Page 31 of Stardust Child

“Write the orders. I’ll tell Darri tonight.” Remin did not see anything extraordinary about the theft of a library. “It’ll go faster if he has orders with your seal and signature.”

“I don’t have my seal,” she objected, nervous now that it was really going to happen.

“I didn’t think to take it when we left. I’m sorry, little owl.” He caught her fingers and lifted them to his lips in apology. “You can use mine, and I’ll have Darri collect yours. Edemir would be glad to get his hands on those books, too. He’s started looking for full book collections, just to save time.”

“For me?” Her eyes widened. She hadn’t asked him forthatmany books, had she?

“Not just for you,” he said, amused. “Between the Academy, Juste’s observatory, and you, we’ll have one of the foremost libraries in the world. You’re saving us some trouble and expense, actually. And House Hurrell doesn’t seem like scholars to me.”

“Well, if it will help…” Ophele couldn’t suppress a smile at the way he got around her. His mind was so endlessly twisty.

For a few minutes, they wrote their various letters in silence, but she couldn’t help glancing at him only to find he was eying her, the corner of his mouth twitching. Under the table, his big boot bumped her foot, a wordless communication that made her glow inside.

Dearest Azelma,she began, feeling as if she would sooner write a poem than a letter, if she was to tell about Remin.It has been some time since my last letter. I hope you received it, and perhaps this letter shall cross yours on the road. How many things have happened here! But I will assure you first that I am well and very happy…

Ophele was aware that Remin might still read her letter, to make sure she didn’t reveal anything that might be dangerous, but it was the thought of Lady Hurrell that made her pause. So often she had heard the lady reading letters aloud, mocking them in private to the delight of her listeners, and the thought of her own letter receiving such treatment made her flush hot with anger and embarrassment. But she would do that anyway, and the thing she would least like to read was that Ophele was happy.

…so very happy. Only yesterday, His Grace held the valley’s first tourney, and how exciting it was! You know we never had such things at Aldeburke, and it was so splendid, with knights on horse, and archers, and a grand melee which His Grace won, and even jousting. I never knew there was such an art to jousting…

Maybe it was a little mean to linger over the tourney when she knew that Julot and Lisabe had never seen one, and weren’t likely to. They had been raised in exile, just as she had. And anyway, this was a message to Azelma, not a spite letter for House Hurrell. Ophele shook herself.

But it has not been all tourneys and birthday parties. I told you about the building underway in the valley already, and it is my delight to see it growing bit by bit every day. Only a few days ago, I went with His Grace to see the place where the orchards will be. Black plums and white cherries, do you remember? I mentioned it to His Grace months ago, and do you know that he has sent for folk to tend them, all the way from Benkki Desa! They are clearing the land now, so it will be ready when they come next year.

And though there are some who might mock him for it, I am so proud to see that His Grace does not scruple to toil with his own hands. It is hard work, clearing trees, and in that particular hollow is an oak native to the valley which they call ironheart oak, a curious species that gets harder the deeper into the trunk one goes. The men say the bigger trees might as well be made of stone.

Well, it happened that they were laboring at one such tree while we were there, and they finally managed to sink the axe only for it to stick there, like Hulainn’s sword in the stone in the old story. And His Grace does hate to watch folk struggling, so he hopped off his horse, had the axe out, and then took down the tree in four whacks, like it was a sapling! He will swear it is nothing, and I am no judge, but the men were certainly impressed.

We lingered a while so that he could help with other such oaks, and so I saw as they cleared them how they divided the trees up, so the pines went for building and the oak, walnut, and chestnut to the carpenters, and the rest will be for fire and charcoal. Nothing goes to waste. Is it not something to think that the trees felled today will become useful and perhaps beautiful things, used for years and years by people who do not even know where they came from? But it pleases me thatIknow.

Remin teases me when I say such things, but he loves things made in the valley best of all.

The letter was very Remin-y, when it was done, and Ophele rather hoped he wouldn’t read it after all. Glancing over at him, she found him characteristically scowling at his papers, his heavy black brows furrowed together. But if she should speak to him, she knew his eyes would light up and there would be nothing but warmth in his voice.

She did not care if other people knew such stories of him. No. Shehopedthey would tell them.

They passed the morning in tea and correspondence, as the rain pattered musically on the cobblestones outside the windows.

* * *

By noon, the rain still had not abated. Ophele endured an undignified transport from the cottage to the cookhouse, cradled in Remin’s arms to save her skirts from the mud and holding her oilpaper parasol over his head.

She looked as respectable as she was ever going to look in a violet gown with lace panels in the bodice, and the cookhouse was breezy and cool when Remin set her down, its doors flung open to admit the rainy air. Three men were already waiting by a roaring fire, Sir Justenin’s sandy blond head bent between two others. Ophele shook out her parasol, suddenly feeling anxious.

“My lord.” Sir Justenin spotted them and moved instantly to greet them, bowing. “My lady. May I present Sir Leonin of Breuyir and Davi Gosse? They are to be your hallows.”

The two men bowed, ill-matched even at a glance. The black-haired man was medium height and very elegant, dressed in an immaculate blue doublet and breeches as if he had never heard of mud. His companionwas tall and stringy, brown as a bean from his hair to his skin and dressed in rough homespun. He did not bow as if he were accustomed to it.

When he straightened, she saw he was missing his right eye.

“You,” she said, startled. She had a good memory for faces, and while there were a number of one-eyed men in Tresingale, she remembered this rawboned face with its rough eyepatch. “You worked on the wall, didn’t you?”

He offered a familiar crooked smile, one corner of his mouth tugging up higher than the other.

“Aye, lady,” he said, shifting back to keep from looming over her. “Davi Gosse, at your service. You fetched me trowel once or twice, when I was fumble-fingered.”

“And you fought with Re—His Grace,” she amended, glancing up at Remin beside her. “Davi was the first to welcome me at the wall.”

“I have good men on the wall,” Remin agreed, extending a hand to Davi and a flick of his eyes to her that reminded her to be evenhanded with them. He had said several times that it was important not to play favorites.

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