Page 112 of Traitor Son

“The rest of you had better hurry up and make your claims,” he said, looking at the enormous expanse of territory, a fifth the size of the entire Empire.

Ophele had little to say in such matters; it was all foreign to her experience. Not merely the building of a new duchy, but even this rough society. She had never known anything as simple as sitting beside the fire in company, listening to the unwinding of a conversation. It had always been just her and her mother at Aldeburke, and once Lady Pavot died, the best she could hope was to be ignored by the Hurrells.

It was wonderful. Whether they were planning the planting for the next five years or recounting war stories when they were in their cups, Ophele was content to sit at Remin’s side for hours, soaking up all this knowledge.

“No, it has to be the trebuchets outside Jardingard,” Sir Auber contested, when they were discussing some of their more lunatic exploits. “That waspureluck, it never should have worked.”

There was some dispute among the Knights of the Brede as to what their all-time stupidest plan had been. In her opinion, Sir Jinmin’s one-man assault on a supply gate at a fortress called Bitternsoundedthe most insane, but apparently there was some stiff competition.

“Jardingard is one of the border fortresses in Valleth,” Sir Tounot explained kindly to Ophele. “Rem was making it clear that he was going to invade if they didn’t surrender. Though we would have preferred not to.”

“We’d likely still be laying siege to Mindelind if we had,” said Remin, grimacing. Mindelind was the capital of Valleth, and its walls were famously twenty feet thick.

“If you’d been a second later on those trebuchets, they might have flung you halfway there,” Sir Auber said acidly.

“If I’d had three or four more Jinmins, I wouldn’t have gone,” Remin retorted. “Too many of you short bast—none of you could reach to cut the lines.”

“If you’d waited a day, Juste would’ve shown up with reinforcements. But what do you think he did instead?” Sir Auber addressed this to Ophele. “He and Jinmin stole some Vallethi uniforms and infiltrated the lines, figuring that Valleth would never guess our general would be stupid enough to go wandering around the battlefield by himself—”

“And they didn’t,” Remin pointed out.

“—and while he and Jinmin were ripping the machines apart, the rest of us mounted a charge to reach them before Valleth could move archers in to turn them into pincushions.” Sir Auber shook his head. “When I got there, Rem was dangling off the arm of the last trebuchet and if just one of those Vallethi sods had the sense of a goat, they would’ve cut the block weight loose and pasted our general against the walls of the fortress he was defending.”

“No,” Ophele breathed, her eyes round at this picturesque image.

“I think the most amazing part of the story is that Rem and Jinmin found Vallethi uniforms that fit,” Sir Miche observed dryly, to a burst of laughter.

There were dozens of stories like that, most often recounted later in the evening, after they had consumed a fair amount of wine. Ophele loved the stories about Remin best; he would never tell her such things about himself, and it was so good of his knights to do it for him, boasting of their young lord over his own protests. When they walked home together afterward, she couldn’t help looking at him, marveling. Not because he was the great military genius and hero, Remin Grimjaw, but because now she understood how he had done it. And most often, it was with creativity, courage, and brute stubbornness rather than superhuman strength.

Oddly, the more human he became to her, the more she admired him.

But it wasn’t just the stories. The workings of his mind were a constant source of fascination to her, being both opaque and relentlessly rational. Once he made a decision, it was almost as if he set up mental tripwires for the required conditions of the next step, and never mentioned it again until they had been met. Ophele herself had forgotten that she wanted to teach Jacot arithmetic until the day Remin gathered up a selection of books, took her to the cookhouse, and thrust her in front of the boy with the announcement that the time had come.

“Now?” she asked, as Jacot hastily swallowed his lunch and scrambled to his feet.

“Didn’t you say you wanted to teach him? We’ve space for it now, and it’s cooler here than the cottage with the doors open.” Remin looked surprised that she had not been preparing all along for this day.

And that was how the Andelin Valley acquired its first school, with a single student and a wildly inexperienced teacher. Every afternoon, Jacot left Eugene on some shady grazing by the wall and bolted back to the cookhouse, determined to learn as much as he could.

“Master Eugene is well,” he always assured her as he took his seat. “And Sir Justenin says he’s going to get another donkey to haul water for the west side of the wall, did you know? Digging wells and all just like they did on our wall.”

Jacot was as smugly superior with this arrangement as if he had devised it himself; the men who had worked with Ophele were very proud of their water management scheme. And as gratifying as this news was, Ophele seized on a much more interesting possibility:baby donkeys.

“Oh, I hope he gets a female,” She said rapturously, wondering if there was any way she could drop a hint.

“Dunno if Master Eugene is up to being put to stud, lady,” Jacot replied, bolting down bread and cheese as if he thought someone might take it from him. By now he knew where the lady’s priorities lay. “He’s slowing down a mite.”

“Nonsense,” Ophele said firmly. Master Eugene was the finest and noblest of donkeys, he would breed splendid babies. But Jacot did only have an hour, so she turned her book where he could see it, pointing to the poem they would be reading. Her book of poetry was the best primer available; the necessity of rhyming kept the vocabulary fairly simple, though Jacot did not appreciate the flowery language. “I have a good one today,” she promised.

“Is it?” The boy said doubtfully.

“The Hero of Vindelein,”she read, encouraging. “Penniless, fatherless, a son of the stews…”

“With a smelly old jacket and holes in his shoes,” Jacot said through a mouthful of bread, chortling.

“Stop that.” She would not laugh. Ophele felt less shy with people younger than herself, and though she had never had a teacher of her own, she had the idea that they should be very serious. “Here, go ahead and read the next line.”

Jacot was an ideal student. Eager and quick-witted, he gave Ophele the confidence to expand her efforts to the rest of the pages, who soon began to assemble for lessons during the hottest part of the day. Ophele never dreamed that the pages’ real first lesson had been on the horrors that awaited them if theyonceupset their gentle teacher, delivered by everyone from their squires to the knights to Remin himself, who promised he could throw them quite a good distance into the Brede.

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