Page 111 of Traitor Son

No matter what goes tumbling down

There’s only one gentle-hearted spirit you can call

There went me hammer off the side

And me trowel’s in a glide

Oh come and save me, nimble lady of the wall!

“Oh,no!”Ophele gasped, as Miche threw his head back and roared with laughter. Remin glanced between them. He had heard of the lady of the wall before, but he had decided not to inquire closely; a good lord let his men have their fun.

Her reaction was likely everything they had dreamed. Scarlet to her ears, she was covering her face with her hands and peeking through her fingers at Remin as if her whole castle of lies was collapsing at once. Every verse was more absurd than the last and before long the entire cookhouse was singing the ridiculous song, including the Knights of the Brede, who thoroughly enjoyed such jokes. And though Remin would have a word with her later about whether it was really advisable for a noblewoman to climb about in scaffolding, at that moment she was laughing so hard she was breathless, and he was just soproudof her.

“My lady?” Miche stood and offered an extravagant bow. “Will you honor me with a dance?”

“I’m…not very good,” Ophele said apprehensively, as she gave him her hand.

“You won’t need to be,” he promised, and the men cleared a space before the high table so they could dance the Lady of the Wall off her feet. She looked a little pale to be under so many eyes, but Miche whispered something that made her laugh and spun her into the music, then handed her off to Juste for the next song and Huber after that, who knelt to ask for her hand with deadpan gravity. Ophele’s eyes widened and she dipped a curtsy, smiling.

If she had needed to dance, they would have thoroughly exhausted her, but her feet scarcely touched the floor. By the time Bram set her into a neat figure at the end of the next song, her eyes went immediately to Remin, happy and laughing and wanting to share it with him, and suddenly it felt as if everything else in the world dissolved away, leaving only her. The loveliest thing he had ever seen.

Ah.

He loved her.

He knew it. He knew it as surely as he knew his own name. It was like flying and it was like drowning, beautiful and dreadful, and somehow inescapably inevitable. How long had he suspected that he would love her? When had he actually begun? The Lady of the Wall. Who else would have become the Lady of the Wall for him?

His hands felt like ice as he rose to go to her, and his heart was hammering fear and love, love and fear. But he still went, though his legs wanted to carry him past her and out the cookhouse doors.

“My lady,” he said, offering her a big hand, and Bram relinquished her with a bow.

“Your Grace.” Ophele’s fingers vanished into his and he wrapped an arm around her waist, swinging her easily into the next song. Boots stomped the rhythm around them. Hands clapped. Remin knew how to dance, even if his long-ago dancing master had once witheringly described it as what one might expect to see if a fireplace poker decided to promenade through a ballroom.

But it wasn’t like that with her. In his arms she felt like warm, living silk, a wisp of a girl with long skirts and hair whirling in the turns. It was so easy to move with her. Maybe it was because he already knew her body so well. He had held her, carried her, picked her up and pinned her down, helped her dress and tended her. He remembered all of it as he danced with her, the times he had seen her drunk and weeping, sick and heartsick, the times when she was laughing, delighted, and crying out with pleasure.

Faster. The song was swifter on the chorus and Remin heard the roaring of the singing, matching his quick feet to the music. Ophele’s face was flushed with exertion as she tried to keep up with him, her small red slippers beating a tattoo. Looking into her golden eyes was like falling into the stars. He wanted to kiss those red lips. He wanted to love her and make love to her and keep her by his side always.

And if he was wrong about her, she would cut out his heart.

Faster. Faster. The song had a tongue-twister of a chorus, light and quick, and at the end of it they landed together so perfectly, it was as if the whole world took a breath. Her body was pressed against him, herbreath panting with his, and her face was turned up to his, glowing. Her eyes. Ah, those eyes. He could see nothing else.

Now was the moment, if he wanted to seize it. Now was when he could bid them all goodnight and take her home to their bed. Maybe it didn’t have to be this way between them. Maybe it wasn’t too late to make her love him. Maybe…

Remin bent his head and pressed his lips to the back of her hand, a gesture filled with the courtly elegance of the nobleman he had been born.

“Thank you for the dance,” he said quietly, relinquishing her to Tounot. There was a flash of confusion in her face; he must have betrayed himself, somehow. But though he tried to look reassuring, he had reached the limits of his endurance. As the men burst into another song, he faded back through the crowd and slipped out the doors into the twilight.

At the high table with his brother knights, Miche of Harnost watched through narrowed eyes, reading the tale before him with deepening disquiet.

Chapter 13 – Greater than Fear

In a curious contradiction, the building of the walls opened the town.

To be sure, the soldiers’ barracks had been under construction for some time, and all the arriving merchants and tradesmen had already been on their way to the valley long before. But almost overnight, it seemed Tresingale transformed from a settlement under siege to a frontier town. At last, the defenses began to move away from the vulnerable camps and sleeping places, tightening around the gaps in the walls, and now men could sit around their campfires at night, talking and drinking and dicing, then seek their beds without fear.

Those beds had moved at last from the cookhouse to the barracks, which left room for other society, the first real society Ophele had ever known. After supper in the evening, whenever Remin and his knights were not on guard themselves, they lingered by the fire, spreading their maps over all the tables and endlessly planning. For hours she listened with fascination as Sir Bram spoke of planting vineyards on the hills east of town. Sir Justenin wanted to build an observatory overlooking them, for the peaceful study of the stars. Sir Tounot dreamed of a town of his own, beside a shining blue lake on the plateau.

He had looked oddly sorry when he said it, but Remin had only nodded and marked the site on the map, making Sir Tounot the first Marquis of the Andelin, master of lands yet unnamed.

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