“That will be excellent, in the long term,” Remin had told them, pulling up the new armchair he had gotten for his birthday. Even the buttery leather failed to soothe him. He was feeling blindsided and angry. “Explain how this will affect the short term. Beginning with March.”
“I cannot argue with you, Your Grace,” Leonin had replied coolly. “It is just as you said. When we go to Segoile, if the Emperor intends to harm Her Grace, then he will surely separate us from her, and we cannot protest if we are only guardsmen.”
“Does this content you, Davi?” Remin turned to the other man, his lanky body folded up into his chair and visibly unhappy. Remin got the feeling that Davi was nearest to sharing his own opinion.
“’Course not.” Davi glanced at Ophele apologetically. “Truthfully, I’d do whatever it takes to protect the lady first, and bugger the rest. For me, my lady, I already want to swear so I can do what you said. Protect you so you can live and do whateveryou’re going to do. I want to see what that is. You’d have my sincere oath.”
“I know.” Her glance took in both Leonin and Davi. “But I don’t think it’s right to take the oath just because it’s dangerous if we don’t.”
“That is why you are taking it atall,wife,” said Remin, with an edge.
“Then we shouldn’t do it,” she said stubbornly. The color was high in her face, but she was holding her ground. “It is the Emperor’s fault we’re forced to consider such a thing. To have to swear an oath that binds our souls for—”
“My first care is that you live long enough to contemplate the state of your soul,” Remin interrupted hotly, and Ophele flushed.
“It’s—blasphemous,” she said, her voice high and excited. “I think. I don’t know if the Temple would say it is, but this oath is sacred and I don’t want to…to…insult it, because we took it for the wrong reasons.”
She had never argued with him like this before. Remin bit his tongue.
“We know our souls are real,” she went on, frightened but stubborn. “We saw our families’ spirits at the Feast of the Departed. There is something after this life, and I don’t know what it is, so I don’t know what it will be to have both of you bound to me forever. What if we do it wrong, and I can never find you there, for all time? What if I can’t find my mother? What if I can never find a heaven at all? And if I am—if I am really a child of the stars, wouldn’t it be even worse ifIdid such a thing? Tied Leonin and Davi to me for my own convenience, or because I was scared, not because I am worthy of such companions?”
These were not questions Remin had ever considered. He could not argue the reality of souls; he had felt them through the clouds of sacred incense. His dark brows drew together.
“Others did not wait so long,” he said slowly. It was a weak argument. His stomach knotted. “I read Juste’s book, too. I’m sure there’s something in what you say, but the reason hallows exist is to protect their masters inthislife.”
“I don’t deserve them.” She lifted her eyes to his, clear and golden and shining. “The only reason they would swear is because of you and my father.”
He could not argue that. She would not need hallows if it were not for Remin Grimjaw. And he had promised he would not force her to take any oaths.
“It’s your decision,” he said, and rose, his face thunderous. At the door, he forced himself to stop and speak again. “We’ll go to supper soon.”
He needed to think. He needed to get a leash on the thing that was trying to thrash loose inside him. And all the next day, he had gone over and over the argument in his mind, as if some construct of logic would be sufficient to protect her.
He found no answers, but at least his exercise with Leonin and Davi had tired him enough to broach the subject rationally.
“I just want to keep you safe,” he told Ophele in bed that night. The moon was nearly full, and its light cast diamond-patterned shadows through their wide windows, glowing on her fair skin. “Wife. I don’t want to force you.”
“I know,” she said unhappily, closing her eyes as his fingers brushed her cheek. And that wasallshe said. Remin withdrew his hand.
“Then talk to Brother Oleare,” he murmured. “Juste is no clergyman. Perhaps Brother Oleare can reassure you.”
“I will.”
They were both naked under the covers. He had made love to her again after supper, hoping to forget himself inside her, and hoping even more to beget a child. It would protect her, if she was visibly pregnant when they went to court. But the feel of her small, vulnerable body beside him was too much. Remin rolled onto his side.
“I love you,” she whispered behind him.
“I love you,” he replied, shutting his eyes.
It would have been so much easier if he had not.
***
Within the freshly painted walls of the tailor’s shop in Tresingale, a polite war was underway.
On one side was Lady Verr, commanding with fierce and glittering gray eyes. Master Marin Tiffen, newly arrived from Belleme, led the opposing force, and somehow Ophele was the small, neutral nation between them that was about to be blown to bits.
“No, a double sleeve, inner and outer,” said Lady Verr, peering over Master Tiffen’s shoulder as he hunched at his worktable, making alterations to the current design. “That was the fashion when I was last in the capital, a very wide outer sleeve and an inner sleeve that buttons down the forearm. Or perhaps, if it was a tippet, we—”
