Page 66 of Stardust Child

“Wife?” Remin tugged her gently; she would have kept walking straight down Eugene Street and out the bridge gate without noticing. She started.

“Oh, sorry,” she said faintly.

She was trying not to think of Granholme. Trying not to remember the night when she had fallen asleep in his arms and awakened to find hehated her. But she would never forget that look on his face, filled with enough hate and fury to stop her heart. Even Lady Hurrell had never looked at her like that. Oh, stars, what would shedoif that happened again? Just thinking of it made her feel as if the dark waters of the Brede had closed over her head, cold and deep and airless.

The cottage was dark when they went inside, and as Remin bent to build a fire, Ophele busied herself with moving the small table out of the way and pushing their chairs before the hearth. There was a pouch full of sacred blue-white incense on the table, more incense than she had ever seen in her life. Enough to last all the way to sunrise.

Together, they closed the shutters and took their seats, and Ophele’s throat tightened as she looked up at him. If only her mother hadn’t done what she had done. If only Ophele herself was not a bastard, a base and crooked thing that under ordinary circumstances would never have laid eyes on a man like Remin in her whole life. He was so handsome in his doublet and silver chain, and the look in his black eyes made her chest hurt, warm and soft as he turned back to her.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded, her tongue rooted in place as he poured a measure of incense into the copper brazier.

“Who will you ask to come?” He took her hand, his fingers twining in hers.

“M-my mother,” she managed. “And my grandparents. My mother had a brother,” she added nervously as she watched the first tendrils of smoke curl up from the brazier. “Consotin. But I think he’s dead.”

“I had a big family,” Remin replied, an unwitting slice at her heart. “My father had four brothers and two sisters, and my mother had two brothers and three sisters. I don’t know how many cousins I had. But I remember my grandparents. I visited House Roye the winter I was six. Grandmother Roye had the baker make cookies every day.”

He was excited. It didn’t show in his stern face or his voice, but she could feel it in the grip of his hand. If only things were different. She might have met his Grandmother Roye. She might have gone to his house as a beloved bride, maybe even betrothed when they were children, and been as much a part of that large, lovely family as he had been.

Now the smoke was rolling thickly from the brazier, curling up and flowing onto the floor like clouds sweeping down a mountainside. It wasstrongly scented, a sharp, crisp smell that stung the nostrils and seemed to bubble into her blood as she inhaled it, making her feel as if she were breathing very cold, thin air.

“Go ahead,” Remin murmured beside her. And though she had been longing for years to commune with her mother just once, now the last thing Ophele wanted to do was summon her. But she had no choice.

“Mother,” she whispered, conjuring the memory of her mother to her mind. Her mother had been blonde, slender and graceful, but so many years had passed that Ophele no longer remembered her face. “Rache Pavot. Dorame Pavot. Michinot Pavot. Mother, grandmother, grandfather, please come to me. I am Ophele Agnephus. I am your daughter. I am your granddaughter. I am your blood…”

She breathed the incense deep, feeling it tingle oddly in her lungs. She had never had so much before, and it made her feel light-headed as she repeated their names, trying to inhabit the words, calling out her own identity to the faraway stars. Ophele Agnephus, the baseborn daughter of Rache Pavot and Bastin Agnephus. A child of stardust, the living disgrace to the Emperor’s sacred lineage.

It seemed to her that there was a weight coalescing in that drifting white smoke, a listening presence. She had never met her grandparents, but she felt loving strangers reach out to her, a call of blood to blood. And then the sense of her mother’s spirit, so strong it was nearly tangible. Tears sprang into her eyes.

“Mother,” she whispered, her throat choked with longing, and in the smoke there was a breath of Rache Pavot, the sensation of embracing arms. Her lips trembled. “They’re here.”

“I feel them,” Remin murmured. It felt as if he were the only real thing in the world, wrapped with her in the tendrils of smoke, drawn into some elsewhere between this world and the stars. His dark eyes were very wide. “I am Remin,” he said, sitting up straight in his chair. “Son of Benetot and Sidonie. Son of House_______. I am Remin_______.”

He said the name of his House. He said his real name, the unspeakable name that it was treason to say, even to write down. In the library of the Tower of Scholars, that name was blacked out of all the history books.

“Come to me, Benetot and Sidonie, Pierot and Jannote, Albe and Louinese of House Roye…”

He said so many names. So terribly many names, all the names of two noble Houses that had been wiped out at the Emperor’s command. House Roye lived on, headed by very distant cousins, but his father’s house had been utterly exterminated.

Ophele wanted to shrink as he called them. She knew the fury of the wrongly accused. Every time Lady Hurrell had slapped her, it was with the reminder that Ophele deserved it, for what her mother had done. Involuntarily, her eyes squeezed shut, bracing for the lash of their judgment.

“Mother, Father…” Remin’s hand tightened on hers. She felt…something there, listening, but she could not perceive it with her eyes or ears. “This is Ophele, my wife. I’m in the Andelin Valley. I brought her here after we married. And I love her.”

“Hello,” she managed, almost inaudible. There was a ghostly sense of curious eyes, a thrill of rejoicing as he saidwifeandlove.They would be happy for him. She was frozen with fright, trying desperately to think what to say, wondering whether she ought to just go to her knees and beg pardon. But shockingly, Remin beat her to it.

“Lady Pavot. Mother-in-law,” he began. The presence of Ophele’s mother was distinct enough that he could turn that way, a short distance toward the hearth and an infinity to the stars. He drew a deep breath and squared his shoulders. “I…wasn’t a good husband to your daughter, at first. I’m sorry for that. I was cruel to her the first time we met, and I didn’t even let her pack a bag when we left Aldeburke. She still doesn’t have a maid…”

Boggling, Ophele listened as he confessed everything to her mother and grandparents, and in far harsher terms than she would ever have described it herself, things that she would never have blamed him for. Who cared if he kept tearing her clothing in the wash? He explained what he had done and why from the moment they met without ever making excuses for himself, ending with his test of her with the dagger.

“I don’t know how else I could have done it,” he concluded, and bowed his dark head. “But I am sorry, for the many pains I caused her. I will make sure that she is happy and never wants for anything again, as long as she lives.”

From her mother and grandparents, Ophele sensed unhappiness and worry. And from Remin’s family, there was surprise, embarrassment, and the beginnings of shame.

“No, no, you couldn’t trust me,” she burst out, unable to bear it. They should never be ashamed before her. “He couldn’t! He didn’t tell you my name, I am Ophele Agnephus, how could he trust me—after everything my father did to you!” she added, turning back to Remin. “And I bet you never told them how many times he tried to have you killed, and you didn’t say anything about that assassin in Granholme, either! I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for everything my father did…”

Unthinking, she rose to her feet as the words tumbled forth, her hands knotting together as she stood before them, feeling as if she stood before a line of executioners. She could not hide her guilt from them. She couldn’t pretend that she was someone else’s child.

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