Page 108 of Traitor Son

“Oh.” Her eyes flicked up to his, surprised. “Oh. Well, I also answered a few more letters, people asking if they could come live here, and I told them what you said about not letting anyone else come until next year…”

The duke listened patiently as she explained the other letters she had written, and then they looked through the food orders for the kitchen, speculating about what earthly use Master Wen might have for a bushel of dried persimmons. Though she felt embarrassed that he was going to such trouble, she knew better than to resist; he would sit at the table all night if that was what it took to make her talk. He was so stubborn.

And thinking that, for some reason she had to look down to hide a smile.

“So let me tell you about the caravan,” he said when she was done, and described what she had already deduced about trying to get a team of men and horses to Ferrede. “The hard part is the horses,” he explained. “We can hardly put them in the wagon, so we have to come up with something to protect them overnight that they can haul. The carpentersare calling it a mobile palisade. But if it’s too heavy, we need more horses to pull it, which means the palisade needs to be bigger to protect them, which means more horses…”

He spread his hands and Ophele nodded. It was an interesting problem.

“But we have to go help Ferrede, and the other villages,” he went on. “I guess you’ve figured that out. I didn’t tell you because I still don’t know who will actually go, or when. I didn’t want you worrying about it in the meantime.”

“I’ll be all right,” she made herself say. But this time his frown was a real frown.

“Stop saying you’re fine when you aren’t,” he said sternly. “It makes it hard for me to tell what to do. Tell me what you’re thinking, not what you think I want to hear.”

“I’m thinking that they’re your people. My people,” she said, which was still an incredibly bizarre thought, but was nonetheless true. “Because I’m the Duchess of Andelin. Ferrede, Meinhem, Raida, Isigne, and Selgin. Is that all of them?”

“Nandre. And Raida is fine, they’re by the border wall.”

“Nandre,” she repeated, giving him her own version of a stubborn face. “I didn’t think about what might be happening to them, all this time. But they don’t have knights, do they? Or soldiers.”

“No, they don’t,” he agreed.

“And they swore to obey you as their lord. They swore to the stars.”

“Yes.”

“Then you have to go.”

“I don’t know if that’s true,” he replied slowly. “I was thinking about it. It bothered me, even before. I swore to protect the people of Tresingale, and I thought I was doing my duty, standing guard for them. But I only swore the protection of my body toyou.Not the protection of someone else’s body. I thought it was the same thing as long as you were safe, but Juste would disagree, I expect.”

“But you said I’m safe,” she said, refusing to be diverted even with such tempting intellectual fodder.

“You don’t sleep when the devils are about,” he said bluntly. “You’re always awake when I come back.”

She flushed.

“It’s not as bad as being out there with no guards at all,” she said, her ears pink. The people of the valley shouldn’t have to suffer because she was a coward.

“Why do they scare you so much?” he wanted to know. “If you explain it to me, maybe there’s something we can do about it. Is it just the noises?”

It was the noises, but Ophele thought that wasn’t all. And he was asking so directly, and had been so patient, she thought she owed it to him to at least try.

“Where do they come from?” she began, her fingers twisting together. “The devils.”

“Vallethi sorcerers.”

“I know that, but fromwhere,”she said, voicing one of the many questions she had asked herself so many times. It felt good to say it out loud. “Are they from the underworld? Or somewhere else in this world? Or somewhere in Valleth?”

“We don’t know,” he admitted.

“Why do they go away in the winter?”

His lips twisted. He was an intelligent man, he likely already knew where she was going. “We don’t know.”

“Why are there more this year than there were last year?”

“No idea.” He looked at her expectantly.

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