Chapter 13 – Greater than Fear #4
“It’s not just you.” Miche was sorry he’d ruined it for her now; if Rem had gone to the trouble of pretending to drink, he’d been trying not to hurt her feelings.
“Rem wouldn’t eat a haunch of mutton unless he’d been personally introduced to the sheep, I’m afraid.
You know he grew up on Duke Ereguil’s estate? Since he was eight.”
“Yes.”
“He was nine the first time someone poisoned him. I wasn’t there, but Duchess Ereguil told me about it.
Windweed seeds, from Noreven. It’s a nasty poison.
I hear it’s like lockjaw, the joints swell up and stiffen, and the muscle spasms are so bad, they’ll break bones.
And nothing stops the pain. He screamed for days.
It was weeks before they could talk him into eating again. ”
It still made Miche furious every time he thought about it. Even in Segoile last year, Remin had frequently gone hungry rather than eat food from someone he couldn’t trust. Ophele stared at him, aghast.
“But I suspect it’s a nearer trouble,” Miche went on, sighing.
“There was a girl he liked when he was fourteen, in Rospalme. Mind, he wasn’t old enough to be courting, even if the girl’s father would allow it, which of course, no sane man would.
She was older than he was, sixteen or so.
Merrienne, that was her name. It seemed every bit as harmless as you’d expect.
Rem used to give her flowers. Just shoved them at her because every time she talked to him, he’d turn red and clam up. Couldn’t say a word.”
“Really?” Though it was obvious that something terrible was coming, she couldn’t help smiling. It was sweet to imagine Remin as a blushing boy.
“That was another reason I didn’t have much hope for the match,” Miche said dryly.
“He was going to have to learn to say whole words out loud first. But she seemed to like him. Took the flowers, anyway. They kept meeting accidentally in town, and finally she got him to agree to slip out one night to see her.”
“Alone?”
“Yes. I probably would’ve let him go, if I’d known.
” Miche was candid in acknowledging his own faults.
“I just would’ve followed him. But he didn’t breathe a word of it, and when I looked in on him that night, he was gone.
I imagine he was sick of being guarded all the time, and didn’t like to have anyone listening while he was trying to woo his first sweetheart. ”
“And she betrayed him?” Ophele asked, her eyes round.
“Worse. She tried to kill him.”
“Oh. No.” Ophele looked at him in horror, her hands lifting to cover her mouth. “No, no, no, a sixteen year-old girl?”
“She said she was sixteen. She’d arrived in Rospalme a year before, with people that said they were her parents.
They vanished that same night. Anyway, by the time I found him, Rem had already killed her.
She kissed him, then tried to stab him. You might’ve seen the scar on his back.
” Miche slapped at his left shoulder. “And he hit her. He was always big for his age, and he was scared. I don’t think he meant to kill her, but… it was very hard for him, after.”
“That is so awful. That is so awful,” she whispered, tears welling and overflowing. “How could anyone do that, that poor boy! How could anyone—”
Wordlessly, Miche extended a handkerchief as she wept.
It was hard. He was sorry to tell her how hard the world could be, but Remin would never tell her this story.
After all these years, maybe he didn’t even know how.
Maybe the weight of all those hurts had been so vast, so relentless, he didn’t have the words to speak of them.
But Miche would do it for him. Miche had never forgotten that fourteen year-old boy, clutching his bleeding shoulder and asking was Merrienne really dead, it had been an accident, there must be some mistake, why had she done that to him?
“I don’t believe you’d do that,” Miche said, squeezing Ophele’s shoulder. “Down to my bones, my lady, I know you never would. And Rem thinks so too, that’s why he’s been letting you close. But there’s part of him that just can’t ever know. You see why?”
She nodded, scrubbing at her face with her sleeve.
“I know. I know. I hate him. The Emperor,” she said thickly. “I know I shouldn’t say it, he’s the Beloved of Stars, but I hate him, I don’t believe he can be the Divinity when he does something so awful. Remin never did anything, and neither did his parents, it’s all a li—”
“We don’t say that even here.” Miche looked at her sharply.
He would have thought she was too young when her mother died to know such dangerous things.
What was common knowledge among Remin’s knights was treason everywhere else in the Empire.
