Page 112 of Stardust Child

“Utility,” he said, with an edge. “The Tower produces a great deal of work that is perfect in its form and utterly useless for any practical purpose. Do you think Edemir would have his secretaries continuing your work to flatter you?”

“No,” she admitted. She knew Edemir far too well to believe he would squander his secretaries’ time when there was so much other work to be done.

“Do you think His Grace took fifty men to the Spur because he’s besotted with you?”

“No,” she repeated, with a startled noise that was almost a laugh. Her ears turned red.

“Then if you cannot believe in yourself, then believe in us, who believe in you,” he said firmly. “We’ve been planning that expedition to the mountains for three months, and we overturned all those plansbecause we thought you were right. His Grace is gambling his life on it. Perhaps he is risking all our lives, next year. Your work isn’t just thorough, logical, and admirable. It isuseful.”

For a while, they sat together quietly, watching the bustle of the harbor below, and Juste found himself watching the men entering the furthest warehouse, squinting to make out the details of their hair and clothing. He couldn’t see well enough to be sure, but he thought he counted forty seconds for one man and nearly a minute for another before they reappeared at the doors. It did seem a long time to walk through a building.

“Thank you,” Ophele said finally. “I—I did feel terrible. When I heard him say that.”

“They will apologize,” Juste promised.

“I don’t want it. I don’t want to see them.” Her lips quivered and she pressed them together. “I mean, I don’t want their apology if they don’t mean it. If they’re just saying it because I’m a duchess.”

He understood why she would feel that way, but he could not agree.

“They will apologize because they were wrong, but even if they were right, they will apologize anyway, out of respect for your rank.”

“Why?” she wanted to know. “Why should they respect me? I haven’t done anything to deserve to be a duchess.”

This was why Juste enjoyed talking to her. She questioned premises.

“There are many types of authority,” he said, leaning back against the tree. “One of which is inherited. Your father’s divine blood, for example, is an inherited authority. Because of it, you became the wife of Remin, Duke of Andelin, and so his authority is conferred to you as well. You are owed respect on the grounds of your birth and your marriage. But if authority is not continuously maintained, and asserted when challenged, then it will pass away.”

“And their insult to me challenges that authority,” she said, her eyebrows drawing together as if she did not much like the thought. “It’s like a game no one asked if I wanted to play.”

“You were born into that game, as we all are. Some of us with better positions than others,” he added, thinking of his own privileged birth, and the events that had ripped all rank and authority away from him. “And if you are born to it, then you must rise to it. You earned a littleauthority on your own, did you not? Your work on the devils gave you authority on that subject among us, but now the scholars have challenged it. Is scholarly authority something you want? Will it be useful to you? And will you seek it on our utilitarian terms, or the terms of the Tower?”

“I…maybe neither,” she said, looking thoughtful. “I do want to be useful, and I hoped it would help, but…I did it becauseIwas curious. I just wanted to know where the devils came from.”

“Please continue to be curious,” Juste said approvingly. “But all the same, you must maintain your authority as His Grace’s wife, as well as the authority you inherited as a daughter of the House of Agnephus. Insist upon it, in all its trappings. Do it for His Grace, even if you do not like it for yourself. There are many who will try to degrade you to diminish him. Don’t let them.”

They had already discussed this, obliquely. She knew what he meant.

“Hallows aren’t just trappings of power,” she said, casting an unhappy glance toward Leonin and Davi, who had moved a polite distance up the hill. “I don’t want them to follow me around just because it makes me look important. Or because famous people had hallows.”

“They were people who needed protection,” Juste replied. Those were the passages he had marked for her in the book she had borrowed: the stories of past hallows, and the soul-sworn they had defended. “As you need protection. Hallows are protectors sworn not just to the devotion of their bodies, but of their spirit. That is the difference between a guardsman and a hallow.”

“I don’twantanyone’s spirit,” she said.

“That may be,” he acknowledged. Remin might be reluctant to push her on this issue, but Juste was not. “But your position is a difficult one for many reasons. You are a weapon that might be wielded against Remin, who has many powerful enemies. You are a princess who is not loved by the Emperor, your father. Your illegitimacy makes you a complication for the Court of Nobles, especially since your father was forced to acknowledge you, so you might marry Remin instead of your sister. Do you realize that some might think that that places you on equal footing with the Crown Princess? And you are the elder sister? It is too dangerous for you to be without hallows, yet with them, you pose an additional problem for the Temple. There are too many areas where your position is ambiguous. You must thoroughly understand what you are, my lady—”

“I know what I am,” she interrupted, and he was surprised to see her small face was closed, her eyes averted as she rose. “Please excuse me, Sir Justenin. I am tired.”

“Of course, my lady,” Juste replied, rising to follow. What was this? “I beg your pardon, Your Grace, if I have overstepped—”

“It’s fine. Thank you.” There was that steel, holding her together as they went up the hill, her head held high. At the manor, Juste apologized again and bid her goodnight, eyeing her with well-concealed curiosity.

He understood people, in a mechanical sense. Stimulus and response. Juste was very good at figuring out which buttons to push to elicit the desired behavior. But he had yet to discover all the levers that moved the Duchess of Andelin.

Out of respect for Remin, he resisted the urge to pry. But Juste admitted that it was equal parts puzzle and promise that drove him out of his cottage late that night. Yvain and Dol maintained their watch outside the manor just as they had done outside the cottage, and he nodded to them as he slipped inside the front door, careful to let them see that he went no farther than the entryway.

In the empty, echoing vault of the first floor, he stood and waited, listening. Whatever she said to his face, there wassomethingthat was putting those shadows under Ophele’s eyes. And he suspected it was not only Remin’s absence, or the callous disregard of scholars.

Just as there had been last night and the night before, there was the sound of feet pacing endlessly back and forth above him, restless in the dark.

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