Page 38 of Stardust Child

If there was one thing Ophele loved, it was finding patterns.

“And what about the next year?” she asked, her quill working messily away. Ink drops spattered the page.

“Still heading north, my lady,” he said. “War slowed down that year, as I recall. T’was April before we heard about devils again. We thought they was gone for good, ye see, hadn’t seen hide nor hair of them since October. His Grace started making fortified camps then, taking down and putting up palisades every bleeding day, but it did keep the devils off us.”

“On the north end of the Talfel Plateau,” she repeated, scribbling. The timelines were the most tedious part of the interview, but she wasdetermined to do her best. And while the basic information about each type of devil—appearance, size, and behavior—was more or less the same from man to man, there was still a surprising amount of detail to be gleaned from the stories of their encounters.

“Wouldn’t say the devils aresmartexactly,” Mr. Boyse said thoughtfully. “Stranglers are probably closest to clever. That was the first one we saw in ’24, it got a friend of mine. Where we were, there was a palisade, with only a couple gaps in the torchlight…”

His fingers rapidly sketched out the positions of the wall and the torches on the desktop, jabbing a finger to indicate where he and his friend had been standing.

“We was there halfway to morning, just watching our bit of wall, and a bit nervous about it, too. We heard there was devils at the other camps nearby. Normally it’s wolves and ghouls that come first, racketing around and squabbling with each other. And it was dark that night, new moon, uncanny-like. We was back up and down all night, feeding the braziers, knowing all it takes is a space of dark. Not even aminute,”he said, his voice filled with old grief and anger. “One of my lights went out, then Sebb’s at the other end, and I took my eyes off himonce. And that was all it took. Strangler must’ve crawled up under the palisade early and then just hung there, waiting for the brazier to go out. Last I saw of Sebb, the strangler was dragging him off through the snow.”

“How awful,” Ophele said, in reflexive sympathy. But then… “Snow? Where were you?”

“Round about Raida, I think, lady. Pushed into the mountains that year, didn’t we? And got an early start, too, the ground was still freezing most nights…”

New moon.

Snow.

Pushed into the mountains.

Ophele’s quill halted, his voice fading into a faraway buzz.

How many times had she already written some variation of those words? Capturing a chronological record of the war, a geographic record of Remin’s campaign through the valley, noting the earliest and latest sightings of the devils without understanding what that information implied. She barely noticed when Mr. Boyse took his leave; suddenly she was riffling frantically through her pages, seeking out the crucial details in her slapdashscrawl, visualizing them as clearly as the little lead figures Remin and his men sometimes used to demonstrate the movements of their army.

And then her eyes lifted to the map hanging on the wall behind Sir Edemir, and her lips parted with a silent gasp.

Was it possible?

Could she find the devils this way?

Oh, but she would have to be sosure!Rapidly, she counted the references in her interviews, dates, battles, locations. How many men could she interview? How certain could she be of the dates they provided? The moon, the moon, yes, that would help: full moon, new moon, at least it would give her arange,if she could consult an almanac—

Pushing back her chair with a screech, she rose to ask Sir Edemir at once, and then spotted Elodie beside her. The girl’s eyes were popping out of her head with excitement.

“Oh. Oh, no, I hope that didn’t frighten you,” Ophele said, catching the girl’s hands anxiously. She was appalled with herself. “Were you? Oh, bother, you shouldn’t have heard that, I wasn’t even thinking—”

“All about the devils!” Elodie crowed, shaking Ophele’s hands in excitement. “I heard ’em at night and papa always says they’re nothing to be scared of but mama says it’s because the valley’s still Cursed with magic.” Her tone implied the capital letter. “She always makes me and Pirot go to bed when Uncle Auber starts telling about them, oooh, wait ’til I tell Pirot, he’ll die! I bet—”

“No, don’t tell him!” Ophele interrupted frantically. “And don’t tell—oh, I suppose we must tell your mother.”

This was not because Ophele thought it was the right thing to do. If Sir Leonin and Sir Davi hadn’t been standing right there, she would have sworn a blood oath with Elodie to take the secret to their graves.

“Why?” Elodie wanted to know.

“What if you have nightmares?”

The girl made a dismissive noise.

“Only babies are afraid of things like that,” she said scornfully. “Uncle Auber says we have the best knights anywhere and nothing will ever get us and besides, the devils will be gone soon ’cause His Grace is going to go kill ’em all, isn’t he?”

Ophele would have liked it if the nine year-old was alittlebit afraid.

“We-ell, we still have to go tell your mother,” she said, quailing at the thought of facing one of Sir Auber’s formidable sisters-in-law.

Retreating, she burrowed back into her notes. She wished she could speak to more of the men who had fought in the mountain campaigns, but they seemed to be particularly difficult to locate. But then, that was where half of Remin’s friends had died, she remembered. She had heard their names a few times when Remin and his knights had been drinking. Victorin, who had found the apple orchard, and Clement, and…Bon, that was his name.

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