Page 8 of Stardust Child

“I’ll talk to Tounot and Bram,” Remin said grimly. “We’ll begin as we mean to continue. I don’t agree with public punishments. I won’t have them in my land.”

“It is standard practice in the rest of the Empire.”

“I don’t recall anything in the Imperial Code that requires a mob to witness the punishment.” Remin knew the Code as well as Juste did; he had set himself to learn it with the determination of a cleric learning his catechism. The Emperor would never get around him that way.

“That is true,” Juste conceded. “There are other ways to deter repetition of such behavior. You have been a most amiable lord. To this point.”

The implication hung there. Juste was the correct person to answer this riddle; the herdsman, master manipulator of the clever beast called man. Before their invasion of Valleth, they had spread rumors of Remin Grimjaw all along the border to soften up the population. For the cost of a little silver, rumors in taverns warned that he was coming for them: the man who had slaughtered their armies, their mercenaries, defeated their magicians and laughed in the face of the Andelin devils. The stories fed on themselves, each more terrible than the last, and by the time Remin completed his conquest of the forts on the Valleth border, he only had to take a single city before the rest of the country fell at his feet.

Valleth had done far worse, when they invaded the Andelin Valley. The summer Remin was seventeen, they sacked three cities south of the Brede, with the worst kind of slaughter and rapine. The flanking action that won him his knighthood had spared a fourth city. Remin could offer any number of justifications for his actions, and even without Juste’s soft confessor’s voice telling him he had done right, he knew that there had been no other course available to him.

But still, he had given the order to destroy a city, and killed anyone that resisted him.

“I don’t want to make them afraid of me,” he said quietly. Ophele had only just stopped fearing him. He never wanted her to know that side of him. “I won’t rule that way, either.”

“I don’t think we need to go that far,” Juste said gently, as if he had overheard every word that flashed through Remin’s mind. “They have been ruled by fear for long enough. Now that they need not fear the devils, they can learn a healthy respect for their lord.”

And that was how it was decided that the time had come for the Andelin Valley’s first tourney.

* * *

One spring night in Aldeburke, a shepherd dog named Callie whelped a dozen puppies.

It was a surprise litter from an unknown sire, and Lord Hurrell hadnotbeen pleased, for it meant a year at least before he could get a proper litter from her, and he had ordered the pups drowned. But Julot hadn’t been so bad back then, and he and Ophele had conspired to hide them in the barn until they were old enough to be given away. They had actually turned out to be very good herders.

Watching the pageboys burst through the doors of the cookhouse, Ophele couldn’t help remembering the puppies, tumbling into the stableyard.

They drew up sharply as they approached, five boys of varying ages and levels of nobility. The older pages were too busy for lessons, but the four little ones came at the noon meal every day. Legeriot, who tended to lead the others, surprised her with a bow.

“Good afternoon, my lady,” he said politely. He was an eleven year-old with some connections to Sir Huber’s family and had the cultured accent of the southern duchies. He promptly contradicted this refined heritage by smacking the closest boy on the back of the head and saying, “You’re s’posed to bow, remember?”

“Oh, right. My lady,” said Gavrel, a big-headed blond boy of ten. It entertained Ophele no end to try to figure out what they had been learning recently, and who had been teaching it to them. Evidently, someone had been at them about their courtesies.

“Good afternoon, Your Grace.” Eleven year-old Denin distinguished himself with a particularly elegant bow and extended a single perfect daisy to her.

“Oh, thank you very much,” she said, surprised, and tucked it behind her ear. The boy swaggered over to his usual bench, eying the others with a superior expression.

“My lady.” Valentin was the youngest, an adorable boy of eight that made Ophele want to pinch his cheeks and coo over him, behavior she was sure would have mortified him to his soul. He bobbed a bow, gave his fellows a glance that suggested he was being stuck all over by pins, and said loudly, “You look like a flower. Pretty. Thank you.”

“You’re welcome,” she said, biting her lip to control a fit of giggles. “Have you boys been talking to Sir Miche again?”

“Yes, my lady.” Legeriot and Gavrel looked at her with amazement, as if she had just performed some feat of wizardry.

“He said a true knight makes ladies happy, and gives ’em flowers, and tells ’em they’re pretty even if they aren’t,” Valentin explained, and yelped as someone kicked him under the table. “What? He did.”

“He also said not to tell ladies his secrets or they won’t work, halfwit,” said Legeriot.

“And Her Gracedoeslook like a flower,” said Denin, who was clearly learning the lessons of his master well.

“Shouldn’t call each other names in front of a lady, neither,” said Jacot, who had been watching these proceedings with lofty disdain. He was the oldest of her students, and except for his lack of education, might already have become a squire. He considered the younger boys beneath his notice unless they needed thrashing.

“You are all very gallant, and I liked it very much,” Ophele said, entertained. “We’ll begin with reading today. Jacot, you’ll be teaching Valentin. Legeriot, Denin, and Gavrel, please read this poem, and when you’ve finished, we’ll talk about it together.”

Turning her book of poetry toward the three boys, Ophele took Denin’s mathematics text and began her own study, her quill scratching rapidly away. When Remin had proposed this little school to her, she had thought it would be like teaching Jacot: basic reading and arithmetic, with a little etiquette on the side. But these noble-born boys had alreadybegun their education under actual tutors, along with history, dancing, and music. Their texts filled in the gaps in her own learning, and she thought that having the boys teach each other worked very well; it made the lessons friendly and informal, and she was learning nearly as much as they were.

It was hard, though, to try to cement the ideas in her mind with so little time. Sometimes she had to force herself to give Gavrel back his book on oratory; she needed to read that one so badly it was almost physically painful, and she took copious notes whenever she had an instant to spare. But mathematics was an even greater challenge. Ophele had raced far ahead in matters of geometry and astronomy but still had wide gaps in some of the most fundamental concepts, and she often sat and quietly worked equations by herself after the boys had left, inventing new problems for them to solve the next day. Most of the boys’ work was military in nature, logistical problems like how to move a given number of men, horses, and wagons to a particular place at a particular time, with each group traveling at a different speed.

But it was fun, nevertheless. After their reading, Ophele presented a geometry test to them, a map of a city and surrounding hills that the boys instantly dubbed Barnabe Town, after the squire that had charge of them in the mornings. One of the problems in Denin’s geometry text had used a trebuchet as an example, calculating trajectory and distance by the weight of the projectile and the length of the trebuchet’s arm, as well as the distance of the siege machine itself from the city.

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