Page 149 of Stardust Child

“Yes, noble lord. This one is three hundred and sixteen.”

“Trees take a long time to grow,” Remin agreed, and Ophele had to cover her mouth to hide a smile as Madam Sanai promised to come and look after it regularly, until such time as it pleased him to assume the shaping of this tree himself.

There were so many gifts. The line stretched out of the cookhouseand down the road, and Tounot and Auber kept it moving, a stream of people bearing gifts and thanks. The last gift came from the three master architects, an oddly assorted group together: gray Guisse with his mutton chops, the gangly Nore Ffloce, and flamboyant Sousten Didion, whose red curls were even more artful than usual. The three men were trailed by Master Didion’s assistants carrying something tall, rectangular, and draped in velvet, as if it was their destiny to forever come bearing visual aids.

“Your Grace,” began Master Didion with a sweeping bow, his voice ringing. “In many ways, we have already been laboring long at this gift for you. But on this felicitous occasion, we are pleased to give it to you in another form, both tangible and metaphorical—”

“It’s a painting of Tresingale,” said Master Ffloce, yanking the velvet away to reveal it and cutting off what promised to be a soaring flight of rhetoric.

“Or at least, it will be,” said Master Guisse, beckoning a few boys bearing lamps closer. “It was Sousten’s notion.”

“It is the entirepoint,”said Master Didion, spreading his arms to encompass the painting. The canvas was taller than he was and contained within a luxuriantly carved frame. “It is the finished city, Your Grace. At least, according to the current designs. The three of us compared our notes and projects, and of course we had Aubin and Matissen here to do the work, but we have attempted to paint a comprehensive vision of the future. Or perhaps we should say it is a dream, as you have conveyed it to us.”

He rolled the words forth with appreciation, and Ophele stepped forward with Remin to examine the picture, all of Tresingale spread from the white walls and finished gatehouses to the curve of the Brede and its ports. It was the town in the evening, with streetlights glowing along the roads and many of the windows in the houses softly lit. Smoke drifted up from the chimneys, soft and gray. The manor on the hilltop was complete, grand and beautiful as it overlooked the town, and on the second hill was the barracks. But there was not only the L-shaped dormitory, but a complex of beautiful buildings, with the high dome of the Andelin’s Court of War towering over the rest.

The marketplace was complete, and so detailed Ophele could see the red banner outside Mr. Guian’s general store and the shield-shaped sign of the tavern. There was a flock of white birds on either side of GooseRoad.

“I like it,” said Remin stiffly, his head turning as he examined all these details. His hand was gripping hers tightly. “I like it very much. Thank you.”

His face had hardened, but by now Ophele knew that was what he did when he was suppressing some powerful emotion, and when he offered his hand to all of them in turn, his eyes kept drifting to the picture of the place that was yet to be.

There was supper. There was something called honey mead that Remin had been saving against an occasion, and this seemed an appropriate time to breach the keg.

“Go slowly,” he told her as he poured some into her goblet, pale golden and scented softly of clover. “This is a good deal sweeter than wine, and more potent. Like it?”

“Oh,” Ophele said after her first sip, looking into her goblet with surprise. It wasn’t at all like wine, there was no acid bite. It was mellow and sweet. “Yes, I like it.”

The mead lent a warm glow to the room by the time the promised pudding appeared, so immense that it took two of Wen’s kitchen boys to carry it out, a masterpiece of hazelnut meringue, clotted cream, chocolate, and sugared hazelnuts, so delicately shaped that Ophele could hardly believeWenhad made it, of all people. As soon as he saw her staring, he shot her a dirty look.

“Your Grace,” he told Remin, setting the dessert on the high table and offering a formal bow with his assistants on either side. “We wish you the best on your birthday. Enjoy your…” There was a visible struggle. “—dacquoise.”

“He didn’t even swear,” Ophele said in amazement, perhaps a little louder than was advisable. The honey mead was really very good.

There was plenty for everyone, and the dessert signaled the end of dinner, as people left their tables to drink and mingle and dance, clearing a large space just outside the doors of the cookhouse in the leaping light of the bonfires. A little while later, Remin cut a large portion of the dacquoise and excused himself, going alone to face the thin folk of Meinhem. They were at one of the tables toward the back of the cookhouse, and he waved for them to remain seated as he approached.

“Did it turn out as you hoped, my lady?” Sir Edemir asked, and Ophele glanced up at him with a smile. Her cheeks hurt from smiling so much.

“Even better,” she said, reaching to fill his cup for him. “Thank you for helping, so much. I couldn’t have done it without you. Either of you,” she added as Sir Justenin approached to stand at her other side. The two men had stood with her in so many ways, but never more than when Remin was gone. “Do you think he liked it?”

“He inhaled half the dacquoise,” Edemir noted amiably. “I would call it a success. Juste tells me that you want to learn about the Court of Nobility.”

“I—yes,” she said, willing herself not to redden. Jacot didn’t let anyone shame him for his ignorance, and she wouldn’t either, when she was going to try to remedy it as fast as she could. But she couldn’t bring herself to meet his eyes. “You know about…everything?”

“I know enough. Neither of us were much surprised, my lady,” he said, and Justenin nodded. “You might not remember, but I was the one that found you, that day in Aldeburke.”

“Oh. Oh, stars,” she said, one hand lifting to cover her mouth. She had forgotten. But now that she thought of it, she did remember Edemir’s gray eyes peering up at her through pine boughs. “Thatwasyou.”

“Yes. So I suspected something was amiss,” he said mildly. “I’ll be pleased to teach you whatever you need to know. All of us are having to stretch ourselves. I assure you, I was not raised to be the Exchequer, Court of Merchants, and Court of Artisans all together.”

“We are all learning our places, even now,” Justenin agreed. “His Grace says it often, but this place will not be like the Empire. It will not be like any other place in the world.”

As one, their eyes sought out Remin on the other side of the room. He had been working his way down the Meinhem table and was now crouched beside a young woman with a toddler in her lap, gravely bending his head to listen to the little boy.

“I have begun to understand what he means, about the sort of lord he wants to be,” Edemir said quietly. “We will all have to work to match him.”

It made her so proud to hear it. She had never thought Remin’s knights might feel that way. That even the Knights of the Brede mightstruggle to learn all the things they had to do. That all of them together were trying to measure up.

When the time came, Remin’s knights extracted him from the crowd and gathered together near the doors of the cookhouse, so everyone could hear. Edemir produced a wooden box and offered a hand to help Ophele onto it and Sir Jinmin called for silence, his booming voice echoing through the crowd.

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