“Sometimes people die.” Wearily, he wondered what sort of hellish garden he was really building for her. It was so hard to focus, he had to admit that perhaps his own fever was notcompletelygone. “What are you doing to help them tonight?”
“There are people watching the Meinhem refugees now,” she said, her fingers knotting together. “Auber is managing them. There are four people who will be checking on the sickest overnight, making sure they have fire and medicine and cooling them if they get too hot or are coughing too terribly. That is one trouble, how can we tell if someone is too hot until they’re wandering in their wits? You never did, but Genon said your fever was so high, and there must be a way…”
“If Genon doesn’t know it, you can’t be expected to invent it,” Remin pointed out reasonably, and waved at her to continue.
That was all he did, over tea and eventually supper. He listened. The chicken and dumplings might as well have beenwet straw, but he forced them down, absorbing every word as she described everything they had done, every problem she had tried to anticipate, every measure she had taken. Setting her clever mind against the world and frustrated that it would not conform to even the most carefully laid plans.
And though there were a few errors and areas where she had been excessively cautious, as Remin listened, he realized with a swell of pride and amazement that she had donewell.
She still had much to learn. No doubt Jinmin and Auber had saved her from a few mistakes. But this…this was what she wassupposedto do. She was his duchess. Not only his wife, and one day the mother of his children. She was his other half, bound to him for eternity, his partner in all things.
“If you thought Master Sharrenot needed watching, then you ought to have ordered someone to watch him,” he said, and lifted a hand as he stifled a cough, scowling. She lacked self-confidence, and this was a good opportunity for his clever wife to learn a lesson. “Did you truly think he needed it, at the time? Hindsight doesn’t count.”
“Well…Lady Verr thought he was dangerously ill,” she said, picking at a bit of chicken. Her delicate eyebrows knotted together. “I thought of having Aubin watch him that night, but…”
“Why didn’t you?”
“Well, I was afraid he wouldn’t get enough sleep, himself. He was already getting up once in the middle of the night to look in on a dozen cottages, and looking after Master Didion besides. And Genon says if people don’t sleep, then they haven’t the fire to fight off illness.”
“What would happen if Aubin got sick?” Remin asked, and listened patiently as she talked it through.
How many times had Duke Ereguil walked him through exactly this exercise? Remin was twelve when he became asquire, and began learning the business of leading men. Ophele had not had any lessons at all. All she had was her sharp, methodical mind and her determination to do her best, and this was a far more bitter test than he would ever have wished for her. But that washisfault. He had never planned for what would happen if he fell ill.
“Those are called second- and third-order effects,” he explained, with some appreciation for the irony. “I think Juste confiscated my books on such things, I’ll have him look them up. You need to consider those, too, when you’re making decisions. Not just the immediate, obvious impacts, but the ones that will follow down the line. If Genon didn’t think it would help, and you might have risked Aubin falling sick by spreading him too thin, would you change what you did?”
“No,” she said after a long moment, and looked up at him. “But…Master Sharrenot…”
“Died,” Remin answered quietly. “People die. He was a good man. I’m sorry for it, for I will miss him.”
“That’s what Genon and Auber kept saying,” she said, with a flash of frustration. “People die, just like that. But there must besomething,why isn’t there—”
“Come here.” He held out his arms with a mingling of relief and pity as she came at once, settling into his lap to cry. It did no good to tell her there was nothing she could have done. She would always feel this burden. He knew.
“I’m sorry,” she sniffed as he wrapped his arms around her, wishing she could pull off her scarf. He missed her face. “I guess I should get used to it, after the devils and everything…”
“Maybe we are all too used to it,” Remin said soothingly, and then wondered if it was true. He had experienced so much death, it had lost its power to shock and horrify him, unless that death was hers. “I don’t know if it’s a good thing,” he added reflectively. “Juste always says to learn what you can, andsend their spirits to the stars. You can’t take all that weight on yourself.”
“Hurry up and get better,” she whispered. “I am always wondering what you would do.”
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there.” He rested his forehead against hers and found her blessedly cool. “I would never have chosen this test for you, little owl. But do you know, I think the stars were very good, when they gave you to me for my duchess.”
Chapter 8 – Solstice Night
“Your Grace. My lady,” said Brother Oleare, offering a bow before he folded his long body into a chair. “I have kept the solstice night for you.”
They sat at opposite ends of the solar in the midmorning light, Remin having commandeered the space to accept reports while his cough stubbornly persisted. With a fire blazing in the enormous fireplace, it was so warm, robes and lap blankets were hardly needed. But Brother Oleare had so far avoided the illness, so he was wrapped all the way up to his eyebrows.
“You have my thanks,” replied Remin, who had been wondering uneasily if his failure to observe such religious rites might not be the cause of the plague. “Under the circumstances, I would not have tried to gather everyone together, but it is hard for us to go under the stars during winter even when there is no sickness.”
“I have been considering that, my lord,” the cleric agreed. “And with respect to the lady’s fears for the Meinhem dead, aswell.”
“We wanted to do something for them before this, and for all those people in Nandre, too,” Ophele agreed unhappily. She was the other reason Remin had summoned Brother Oleare; with nineteen dead of the sickness so far, and eight of them from Meinhem, she was taking it hard, and asking the most unanswerable questions. “We were going to wait until everyone came back, and pray for them all at once, but Sir Huber still hasn’t returned…”
It was a familiar problem. During the war, it had always been a struggle to balance rites for the dead, allowing the living to grieve, and the demands of the war. Constant funerals were terrible for morale.
“Ah, I have a thought, in this circumstance.” Brother Oleare shifted forward at the edge of his chair, his bony knees poking through his robe. “Some of the solstice rites may inform us. Now, I have kept them, as I said. I burned the incense, and contemplated the void between the stars. The spirits of your dead will not linger. But there is a prayer called thesegarde—do you know it?”
“No,” said Remin, on behalf of them both. He did not know the names of prayers.
