“The Lord and Lady Havellin had a h-happy…” He was looking right at her. Mild, patient Justenin, with his pale blue eyes and the scar bisecting his right eyebrow. She talked to him easily every day. But now, Ophele’s tongue twisted and she halted as that hateful heat crawled up the back of her neck.
“A little louder, please, my lady,” said Sir Justenin gently.
“The Lord and L-lady…” Ophele stopped, resisting the urge to hide behind her book. Drew a breath. Tried again. She hadn’t read aloud since her mother died; there had been no one to readto.“The Lord and Lady Hav—Havellin…”
She plowed on, unable to meet his eyes, working down the list of tongue-twisters. The book explained that such exercises were meant to correct pronunciation and forced the speaker to slow down; things likeI saw a kitten eating chicken in the kitchencould only be safely spoken one syllable at a time. But then one of the secretaries happened to glance in her directionand Ophele actuallyfeltthe beads of sweat burst along her hairline.
It was ridiculous. If she had been speaking to him at supper, it wouldn’t have bothered her at all. There was no reason to be afraid, no one was doing a thing to her. But suddenly all she could think about was what ifallof the secretaries turned to look at her, stuttering her way through the tongue-twisters like an imbecile, and a heavy weight thumped squarely onto her chest.
“That will suffice,” Justenin interrupted. His eyes were thoughtful. “Let us discuss rhetoric.”
The forms of argumentation were soothingly logical, and Ophele took a bitter pleasure in constructing her arguments and then refuting them, as she had done so often over supper with Edemir, Bram, and Justenin. She could construct arguments all day, so long as she didn’t have to say them out loud.
Ophele was very quiet as Davi handed her onto Brambles’ back that evening. It seemed an age had passed since she had been so afraid to confess her ignorance to Remin. Had it really only been a few days?
“You have consumed a great quantity of information today, my lady,” said Justenin, who had elected to ride back to the manor with them. “Tomorrow we will see how much of it you can retain. If you find that it is too much, we will adjust accordingly.”
“It’s fine,” she said automatically. Her head did feel strangelyfull,but she thought she still had the capacity for more grammar, perhaps with some nice linear equations for a reward afterward.
“If you insist on continuing to work, I would suggest oratory,” he said blandly, as if these thoughts had been printed across her eyeballs. “I recall when I was a boy, the brothers would have us recite before the whole class.”
The thought made her stomach drop, as if she had slipped on the stairs. Ophele nodded. He was right, of course. She would have to learn it. It was embarrassing, having lessons at her age, but hadn’t Jacot said the same thing, that day by the wall? He had sat side-by-side with eight-year-old Valentin to learn long division. Ophele had been wishing for books and teachers for months, and now she had them. She would be grateful.
They rode up to the manor to find Remin coming out of the stables, huge and shaggy with his new black bear cloak over his shoulders and his sword strapped to his back. It made her feel better just to see him.
“I was hoping I’d catch you together,” he said, moving to intercept Brambles. The big horse was steaming away toward the stable, eager for his supper. “I understand you’ve got reservations, wife, but if we’re going to court, we’ll need to talk about your hallows.”
Stars and blazes.
She almost said Davi’s oath out loud. And as Davi and Leonin turned toward her, Ophele tried to remember everything she had just learned about the construction of a persuasive argument.
Chapter 2 – A Trial of Steel
“Get up,” said Remin, moving back a pace without shifting the ready angle of his sword. “Try again.”
He took no satisfaction in watching Davi and Leonin wobble back to their feet, their panting breaths rasping through the visors of their helmets. Notionally, they had just secured an imaginary Ophele’s retreat through the door behind them, but they had had to resort to absorbing his bruising, bludgeoning attack with their armor rather than fighting back. If he had wanted to kill them, he could have.
Wordlessly, the two men moved into position, Leonin in front and Davi slightly behind, where his greater reach could be used to best advantage.
“Are we guarding the door, each other, or another point, Your Grace?” asked Leonin, polite and breathless.
“Secure a route to a carriage,” Remin replied, and pointed to the gate on the other side of the paddock. “There.”
They barely had a chance to turn their heads and lookat it before he attacked, chopping his sword toward Leonin’s head. The other man swiftly pivoted to parry, the clash of steel ringing through the air. Leonin had been the one to suggest these exercises, scenarios a guardsman might reasonably expect to encounter, and Remin was the most ferocious antagonist available. They only had four months before they left for Segoile.
Though a lack of training was not their greatest concern. For now, and for the foreseeable future, Davi and Leonin were nothing but exceedingly devoted guardsmen.
Just thinking of last night’s argument with Ophele was like a heaping of coals into his gut. Remin sucked in a breath and attacked again, pressing Davi and Leonin inexorably toward the paddock fence, constantly searching for a way to smash through the wall of their bodies to get to the imaginary Ophele on the other side. He had been planning to practice with them anyway, but he took a vindictive pleasure in it today.
Stars, did she think hewantedher to be bound forever to two other men? Did she think he enjoyed knowing that she spent a greater portion of her day with her guards than her husband? Had it not occurred to her, when she worried that they would know all her secrets, that Remin worried about the same thing? He had never thought he was a jealous man—though it was true, he had never before had an opportunity—but he could never like knowing that other men might know her better than he did. He hated that his wife must have such guardians. He was enduring it because he had no choice.
“Leonin, the gate,” Davi puffed, muffled through his helmet, a split second before Remin lunged to intercept them. Knocking Leonin’s sword aside, he smashed in with a shoulder charge, but the smaller man sidestepped just as Davi shoved forward, covering the gap between them. And they got the gate.
They were getting better. Neither of them would ever defeat Remin in a fight, but they weren’t trying to unseathim as Supreme Sword. A good guardsman was a shield, an obstruction, and these two were learning to work very well together. In time, they would do some of these exercises with Ophele, and teach her how to simultaneously move with them and stay out of their way.
The three of them were already learning how to maneuver around each other, apparently.
It had been Leonin who explained their vision of Andelin’s hallows the night before, once they had trooped into the solar for a more private conversation. A noble tradition, in which the hallow and the soul-sworn endeavored all their lives to deserve each other. Remin would have to think through the implications of such a scheme for his descendants, but he had to admit that this was normally the sort of thing he loved. A blend of ancient tradition balanced against the needs of the present, with high expectations and uncompromising judgments.
