Chapter 13 – Greater than Fear #5
Remin was entirely within his rights to do so. Especially if the documents might concern Edemir and Tounot themselves, which these did.
And given the tide of people surging to the valley, it only made sense that Remin would get his affairs in order.
Soon enough, the first ships would go skating across the Brede, carrying goods and passengers, and Remin was already looking long at the new arrivals, wondering.
He had been careful and lucky for a long time, but if one of the Emperor’s assassins made it through the gauntlet of precautions, it was best to be prepared.
He was not wrong to worry. It would be many months before he learned that there were now two traitors in Tresingale.
“I never thought I’d see the day when I came to bless the Andelin devils,” said Tounot, affixing his own seal and signature as second witness.
“It’s a lot easier to watch the riverbank when we only have to do it from inside the walls.
If anyone manages to survive the devils outside, I’m inclined to shake their hands and give them my blessing. ”
“You can make that the policy in Tounot Town.”
“Not everything has to be alliterative, Rem.”
“Makes it easier to remember.” Remin signed the last page and set down his quill, his fingers cramping.
He felt better, having it done. The sheer complexity of his instructions was a kind of testament to what he had built, and with the east wall finally complete, he could rest knowing that he had done his best to defend his people.
They had been finished only yesterday, with a little ceremony as Master Guisse and Master Misler had laid the final stones at either end of the wall. Remin had gone so far as to don one of his better jerkins for the event, playing Lord of Tresingale to mark this significant milestone.
“Five miles of wall in six months,” he had called, when the watchers demanded a speech.
“It would be an achievement to boast anywhere in the world. You dug to bedrock, cut and shaped the stone, and laid every block with care. I can only hope that the rest of my city will be built so well. And when the devils come tonight, the night watch is going to stand on this side of the pit and salute the filthy buggers.”
That brought a burst of cheers, savage and triumphant.
The east gatehouse was yet only a hole in the ground, but so deep and wide that it was nearly as an effective barrier as the wall itself.
And there among all the shouting, laughing men, there was Ophele, a solitary spot of color in her new pink gown.
She had endured as much as any of them to see that this day would come, but there was no sign of hardship in her face.
Her smile was swift and bright as sunrise when he looked at her, as if there had never been a hard word between them at all.
Before, he would have suspected it for a lie. But now he knew that was just her, so swift to bloom with only a little encouragement. Ophele did not hold grudges.
That was why he was about to make one last, massive gamble upon her.
Tying off the last of the ribbons, Remin bound up all three copies and locked them away. One day, he might be able to tear them up and write something better. But if this was the culmination of his life, he would not be ashamed.
He left Edemir’s office with a lighter step.
Ophele was waiting for him at home, and the prospect of seeing her made his heart beat faster.
She always seemed to have some small gift or surprise for him these days, from a new belt to a sachet for his pillow or even just a pretty stone she had found down by the river.
Sometimes it was food, and if she had scones today, he was going to eat one for real.
“Yes,” she said when he knocked on the door, careful as always to warn her.
Ophele was already dressed for dinner when he stepped inside, so beautiful even in her simple blue gown that his chest tightened.
She turned to smile at him, and the fronds of her long hair hung around her in damp tendrils, like an enchantress from an old story.
Maybe she was one of those dangerous, beautiful women, luring him so subtly and so sweetly that even Remin Grimjaw couldn’t resist her.
“Here,” he said, taking a seat by the fire and holding out a hand for her brush.
He was inclined to indulge himself today, and he liked brushing her hair.
He liked the feel of it in his fingers, liked feeling it change into silk as it dried in the heat by the fire.
He liked turning his hands to a gentle task. “Are you well, wife?”
“Yes. Are you?”
“Fine. You keep asking me that,” he remarked, drawing the brush through her hair. “Actually, I was thinking of something my mother told me, when I was a boy.”
“Oh?”
“Have you ever heard of the Diamond Cygnet?”
She shook her head, watching him with large, solemn eyes.
“It’s an heirloom of my mother’s House. Sidonie Ileane of Roye, that was my mother’s name.
She told me it was a golden egg as big as both her fists, decorated with jewels to show a forest surrounding a lake.
There was a little key that unlocked it on top, and when it opened, there was a swan made of diamonds inside, with a ruby this big for its heart. ”
He indicated his own large thumbnail.
“It sounds beautiful.”
“It was a gift from my many-times great-grandfather to his wife, Neda the Swan. She was a great beauty of the time. It was a masterpiece, one of the chief treasures of the family. But House Roye was on the border with Dulcia, before it was absorbed into the Empire, and four hundred years ago the family estate was attacked and looted, and the King of Dulcia took the Cygnet.”
He could remember his mother’s voice as she told him the story, holding his small body in her arms. Of course, she had used simpler words then; seven year-old Remin was just old enough to understand treasures and war and loss.
“My mother’s family never forgot it. The story of the swan passed from father to son, mother to daughter, because even if it was in the Dulcian King’s court, it still belonged to House Roye. And sooner or later, the chance would come to get it back.”
