Page 121 of Stardust Child

“We know a messenger was dispatched to Aldeburke last winter,” Juste replied. “Unofficially. We followed him. At first we thought the message might have gone to you, but His Grace said you had no correspondence with your divine father.”

“No. He never wrote to me,” she whispered.

“Then who else would receive it, if all his guards had departed?” Juste asked. “Anything official would be directed to the lord, but what about something more clandestine?”

“Lady Hurrell.” She was clutching her teacup in her hands. “But…my father couldn’t have known, could he? Everything they did? She meant to give me toJulot,Lady Hurrell said my mother had cast them so low, they must accept even a star-cursed bastard. But she would not dare tell that to my father…”

There wasn’t much room to pace in Edemir’s closet, but she tried anyway, jerking to her feet with hands fluttering in agitation.

“But she must have planned it for so long,” she said, almost to herself. “It was two years ago when she hired the dancing-master, after His Grace had won through the mountains into Valleth. We had a letter about it. And isn’t that curious, too, that exiles had regular letters about the war? Lord Hurrell said it was all but won, and that’s when Lady Hurrell sent for them all, the dressmakers and the shoemakers and the jewelers, I never knew it took so many people to dress a lady, and Lady Hurrell always said we were poor. But she was planning it even then, wasn’t she? She knew my father would protect Selenne, and give me away. That he thought solittleof me, she could even dare to offer Lisabe to Remin in my place.”

Her voice had been rising with each dreadful new supposition, and now she looked between them beseechingly, as if begging them to deny it. But Edemir was too shocked even to try.

“Lady Lisabe…Remthoughtyou were being kept from us on purpose,” he said, outraged. “That was a scheme of the lady’s?”

“Which you thwarted,” said Juste grimly, addressing Ophele. “Which makes it clear to me that Lady Hurrell always planned to go back to the capital. And she meant to do it with a Daughter of the Stars for her daughter-in-law, and the Duke of Andelin for her son. She very nearly achieved it. She will not wish you well, Your Grace.”

“She never did,” Ophele choked, and turned away.

Well. That painted a much clearer picture of their enemies, but Juste would have spared her this knowledge, if he could. Silently, he fetched her cloak and waved Leonin and Davi back into the room. It was one thing to know that her divine father had chosen to protect his legitimate child over his bastard: hurtful, but hardly unexpected. It was something else to think he might have known her guardians were abusing her, and chose to abandon her to them anyway.

“All those roads led you here, my lady,” Juste said quietly as he laid her cloak over her shoulders, and dared a single squeeze. It was all the comfort he could offer.

He did not speak again until they were ahorse and headed back to the manor, under gray skies and a snapping breeze. It would take time tothink through all the implications of what she had told him, but there was one that seemed critical to him, and he nudged his horse forward alongside hers.

“My lady,” he began gently. “In light of this information, I urge you again to accept the oaths of your hallows. If there is some deeper game we do not know, there may be dangers we cannot see.”

“Sir Leonin and Sir Davi are always with me,” she replied. Her face was brittle as a mask. “I forgot to tell Sir Edemir, but please do not say anything to His Grace about what I told you. I will tell him myself.”

“Of course.” Juste was nothing if not agreeable. “And I hope you do not take my request to speak to you without your hallows as an indication of distrust. I have no doubt that they will be as careful of your honor as their own.”

“The oath will only bind us more deeply to silence,” said Leonin, who had spurred closer on her other side. “But Sir Justenin is correct. We would respect your privacy and secrets regardless, my lady.”

“I know you will.” Ophele’s hands tightened on Bramble’s reins.

“It just means that we could protect you better, even from the Divinity himself,” Leonin explained. “If we are sworn as your hallows, then even defiance of the Divine Emperor could not be accounted blasphemous—”

“I don’twantyou to defy the Divine Emperor.”

“They may have to, my lady.” Juste was torn between irritation at her stubbornness and pleasant surprise that their meek ladycouldbe stubborn. “Hallows or not, if they must defend you—”

“I don’twantthem to be my hallows!” she burst out. “None of you even asked if I wanted any, if I evendeservethem! I don’t want hallows, I don’t—Brambles,git up!”

Wonder of wonders, the horse actually obeyed. Davi gave a shout of surprise as the big horse sprang away, his platter-sized hooves drumming through the dry leaves as he raced up the road to the manor, leaving her astonished guards behind.

* * *

They came to the Spur in the midst of a howling blizzard.

It hadn’t been bad, in the early stages of the climb. A brief warm spell might have tempted Remin to think it would be a pleasant journey, and the sky was clear enough that he could see the smoke rising all the way from the camp. Proof that they still lived.

In some ways, the mountains were safer than the valley. The devils could not attack in a mass on those narrow paths: wolf demons were too big to pursue them there, and ghouls were too cowardly to attack so many men. As night fell, Remin ordered everyone to don their helmets and tighten steel gorgets around their throats, forming a living palisade with their own shivering bodies.

Bonfires blazed behind them, heating their backs, and every other man shut his eyes and leaned on his neighbor, dozing while he could.

“Strangler!”someone shouted down the line, and Remin heard the wet thud of steel into flesh, and then a high, rasping screech as the creature was flung off the mountain.

Then there was only the soft whistle of the wind, rising with a stinging chill.

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