Page 40 of Traitor Son

“You’re making a big mistake.” Miche met his eyes, flat and angry. “I told you I’d tell you if you were. She can’t help who her father is. If you just gave her a chance—”

“Drop it, Miche,” he said shortly, and walked away.

Remin was not prepared for this. He had expected a spoiled, haughty noblewoman, sly and conniving, the Emperor with breasts. It would have given him immense satisfaction to use the Emperor’s blood for his own ends, to defeat whatever machinations she might attempt and get heirs on her that would establish his House for all time. There was no possible vengeance so complete or enduring.

But the princess refused to play her role. He kept giving her opportunities to reveal her true colors, so he could catch her in some lie, some deception, but every time it failed to manifest. Perversely, it only made him more determined to trap her. It could only mean that she was more cunning than he had expected, more subtle, more patient.

It meant, when she inevitably betrayed him, that it would devastate him.

It was his own fault. He had almost been taken in by her. He had let her get too close, close enough to hurt him. It would be a painful correction, but soon they would both get used to it and understand what lines should not be crossed, and then they would…

He didn’t know how to end that sentence.

At any rate, soon they would be back in the valley and working too hard to care. The matter of the bandits was his biggest concern, but until they got back to Tresingale and saw how things stood, there wasn’t much he could do about it. But as the Andelin drew near and they left Trema behind, he and his men often sat up late at night, planning everything that would have to be done.

“The surveyor sent a preliminary map,” said Edemir, spreading a large piece of parchment in the space they had cleared between lamps. He had collected the messages waiting for them at Trema’s small garrison. “This is the proposed town site, and he’s even included the grade of the hills and their elevation. Here’s the river, and here’s that hill you suggested for the manor, Rem. It’ll be a steep climb for horses unless you circle the road around the back.”

“Daitians do a terracing thing to manage steep terrain,” said Bram, who was the most well-traveled among them. “If you don’t mind climbing a lot of stairs yourself.”

“Not if it means we’ll have a view of the town. The city,” Remin corrected. Tresingale would be a city in his lifetime. On the far side of the fire, he didn’t notice the princess turn slightly toward them, listening. “The hill to the east would be good for a training yard. And the barracks could go here.”

“With a view of the sheep,” observed Tounot. It was true that the hills Remin had designated as grazing land were immediately adjacent.

“What you do with your time off is your own business,” he said, to a rumble of laughter. “But I won’t force any of you to stay,” he added, looking at the map. Specifically, the blank space that lay beyond the borders of the town: the mountains to the north and east, the Talfel Plateau northwest, the moors to the west. It was a lot of land. “I told you I’d give you all lands and titles of your own.”

“What sort of bannerman leaves their lord sleeping in a croft?” Tounot asked lightly. “Which, if I recall correctly, was located about here. Next to Tounot Boulevard.”

“Auber Avenue,” Auber corrected. “His Grace said everything had to be alliterative.”

This was true, though Remin had consumed a considerable amount of alcohol at the time.

“If that’s the main road going to the new bridge, it can only be Harnost Highway,” said Miche loftily.

“Miche Marke is going to be on the bad side of town. Where the brothels are,” Tounot retorted.

“How dare you, sir.”

“There will be no bad side of Tresingale,” Remin decreed, putting an end to the argument. He was glad that they were all steadfast in their desire to stay. Eventually they would have to go and begin settling those wider lands, or someone else would beat them to it. But he wasn’t quite ready to give up his knights yet.

Each of them had a task, according to their own inclinations and aptitudes. Juste, who had lived in an orphanage run by the Brothers of the Shepherd Star, had learned how to manage sheep, cows, and goats. Auber was a farmer’s son, and several of his many siblings—including the older brother that had made the error of buying wedding rings without a single diamond to shine for the stars—would be arriving in autumn, to farm lands more vast than the niggling acres in Engleberg.

Huber knew horses, Tounot and Bram would manage the incoming settlers, and Edemir did the work of actually procuring the experts and materials they needed to accomplish everything else: the surveyor who was charting the lands around Tresingale, followed by the architects and planners who would decide what to do with it, and the builders to make it real.

Miche pronounced himself useless but willing to lend a hand wherever he was needed.

Already hundreds of people were converging on the valley at the duke’s invitation, and they were going to have to ride hard to beat the first shipments of supplies. Remin had left behind a few trusted knights and a small force of soldiers, but the amount of work to be done was staggering. Thoughts of bandits weighed on his mind, and he took some solace in the knowledge that he had left Genon Hengest and Jinmin of Oskerre behind to look after things. Genon Hengest was a surgeon and veteran that had kept them alive through seven years of war, and Jinmin had once crushed a Vallethi soldier’s head in the palm of his hand like he was cracking a walnut. The two men could be trusted to keep a grip on things.

“We’ll be arriving in Andelin in two weeks, if all goes well,” he told the princess the next day as he lifted her into the saddle. With practice, they had managed to find positions on the horse that allowed them to touch as little as possible.

She nodded. He couldn’t remember the last time he had heard her speak.

“There won’t be much there,” he said, wondering how much she had heard, or guessed, about what he was taking her into. “There’s no manor house, like Aldeburke. If we’re lucky, we’ll have the main house built by winter, but that’s just the central structure. It won’t include things like libraries or ballrooms.”

The princess nodded again, solemn as ever.

“You won’t have time to be reading all day,” he added. It came out more harshly than he intended. “It won’t be the life you knew before. You’ll have to be useful.”

“I will,” she said, almost inaudibly. He kept telling her to speak up, but if anything, she was getting worse. “I’ll work hard.”

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