“You ought to help me settle in my cottage once this business is done,” Miche agreed. “All these people are servants? We’ll need to find room for a cook.”
“We’ll talk about that, too,” Juste promised, and they parted to stand in the appropriate rows as all the servants lined up so Ophele could do her duty as lady of the house. She introduced Miche and Azelma to everyone from Adelan the butler to Samin the boot boy, who offered a jaunty bow and an appealing gap-toothed grin when Miche winked at him. Miche did not need an introduction to Leonin and Davi, who immediately moved to flank Ophele.
“They’re my guards,” she told Azelma, as the two men offered polite nods. “One day, they might be my hallows. I’ve so much to tell you. Sir Davi Gosse and Sir Leonin of Breuyir, this is Azelma Bessin, who was the cook in Aldeburke. I do hope you’ll cook for us here, too, Azelma.”
Oh, that did not sit well with Reminat all.Miche pretended not to notice the black glare directed his way.
The four new laundresses were settled in the third row of cottages, and Miche frankly would have been happier to miss this phase of development altogether. He had not missed his cottage in town, and he was amused to find himself positioned between Juste and Lady Verr, like a proper troublemaker. As soon as the servants were dismissed, he followed Juste and Remin into the manor to see the west wing, where his permanent chambers would be located. Hopefully soon.
“Just do it, you’ll never hear the end of it otherwise,” Remin advised as he sat down on a bench to swap his muddy boots for house shoes.
“I’m gone two months and they’ve already domesticated you.” Miche shook his head sorrowfully.
“Sousten nags worse than the butler,” Remin said dryly. “But it’s not just him being fussy, I don’t want mud up those stairs. The carpenters promised something less steep, but I had to catch Peri myself the other day or she’d’ve broken her neck, hauling a scrub bucket up there…”
It did Miche’s heart good to hear Rem do the honors of his house, hazardous stairs and all. The west wing of the second floor was in the final phase of plastering, and he was deeply gratified to see it was larger and grander than any hall in Aldeburke. Once the plasterers and carpenters finished with the bas-relief and corbels and all the other whatsits, it would be one of the grandest homes in the Empire. The halls were so massive, they echoed as Remin led them down a wide corridor with tall double doors on either side, separated by graceful niches that made room for wide banks of windows.
“There are three suites here, and Juste already claimed that one,” Remin explained, indicating a room facing the front of the house, overlooking the courtyard. “Lady Verr—that’s Mionet Verr, née Boscillard, some connection of Duchess Ereguil’s—ison the other side. Try not to outrage her, we need her for at least another six months.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” Miche said promptly. “This will be mine?”
“Yes, though if you touch anything right now, Sousten will have a fit,” Remin warned. “The plaster takes longer to dry in the winter, it’s slowed things down a bit. But we can have a look inside, I think the plasterers finished the front room yesterday.”
It certainly smelled like it. Pushing the doors open, Miche found himself in a wide and sunny suite of rooms, with a generous sitting area, a separate bed chamber, private bath, dressing room, and three small hearths, all of them with iron grates already in place. Bare though it was, Miche could see exactly where he would place his bed and how he would arrange his sitting room, the all-but-forgotten comforts ofactualfurniture, rather than camp stools.
“It will be a proper home, Rem,” he said, flashing a smile at Remin and Juste. All three of them had lived in tents for most of the last decade.
“Do what you like with it, and don’t worry about the cost,” Remin agreed, obviously pleased to say it, and Juste shut the doors so their more serious conversation would not be overheard.
“The Hurrells were gone when I got there,” Miche reported without preamble. “None of the servants could or would say where. Which is lucky for them, or I might be up before Duke Lein on murder charges. They were abusing her, Rem. I saw the fucking closet where they kept her.”
Remin’s face darkened, but neither he nor Juste showed the slightest surprise.
“She told me some of it,” he said flatly. “Tell me the rest.”
Miche had no scruples about doing exactly that. He was a cheerful busybody who interfered whenever he thought it best,and he knew that Ophele was not a woman who complained, even when she really should. But this was well beyond mere childhood hurts, and the disappearance of the Hurrells added a sinister layer to the affair. Over the next hour, he related every word of what Azelma had told him, as well as the things he had seen for himself, from that closet of a room to the sad little bolt holes all over the estate and—most infuriating—the fact that he had found caches of food in every single one. Well-fed people did not cache food away.
“She didn’t tell me any of that,” Remin said when he was done, scrubbing his palms over his face.
“I am surprised thatnoneof the servants reported it,” Juste said, frowning. “They cannot claim ignorance. All of them might be named blasphemers. Perhaps it would be best if they were…”
He trailed off thoughtfully, and then shifted his gaze to Remin.
“If you would like, my lord, I will handle this problem,” he said. “I have already begun making inquiries. Did you think to take a list of names, Miche?’
“As it happens, I did,” Miche replied, with no qualms at all about handing them over to Juste’s questionable mercy. “I have all the household documents in my baggage. Though you needn’t look for Leise or Nenot.”
“You dealt with them yourself?” Juste asked, his scarred brow lifting.
“The law in such cases is clear,” Miche replied, untroubled by his quiet execution of Ophele’s nursemaids. “I would not presume to contest it.”
“You presume when it suits you.” Remin was not so easily placated. “You brought Lady Pavot’s cook here, of all people. Did it never occur to you that Azelma might’ve been the one to send the lady to the stars?”
Miche blinked. His face hardened.
“No,” he admitted. Trust Rem to think of that. “It did not. I thought we needed a cook for the house, and she’s the only person Ophele trusted. And she did protect Ophele, at risk to herself. But more than that, you said it yourself. She is Lady Pavot’s cook. All the way back to when she was in Segoile, and had the favor of the Emperor.”
It was such a tangle of history. It had twisted all of their lives, but no one more than Remin and Juste, who still did not know why their families had been executed. For more than eighteen years, the details of the Conspiracy had been confined to the offices of the Emperor and the highest strata of nobility, sworn to silence with the direst of oaths. That was why it wascalledthe Conspiracy.
