Page 53 of Stardust Child

“If you like, m’lady,” he said politely, offering his arm, and Yvain and Dol followed behind as they hurried toward the caravan, which was already disgorging its passengers. The men were forming up on either side of the road, an honor guard of sorts, and as they cleared a path for her, she wished she were wearing something a little finer than an ink-spattered purple gown.

Remin said that before he spoke, he often set out a few sentences in his mind, and Ophele tried to do the same as she reached the circle around the caravan and then stopped, waiting. The stink of both the caravan and its occupants was incredible, weeks on the road in that sweaty, airless box and no baths. They would be filthy, hungry, and tired, and her responsibility to them was both honor and hospitality.

A flick of Remin’s eyes beckoned her forward, and Ophele approached obediently as the travelers assembled. The last time she had seen Sir Huber was at the feast the night before he left, when he had danced with her and asked her to look after Remin. At the time, the request had surprised her, but she understood it better now. Huber and Remin had grown up together. And Remin had needed looking after, in the end.

“…did right, not to wait,” Remin was saying as she and Genon approached. The surgeon went immediately to look everyone over, including a few soldiers who were sitting down, having been mauled a bit by the devils. “We’ll have to think of a way to let you signal your approach in future, I would have sent men out to meet you.”

“It was hard on the horses,” Sir Huber agreed. He looked a good deal leaner than he had been when he had departed, a bronzed whip of a man with his hair gleaming faintly copper in the torchlight. His eyes went to Ophele, and he offered a brief bow. “My lady.”

“I’m glad you came back safely,” she said, looking sympathetically from one exhausted man to the next. “Thank you for doing something so dangerous. Your Grace, might we send someone to Wen and Master Balad, to have food and baths prepared for them?”

Remin blinked.

“Yes,” he said approvingly, and looked at a nearby soldier. He didn’t even need to speak the order. The man was off like a shot.

“Welcome home,” Ophele concluded, nodding her head as gracefully as she could. She hoped that was enough.

“Thank you very much, my lady.” said Sir Huber. “My lord, I can tell you Ferrede lives, and we helped them bring in the harvest. Rollon had already built a common hall for sleeping and ordered the defense by the time we arrived. Elder Brodrim said the town would have been lost, were it not for him.”

Ophele had barely known Rollon before he left; she knew his name and his face, but that was all. He looked as if he had aged ten years since.

“That’s what I sent you to do,” Remin said quietly, extending a hand, with a brief but solid squeeze of the squire’s arm. “I will want your report tomorrow. Well done.”

“Thank you, Your Grace,” Rollon replied, standing up straighter.

“All of you have earned your rest.” Remin stepped back, nodding to Sir Huber. “Defenders of Ferrede!”

Sir Jinmin led a boisterous round of huzzahs, dissolving into cheers as a group of men led Sir Huber and the rest up the road, battered and weary, but moving under their own steam. It looked like half the town was about to descend on the unsuspecting Master Balad.

“You did well,” Remin murmured to Ophele as the stablemaster led the horses away and the rest of the men dispersed, with Sir Jinmin bellowing at the men on the palisade to point their eyeballs north. Remin didn’t look hurt, but he was disconcertingly blood-spattered. “It’s not my blood,” he added when he caught her looking.

“I know. I…saw,” she said, a little guiltily. “The wolf demon, I mean.”

“I wondered if you did,” he said. Filthy as he was, he didn’t offer his arm as they moved up the street together toward home. “Did it look like you expected?”

“Bigger,” she admitted. “I saw the pictures and everyone said how big they were, but it’s not the same as seeing a real one. And it was so fast. I see what you mean now, about not trying to stop them directly. It would just knock everyone over, wouldn’t it?”

“Mmm-hmmm. And you weren’t scared?”

“No…” She looked up at him in surprise. “I wasn’t,” she said, feeling an unaccustomed glow inside, a feeling she had very rarely felt before. She was timid and cowardly and afraid of so very many things, but she was no longer afraid of this.

“That’s good,” was all he said, and the torches lining the long road home shone on a small, satisfied smile.

* * *

…blurred by smoke,Ophele wrote the next day, thrilled beyond words to have her very own firsthand account of the devils.It appears to emanate from around the head and neck and streak backward, with black particles dissolving in the air. This could be to obscure the movements of the devil, or to aid in concealment, though this purpose would seem to be undermined by the green glow of its eyes. But perhaps that is a threat display that occurs when it attacks…

By now, Ophele had learned to give herself a few pages to babble before she attempted to incorporate her ideas into her treatise. It only seemed sensible to her that there would be some logic to the natural world, discoverable reasons why things were the way they were. Claws for bears, to dig and climb and fight. Long snouts for hedgehogs, to poke their adorable little noses into narrow places for bugs. So what purpose did the glowing eyes of a wolf demon serve? Intimidation? And what was that flare of poisonous green she had seen glowing within its smoking mane?

If only she could have gotten a better look. That thought had jerked her awake before dawn and startled Remin out of a dead sleep: why hadn’t she asked to examine the corpse? She could have learned so much from the wolf demon’s body, and it had beenright there.

“You’re not poking at dead devils,” Remin had said, grumpy at being awakened early, and dragged her back under the covers.

She would ask Sir Justenin next time. Or maybe Genon. Had he ever examined one of the devils?

Ophele hummed, scribbling on. She only had a little time to record her observations and hypotheses; her other project was much more important and time-sensitive, as underscored by the fact that the firstthing Remin did every morning was snap open the shutters, looking critically at the progress of the snow on the mountains and the leaves on the trees. And the stars knew she had enough other demands on her time, not the least of which was—

“Your Grace!” Elodie’s voice piped from just outside the open door of the cottage, and Ophele turned to find her pagegirl waiting, clutching her sewing sampler and bobbing curtsies like a manikin bird.

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