gallant, and very sensitive of propriety, when I am still the only woman in town.
Sir Auber says that his brothers and their wives are meant to come later this year, so perhaps I will have a little society then.
Many people have come already, hoping to settle the valley and take oaths to His Grace.
Most of them must stay on the other side of the Brede for now, because of the devils, but Sir Tounot says there is much provision for them, and they have negotiated with the local lords to be sure they are all safe and have some work.
Sir Tounot is the one that manages them, and I am sure he does it so pleasantly they could hardly mind at all.
He is a handsome man with a cleft chin and curly hair, and so well-spoken that one finds oneself agreeing with him no matter what he says, because he says it so well…
She could have filled pages with stories of the duke’s men.
By day, there would have been a little spiteful pleasure in writing about them, knowing how Lisabe would squirm with jealousy.
But at night, she was reminding herself with every rasping snarl outside the windows who it was that stood between her and the devils in the dark.
I have never seen the devils myself, so I cannot know what they look like. But I know all their noises. The ghouls just sound nasty, always growling and snapping, like a rotten dog. Only, there are so very many of them…
She didn’t know how many. No one would tell her, not even Sir Miche, which could only mean that there were a great many indeed, so many they thought she would be frightened if she knew.
Hundreds, maybe, to make such a racket. Thousands?
The noises outside were constant now, an escalating cacophony that built and built until she wanted to scream for it to stop.
Rasping, snarling, all of the noises had teeth, tearing at the little town of Tresingale.
I can never decide which is worse, the stranglers or the wolf demons.
Remember that one summer when we heard squealing noises in the wood, and it scared everyone to bits until we found out it was just an elk?
The stranglers are a little like that, if the elk was laughing in the dark.
They call most often at sunrise and sunset, when everything else is quiet.
As if they are laughing at their own wickedness.
The wolf demons are more frightening, I think.
I can’t even tell you what it is like to hear one close by, as if their teeth are iron and they are howling through the metal.
I think if I saw one of those, I would just crumple over right there.
But I hate stranglers. Sometimes I fall asleep and wake up to hear one cackling, and it sounds so close, like it’s right outside the window.
I would rather a wolf demon killed me in one bite than to be waiting for a strangler to creep up upon me.
I would never wish you to hear them yourself, but oh, I wish you were here, Azelma.
You would laugh at them, I bet, and tell me I am a silly girl.
I wish I had thought to ask if you could come with me when we left Aldeburke, for then I would not be so alone.
It is hard to be so afraid all by myself.
Sometimes her quill ran away with her.
Ophele scrubbed a hand over her face and hardly noticed when it came away wet. This was not a letter she could send home. Rising, she crumpled it up and thrust it into the fire, reaching for a fresh page.
These letters were not only for Azelma. In the dark of the night, when the fire burned low and it seemed every devil in the world was about to batter down the fragile walls of the cottage, the words poured out of her, the only outlet for her terror.
Who else could she trust? In whom could she confide?
Certainly not the Knights of the Brede, who went out into the dark with the creatures every night.
To them she could only be a foolish girl, at best. They could not know her cowardice.
Her worthlessness. For she was the daughter of their enemy, a backhanded insult to their lord.
She started over. She tried to sound hopeful. She tried to sound brave. In the early hours of the morning, she read her letters anxiously again and again, but it was so hard when she had no gauge for what was normal, or what things she should already know.
If His Grace read her letters, he would only despise her more.
Ophele told herself good stories. She wrote about the building of the town, and how beautiful the wheat was, growing green on the hills to the north.
She wrote about the wall and how exciting it was to watch it every day, knowing herself a small part of that great enterprise.
She wrote about Eugene and Master Didion and the grand manor to be built on the high hill.
But she did not write that it was to be made in the likeness of Tressin, the ancient house that her divine father had burned to ashes.
Of her husband, the Duke of Andelin, she wrote nothing at all.
* * *
By the time Remin came home, the fire had burned to coals.
It was not the first time he had found the princess asleep at the table, her head pillowed on her arm and her quill still loose in her fingers.
There was a small glass phial at her elbow in a shape he recognized, and he plucked it up, sniffing the dried herbs tied to its neck.
Remin had seen enough such beakers to recognize it at once: one of Gen’s tonics, and this one for sleep, if he recalled his limited herbology correctly.
Gen looked in on the princess regularly, and said she was looking a little worn.
Of all the problems currently before him, the princess’s correspondence ranked very low, but Remin eyed the piles of paper as he went to wash the blood from his hands.
Her handwriting was too messy to read from a distance, but he wouldn’t have done so in any case; it was Juste’s task to read her correspondence, to be sure there was nothing dangerous.
Even if she was the Emperor’s daughter, there were some lines with his wife that Remin would not cross.