Page 80 of Traitor Son

“I know.” Sir Miche fell into step with her as she led Eugene on to the next set of buckets, the small wagon creaking.

“Why doesn’t he want me to do anything?” she asked plaintively. It had been bothering her for weeks.

“In this particular case, he’s afraid you’ll get hurt. And I agree with him.”

“He’s not afraid of anything,” she said, looking at her feet. No doubt he didn’t want his princess to get hurt; he wanted heirs from her. But she objected to the wordafraid.That implied a level of emotional engagement that did not exist.

“You’d be surprised what scares him,” Sir Miche said dryly. “Here, let me do that. I’ve never seen a spring so hot, no wonder every devil in the Berlawes has decided to come out early.”

“It’s almost summer,” she pointed out, lifting the masses of hair off the back of her neck and fanning herself. Dark clouds had been hovering all day, like a lid on the steaming stewpot of the valley.

“You don’t have to tell me,” he agreed, winching up a full bucket with such ease that she sighed inside. Thunder rumbled. “Stars, it’s going to rain again,” he said, frowning up at the sky. “Best get under cover, my lady. I’ll start getting the men off the wall.”

Sir Miche often said he was useless, as if he wanted to make it clear up front that no one should expect anything from him. But it wasn’t true. He had quietly taken over many of the practical complexities of the wall, and he had an eye for detail that spotted disasters before they could occur.

It was oddly…comforting to watch him. Charming, handsome, with that long golden hair, he was like a knight from a storybook. For all the men’s jokes about his reputation with women—Ophele could guess whatmaidenslayermeant—Ophele had never seen the least sign of it. He had never been anything but kind and considerate of her.

“What did happen with the boy?” she asked when he returned, handing her an oilskin to keep the rain off and stretching out beside her in his usual lazy sprawl of limbs. She didn’t believe Sir Miche had really thrown him back in the river.

“Sent him up to Rem. Not that I want to reward bad behavior,” he drawled meaningfully, rolling his hazel eyes toward her, “but we do need pages, and squires. Dozens of them. But no nobleman is going to send his precious spawn to the Andelin right now, even if it is for the Knights of the Brede.”

That thought was sobering.

“Is it really so dangerous?”

“Not for you,” he assured her. “I’m not just saying it to make you feel better, my lady. Your cottage is near the southernmost bend of theriver, any Andelin devil that goes that far has gone through an awful lot of people to get there. Not that you should take it lightly,” he added. “There’s more this year than we’ve ever seen before, and it’s a worry.”

“I just wish there was something I could do,” she said, low. “His Grace keeps saying it’s safe, but I hear them and I don’t know where they are and…”

Her throat closed and she cut off the rest of the sentence. It felt like whining to complain about being afraid when she knew she was better protected than anyone else in the valley, and especially in front of Sir Miche. He always listened with every sign of sympathy, but he was a knight and a hero and he must have seen so many terrible things, her fears could only seem trifling and cowardly.

That was what she told herself, when she was tired and so worn out from working that it seemed like she couldn’t walk another step. The duke and his men had surely been more tired than this. More frightened. More lonely.

“Would you have rather stayed in Aldeburke?” Sir Miche asked quietly, and her eyes flew open in surprise. It was a dangerous question. But the downpour was kindly and muffled their conversation. “I’m not blind. I know you’re unhappy here.”

“I was unhappy there.” She wrapped her arms around her knees and propped her chin on them. It didn’t matter what she wanted. In her short life she had already learned that there was nothing to be gained from imagining things she couldn’t have. So instead, she pondered his question as a hypothetical. It was all very well, after she had been trapped into her marriage, to rationalize it as destiny and a chance to atone for the crimes of her parents. Would she have preferred to stay in Aldeburke with the possibility of one day escaping, instead of marrying the duke, even if it meant that the crimes of her parents against him and his whole extinct House were never paid for?

It was impossible not to think of everything they had done when she could see the scars of it on his body. Every day when he stood at the wash basin, she could see the evidence of his suffering: sharp, straight lines from stabbings, curving slices from glancing blows, divots from arrows, and multiple dark and ugly gouges where whole chunks of flesh had been torn away. Even her fertile imagination couldn’t guess whatmight have made those. But she had seen an assassin come through the window in the dark of night to try to kill him.

Her parents had done that to him.

Didn’t she owe him something for it? If she had had a choice, would she have voluntarily delivered herself into bondage, to make it right?

“There must be some parts of it you miss,” Sir Miche said gently. “The connection with your mother. Do you remember her much?”

“A little bit,” she said, grateful that he hadn’t pressed her. Grateful that someone, anyone, cared about her even a little. “I always think of her in the library, and in the woods. We would go walking when it was nice out, and she showed me what things were safe to eat, and how to climb trees.”

“Unusual pastimes, for a noblewoman.”

“She said that that was what she used to do, back home,” Ophele explained. There was a flickering of a memory in the trees, the sensation of being lifted up onto a branch and cuddled in a green bower. “At…Murewood? I think. She said she ran wild there when she was a little girl, and her mother always had to come hunting for her for lessons. But after…everything, the Emperor dissolved their House and took back their lands.”

“And so she taught you to run wild at Aldeburke.”

“I guess so.” She smiled to herself. She had mostly been hiding from the Hurrells, but it was nice to think that something of her mother lived on. “I am sorry for that, though,” she added. “Making all of you look for me. I didn’t know who you were, and last time…well, I was afraid…I wasn’t trying to embarrass His Grace,” she finished lamely. “I wanted to tell him that, before. But I could never find the right time.”

“I knew that. I found your fire,” he replied, making her eyes widen.

“Did you? I thought I’d hidden it.”

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