Page 31 of Traitor Son

She nodded, her slim shoulders hunching, and hung back behind him all the way to the market. Remin frowned down at her. Sometimes it was almost like she was nervous around him, and he didn’t know why. He was keeping her close for her own safety as much as his own. Granholme was in the duchy of Firkane, whose lord was not just loyal to butdevotedto the Emperor. If she wasn’t actively in league with her father, that made her a potential hostage.

It was unexpectedly awkward, walking with her. Her strides were so much shorter than his own and he didn’t know what to say. And it didn’t help that she kept stopping to gawk. After months in the capital, the marketplace of Granholme looked small and shabby to him, but the princess was drinking it in with wide, solemn eyes, like a watchful little owl.

“Is there something you want to see?” he asked the fourth time he had to stop for her. She started and said something inaudible, hurrying over to his side. “And don’t mumble,” he added, scowling at her in perplexity. She was making him feel like an ogre. “We have time. If you want to look at something, tell me.”

“It’s just, I’ve never been to a town before,” she admitted, looking at an inebriated lutist picking indifferently at his instrument as if he were a traveling fair.

He kept forgetting that. She wasn’t just unaccustomed to crowds; she had never seen a town in her life before Celderline. She had grown up a prisoner in Aldeburke, in the questionable care of House Hurrell.

“All right,” he said, laying her hand on his arm as he had seen couples in the capital do. “You choose where we go. Look at whatever you want.”

“Really?” Her look of delight made the back of his neck feel hot.

“Yes,” he said stiffly, his face freezing into hard lines. “Go on.”

She was fascinated by everything, from the barking negotiations of the ironmonger to a cooper forming staves into a barrel. At a pastry stand he bought her a hot berry tart and repressed a smile when she bit into it too soon and yelped.

“All right?” he asked.

“Yeth,” she said, fanning her burned tongue and looking up at him with comical chagrin.

At the glassblower’s stand he watched her watch a sturdy bald-headed man delicately whisper molten glass into a chrysanthemum, so utterly absorbed that Remin had a momentary impulse to ask the fellow if he wanted to move his trade to Tresingale. Surely they’d need glass eventually, and the lady seemed like she could watch him forever and never get tired of it.

“Is it very difficult?” she asked, once the glassblower lifted his head from the pipe.

“Takes practice,” he said. He looked from her to Remin and his men, taking their measure at a glance. “Want me to make you something, lady?”

She glanced back at Remin, and it would have taken a heart of stone to refuse. He nodded.

“Could you make a bear?” she asked. It was not one of the animals laid on the counter. Remin would have guessed she’d pick a flower or a bird or some such. But the glassblower nodded.

“Aye, can do,” he said. “Even smoke the glass for you.”

“To make it black?” She leaned over to watch as he made it, a tiny figure with tawny eyes bright with interest, filled with questions and talking more than Remin had ever heard her speak at one time. Even the gruff craftsman softened under her sincere interest, and by the time he finished the bear, he actually smiled at her.

Unexpectedly, she instantly turned around and presented it to Remin.

“It’s for you,” she said, her eyes fleeting away from his, and hurried back to the glassblower’s display. Remin looked down at the useless object, flummoxed. It was small, hardly bigger than his thumb, and looked as if there was smoke containedinsideit, crystal on the outside and swirling black within. The bear sat on its haunches with one paw extended, detailed down to the claws. Why had she given it to him? Was it some kind of message?

It was time they left, anyway.

“The seamstresses will need time to sew,” he said, steering her to the side street where they had been told there was a tailor. It was a small place, but tidy. The lady inside looked as if she were about to swoon when Remin ducked in the door.

“Yes, this is my shop, my lord,” she said faintly, her eyes as wide and staring as a fish’s. A wise merchant knew how to recognize a nobleman at a glance. “How…you need…clothing?”

“The Duke of Andelin,” put in Bertin, who was touchy of His Grace’s honor. “And his lady.”

“Oh. Oh, my. Please excuse me.” She curtsied. “I am honored, it is…I am Violet Courcy, and I will do my humble best to serve.”

“My wife needs clothes,” Remin said, pushing the princess forward. “By tomorrow.”

“Everyday dresses, and kirtles, and…so on.” Ophele glanced back at Remin’s knights, her ears turning pink. “Um…do you need to measure me?”

“Bertin, Ortaire, wait outside.” Remin wasn’t about to leave her alone with a stranger, and it was nothing that he hadn’t already seen, anyway. But his eyes still sharpened as Ophele reluctantly stripped down to her chemise with Mistress Courcy’s help, baring that fine, velvety white skin, the soft shape of her breasts visible under the linen. For a moment, he considered ordering Mistress Courcy out of the shop, too.

“We have a pomegranate-patterned silk that will look lovely on you, m’lady,” the seamstress said, scribbling down her measurements on a bit of paper.

“I don’t need silk,” Ophele said, gentle but decided. “Dark colors that are easy to clean, simple and comfortable so I can work. And I need to be able to put them on by myself.”

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