“I’m not,” he assured her, sliding into bed and pulling her beside him to examine the object together. “Look, eyes and wings.”
“It’s supposed to be a blessing,” she sulked, picking at it with a fingernail. “It does look like a bug.”
“Maybe if it had a beak,” he said guiltily. “I’m sorry, wife. I do like it. Sew as many as you like, I’ll wear any quantity.”
“It would serve you right if I did,” she replied, looking up at him with a reluctant smile. “What would you tell everyone, when they wondered why you suddenly had bugs all over your shirts?”
“I would tell them that this is a sacred owlbug, which my wife sewed for my protection,” he answered solemnly, and made her burst into giggles.
“It’s an owl,” she said as he moved over her, pushing her legs apart. Her voice was suddenly breathy.
“It’s an owl,” he agreed huskily. The scent of her perfumed skin was making him giddy. With the valley fever and the somber reflections of solstice night behind them, he had been applying himself conscientiously to getting an heir, and the hours spent above her and in her were the most blissful of his life. If he still had dreams, they were easier to bear with the feel of her etched in his skin.
And her little blessings, stitched into his clothes.
He was aware of the small bump of another owlbug against his wrist when he met Tounot at the barracks a few days later, to prepare new quarters for Huber. Respecting Huber’s wishes, Remin had stayed away from the infirmary, though Genon had had to amputate a further two inches of Huber’s armbefore he finally rallied. Now there was nothing to do but let him heal.
“It’ll be better for him here,” said Tounot, as he and Remin heaved a heavy bedframe into position in Huber’s new bedchamber. “Gen says there’s no risk of further infection, and lying in that closet all day isn’t doing him any good. His color’s poor. He needs sunlight.”
“There will be plenty of it here,” Remin replied, shoving the bed further under the window. The deep copper in Huber’s skin and hair always seemed to gleam brighter when he’d had some sunshine, as if he needed a regular burnishing. “You might tell him about those horses Miche brought back. How’s he been doing otherwise?”
Tounot shrugged, raking a distracted hand through his curly hair.
“Juste sits with him often,” he said. “And Miche comes by to stir him up every day. But he won’t talk to any of us, and he won’t let us bring Nicco and Lege to see him. His pages need him, Rem. They’re still grieving for Rollon, too.”
“Then moving him here will be the best thing for all of them,” Remin said firmly.
They did the best they could for him. The new rooms faced south to let the sunlight pour in, and Huber’s treasures glittered on the deep windowsills: the stones he collected, books worn from his saddlebags, the strange carvings he had made beside so many lonely campfires.
His healing would not be swift. To be maimed in this way was almost a form of death, for a knight. Some men shrugged and got on with things; others brooded on the loss, and never got over it. If anything would call Huber back to himself, it would be his boys.
Remin had cause to think of Huber again a few days later, when he and his knights gathered in the council room of the barracks. There was one more village that needed rescuing.
“We need to fetch the people of Ferrede back to Tresingale,” he began. “I won’t risk leaving them to the devils when the snow begins to melt. Or when the devils start bursting out from under it,” he added grimly. Ophele had voiced this unsettling possibility.
“They might need persuading, Your Grace,” said Ortaire, who had gone to that village with Huber last summer. “We thought about bringing them back with us while we were there, but all of them refused.”
“Tell them what happened in Nandre,” said Auber, frowning. “If those houses couldn’t keep the devils out, nothing in Ferrede will.”
“I will tell them myself.” Ortaire looked at Remin. “Let me go, my lord. They know me. It might mean something if I tell them that the thing that killed Rollon is coming. They…thought highly of him.”
This was how it happened. Over and over, this spiral of self-sacrifice, from Rollon’s guilt for the dead of Ferrede to Ortaire’s grief for his friend Rollon. They wanted honor, and they wanted redemption, and so these good men kept saying,I will go.And over and over, Remin sent them, knowing they might come back maimed, or never come back at all.
Under the table, his fingers found the owlbug in his sleeve.
“Very well,” he said. “You’ll take a large force with you. Fortify your camps. We can’t count on anything with the devils this year.”
“You’ll want to get the men practicing with snowshoes now,” said Miche, Master of Snow. His face was unusually somber. “It’s no joke, traveling with commonfolk in thisweather. They’re not used to marching. You’ll do better to put them in sledges.”
“There’s time, I don’t mean for you to leave straightaway,” Remin agreed. “Provision well. We’ll need to have more cottages built before they arrive.”
“Nore Ffloce is going to have a fit,” remarked Tounot, with some amusement. But that was only one of the secondary effects of this migration. Remin had never expected Tresingale to support so many over the winter. They needed food, firewood, medicine in the event there were sick or wounded, and all the infrastructure of fledgling Tresingale was already straining.
And every additional person was another person to evacuate, if the devils had any more surprises, come spring. If they came over or through the walls of Tresingale, then maybe the Brede would devour them all, in the end.
“Let me see the town map,” Remin said, to groans of complaint. He ignored them. He had been outside town digging trenches right alongside them, sharpening pikes and other defensive objects, but it still didn’t feel likeenough.They had never had so many noncombatants to protect, and once the people of Ferrede arrived, he would have emptied the valley of every other man-thing, to use Ophele’s words. When the devils re-emerged in a few months, all of them would be coming for Tresingale.
“I begin to be persuaded of Her Grace’s arguments,” Juste told him after the meeting, as they walked together toward the harbor. The road was steep and winding, too treacherous for horses in winter, and Remin wanted to evaluate the harbor for evacuation potential. “That mountaintop concerns me, my lord. It does not seem so great a leap to think that somehow the devils are coming from inside it, and perhaps it was only the size of the entrance that restrained them before.”
