Page 114 of Stardust Child

It was getting colder. They were deep into the Berlawes now, with the terrain rising higher every day, and the snowcap above them wasdrawing near. Four days from Crassege, the weather turned bad, with a squall of sleet and snow that soaked them to the skin, followed by a blustery night that left even the horses short-tempered and miserable.

“Stars, let me be wet or let me be cold, but not both at the same time,” said Auber the next morning, his teeth chattering as he peeled off his soaking tunic. Their shelter on a rocky outcrop had kept the devils off them, but not the weather.

The march ground on. Cold hands, sore feet, and stultifying boredom as the peaks loomed steadily nearer. It had been two years since Remin last saw this place: Mount Virel, Faelon, the twin spires of Mount Orval and Mount Elun. There were three Vallethi fortresses within a few days’ march, or what remained of them; Remin had broken them beyond repair, with the intent that he would come back later to assert his borders. Valleth was in no position to challenge him.

Frankly, the devils were trouble enough for both of them.

It was good that they had left the forest behind. It gave Remin time to improvise and test their defenses in this more open country, where the steep, rocky slopes only supported occasional stands of pine. The early windstorm had made for a dangerous trip through the forest, but an easier one through the mountains; there were not enough devils here to threaten them.

Yet.

Remin had no doubt that would soon follow. By day, he scoured the horizon, seeking the campsites that he wanted. He had seen a dozen likely places last time he had been in this part of the mountains, but there was one in particular, a high bluff with narrow sides, and stands of pine to feed the torches and support a palisade…

“There it is,” he said, four days from Crassege. His breath puffed white with the words, and a light snow was falling.

It took a full day to fortify the camp to his satisfaction. Really, itcouldn’tbe fortified against the purring devil; any creature big enough to shake a hundred-foot tree was big enough to knock over a palisade. But Remin lined the inner walls with the box wagons, providing a platform to archers and spearmen, and mounted spike frames facing outward to deter stranglers. At the base of the palisade, he and Jinmin dug a trench and shored it up with stones, to keep ghouls from digging under the wall.

And on that thought, he went to Lancer, washing and grooming the horse until his black coat gleamed, picking out the white scars that marred his haunches and barrel chest. Remin had never been terribly affectionate with his horse, but there was a sympathy between them; Lancer rumbled low as Remin latched his armor into place, testing the buckles and cinches with hard jerks of his fingers.

“Guard,” Remin ordered quietly, lifting a hand to stroke the horse’s nose. Lancer bit his palm, his ferocious black eyes gleaming.

The next morning, they broke open the last box wagon.

Heavy cloaks. Layers of woolen clothing. Spiked, fur-lined boots that laced tight to their feet, suitable for treacherous terrain and bitter temperatures. Every man had a belt equipped with coils of ropes, icepicks, and the materials to start a fire. Every other man carried a roll of extra torches.

Remin handed out rations, personally inspected every man’s armor and kit, and made all of them run up and down the hill beside the camp to make sure no gear went flying. In his own skin, he felt a familiar jitter of nerves and excitement, that the moment was upon him at last. He had planned and planned, and now it was time to execute.

When they marched away that morning, he left five men behind to defend their camp and horses. Three were Huber’s scouts, trained to survive in rough country on only the barest supplies. The other two were sharp-eyed as eagles and knew how to read the Empire’s smoke signs, which Remin would use as a last extremity to signal what he had found.

He had no doubt that he would find something.

Chapter 12 – The Wrong Kind of Quiet

House Hurrell was gone.

No one could say where. All the people of Aldeburke knew was that one scorching August afternoon, Lady Hurrell had ordered the family’s clothing and Rache Pavot’s jewels packed up and loaded into carriages, with enough supplies for several weeks’ travel. By first light the next morning, they were gone, destination known only to themselves.

Given that they had been thoroughly disgraced, barred from entering the capital, and stripped of all property, Sir Miche of Harnost wouldn’t have thought they had anywheretogo.

But gone they were, and after he had searched the house and bullied the higher-ranking servants a bit, he had shrugged to himself philosophically and dashed off letters to Rem in Tresingale and Darri in Segoile, to investigate the matter further.

As far as Miche was concerned, it was license to loot the entire estate.

“All of the princess’s things,” he had said, waving the packet of signed orders at the butler, whose name he ignored. “And Lady Pavot’s. Show me where they are, there’s a good fellow.”

“Of…course,” said the butler, and over the course of two days very slowly produced a number of objects that might plausibly have belonged to Lady Pavot, beginning with a few items from her bedchamber—as Ophele had said, it had mostly been stripped—and a number of small things that might have belonged to Ophele when she was a young child.

Miche would never have thought of searching for such things: dolls, children’s books, a stuffed rabbit, and a pretty dollhouse that looked to have been collecting dust in an attic for quite some time. But it was easy to imagine Rache and a little Ophele crouched together on the floor, laying an imaginary supper on the table of the dollhouse. And Rem and Ophele would be having a baby of their own sooner or later, wouldn’t they?

“Pack all these things up,” he told a nearby footman. “Carefully. Where’s that damned butler?”

The butler had become conspicuously difficult to find, and Miche was getting impatient with it. It seemed that some of the bad habits of the Hurrells had rubbed off on the servants, who were polite but notably unhelpful: they didn’t know where the butler was, they didn’t know where the princess’s chambers were, they had all just arrived at the estate themselves, so sorry.

All of this felt very familiar, after the last visit to Aldeburke. Miche took up a discreet position in the kitchen, nodded to Azelma, to whom he had already offered Ophele’s greetings, and waited. Everyone had to eat sometime.

“Jerry,” he said jovially, when the butler finally skulked through the door, well after breakfast. Catching the smaller man by the collar, he propelled him back up the stairs, none too gently. “Just the man I want to see. No one seems to know where the princess’s room is, it’s been infuriating.”

“I am Germain, sir knight,” the butler said, trying for some dignity. “I am quite busy, I’m afraid…”

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