Hard work had always been one of Remin’s favorite refuges.
He was convinced it did him good to be just another man with a shovel, and it certainly did his men good to see him laboring beside them. In the excitement over the first real snow of the year, none of the men from the barracks protested when they were ordered off to the market with their shovels. Once that was clear, they moved out to the major roads, with many good-natured wagers over who would be done first.
“It isnotcalled Goose Road,” Remin said for the hundredth time, after Miche had ordered a second group of men up that way.
“Well, you’d better come up with another name soon, or that one’s going to stick,” Miche replied, sinking his spade into the snow. “Victorin Avenue?”
It was an unusually serious suggestion, and Remin’s brows knit.
“No…”
“Clement Highway.”
“No.”
“Bon Street.”
Both men paused in their shoveling. That one actually had a ring to it.
“Maybe,” said Remin thoughtfully. “You know whattheywould have said.”
“Mmm-hmm. Ludovin would’ve laughed himself sick, to be a namesake,” said Miche, smiling crookedly.
“I thought about naming my sons after them,” said Remin, resuming his shoveling. “When they come along. And I thought—maybe I would name the new bridge after Rasiphe.”
“I like that,” Miche agreed, tossing a shovelful of snow into the trees. “But if you ask me, I’d tell you to name your boys what they look like, Rem. If one strikes you as a Victorin, then fine, but that’s a heavy weight to put on a boy, naming him for a dead hero.”
That was a fair point; he hadn’t thought of it like that. Remin was going to an awful lot of trouble to keep his children from knowing the burdens of their parents.
“But what do I know?” Miche added. “I haven’t any youngsters of my own. That I know of.”
“I think their mothers would have claimed you, if you did,” Remin said dryly. A few of them had already tried. “I like Rasiphe for the bridge. And Bon did like to sing. You know Nore’s planning to put a theater on that road one day. It would be a fine thing, to call it Bon Street.”
“He would have liked that,” Miche said appreciatively. “What about Clement?”
“Something at the Court of War. The training hall,” Remin said, the idea coming to him as if it had been waiting for exactly the right moment.
“Clement Sparrowheart?” Miche laughed. That was one of the kinder names Clement had been called, and Miche himselfhad bestowed a few of them. Clement had wanted to be a knight, and Miche had done him the courtesy of believing him, and then doing his best to break him. “Promise me there will be a statue. The short knight, with spectacles and a stutter.”
“Who trained harder than anyone else,” Remin agreed, meeting Miche’s glance with perfect understanding. If there was any example he wanted to set before his men, it was not himself. It was Clement in the stoneyards of Rospalme, in the rain, in the dark, in the sweating humidity of an Ereguil summer, working harder than anyone else just to be average. Sir Clement of Feuille, who they had found in the center of a small mountain of Vallethi dead.
“Some of the others will be more difficult,” Miche said thoughtfully. “Unless you want to dedicate the Ludovin Saccey Memorial Brothel.”
“I don’t think so,” Remin said, but he couldn’t help a snort of laughter. Maybe they might name the theater itself for him. Ludovin, the accomplished mimic. Hanged as a spy.
The thought drove the smile off his face.
“We need to do something about these shovels,” he said, after they had worked in silence for a time. “This is meant to take the place of morning exercises. I can’t even break a sweat with this thing.”
“And we’re going to be all day about it, besides,” Miche agreed, casting a glance down the lines of laboring men. “I’ll see what I can do about it, as Master of Snow.”
Shouldering his shovel, he about-faced and marched away, leaving Remin shaking his head. Miche’s nonsense was exactly what he needed, and there was a great deal of satisfaction in imagining Tresingale’s ever-evolving maps, whereBon Streetwould replaceGoose Road.
But all too soon, Remin’s mood soured, as all the other things he had been trying not to think about floated back to the surface.
He wasnotgoing to apologize.
Remin dug deep into the snow, wishing all his problems could be solved with a shovel. Along the lines on either side of him, dozens of other shovels were moving, the men jeering each other good-naturedly about who could fling their snow the furthest. The farther the better; winter would be long, and there would be much more snow to come.
