Page 17 of Traitor Son

“To measure Your Grace for Your Grace’s wedding clothes.”

“I don’t remember putting that on my list of requirements.”

Miche stepped into the room. “With respect, Your Grace, you smell like a horse’s ass. And you look like you’ve been sleeping on the side of the road for a month.”

Edemir glanced at him with pity. “He’s not wrong, Rem.”

With the exception of their sojourn at Aldeburke, hehadbeen sleeping by the side of the road for the last month. Sighing, Remin allowed himself to be measured for a new doublet and jerkin, stubbornly refused breeches in any color but black, and then submitted to the ministrations of a barber while Edemir read off more reports and noted down Remin’s orders. But the jeweler was the last straw.

“I told you to take care of it, Miche,” he flared. “I don’t give a fuck whether you stick a sapphire or a lump of coal on my brooch. Don’t bother me about it again.”

He was silent at dinner, an excellent meal with hearty joints of beef and pork, thick crusty bread, and platters of turnips, beans, potatoes, and a variety of green things. It was pleasant to be clean, and clean-shaven, after so many weeks in the saddle, and his men were loud and boisterous. Seated at a long table beside a massive stone fireplace, the innkeeper rolled in cask after cask of excellent wine and ale, and their laughter rang to the ceiling.

Ordinarily, he would have been roaring and singing and exchanging insults right along with them. But tonight, for some reason he felt as if he were standing on the edge of a precipice, the same feeling he had had the night before the charge on the Gresein, and the day before he went to accept the surrender of Valleth. His men glanced at him, glanced at each other, and poured more wine into his cup.

“Your health, my lord,” said Justenin, knocking his cup into Remin’s. “We’ll return to the Andelin in time for the spring planting.”

“Sir Juste is eager to meet his sheep,” said Bram knowingly. Justenin had taken charge of His Grace’s livestock. “Think you’ll find a bride of your own?”

“Better than the woolly sort of prostitutes you favor, Bram,” Justenin replied placidly, to a round of laughter.

It was late when Remin finally stumbled out onto the balcony, breathing in huge draughts of the freezing air. The sting of it felt good on his hot cheeks.

“I wouldn’t advise any more wine,” said a voice from the darkness, and he turned to find Miche lounging on the stone railing against the side of the inn, holding a wineskin in one hand and a cup in the other. Miche always counseled against the vices in which he was indulging.

“I wasn’t planning to.” He wasn’t drunk, but Remin was unpleasantly hot, and flapped the neck of his loose white shirt. “I just wanted some air. Why aren’t you inside?”

“The same reason, more or less. I was quite busy today, on behalf of my liege.”

“How did you get the whole city to turn out?” Remin wanted to know. “I figured out the rest, but you could hardly have bribed half of Celderline to show up.”

“I bought minstrels.” Miche smirked. “When Huber wasn’t looking. A few rounds ofThe Battle of the BredeandThe Lady’s Courting-Songand they were lining the streets. It puts a nice finish on the war, doesn’t it? And then His Grace married a princess and lived happily ever after.”

“It’s not like that.” For some reason, hearing that made him angry. As if all of it, all those years of blood and dirt and misery had just been the lead-up to an hour in the temple of Celderline. “It was our land. The Andelin was part of the Empire for almost a thousand years. When Valleth invaded, the people—”

“Didn’t give a shit.” Miche poured himself more wine. “Neither do you, Your Grace. It’s a rich land, but if the Emperor hadn’t destroyed your House—”

“Miche.”

“If you had grown up a proper nobleman’s son, the Andelin Valley would still belong to Valleth and you wouldn’t care,” Miche said stubbornly. “I’m not judging, Rem. It’s also true that they attacked us, and you likely would have been sent with all the other blue-blooded sons to lead an army and drive them out, one day. But that’s not what we were fighting for. We were fighting because the Emperor took everything from you, and we had to go through the Andelin Valley to take it back.”

Remin didn’t want to hear that. It was easier to bear if he thought the dead men of the Andelin had given their lives in service of the Empire, not himself.

“Give me a cup.”

“No. You’re getting married tomorrow; you can’t be nursing a hangover.” The other man noisily drained his cup, because that was the sort of bastard he was. “You’ve gone to a lot of trouble to marry the daughter of a man you hate.”

“You know my reasons.”

“Yes.” Miche’s breath curled up white as he sighed. “But I was thinking. That’s not good enough, Rem.”

“What do you mean?”

“It’s not what they’d want.”

There was only onetheyamong the Knights of the Brede. Even with the wine warming his veins and mazing his mind, Remin could see their faces as clearly as if he had spoken to them at supper. Rasiphe, Bon, Ludovin, Clement and Victorin. Rasiphe had died at the Gresein Bridge. Bon died of poison meant for Remin; Ludovin had been captured as a spy and fed to the Lord of Tales. Clement and Victorin had died together holding a narrow place in the Berlawe Mountains, slowing the arrival of enemy reinforcements. Victorin had taken twenty-six stab wounds before he succumbed.

“I was thinking,” Miche repeated doggedly, “that they’d want the Duke of Andelin in new clothes for his wedding. They’d want to see you in a temple with a crowd of people smiling for you, and a pretty girl in silk next to you, with flowers in her hair. And they’d want you to be happy together, Rem. I know who she is. But she seems like a nice girl. Give her a chance. Give both of you a chance.”

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