“She was your mother’s cook.” His eyes met hers, dark and knowing. “The only person that followed her from the capital to Aldeburke. Hired for her household by the Emperor.”
“You—you think she came here tohurtme? Or you?” she asked in horror, shaking off his arm as she sat up. “Remin—she’s my friend, she…no one else took care of me. I didn’t tell you, but she even used to…sneak food to me.”
“Oh, wife, I know. Miche told me,” he said, so gently she felt like bursting into tears. “I’m sorry—”
“She didn’t do it,” Ophele interrupted, sliding out of bed and reaching for her chemise. She couldn’t talk about this while she was naked, with the feel of his skin still tingling all over her.
“We can’t be sure.” He was so veryreasonable,she felt a sudden surge of fury.
“You couldn’t be sure of me, either,” she said angrily, yanking her chemise over her head. “For months, even when I was trying so hard, and I never did anything but be my father’s daughter.”
“Ophele—” He sat up.
“No. Azelma is myfriend,” she interrupted, with furious tears burning as she snatched up her morning gown. “She was my only friend my whole life, until I came here, and you’reinsultingher. Lady Verr!”
The bedroom door thudded shut. Remin did not come after her.
It completely spoiled the snow. It spoiled everything. Lady Verr and the maids were already in the solar, and only after she was in her dressing room did she hear Remin’s heavy tread in the hallway, and his voice calling sharply for Magne.
“Master Tiffen sent a new practice gown, my lady,” Lady Verr said in an encouraging sort of way, brandishing a glorious confection of a ballgown, deep violet satin and silk with embroidered feathers, gleaming and metallic.
“It’s beautiful,” Ophele said dutifully, though the train that fell from her shoulders and trailed six feet behind her felt as if she had Remin strapped to her back instead. Sitting silently, she allowed Lady Verr to make her up and dress her hair, the full regalia that she would wear to a Segoile ball, including the pearl jewelry Azelma had brought her. Lady Verr was so happy to have real jewels, she didn’t even care that they didn’t match the gown.
It made Ophele angry all over again to think that Azelma had risked so much, even stealing jewelry and bringing it all this way, just so Ophele could have a little bit of her mother.
How could Azelma do that, if she was the one who had killed her? Slowly, overyears,with poison.
“House Pomeret?” Lady Verr said, when they were settled in the solar beside the roaring blaze of the fire, sewing in hand. Lady Verr had been conscientiously reviewing the key figures of each duchy of Segoile, beginning with Agnephus and Melun, though she cautioned that she had little personal experience with these most powerful families.
“Duke Wandrille Pomeret and Duchess Edelene,” Ophele recited. “Forty-seven and thirty-nine years old, eight children. He is fat and likes his drink and she enjoys weaving and embroidery. She is pious and he likes to appear so, and they make many offerings to the Temple.”
It was mean to say such things about people she had never met. And Ophele did not like knowing who had mistresses and whose first wife had died under suspicious circumstances and whose children bore a striking likeness to the head footman. It was all so…ugly.
“And?”
“And their oldest son is nineteen, and has made an offer for the Crown Princess.” Ophele had not wanted to hear about the Emperor and Empress, but she was secretly wild with curiosity about her half-sister. What must it have been like, to grow up in Starfall, the object of so much attention and expectation? “But he is not expected to succeed.”
“Or was not, when I left,” Lady Verr qualified. “It is important to remember that such things can shift overnight. What are the names of high House Pomeret?”
This was easy, rote memorization, and Ophele hardly had to pay attention as she rattled off ages and names and hobbies, along with the names of key retainers and even some of the more interesting figures from the cadet branches, including one who had run away from home to join a troupe of actors.
Justenin had told her that the foundations of House Pomeret’s power were cattle and piety: they had made their fortune on the inland plains of the Empire, then bullied their way into many other interests, particularly in the Temple. It was interesting to see how the scales of power weighed, and to learn how each of the Great Houses of the Empire had accumulated it. But today, it only reminded her that Remin had once madejust such a dossier abouther,and she wondered unhappily how much this exercisereallyrevealed about those distant people.
“I know the gown is heavy, but please remember to sit up straight, my lady,” Lady Verr reminded her, and Ophele adjusted herself again with a sigh. Silk and satin were all very well, but when the gown was sufficiently heavy she felt in danger of sliding right off her chair. “That was all correct; we will move on to House Firkane…”
Ophele had never been good at sustaining anger. But there were so many factors in its favor at the moment, from her gown to the gossip to the heavy blanket over her lap, upon which she was sewing an endless seam. The tight backstitches were meant to be as tiny and even as humanly possible, or else she would have to unpick them and do them again. It was excellent practice, and she was inhell.
She was so rarely angry, she didn’t know what todowith it. She wanted to fling the blanket away and rip off the heavy, beautiful dress, she didn’t want to be doinganyof this. Learning nasty things about people she didn’t know, with Davi and Leonin standing at the wall like statues, listening to every word as if this werenormal. No one had ever asked if she wanted to do this. Any of it.
During her dance lesson, she was so singularly terrible at keeping the tempo, Leonin called a halt mid-lesson.
“My lady, are you well?” he asked.
“Yes.”
“It’s all right if you aren’t,” said Davi, bending down with a worried look in his eye.
“I am fine,” she said, looking him dead in the face. There was a meaningful silence.
