Page 37 of Stardust Child

He laughed. In full view of his astonished knights and everyone else in the cookhouse, he laughed, and caught her chin to kiss her naughty sheep face.

“I told you to stop that, wife,” he said, more caressing than admonishing, and let her go, glancing at his knights with a flash of his black eyes to let them know this was how things were going to be from now on. “Tell Miche what happened with the sheep.”

She told them. Remin’s eyes lingered on her, wondering that she could tell such a story with no shyness at all, and make them laugh when she told it. She even made him laugh again, and he let it come, amazed that it could leave him breathless and at the same time make him feel like he had finally stopped suffocating.

It reminded him of what Ophele had said, about how they had made an oath to share all of their joys and sorrows. Well, he owed her the full measure of this joy. All his life, by nature and necessity, Remin had been a wolf.

For her, he would try to become a little more like a lamb.

Chapter 4 – The Many Works of Tresingale

Ophele’s world was filling up with new people.

Every afternoon they marched dutifully behind her into the offices above the storehouse to take their positions behind her small desk. Sir Leonin was the very image of a guardsman, formal and intimidating, his sharp blue eyes quietly watchful. One-eyed Sir Davi—it was official now, Remin had given him his knighthood two days ago—looked lazy and a little disreputable, slouching against the wall in the corner, but every time the door opened, his head came up.

And her third sentry, stationed between the two men with sturdy legs braced in unconscious—or perhaps conscious—imitation of Sir Leonin’s perfect posture, as if the sky would fall before she deserted her post. Elodie’s unruly brown hair was well outside the control of her ribbon and her dress was much-mended, but clean. The sight sent a pang of sympathy through Ophele.

“I’m all right, my lady,” Elodie said firmly when Ophele entreated her again to sit down. “Mama said I’m s’posed to be quiet and not move ’less you say, or I can’t be your page.”

“If you get tired, you can sit on the floor,” Ophele said a little helplessly, and stood as she saw Sir Edemir directing a man to her. She had been steadily interviewing Remin’s men about the devils for a week now and it was every bit as fascinating as she had hoped, but she stillchafed at the slowness. It was hard to get them away from their work even for an hour, and she knew from her discussions over the supper table that the more information she had, the better.

There were several goals she had set for herself. Her objectives, as identified by Remin, were to prepare his men for the Berlawes and protect them from the scholars of the Tower, which to Ophele meant that she must produce something as similar to one of her scholarly books as possible. Sir Justenin had confirmed it: over supper, he had suggested she analyzeThe Will Immanentin particular and pretend she was Mr. Aubriolot, to describe the devils as he would.

She also had to describe the devils for Master Didion, and only after that could she satisfy her own curiosity about the devils’ origins. That was the hardest part, when she was writing her initial list of questions; it was more difficult than she expected to find the questions that would elicit the information she wanted. Andthenshe found out, after several painful interviews, that there was no way she was getting through all those questions in an hour.

Ruthlessly, she cut down the list by two-thirds, only for Sir Edemir to deflate her further by taking one man to task for exaggerating.

“Her Grace doesn’t want to hear your fish stories,” he had snapped, his gray eyes flashing. “And His Grace won’t thank you when he reads it.”

As a general rule, Ophele learned, estimates of size and numbers could safely be revised downward.

“Thank you for coming,” she said to her next appointment, fighting the surge of shyness that always accompanied a stranger. She gestured to the chair opposite hers at her small desk. “Archand Boyse?”

“Aye, m’lady,” the man replied, glancing at the guardsmen behind her and noting Elodie with a little puzzlement. “Master Selassey said as ye was wanting to ask questions about the devils?”

“Yes, if you don’t mind.” Ophele took her seat and smoothed her skirts. “There are a lot of people interested in them, and of course His Grace wants to figure out how to get rid of them. It may be that you know something that will help him do that.”

It was far easier to talk when she had a script. Ophele had refined this introduction over a dozen interviews, with generally good effect.

“Help if I can, m’lady,” said Mr. Boyse, brightening at once. “What d’ye want to know?”

“Actually, a bit about yourself first…” She scratched his name at the top of a page. Unless she took her time, her handwriting was atrocious. “When did you first come to the valley?”

“That’d be 819, m’lady. Came in with Count Embe. Took the oath to His Grace in 821. Spring, it was.”

“So, you’ve been here seven years,” she said sympathetically, not a question so much as an acknowledgement of his sacrifices.

“Aye, lady. Seen a bit.”

“When did you first hear about the devils?”

His eyes shifted as he thought back. He was a plain man with receding brownish-blond hair, built like a sturdy but rather irregular tree branch. One of his shoulders drooped much lower than the other. “Think that was the summer of 822.”

“Do you remember where you were, or who you were fighting at the time?” Ophele’s quill dipped and moved. A lot of the men had trouble with dates, sometimes unable to narrow it down to even a particular month. A soldier only knew that he was sleeping, marching, or fighting.

“Aye, I do at that. We was pushing north with His Grace’s main force, clearing out the plateau. Hot fighting, that was. No cover.”

For most of them, the story was more or less what Remin had told her: initial rumors of strange wolves or hairless bears or cannibal mercenaries. All the men seemed to accept that the devils came from the mountains, but she had yet to hear a concrete reason for that belief. It was not enough to just make note of the claim. There had to be an explanation.

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