“The Annexation?” she asked, quick as always to make connections.
“Just so. Two hundred years ago, Earl Sigedore Aolo of Roye led the Emperor’s forces into the capital of Dulcia. He fought his way through the Dulcian King’s guard and captured the entire royal household. And he only asked the Emperor for one thing as a reward.”
“The Cygnet.” She smiled with appreciation.
“Mmm-hmm. It wasn’t just a matter of pride,” he said thoughtfully.
“It wasn’t that the Cygnet belonged to House Roye and they wanted it back.
They remembered, over generations. They waited.
And when the opportunity came, they took it.
My mother said that was the sort of thing that makes a noble house a great House. ”
“I always thought that was just a thing for romances,” Ophele said thoughtfully.
“Fathers telling their daughters they have to marry so-and-so for the good of their House, when the daughter wants to run off with a stableboy. But I guess if you want to have a great House, sometimes you can’t run off with the stableboy. ”
Conversation with her was confusing because he enjoyed it so much. There was always more to say, and he could see all those thoughts crowding behind her eyes.
He just didn’t know, he couldn’t know, if anything she said was real.
Quietly, he brushed. The locks of her hair dried, gleaming in his hands, maple twined with umber, so beautiful against her skin.
Before he realized what he was doing, he had touched her, his fingers gently tracing the smooth skin of her forearm, bared by the shorter sleeves of her soft blue gown.
All this time he had been careful never to touch her more than necessary, denying his desire for her.
“Your Grace?” she asked softly, and he withdrew.
“Fine,” he said, setting the brush down on the table. “Come, we’ll be late for supper.”
Supper was a raucous affair these days, and with so many new people coming into the valley, the high table was a necessity. Remin sat surrounded by his knights, eating only from the dishes Wen personally provided, and even then, only after Tounot and Miche had tasted them.
“Thank you,” Ophele said as he cut her meat for her, a courtly grace. Soon there would be silver, it was already on its way, but he liked watching her eat, her slim fingers picking at the morsels, her tidy manners. Her hands were so pretty.
“Sousten says you’ll be needed at the house tomorrow, Rem,” said Juste from a few spaces down the table. Juste had taken charge of the day-to-day building of the manor house. If something happened to Remin, then the house would belong to him.
“When?”
“Midmorning. They’re framing the first floor and need some muscle.”
Remin nodded. It was a pleasant thought that one day his son and Juste’s boy might play together in halls very like those at Tressin.
But the vision in his mind had altered somewhat, and now the son he imagined had Ophele’s golden eyes, watchful and intelligent.
Daughters that were their mother in miniature.
He had planned a dozen children as a hedge against fate; he understood his mother’s fear all too well.
But now he looked at Ophele and he could imagine his life with her so clearly, it was as if Sousten Didion had painted it for him.
The vast concept of a future, and everything he had endured to ensure that there was one, had narrowed to a singular vision consisting of her. He could see nothing else.
Walking home in the gentle light of dusk, his heart was pounding in his throat.
It wasn’t just the future that lay before him, the home and the children and the garden he wanted to build.
A thousand years of ancestors stood behind him.
He had been born to carry that burden, but sometimes it was so heavy.
He had fought for so long for them, so everything they had struggled and sacrificed to create would not have been in vain.
He lived a lifetime in the short distance from the cookhouse to his cottage.
Every step felt as if it were the culmination of all the steps he had taken in his life.
The long years of painful, arduous training to become a knight.
The determination with every new attempt on his life that he would not die, he wouldn’t give the Emperor the satisfaction.
The endless years of war. Remin was twenty-four years old and he had spent half his life at war.
All the while he had known that if he failed, if he died, then his blood would be gone from the world forever. His parents’ blood would be gone, as if they had never been. All of it depended on him.
And he was about to risk it all.
Yvain and Dol were already waiting, trying not to look curious.
He’d had a word with them that morning, asking them to move back some from the cottage, as he was wanting private conversation with his wife.
They were his men; they would obey. Even if they heard him murdering her, they wouldn’t approach.
Inside the cottage, there were a few minutes of homely chores, building the fire and lighting the lamps.
Ophele put on the teakettle, setting out the tiny parcel of tea she took from Wen every night, careful to let Remin see that it remained sealed until he himself opened it.
She was so smart. It was a habit now to have tea while they worked through the endless stack of correspondence together, one that Remin liked very much.
But tonight, he had a different set of papers in mind.
“I want to talk to you, wife,” he said, steering her to a chair and producing his copy of the document Tounot and Edemir had witnessed, still sealed and wrapped in black and silver ribbons. The colors of the House of Andelin.
“What is this?” she asked, sitting obediently. There wasn’t a flicker of suspicion in her large, tawny eyes.
“My will. I want to give you something.” He sat down, taking the knife from his belt and pushing it across the table to her, hilt first. “This.”