“You should talk to Juste, if you have questions. What he says goes over my head, but you’re bright enough to keep up.
No, keep it,” he added, waving a hand as she offered his handkerchief.
“I miss talking to Sir Justenin,” she said, dabbing her cheeks with it. “I liked talking to him on the way here, he always made me think.”
“There will likely be more leisure, in a little while.” Miche had his own ideas about why the quiet, gentle Juste might have been keeping his distance. “And you probably know better than to ask Rem about any of it, but he won’t appreciate it if you bring it up.”
She nodded, red-eyed.
“Why did you tell me?”
“Because you need to know. Especially if you’ve guessed enough to go poking yourself,” he added approvingly. “It’s not your fault, but it will be hard for you. Hard for him. You see why?”
“I do.”
“And now that you know, you can help him,” Miche said, encouraging. “You wouldn’t think it to look at him, but he takes a sight of looking after.”
“That’s what Sir Huber said.” She gave a wobbly smile. “Before he left.”
“Huber was always sensible. Don’t look so serious,” he added lightly, and she was quick-witted enough to understand the warning. “Tell me more about these Daitian hats.”
“Daitian hats?” Rem asked, appearing at the end of the stable, and Miche was happy to explain the fundamentals while Ophele curried the donkey within an inch of his life.
* * *
Remin had a few memories of what life had been like, before.
The memory of Tressin was as vague and lovely as a dream.
It was an old land, a beautiful land, peaceful and sedate.
His father had been very proud of their well-ordered duchy, and from the windows of his nursery, Remin could see the forest to the east and the acres and acres of wheat fields to the west. That was his best memory of the land: the golden wheat waving under the summer sun, and a deep blue sky.
The sheaf and the sword were the sigil of his House. Remin’s father always said that one could not exist without the other.
His father was Duke Benetot, lord of a House whose name it was treason to speak.
He married Sidonie of House Roye when she was eighteen and he was twenty-one.
It was probably a political marriage, but Remin remembered them being happy.
In the evenings they always went for a walk in the garden after supper, and his parents spoke easily together, and laughed often.
His father was a very important man. Everyone bowed when he passed and said Your Grace, and though he looked like a stern and terrifying giant, he made a happy fool of himself playing with his son, chasing him up and down the stairs, flipping him upside down, throwing him up in the air and onto various soft objects.
“Benetot,” Remin’s mother admonished, covering her eyes with her hands as if nothing bad could happen so long as she didn’t look. “Be careful, what if he falls?”
“He’ll get up again,” his father had replied. Benetot was convinced that rough play made strong boys, and Remin was going to be a knight, just like his father.
His mother was always worried because Remin didn’t have any brothers and sisters. Over and over she said she was going to have a baby, but then she would get sick and the baby would go away, and another small stone would be added to the family memorial in the woods.
“I’m here, Mama,” Remin had tried to reassure her, when she was sad after she had been sick again.
“So you are,” she had said, pulling him into the bed beside her. He still remembered how her voice had tickled his ear as she hugged him. “My heart’s greatest treasure.”
As a daughter of House Roye, his mother knew better than most that treasures could be stolen or lost. Multiple children were a hedge against cruel chance.
And he remembered the night when Duke Ereguil had come for him, only minutes ahead of the Imperial Guard.
His mother’s parting kiss on his forehead, the feel of her tears on his cheek.
There had been no farewell from his father.
Benetot had gone to Starfall and never came back again.
There had been no final words to remember, no parting benediction.
Only his mother’s choking sob as she whispered, good-bye, my treasure.
“You’re sure about this, Rem?”
In the closet of an office above the storehouse, Edemir eyed him as he set his own seal and signature to several packets of documents, all thick, heavy parchment with Remin’s instructions painstakingly detailed.
These were not mere lists. These were the formal orders of the Duke of Andelin, written in triplicate, witnessed and signed, with all the formal ribbons, toggles, and wax seals required to prove their authenticity.
“You’ve been nagging me to do it for a year, do you want me to tear it up now?
” Remin asked absently, scrawling his sharp, slashing signature in all the appropriate places.
Edemir was not required to know the contents of these documents.
Indeed, in this case, Remin was requiring him and Tounot to sign without having read a single word, attesting that Remin himself had provided these documents and signed and sealed them in their presence.