Page 54 of Stardust Child

“Elodie! Come in, set your things down,” Ophele said with genuine pleasure, corking her ink bottle and rising to wash her hands. “We’re going to the market today. Have you got your shawl tied properly?”

Elodie had a distressing tendency to abandon her shawl in the oddest places, which had required more than one frantic return to the market. But Ophele did not chasten her for it. Maybe Sir Leonin looked askance at her, allowing her nine year-old pagegirl to accompany her on these errands, but Elodie was delightful company and made a helpful medium for questions that Ophele could not dare to ask herself.

“Oh, look at that, my lady,” said Elodie when they arrived in the market square, where stone statues were being removed from large crates. “Can we go see? What is it?”

“Those are for the fountain,” Ophele replied, inwardly pleased with the excuse to go watch. They were a few minutes early for their appointment anyway. “His Grace said it will be shaped like a sword, and I think those are supposed to be stars. Master Didion’s sculptor used His Grace’s sword as a model.”

“And water will come out the top?” Elodie asked, craning her neck.

“No, from the bottom, young lady. Those pipes there,” said another voice, and Ophele looked up to find Master Nore Ffloce approaching with the usual fluttering of city plans. “It will appear the sword is smashing into the earth of the valley and sending out a scattering of stars, a metaphor for our recent history. How are you, my lady? I hope I have not kept you waiting.”

“Not at all, we only had a moment to admire the fountain,” Ophele assured him. “And…are those the lamp-posts you mentioned? Look, Elodie, remember we saw Master Procher and the other blacksmiths making all the metal scrolls for the sides?”

“Yes,” said Elodie, surveying the lines of lamps. “They’re all right, I guess.”

Elodie Conbour was a difficult audience.

“I will hope for greater appreciation when they are strung with banners on a festival day, Miss Conbour,” Master Ffloce said good-naturedly. He was an amiable grasshopper of a man, the third of Tresingale’s master architects and the level-headed balance between the surly Master Guisse and the flamboyant Sousten Didion. “Though it will be some time before that happens. Can you guess why?”

Elodie despised guessing games.

“No.”

“This,” he said, and it was surely for the little girl’s benefit that he produced a crystal sphere from his pocket with a flourish. But when it suddenly glowed in his hand like a lesser sun, Ophele fought the urge to applaud.

“Oh, what makes it do that?” she asked, and only just remembered to glance at Elodie, implying the question was on behalf of the child.

“It is a Norveni invention, Your Grace,” the city architect explained. “Rather too bright for use by day, but by night it will catch the light of moon and stars and reflect it into the many prisms within, magnifying it greatly. A simple marvel, is it not?”

“I have heard of them, but we never had any in Aldeburke,” Ophele replied, beaming as he offered it to her. “How wonderful!”

“Unfortunately, we will still be without this marvel on the Feast of the Departed,” Master Ffloce said, moving neatly to their other business. He had managed most of it himself, but he still made a polite fiction of consulting Ophele’s opinion. Master Wen just shouted at her to get out of his kitchen.

“Torches should do,” Ophele agreed. “His Grace said we would only need them for the main roads, and we will have candles at the tables.”

“I will need some help with those,” Master Ffloce replied, nodding. “I believe we will have enough places for all the Tresingale residents, but if His Grace could send some fellows to haul the tables from the cookhouse, it would be a great help. And there is still the matter of laying the fields to rest…”

“Oh, is there?” Ophele asked, listening with outward politeness and inner consternation. Her mother had died when she was too young to participate in most religious rites, and thereafter such ceremonies had beensolitary affairs: a small offering to her mother, a stolen pinch of incense, a lonely prayer before the fire. Until she was twelve, Ophele had thought the Feast of the Departed meant everyone left the manor but her.

“Putting the fields to bed?” Elodie said, when consulted later that afternoon. “We did that in the garden, for Auntie Jacinthe and Grandma and Grandpa and my cousin Corin. Mama said they’re all in boats in the sky, so we took the food and buried it in the garden, so they don’t get hungry.”

“Buried it in the garden?” Ophele repeated, with a flicker of fear. In all the years since her mother’s death, she had never heard of this. Had her mother been starving all this time, among the stars?

“From the feast.” Elodie eyed her curiously. “Mama said they eat the feast with us. Don’t they?”

“Oh, yes,” Ophele said, relieved. She and Azelma had at least done that much in the kitchen, setting a place for Ophele’s mother at supper. “What did you do next?”

Grudgingly, Ophele set her own work aside to tackle the problem again the next day, darting back and forth between the office and the square to ferry suggestions between Master Ffloce and Sir Justenin. It seemed to her that they ought to at least bring the remains of the feast as far as the north gate after supper, so as to save time the next morning, and Sir Justenin said that the dead could only draw sustenance from it before sunrise. It would give them the largest window of time between the departure of the devils and dawn.

“I’m sorry to run you about,” she apologized to Sir Leonin and Sir Davi, hurrying her steps toward the stable. She still tried to make time for Master Eugene at the end of the day, even if she was busy; the donkey would never say that she was a fickle friend.

“It’s not a problem, lady. My lady,” said Sir Davi, as easygoing as ever. “At least we’re not fighting off geese today.”

“You don’t need to mind us so much,” said Sir Leonin, stiff and formal, as if he’d never heard of geese in his life. He was beginning to remind her of one of Julot’s tin knights. “We are your guards. We are meant to be your shadows.”

There was an undercurrent in his words that made Ophele’s smile fall away, and she looked up with sudden anxiety, wondering if she was being rebuked.

“Leonin means you ain’t troubling us, lady,” Davi said, glancing at the younger man repressively.

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