Page 9 of Stardust Child

Ophele had taken this problem and run with it.

The boys seemed very excited to reduce Barnabe Town to rubble. Though it was a bit advanced for Jacot and Valentin’s arithmetic skills, Jacot quickly got a feel for the basics, and everyone could participate in moving the marker for the trebuchet around the map and aiming for particular targets within the city, which ranged from the keep to Barnabe himself and—with particular spite—even Barnabe’s chickens in the coops behind the stables.

“Why his chickens?” Ophele wanted to know.

“So Barnabe doesn’t get any eggs,” Denin said darkly, and Gavrel and Legeriot nodded their agreement.

Although Ophele was sure no lady in the world needed to know how to place trebuchets, teaching gave her a reasonable excuse to ask forintermediate-level books from Sir Edemir and sneak in books on finance and economics on the side. The boys would need to be able to convert currencies too, wouldn’t they? And she often heard Sir Tounot and Sir Bram grumbling about the tediousness of managing everyone’s pay. If she could only get these books, then she was sure she could learn the things she needed to know to manage Remin’s household. She still had time. There wasn’t even a house yet.

“You do a thing thoroughly,” Sir Edemir said over supper, when she explained the types of books she wanted. “But we won’t need to trouble you much longer, my lady. Soon enough the squires will be back at their regular work, and we have a tutor on his way from the Tower.”

“I don’t mind teaching them,” Ophele said, trying to hide her disappointment. “But even if it’s the squires or the tutor teaching them, won’t they still need the more advanced texts?”

Maybe she could read the books quickly, before Edemir gave them to the boys.

“That is true,” the knight said, slicing neatly into his roasted venison. Utensils had arrived in the valley, at least for the high table, and Edemir used them with fascinating precision. “But if you don’t mind my saying so, it’s important to balance interrogation and didacticism, my lady. If you try to teach them too many subjects, they won’t make progress in any of them.”

He and Justenin had begun discussing the learning theory of the Tower with her at increasing length lately, particularly the balance between interrogation and didactic learning: the need to let the boys ask questions, and more importantly,wantto ask questions, without straying too far from the subject at hand. This was one of her particular weaknesses, Ophele knew. Having grown up in a library, she was used to being able to indulge every question she had, and unanswered questions tickled mercilessly at her mind, an itch begging to be scratched.

“Maybe we don’t need books for some things,” she admitted. The words felt blasphemous. “But I wish I had some references. Denin wanted to know the maximum distance of a trebuchet with different projectiles where he could still destroy the keep, but none of the books say what the minimum weight of a projectile should be.”

“Wind’s an issue if they’re too light,” said Sir Bram, who always surprised her with his participation in these discussions. He was the oldestof Remin’s knights, lean-faced and scarred and thoroughly intimidating, but he was surprisingly intellectual, for all his rough demeanor.

“Oh, we didn’t talk about wind,” she said, making a mental note. “Are there equations for that? The book didn’t say anything.”

“What under the stars are you teaching them, wife?” Remin asked, amused. And a few minutes later, Ophele found herself explaining the problem to the Knights of the Brede over a replica of Barnabe Town made of fruit and cups. They argued about trebuchet placement in almost the exact same withering tones as their pages, even down to calling each other halfwits.

“You don’t need to work equations?” Ophele whispered to Remin, who had taken one look at the town and placed a single trebuchet in position to knock out all six towers and the gatehouse.

“After a while, you get a feel for it,” he replied, as if it hadn’t taken everyone else ten minutes to mathematically prove that he had picked the perfect position. Ophele eyed him curiously. Was this the sort of thing that made people call him a genius?

“I’ll see about your books, my lady,” said Edemir, who was looking at Remin with some chagrin. “Even if there isn’t much time for study now, there will be in future, and there will be more pageboys too, soon enough. Where did you find this exercise? I don’t remember it from any of my texts.”

“The boys like it better when it’s a real problem, instead of just numbers…” Ophele skirted the question nervously, wondering if she had done something wrong, coming up with her own exercises. In her mind, if they expected her to teach, it was because she was supposed to know how, and she couldn’t admit she had never had a tutor of her own. She could just imagine the looks on their faces, if they ever realized how ignorant their lady was. She had sworn to make them proud to serve her.

“That would have been my preference, when I was a boy,” Sir Justenin said, smoothing the conversation over. “The brothers taught us geometry with the stars, but we would have much preferred trebuchets.”

“There was a book on celestial geometry in Aldeburke.” Ophele accepted this offering gratefully. “I liked it. The same equations that measure spiral galaxies can measure the spirals on a snail shell.”

They really worked, too. She had tried it on one of the snails in Azelma’s kitchen garden.

“Was itThe Sacred Angles of the Stars?”

“Yes,” she said, surprised.

“That’s an advanced text.” His pale blue eyes were placid and unreadable. “I’m surprised your tutor chose it.”

“I found it in the library.” Ophele looked away. This was a true statement, though it did not correct his assumption, and she felt uncertain all over again. Was it a book she ought not have read? Sir Justenin was so shrewd, sometimes she felt like he was helping her, and sometimes she felt instinctively that he was laying out bait.

“It was philosophically interesting. Calculating the paths between stars. Not so different from this,” he said, gesturing to the cups and fruit of Barnabe Town. “A path between points. A map between heavens.”

As a conversational lure, this was irresistible. Ophele eyed him for only a moment before she pounced, though she was aware of the contrast between the lively trebuchet discussion and the far more selective circle that quickly drove away everyone but Sir Edemir, Sir Justenin, and Sir Bram. Sir Miche tipped her a wink before he slid toward the other end of the table.

“I hope it’s not too boring,” she told Remin as they walked home together in the moonlight. Her mother would have rebuked her for so exclusive a conversation, better reserved for a private salon. And tonight, Ophele felt uncertain about everything. “When we talk about geometry, and the stars.”

“Sometimes it is,” he said bluntly, but he took her hand and laid it on his own. “It pleases me that you enjoy it, wife. I’m sorry I’m not much of a scholar.”

“I’m not either,” she said, subdued. The truth was a weight. What would he do, if she turned to him and told him that she really didn’t knowanything?He wouldn’t hate her for it, would he? “I want to learn,” she said instead. “I don’t know what I think about any of it. I just repeat the things I read.”

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