Page 69 of Traitor Son

Blearily, she watched him put on a kettle to heat washing water and then strip off his shirt, dirty and sweaty and a little blood-spattered from guarding against the devils. It wasn’t his blood. It was never his blood. And he had been very careful to wash the worst of it off before he woke her ever since that first time, when she had opened her eyes to see him glaring at her through a mask of devil’s blood. Half the town had heard her shriek, to her lasting humiliation, and it had taken some time before she could besureit wasn’t all a nightmare.

To be fair, he had been sorry about that.

Ophele understood something of her father’s frustration, watching him shave. Didn’t he ever get tired? Was he even human? Night after night, he was standing watch, sometimes returning at dawn to wake her and wash before he went to work for the day. She knew this because often she was still awake when he came home. Yet somehow he looked as freshas if he had come from a good night’s sleep, while she was so exhausted she was starting to believe in the Bhumi night hags, ephemeral demons that rode on the shoulders of their victims, whispering nightmares in the dark and leeching away warmth and strength by day.

Hands gripped her shoulders and lifted her bodily out of bed, standing her on her feet, and she had to catch herself. She had almost fallen back to sleep.

“Awake now?” His finger pushed her chin up to look at her, and Ophele shrank away. She knew she was nothing to him, neither wanted nor useful, nothing more than a chore.

Once, she had wanted to say so many things to him. Apologies, explanations, and an endless number of questions. Now she just felt paralyzed in his presence, afraid to do or say anything. Sometimes it seemed as if just the sight of her infuriated him.

He had made it very clear that he wanted nothing from her. Not even her help.

That hurt her more than almost anything else, including the incident with the flowers. Ophele had unraveledthatmystery inside twenty minutes; of course he would not want her near him, and would see her as a threat: her father had spent almost twenty years making sure of it. But she had thought he would be pleased, when he saw the other things she had done. Wasn’t it better if Master Wen didn’t have to stop cooking to fetch things? And both Master Ffloce and Master Guisse had said they were glad she thought of the wells, especially with the stream by the north wall already drying up.

But maybe they hadn’t meant it. She was their duchess. Maybe they had been afraid to tell her she was wrong. What did she know of wells and walls?

“Get dressed,” the duke said as he shrugged into a rough jerkin, belting it around his waist. “I’ll see you at supper.”

The cottage door thudded shut behind him.

Safflower. That was the Bhumi remedy for night hags. Ophele stood in the silent cottage, feeling the rushes with her bare feet, and then moved stiffly to dress.

There was always a bouquet or two of flowers on the front doorstep, and she put them in water and hung the old bouquets over the bed to dry,filling the cottage with the sweet scent. There was no sign of Sir Miche yet, so she stood by the new road, looking with pleasure at the cobblestones. They had just been laid yesterday; was it safe to walk on them? Did the mortar have to set, or something? Cautiously, she stepped onto them, feeling the rounded river rocks through her small, sturdy boots.

“Admiring the metropolis, my lady?” Sir Miche’s voice said from behind her, and Ophele retreated guiltily.

“It will be, one day,” she said, brightening as he approached with Eugene. The donkey’s hooves clopped onto the road and the wagon wheels bumped upward with a sound that was like a touch of civilization. “Do you think that’s the first time anyone’s heard wagon wheels on cobblestone in the valley?”

His eyebrows lifted.

“First time in a long time,” he said, glancing back at the wagon with appreciation. “Since the first invasion of Valleth, anyway. That’s a milestone, isn’t it? The official opening of Harnost Highway.”

“I thought it was Tounot Turnpike.” She fell into step beside him, petting Master Eugene. The Knights of the Brede squabbled like boys over the naming of things.

He gave her a wounded look.

“Of all people, I never thought you would abandon me.”

“I would never,” she protested. “I think it should be Eugene Street, in memory of the first wagon to touch it.”

“We are not naming the first major road in Tresingale after a donkey, no matter how distinguished.”

Bickering amiably, they stopped for breakfast and carrots and then headed for the wall. It was a fair distance, two and a half miles along the curve of the road that went south, then east. But it gave them a chance to see the progress of all the new projects along the route, from two buildings at the end of a long lane by the river to the wooden frame of what Sir Miche said would be the town’s first store. A merchant named Guian was already on his way to the valley.

It promised to be a fine, hot day as the sun rose in a clear sky, and Ophele was already beginning to perspire in her hot woolen dress as they reached the cob barracks, a prominent structure on a hillside overlooking the sheep pens.

“They’re putting in windows?” she asked in surprise. The building was made of white Brede River clay, and the large, regular gaps in deep sills could be nothing else. It seemed foolhardy, with stranglers creeping about every night.

“One in every room,” Sir Miche said, with mingled satisfaction and defiance. “The east wall will be finished before the barracks are. We’ll have all the windows we want, and laugh at the devils.”

“I like the tower.” It wasn’t in her to laugh at the devils. She didn’t even want to think about them. “What’s it for?”

“That’ll be the council room,” he replied, nodding to the large round tower on the east end of the complex. “Have you heard of the Five Courts?”

She nodded. They were the five bodies that supported the Emperor in Segoile: the Courts of Nobles, Merchants, Artisans, Scholars, and the powerful Court of War. It would have been blasphemous to count the Temple of the Stars as merely a court, though the essential divinity of the Emperor made it very difficult for the Temple to oppose him.

“That will be the Andelin’s Court of War,” Sir Miche was explaining. “The Emperor considers us a buffer region against Valleth, expendable if necessary. We’re not going to count on the House of Agnephus for support, if it comes to it. We’ll have our own Court of War, our own standing army, and our own Academy. Just in case.”

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