Page 79 of Stardust Child

Wrapped inside was the promised embroidery box, a beautiful object of gold-flecked burl wood with a glass lid depicting a willow tree over a lily pond. The silk thread inside was a little faded with age, but carefully spooled and ordered by color. There was a needlebook with silver needles of graduating sizes, and silver shears with playful cats forming the handles, their peridot eyes glittering. A large squashy strawberry served as a pincushion, with worn green leaves.

Above her, Remin’s hand reached toward the box, hesitating for a moment before he plucked out the strawberry. Ophele watched as he lifted it to his nose. The look in his eyes made her hastily drop the cat shears and go to him.

“It’s all right,” she said as his arms wrapped around her, so tight she could barely breathe. Her arms went around his neck. “It’s all right.”

With his face pressed to her breast, she felt him draw a deep, deliberate breath. His words were muffled, but steady. “It still smells like her.”

“Oh, Remin…” Helplessly, she stroked his black hair. Grief was like this, she knew; years later, her grief for her own mother could still rise up and strangle her without warning. It was hard, and cruel, and there was no remedy for it.

“We can put it aside for a bit, if you want,” she said when he lifted his head. His face was as forbidding as ever.

“No. They’re meant to be used,” he said, cuffing her in a rough, grateful caress. “I’m fine, wife, go on and look at the rest.”

He pulled her into his lap as she carefully withdrew the remaining objects. In a smaller cloisonné box, there were a half dozen thimbles, several of them jeweled and exquisite, and three of them quirky little treasures that must have come as a set: a frog, a bluebird, and a fox. Charmed, she slipped one onto her finger and felt Remin’s arms tighten around her waist.

“There are six of them,” he noted, a little gruff, but making an attempt at his usual humor. “One for each of our daughters.”

“But I want to keep the frog,” she replied, tapping it against his lower lip like the peck of a kiss. It drove the shadow in his eyes back another step.

The last treasure was in the bottom, a folded piece of silk that must have been the last thing his mother ever made. House Roye, whose emblem was the starling, gregarious birds who formed massive flocks over summer meadows in the evenings. The beginnings of that soaring dance were captured in the silk, larger birds in the foreground diminishing to small silhouettes. They looked so real, as if Remin’s mother had captured the motion of their flight with silk.

“I will learn to do this,” Ophele said softly as she held it up, more to herself than to Remin. Not just because embroidery was something a noblewoman should know how to do. This was the inheritance Remin’s mother had left for his wife. A woman’s art passed from mother to daughter, a challenge to become more than what she was.

And later that night, as she dreamed of mothers and secrets and things left behind, a windstorm blew through the Andelin Valley, and swept the leaves from the trees.

Chapter 8 – On the Origins of Devils

“Stars and ancestors, where’d the leaves go?” a dumbstruck Remin demanded the next morning, flinging open the shutters and gaping out the window. “Was there a storm last night? We should have hadweeksbefore this.”

“Is there? What?” Ophele sat up in bed, eyes half-closed and hands fumbling for an imaginary windowsill. “There’s leaves?”

“No. Therearen’t,”Remin said savagely, stooping to yank his trunk open and flinging on some clothes. His breath puffed white as it passed the open window. “This shouldn’t happen. It’s too soon. The snow isn’t halfway down Long Pennitt, there’s nowhere for the devils to hide, the sun’s going to cook them all before we can find out where they’re going—”

“Find out—oh,no!”Ophele gasped, scrambling for the window herself. “No, it’s too soon! Remin, you promised you wouldn’t go for another two weeks!”

“The leaves never fall this early,” Remin said, guilt smiting him as he stomped into his boots. “I have to talk to Tounot. The spike frames aren’t ready yet, the carpenters haven’t finished the platforms, there’s no way we could go today—”

“Today?”Ophele shrilled, scurrying after him. “No, you can’t go today,it’s not ready—”

The alarm in her voice made him stop short, and Remin had to catch her as she ricocheted off his back.

“I know we’re not,” he said, drawing her against him in a tight embrace. “There’s no point in going if we’re not prepared to come back. I know we’re not ready, wife, and we’re not leaving until I am satisfied we are. I promise.”

“All right. Then…then you have to go get ready,” she said, pushing him toward the door. Her lower lip quivered. His little owl was trying so hard to be brave about it. “Will you come home for supper?”

“Yes. Even if I am just coming to bring you a basket,” he promised, lifting her to her toes for a kiss. “Don’t be afraid, little owl. It will be all right.”

It wouldnotbe all right. It was too soon.

Outside the cottage, he shot a black glare at the nearest tree, the trailing shadows of its bared branches like the grasping fingers of a strangler. That was not enough cover for devils. And for a moment he turned east, craning his neck toward the old forest, wondering whether that might not be a good thing after all. Denied the cover of the trees in the valleys and the snow in the mountains, then maybe all the devils would just burn away, and that would be the end of them. An ignominious conclusion to the evil that had so devastated his people.

But when he pictured those enormous, ancient trees and the permanent gloom of the deep wood, Remin didn’t think so.

He broke into a trot, heading for the stables.

“Are we still planning to use the watchtowers?” asked Auber when Remin arrived at the barracks, where a line of tall box wagons was rolling into the courtyard. Auber, Tounot, and Jinmin had guessed which way the wind was blowing—or had already blown—and the barracks were a hive of activity, preparing for this last and most dangerous expedition.

“Yes,” growled Remin resentfully. “But plan to spend some time in the mountains, too. Supply for ten days. If the devils give us a direction, I want us prepared to follow it.”

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