Page 57 of Traitor Son

But Sir Miche was happy to help her.

“This is where you say something like, ‘And your good company adds spice to every dish,’” he said, bending his head and speaking from the corner of his mouth. “Except it’s Tounot. I’d only stretch him to salt.”

“Oh? Then what would you call your nonsense, Miche?” Sir Tounot replied, without the least offense.

“Cardamom,” Sir Miche said promptly. “The spice of kings.”

Anise,Ophele thought.An acquired taste.

It would have been funny, if she had said that.

Both men made a kindly attempt to include her in the conversation, but as the rest of the knights joined them at the table it felt a little too much like making a speech, with so many eyes on her. And anyway, she was much happier just to listen as all of them talked about the planting, the wall, the horses, the construction, and the thousand and one other details of building a town. She wanted to know everything.

Things felt less strange when she was sitting among the Knights of the Brede; she was used to them, even if she was still too shy to talk to them. But once Sir Miche had left her at the cottage for the night, with the promise to pick her up early to go get the donkey, she realized just how far away she was from everything she had ever known. It was amazing to think that this was only her fourth night in Tresingale.

And alone, in a house of her own. Ophele kindled a fire and lit an oil lamp, then sat down with a book. All she needed was a cup of tea and one of Azelma’s hazelnut cookies, and it would have been perfect. For the first time in her life, no one would come to bother her. No spiteful Lisabe, no sneering Lady Hurrell, no Julot saying strange things and standing far too close. And, though it felt disloyal to think it, no duke hurrying her or scolding her or icily ignoring her.

She didn’t blame him for not trusting her. Ophele tried to be fair about such things. She just wished he would stop showing her glimpses of what he could be like, if hedidn’thate her. When he talked to his knights, sometimes he even told jokes. He wasn’t mean to anyone but her.

By now, she had been married for over a month. She didn’t feel married. She felt like she had acquired a very strict guardian. Since leaving Aldeburke, His Grace had been with her almost every moment of every day. He loomed so large in her life, figuratively and literally, and now that he was gone, she felt curiously bereft.

Especially once she put out the lights.

Ophele was sure she would sleep as soon as her head touched the pillow. A day in the sun had left her feeling like a wrung sponge and her limbs were in such agony, movement seemed impossible. But suddenly the cottage felt very big and shadowy without the shape of the duke on the floor, lying between her and the door like a small mountain range.

It was fine. She wasn’t a child. Ophele hugged a pillow to herself and shut her eyes, trying to empty her mind. And when that didn’t work, she reminded herself how sorry she would be if she didn’t sleep, and that she was going to get a donkey in the morning, and she needed to hurry up and go to sleep so there would be time to stop by the kitchen and ask Master Wen for a carrot or an apple.

Outside, there was a very soft scraping noise.

That was just one of the guards. The duke had said there were guards on every window and door. But Ophele found herself wondering what a strangler looked like. Sir Miche said they had long fingers—presumably for strangling—and that they could climb right over a wooden palisade. And there were ghouls, too, that ate the dead on battlefields. And maybe not just the dead; anyone that couldn’t get away, probably. And though both men said they wouldn’t come down from the mountains until it was warmer, it had been very warm today…

It wasn’timpossiblefor them to come earlier, was it? It wasn’t impossible that something could slip into Tresingale in the dark, creeping between braziers and torches unnoticed. And it certainly wasn’t impossible that something like a strangler could creep up on her guards and strangle them, and they wouldn’t even be able to call out because they were being strangled. And then it could sneak up to her window…

Another scraping noise.

“Is someone there?” she asked, her voice quavering. She was being silly, she knew it, but she was six hundred miles from home and all alone and people had been talking about stranglers ever since she got here.

No one answered. She sat up.

“If you are, please say something,” she said, clutching her blankets. Turning, she addressed the daubed wall behind her headboard. “It’s fine, I know I have guards, I just want to know what…who’s there.”

“One of your guards, m’lady,” said a reluctant male voice. “Just sharpening my sword. Beg pardon, didn’t think you’d hear it.”

Ophele closed her eyes.

“No, please keep it sharp,” she said. “What’s your name?”

“Dol, m’lady.”

She slid back under her blankets. “Are you here every night?”

“Aye, lady. Night watch doesn’t change much.”

“One of the watchmen back home said that. He said once you got used to being up all night, it was best to stay that way.” It was easier to talk to a stranger if she couldn’t see him. “His name was Alou.”

“I don’t mind it. But you probably ought to sleep now, m’lady.”

Now that she knew she wasn’t about to be strangled, she thought she could. It wasn’t just that she was alone in a strange and frightening place. She had never been on her own before, ever. She had never hadany control over her life. She had been born in fetters, pushed into marriage, with no choice in what she was and the inescapable destiny thrust upon her.

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