Page 47 of Traitor Son

And that was that. He couldn’t stand her enough to sleep beside her, but soon enough he would put a child in her. Silently, she turned away to slip under the blankets. The mattress was filled with lumpy wool, but it was soft, even if the bed was so big she felt like a single potato bumping around in a very large barrel.

She didn’t look at him as he laid down the same bedroll he’d been using for more than a month, but she heard the rushes rustling underhim as he stretched out. There was barely enough room for him to lie down in the small room.

“If you wake up and hear something outside, don’t be afraid.” His voice rumbled from the dark. The coals in the hearth had burned down, and there was only the faintest glimmer of starlight through the cracks in the shutters. “It’ll be one of the lads. There’s always a guard on this house, watching every window and door.”

“All right.”

Despair would have been easy. And for a time, she indulged it, and let the tears streak her cheeks in silence, well-practiced after many years of soundless weeping. But Ophele’s mind was a busy place, and her life had never been her own. No matter how limited her options, no matter how cramped her prison, she had never been able to stop seeking a way out. A pattern she might exploit. A solution to the problem.

The Will Immanentsaid there was a purpose to everything, especially in this imperfect creation. Purpose was the gift of imperfection. The divine world was perfect, flawlessly ordered, but in a perfect world there was no purpose, no reason to learn, to work, to grow. There might be debts owed in an imperfect world, but they could be paid. An imperfect world was a work in progress. An imperfect world could be changed.

Shecould change it, if she was brave.

Chapter 6 – A Poisoned Sweet

His wife did look as if she could fit in very small spaces.

Remin woke up early his first morning back in the Andelin, when the outlines of his furnishings were just visible in the morning gloom. A cottage floor was an improvement over the side of the road, but he grimaced as he sat up, rubbing the back of his neck. For a moment, he wondered if he’d overindulged the night before, but then he spotted the small shape in the middle of his bed.

The princess was a nester. Even with the whole wide bed to stretch out in, she was curled up in the center, hugging a pillow and burrowed into the blankets so only the top of her head showed. The Emperor’s daughter, sleeping in his bed at the far end of the empire. Alone.

This was what he had wanted.

There was a small washstand next to the hearth, and he took the opportunity to strip down and wash, then brushed his teeth. He had long waged an internal debate between fashion and practicality; he had been born the son of a duke, but he had grown up as something worse than a peasant; more like a particularly insidious species of vermin that the Emperor just couldn’t kill. The affectations of nobility most often felt like a waste of time—for example, shaving—but people set store by appearances. One of the reasons he had brought his wife to Tresingale was to begin civilizing the place.

Beginning with himself.

Grumbling inside, Remin shaved. They needed a public bath. There were such places in the capital, everything from practical and minimalistfacilities for peasants to luxurious places where nobles met to socialize and connive while they were scrubbed, massaged, and beautified. The princess was too polite to show it, but the stink from his men last night had singed his own nostrils, never mind what it must have done to her aristocratic little nose.

Maybe he’d bump the bathhouse up a few spaces on the list of priorities. Genon had been nagging about personal hygiene for months anyway.

Tugging a fresh shirt and pair of leather breeches on, Remin went to wake the princess, who generally needed some time before she was sensible. He had applauded himself for his restraint the night before, but as soon as she sat up, foggy-eyed and disheveled, with her chemise slipping off one slim bare shoulder, it all came roaring back.

“…time izzit?” she mumbled, squinting into the middle distance.

“Almost dawn.” Remin’s jaw tightened. Why did she have to look like that? He refused to confuse himself or her any further. They had a political marriage, and he knew he was already dangerously soft-hearted toward her, or her tears wouldn’t make him feel like he deserved nothing more than a hanging. “Get up and get dressed.”

“Mmm.” She covered her mouth with the back of her hand, yawning, and he turned away to build a fire so he wouldn’t forget himself.

The thing about traitors and spies was that one had to consider the work from their point of view. Assassins were lightning bolts, but traitors and spies were chameleons, blending in, biding their time, wearing the face of a trusted friend, servant, or sweetheart. He would rather face a hundred assassins than one spy. He had never once felt guilty for killing an assassin. Killing a spy who wore the face of a friend was something that haunted.

Remin was sure that traitors didn’t think about their treachery every moment of the day. They couldn’t; no one could live that way. Those moments of friendship, affection, and trust had to be real, part of a complex web of manipulation and—he was sure—cognitive dissonance from the traitor. They would do whatever it took to get close and stay close, and then await their orders. It might be days, weeks, or even years, but the order would come.

It had always come. He knew how these things worked. He was a fool if he let himself forget it.

“Usually we go to the cookhouse for something to eat in the morning,” he said as he lit the kindling and slowly added larger branches to the blaze. “Food isn’t allowed in the cottages to minimize vermin, though you’ll still hear field mice in the thatching. Between Wen and Genon, we mostly keep them at bay, but I hope you’re not afraid—”

He glanced back to see if the temptress was dressed yet and stopped talking.

She was asleep.

Sitting up. Her elbow on her knee and her chin propped on her hand, with her eyes closed and the curves of her breasts plainly showing at the neck of her chemise. Through her parted lips, she was very softly snoring.

This sort of thing was why he had to lecture himself about assassins and spies. Bending, he shook her shoulder, trying to keep the corner of his mouth from twitching. This was not funny. It was not cute.

“Wake up.”

She sucked in a breath and her eyes opened up wide.

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