“I’m sure we all shall be, Your High—my lady,” Azelma said, squeezing Ophele’s wrist as she let herself be helped up the steps to the first floor, which were shallow and wide, to allow the safe transportation of heavy loads. They finished their tour just in time to see Remin, Miche, and Justenin at the front door, stomping back into boots that Samin had just finished cleaning.
“Oh, there you are, wife,” said Remin, rising promptly for a visual inspection. “You were downstairs?”
“Yes, Master Didion was showing us the kitchen and the servants’ quarters,” she said, catching his arm impulsively. “Azelma knows all about how a proper kitchen is run, isn’t it marvelous? She can tell us just how it ought to be set up.”
“It will be good to have the benefit of her experience,” he replied, and Ophele was too pleased to catch the acidity in his words. “I’ll have Wen send supper up tonight, wife. We cannot ask Mistress Bessin to begin straightaway. And…Mistress Bessin,” he said, turning his head to rest cool black eyes upon her. “Miche has told me of some of your kindnesses to my wife. You have my gratitude.”
“I wish there had been more of them, my lord,” Azelma replied, a slightly perplexing reply that made Ophele glance between them, wondering. Remin only squeezed her hand.
“I’ve some matters to discuss with Miche and Juste, wife. It may be a late night.”
“Itwillbe a late night,” Miche said, with a wink for Ophele that made her smile. “Master Didion, a pleasure as always. Do something about those blasted steps, won’t you?”
***
There were some discussions that could only be held with discretion. Dangerous conferences in closed rooms, held in whispers with guards at the doors. Sacred secrets that could only be confided over a campfire, beneath the light of stars.
Other conversations were best suited to the confines of an outdoor Benkki Desan bath, with Master Balad at a discreet distance, steam drifting into the cold air, and lanterns glowing, warm and golden.
And alcohol. Lots and lots of alcohol.
“…four hundred and ninety miles,” Remin was saying heavily, and not for the first time. “It takes a month to get to Selgin, and that’s with strong men and good horses. He might have five hundred people to bring back, what was I thinking?”
“You were thinking it was Huber.” Miche jabbed Remin with his cup. “Fucking Huber.”
“Fucking Huber,” agreed Tounot, lifting his cup for a toast.
All of Remin’s men had their strengths. Huber was the dark horse, metaphorically and literally: a worker of miracles, turning up when he was most needed and least expected. Tounot was the one for a song, when his heart wasn’t broken. If Edemir had been there, he would’ve been the one sober enough to get everyone home, and slipping a few extra sovs into Master Balad’s hand for his trouble. Juste would listen for hours, if a man wanted to talk.
And if Miche had been willing to own a skill, it was this: knowing when to get them drunk and let them complain.
“You didn’ see the devils.” Remin was on his way to being well and truly inebriated.“Wedidn’ see ’em either. There’s new devils, did you know?”
“One for sure,” agreed Auber, floating on his back in the steaming water and naked as a jay. He lifted a finger, then considered it and raised another. “Maybe two.”
“Is there really?” Miche asked, shocked.
“It could be more than two,” said Juste without lifting his head. Miche had always found it strangely apt that the upright Juste was the first to keel over, when drunk; not unconscious, just boneless, as if whatever stiffened his spine was soluble in alcohol. “One of which has poisonous quills. Like a porcupine. It is quite fascinating, there was an experiment with a goat—”
“Thass the devil that destroyed Nandre,” Remin said, as Juste trailed off into contemplative mumbling. And though the stars knew Remin had excuse to be a brooding sort of fellow, and Miche would’ve thought less of any man who wasn’t bothered by the destruction of two villagesso far,this wouldn’t do at all.
“But you sentHuber,”he repeated. “’Member that day by the Herugel Pass, the day before we meant to march on the fort? He went for a piss in the morning and didn’t come back, and we all thought a devil got him or he’d been captured or fell off the side of the mountain? And he came back that night with a hundred prisoners. The whole fucking enemy scout force.”
“He made them tie themselves up,” Remin said reminiscently. He was sprawled against the stone side of the bath with his huge arms outstretched, his big chest heaving with a sigh. Beside him were multiple trays filled with the sharp, heady spirit Benkki Desans brewed from some lethal white berry, sloshed into tiny wooden cups that were barely big enough for a good gulp. Miche had begun the night by challenging Tounot to see who could empty more of a tray.
Shit, Tounot.
Shaking his head to clear it, Miche fumbled about and hauled him out of the water by his hair. Tounot kept wanting to slide under.
“He’s gonna build a village next to mine,” Tounot slurred. “He said village ’cause fuck towns. Bottom part of the Talfel Plateau, he wants it for horses. Said he’d trade me horses for food.”
“His horses have come,” Juste reported, rousing. “Twenty of them. They were to come back in August, but one of the mares was late in foal and he would have no others. Another noble lineage, like that blasted bull—”
“Sometimes you don’twantanother,” Tounot retorted. He was as adept as any nobleman at concealing his feelings, but the pain surfaced now, his voice ragged. “I have told her and told her, I don’twantanyone else, and all she will say is that there’s plenty of stars in the sky…”
“There are,” Remin agreed, his eyes weaving upward until his head fell backward. “Lots.”
“I wanted that one.”
