“Just a touch of fever.” The old lady tried to sound reassuring, but they both knew what it meant. “You don’t need to worry. I’ve plenty of tea and am quite comfortable.”
“I’ll send for Genon tomorrow,” she managed, trying to think past the sudden surge of fear and anger. “You will be all right tonight, won’t you? You won’t be too cold, and can manage your fire yourself?”
“Of course I can, child, don’t be a goose,” Azelma replied, and even opened the door so Ophele might glimpse her face, pink but still fierce. “Now go on, you ought not linger in the chill either.”
She would be all right tonight. Surely Azelma could hold on to see Genon tomorrow, she could not have come all this way to die, like poor Master Sharrenot. But Ophele finished bringing food to the rest of the cottages in a numb, helpless horror, struggling to think of something,anything,that had not already been thought of.
“I can look in on everyone once more before bed, Your Grace,” Emi promised. “Isn’t Mr. Adelan already getting better? I’m sure there’s naught to fear.”
“Thank you, Emi. Make sure you dress warmly.” Ophele tried to smile. It was true, Adelan did seem better, though Magne’s voice had been hoarse and querulous with fever. The valet was a small man going dry with age, just as Master Sharrenot had been.
Who else would die tonight? How many more would die before the sickness ran its course?
Inside, a hot and choking lump swelled in her throat and Ophele covered her mouth with her hand to stifle a sob. People died. She knew that. But she was supposed to protect them somehow, only she didn’t know how, and how was she ever going to tell Remin what had happened?
The high, grand halls were cold and still, and filled with the soft sound of weeping.
***
For a long time, Remin knew nothing.
His sleep was long and deep, like falling into a pit. He dreamed. Sometimes of Ophele, often of the war, sometimes of long-ago summer days. Sometimes it was the same dreams that had haunted him ever since the Emperor’s messenger had arrived, horrible visions of the Place of White Stones. He woke up calling for Ophele, terrified when she did not come, but he was so hot, it was never long before he fell asleep again.
He dreamed of that, too, the day in the Brede when Ophele had had her sun sickness. Maybe this was how she had felt, broiling as she labored under the merciless summer sun. Maybe this was how Bon had felt as his guts writhed inside him until he died. There were many awful things that he might have seen in his fever-dreams, but the one that left tears on his cheeks was the fleeting vision of his boyhood in Ereguil, with Victorin shoving him awake and Miche’s voice drawling from the door…
“My lord,” said a voice. Sometimes it was Juste. Sometimes it was Genon. Most often it was Ophele. They gave him sweet tea and foul-tasting medicines. There was cool water and Ophele’s soft hand touching his face, the scent of her skin, and Remin was tired of being sick, he wantedup,but he just couldn’t seem to stay awake…
And then one afternoon, he sat up in bed with a watery winter sun shining through the windows and looked around.
For the first time in days, it didn’t feel as if his head was going to fall off and shatter on the floor.
Squinting, he found his bedchamber in the usual configuration and a fire crackling in the wide hearth. The house was utterly silent. Though he was not often home in the middle of the day, Remin knew that the manorshouldbe a hive of activity, with builders, carpenters, and plasterers busy on every floor, servants moving up and down the stairs, and Ophele in the solar, cramming knowledge into her head as fast as she could.
Ah, but Ophele had said that everyone was sick.
The memories came back to him in stages as he rose and tottered off to the bath chamber, and he felt almost human again after a bath and a shave. And since he was unsupervised, he dug through his wardrobe to pull out his oldest and rattiest clothes, which he had carefully concealed from Magne. To be sure, his appearance had improved considerably with the attention of a valet, but formal clothing always made him feel faintly harassed, as if he must account for every lost button.
Where was Ophele?
Remin felt like a bear lumbering through the chilly house, a headache thumping behind his eyes. He had told her she should stay home, he didn’t want her out in the cold, breathing sick air. She was so small, what would happen if she got sick herself?
In the bedchamber, he found stacks of papers on the table by the fire, maps of the town that looked almost like the plan of some campaign. Someone must have taught this to Ophele; he recognized the movement of supplies at a glance, and the division of the town into quarters. What on earth had she been doing while he was ill?
“Ophele?” he called, and heard only the echoes of his own outburst of coughing.
He found more clues in the solar. All the food and medicine in the house was being distributed there, with many small earthenware crocks and beakers lined up at one end of the long table. But Ophele herself was nowhere to be found, and neither was anyone else. Even these small exertions laid a film of sick, slippery sweat over his skin, but Remin wrapped himself warmly with a thick muffler around his throat and went outside.
He wasn’t going to do anything drastic, like fetching Lancer and riding into town to demand a report. Yet. But as he stepped out into the cold and looked through the naked trees to the town below, with smoke rising from the many chimneys, he had the infuriating sense that important things had been happening without him, and his hands had been forcibly removed from the reins.
“Juste?” He knocked on the door of Juste’s cottage, squinting against the brightness of the sun on the snow. It looked like almost every chimney in the servants’ quarters was working away, belching forth woodsmoke. “Juste, are you there?”
If Juste answered, it was too quiet to hear. Remin jerked one shoulder impatiently and pushed the door open, shutting it before the heat could escape. Juste was asleep in his bed, his angular cheeks hectic with fever. Remin paused to make sure he didn’t look like dying and then went to build up the fire.
Whether it was a tent or cottage or apartment in Segoile, all of Juste’s spaces always ended up looking the same: comfortably disarranged, with stacks of books on every available surface and half-burned candles squeezed between them. Juste had been carting the same shabby chair from place to place for the last seven years, much-battered, patched, and repaired, and Remin pulled it up to the hearth and laid a few logs in the grate, feeding the coals with some kindling.
“You should be abed, my lord,” croaked Juste, and Remin looked back to see his eyes were slits of awareness, dull with sickness.
“I came to see that you’re not like to die in yours.” And to find out what was going on. Remin dusted off his hands and dragged the chair beside Juste’s narrow cot. “You look wretched, Juste.”
