Page 81 of Stardust Child

“Nothing wrong besides the obvious,” Genon said, rising and beckoning two waiting porters to carry the cleric over to a nearby wagon. “Needs sleep and feeding up, but he might drop dead any second of old age. Wonder why he came.”

“Hopefully we’ll get a chance to ask.”

“At least we’ve a hospital to put him in,” Genon said philosophically. He and his journeymen spent most of the last two months outfitting a small stone building to serve the need, now that there were so many people in the valley. Remin’s population was mostly young but very active, and they averaged a serious injury every few days, to say nothing of the usual illnesses, sprains, and contusions that occurred in daily life.

“Welcome to the Andelin, Brother,” said Remin, bending over the back of the wagon to sketch the blessing of the stars. Gently, he touched chest, forehead, cheeks, and then covered the cleric’s eyes with his palm and lifted it in the gesture of revelation. “It would be a shame if you never got to see it.”

“I’ll send a runner if anything changes.” Genon mounted the front of the wagon and gave the reins a snap. “Give my regards to your lady.”

It would be some hours before Remin had time to give regards to anyone. He was still only two-thirds of the way through his list by suppertime, and swung by the cottage to find Ophele buried in her papers and ignoring a perplexed Lady Verr. Setting down a hamper of food, he served Ophele himself, admonished her to eat, and then wentbackto the kitchen to remind Wen to bake a few treats for her while he was away. It seemed all too likely that she would closet herself off with some new project and live off tea.

Jogging up the stairs to the storehouse office, Remin sat down with Edemir to make still more lists.

It was his own fault. How many times had he told his men that no one should be irreplaceable? And yet he had never made plans to delegate his own work, in case he was injured or fell ill, for who could replace the Duke of Andelin? Ophele? Now he had reason to regret it as he sat and racked his brains, scribbling pages of instructions for Juste, Edemir, and Bram, trying to anticipate a season’s worth of trouble in the space of a few hours.

His head was aching by the time he finally went home, to find Ophele asleep at the table.

They were going to talk about this tomorrow. She was not going to be working all hours of the day and night, falling asleep at the table, and skipping her supper while he was gone. She didn’t so much as twitch asRemin lifted her from the chair, her head lolling over his arm, and her bare feet were like ice as he tucked her into bed.

He didn’t mean to look. Even if itwasgalling that she still hadn’t let him see whatever she was working on, and he was about to leave her formonths.But as he bent to blow out the lamp, his eyes happened to fall on her papers long enough to recognize the map of the Andelin, which he knew as well as the palm of his hand. Eight copies of that map, each one dated in the upper right:Spring 822. Fall 822. Spring 823, Fall 823. Spring 824…

Remin frowned, flicking through the pages. A map for each fall and spring for the last four years, all of them dotted with small, unevenly shaded circles, identified by a number and date. Turning, he skimmed the topmost set of notes, scrawled in Ophele’s messy, childish handwriting. It took only a minute for him to understand what he was reading.

Slowly, he sank into the chair.

He and his men had been wracking their brains formonths, trying to think of a way to find the devils’ dens, and this infuriating little creature had gone behind his back anddoneit!

“Ophele,” he said, going to shake her awake. “Wake up. Explain this to me.”

* * *

The next morning was quite busy.

The sun had barely touched the horizon before Remin was up and about, pushing a half-conscious Ophele into Lady Verr’s hands with orders to make her look like a scholar. The bare thought of his wife made Remin simultaneously want to laugh and shake her, bursting with pride at what she had done and intense irritation that she had kept it to herself until the final hour. It was both unbelievable and entirely in character that she would have been working quietly at something like this forweekswithout breathing a single word about it to anyone.

“But Iaskedyou where the devils came from, remember?” she had protested the night before, bewildered. “I wanted to find out.”

That had set off another explosion of laughter, and by the time he stopped, she had looked a little sulky.

“No, you did, you did,” Remin had agreed, wiping his eyes and laying a hand on her head, the small, delightful casing for her busy brain. And then he had taken her back to bed and made enthusiastic and very slightly vengeful love to her, to make sure she passed out until morning.

For his own part, Remin was off to Juste’s cottage at dawn, with Ophele’s maps and several pages of interviews clutched in one hand. He hadn’t gotten halfway through his explanation before the generally imperturbable Juste let out a short, violent exclamation.

“That’swhat she meant?” he demanded, as if Remin, her husband, had been granted any special insight at all into the mysteries of her mind.

“I wouldn’t know,” he said acerbically. “But it would work, wouldn’t it? At least for a general vicinity.”

“I need to see the rest.” Juste’s pale eyes moved rapidly over the pages of interviews. “How many did you say she had?”

“She said four hundred something.”

“She is thorough,” Juste muttered, and added belatedly, “my lord. Please give me a few minutes and then I’d like to see them myself. The idea has a great deal of merit, I will say that much.”

For his own amusement, Remin interrogated the only two other people who might have known what Ophele was up to, as soon as they arrived. Both Leonin and Davi unsurprisingly professed ignorance, though Davi was as smugly pleased as if it had all been his own idea.

“I knew she was up tosomething,”he said, clapping the expressionless Leonin on the shoulder. “Didn’t I say so? The wall all over again, ain’t it.”

It was. And just like that day all those months ago when Remin had returned from Ferrede to find that Ophele had been quietly organizing things to her own satisfaction in his absence, he felt a certain amount of chagrin as he followed her backtrail, this time mingled with admiration. If he had any complaint at all, it was just that she hadn’t spoken sooner. He hadasked.And something like this, at the last moment, with no time to consider, no time toplan…

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