Page 8 of Traitor Son

“I will put prunes in your food every day if you let Her Ladyship have her way. Princess.” Azelma wiped the flour off her hands and deftly wrapped up a package of food, knotting the small bundle in a handkerchief. “You’re a clever stitch. If Lady Hurrell says yay, you know to say nay, loud and clear. Here, now. Best you get along with yourself, His Grace’s men wake up early and hungry.”

Subdued, Ophele took the food and slipped out the back door of the kitchen. She had been haunting the library for the past few days, where she had a comfortable nest above one of the enormous bay windows, a space in the rafters wide enough that she could even sleep without worrying about rolling off. Hurrying through the servants’ hallways, she pushed the heavy library door open and scampered up onto the shelves. From the edge of the long row of bookshelves, it was a short leap to catch the rafter above the bay window, and she scrambled up with a kick of bare legs and a flurry of too-short skirts.

It was true, what Azelma had said. Sitting cross-legged in her small, shadowy refuge, she kindled an oil lamp and unwrapped her breakfast, breaking the loaf of bread in half to save some for later. Of course, she knew that Lady Hurrell was not helping her. Lady Hurrell was helping herself and her family. She wasn’t stupid. And anyway, the lady’s motive wasn’t the issue.

The issue was: what would she do if Ophele defied her?

On paper, the Emperor had acknowledged Ophele as his daughter. But as a practical matter, she doubted he had remembered she existed until there was an inconvenient marriage in the offing. No matter what happened, whether she was sick or unhappy or if the Hurrells locked her up or beat her, there was no evidence that her father had the slightest interest. She wasn’t just a bastard; she was the daughter of an accused traitor who had threatened the rightful succession. Only the fact that Rache Pavot was pregnant with the Emperor’s sacred child had saved her from joining Remin’s parents on the block.

Ophele wanted to leave. She would have contracted with a demon if it promised to help her escape. She hated Aldeburke, and she was tired of being afraid all the time. Lady Hurrell and her twisting, slippery words, her pinches and slaps and fingernails. Lisabe with her mean, trilling laughter. Julot, who kept trying to corner her in quiet places. And Lord Hurrell…well, most of the time, he ignored her. But Ophele had never forgotten the time he had not.

But Remin Grimjaw was worse than all of them put together.

Ophele rubbed her wrists, remembering the feel of his hard hands. It was easy for Azelma to tell her to defy Lady Hurrell. Azelma was safe in the kitchen, tucking prunes into sweetbread. But who said Duke Andelin would believe her, or protect her? He wasn’t a knight from a tale. He was a brutal conqueror who hated her father and had every reason to despise her, and Ophele had already made him angry. Azelma was proposing that Ophele place herself in his hands and hope that he believed her instead of Lady Hurrell.

When House Hurrell had served his father, and fallen with him.

Ophele buried her face in her hands and drew a long, slow breath.

No, it was safest just to obey Lady Hurrell. Ophele knew perfectly well what the lady’s plan was; they had probably made some excuse forher absence and were trying to convince him that she was too stupid to be his wife. All she had to do was be quiet, be a mouse, and Lady Hurrell wouldn’t hurt her and Duke Andelin might go away, and then…

Ophele paged through her small, permanent collection of books. Atlases, natural histories, a few favorite books of poetry and fiction.The Habits of a Lady,a book she had nearly memorized, if only to understand her lost mother. And there at the bottom of the stack, a book that described all the countries surrounding the Sea of Eskai. Some of them had very liberal attitudes about women acting as scribes and merchants.

She could run away.

There were only a few guards left on the estate; most had left after her mother died. If she set aside some food, and waited until all this fuss was over, she could likely make a good start before anyone noticed she was missing. The Emperor would probably never even search for her. Perhaps the Hurrells would; Ophele had long suspected that Lady Hurrell meant her for Julot, once she reached her majority. Bastard or not, the speck of stardust in her blood was priceless, especially to a disgraced House.

For the same reason, the Duke of Andelin would never stop hunting her if she fled now. But the Hurrells were fighting tooth and nail to get her out of it, so if he married Lisabe instead, then Ophele at least would have a sporting chance of evading whoever Lady Hurrell sent after her.

Should she play along, then? Act like a simpleton? Drool? Foam at the mouth? What was likely to impress him least?

Rummaging through her atlases, she found one with maps of Aldeburke and the surrounding areas. The nearest country was Rendeva, a mountainous land about a hundred miles away. She would need money. Might there be things in Aldeburke she could sell? She didn’t have any real notion of what might be valuable, aside from jewelry; people in books were always selling jewelry. But Ophele had never bought or sold anything in her life.

She would need food. She would have to stay at inns, and be careful of rough men in taverns. Transportation: she couldn’t possibly walk all that way unarmed, vulnerable to thieves and wild animals. She had never gone past the gates of Aldeburke in her life, but she thought she hadsomeidea of the danger, and Ophele’s precarious existence had made her both cautious and methodical.

It was possible. The dream of escape, and a safe place. But even as she imagined it, the words blurred on the page before her, because she knew that this was not what her mother would have wanted.

It wasn’t fair to the duke, was it?

Ophele knew a truth that was treason to the rest of the Empire: his family had been innocent. They had been implicated in her mother’s treason, the Conspiracy that had shaken the Empire to its foundation and almost broke the Covenant of Stars. By the time she was five, Ophele knew that she and her mother lived in this place because her mother had done something dreadful, and a boy named Remin had lost his whole family and his home andeverythingbecause of it. It was the saddest story her mother had told her, arming six year-old Ophele with the truth.

Lady Hurrell had made sure to reinforce the lesson.

The boy Remin had gone on to become a knight, wage a war, defeat Valleth, and win an Imperial Princess for his wife, fair and square. Ophele was sure that her mother would have wanted to help him, if she could.

Only…

She was afraid.

Duke Andelin probably wouldn’t kill her, even if he did learn what her mother had done. Ophele was still a Daughter of the Stars, and no one would risk losing their blessing. But Ophele knew she could be hurt very badly, and no one would care. All he wanted from her was heirs, children with the sacred celestial blood of the House of Agnephus in their veins. Even if he didn’t hurt her, what if he locked her up, or didn’t like to give her food?

And in the Andelin Valley, she would be alone.

Shifting deeper into her shadowy refuge, Ophele opened another travelogue. She needed to learn how much she might expect to spend on inns on the way to Rendeva.

* * *

Azelma Bessin had, over the course of her long life, cooked for the highest tables in the Empire.

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