Page 91 of Traitor Son

“I know it ain’t. They wasn’t lying about the Brede, for starters.” Jacot was completely unabashed. “Was that cold! Thought my balls would never drop back down.”

Remin did not laugh. But that was funny.

“If you need something to do, go see Auber at the palisade. He’s been saying he needs help moving branches out of the way while they’re trimming down the trees.” Auber didn’t have any pages yet. Maybe it would be good for him to take on the irrepressible Jacot.

“Yes, Your Grace,” the boy said, disappointed. He hurdled a ditch and shifted direction toward the north gate. But there were many kinds of danger in the Andelin, and he’d hardly gone a dozen steps more when one of the masons came riding hell for leather toward Remin, shouting.

“Your Grace! Your Grace!” He drew up so sharply he almost went over his horse’s head. “My lord, the Duchess fainted by the wall. Sir Miche is down in the river with her, by the bridge, he thinks it’s sun sickness.”

“Go get Genon,” Remin ordered, after a stunned instant, and thumped his heels into his horse.

Chapter 11 – Try

Jacot of Caillmar was right. The Brede wascold.

It was nearly evening by the time it was safe to take the princess out of the icy river. Remin thought she was finally cooler; the pink flush had faded from her skin and she had stopped saying that it was too hot, but he was so cold himself, it was hard to tell for sure.

“Better, aye,” said Genon, wading knee-deep into the water to check her. His masses of silver-pink scar tissue made him too sensitive to temperature to take a turn in the river himself. “Breathing’s finally slowed down, heart’s beating regular. I think we can take her home.”

“She’s going to be all right?” The words had to be squeezed through a throat so tight, Remin wondered that he hadn’t strangled.

“I think so.” Genon lifted his fingers from the pulse point of her neck. “We won’t know for sure until she wakes up.”

Remin nodded.

He felt numb. Numb with cold, numb with shock, numb with fear. He knew how to shut himself down when he had to, when he couldn’t afford to think or feel, but in this case there was nothing to fight, no action he could take, nothing he could do but endure. He had spent the longest day of his life in the icy river.

“I can’t swim,” she had kept crying, confused pleas he would never be able to forget. “Let me out, I can’t swim, I’m fine, it’s just so hot…”

“It’s all right.” In waist-deep water, Remin held her away from him so he wouldn’t warm her, her soaked chemise drifting around her body and her long hair streaming in clouds around her head. “Ophele, it’s allright. Didn’t I tell you I’d teach you to swim? This is the first lesson. I’ve got you, all you have to do is float.”

She was trying to listen. Her huge, soft eyes tried to focus on his face, on the trees shifting against the sky, seeing everything but understanding nothing, so bewildered that he couldn’t stand it.

Remin knew sun sickness. During summer campaigns in the Andelin Valley, sometimes sun sickness felled more men than the battle. Everything her body was doing was working against her, from her racing heart to those panting breaths. In the icy water, she shivered violently, her body’s perverse attempt to warm her when she was already burning up inside.

“It’s all right,” he said again. “Wife, I’m here. Shh, shh. Breathe, a good breath, deep and slow…”

Hadn’t he said that, on their wedding night? And then she had trusted him, and they had breathed together. But Remin knew he was no comfort to her now.

A white-faced Miche was waiting when he finally brought her out of the river, and Remin gave her to him for the length of time it took to bring his horse around and mount up. All of the workers on the bridge had kept their distance, mindful of their lady’s modesty, but Miche hadn’t budged from the riverbank all afternoon.

“She’s cooler, thank the stars,” he said as Remin nudged Lancer over and reached out for her. His eyes were red. “Rem. She’s been workingfor you.She’s meant to be the mother of your children. Youhaveto take care of her.Swear it.”

“I will,” Remin promised through numb lips, as Miche carefully surrendered her.

In their cottage, he pulled off her wet chemise and tossed it aside, laying her naked on the bed. Sun sickness was caused by an imbalance of fire. The cooling elements of air and water had to touch as much of her body as possible. Was she warmer? He couldn’t tell, his own body was still icy from the river.

Remin soaked a towel in cold water from the well, sponging her with it. Water and air, cool water that would evaporate on her skin. The thought that she might die…

It could not be thought. He wouldn’t let it happen. How had he let this happen? What business did she have, laboring day after day in themerciless summer heat? When she woke up, he would never let her lift a finger again. If she woke up. Shewould.Remin bent beside her, his face drawn into stark, forbidding lines, his chest so tight he could barely breathe. What was wrong with him? He was never like this. For some reason he couldn’t find the usual icy calm he felt in a crisis, and his thoughts kept scattering.

She was going to be so embarrassed when she woke up. He could already imagine the look on her face. Fainting in front of half the men on the wall, Miche cutting her dress off, and now she was naked in front of Genon. Why did these things keep happening? He never intended to embarrass her, but he failed to prevent it, over and over.

“Going to be dark soon.” Genon grunted as he crouched beside the bed, taking the princess’s wrist between his fingers. “If I thought there was the slightest danger, I’d stay, but I think she’ll live. Miche saved her life, getting her down to the river as fast as he did.”

“Will she be all right otherwise?” Remin made himself ask. He had lost many people dear to him over the years, but he had never felt anything like this horrible, hollow helplessness.

“I don’t know.” Genon never lied about things like this. “It took a long time to cool her down.”

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