Page 99 of Traitor Son

He dragged the second chair around the table beside him and she padded over barefoot, wondering at the mismatch between his face and his words.

“I’ve been working with Edemir on supply orders,” the duke explained, turning the piece of paper toward her. “We have to keep track of the current population of the valley so we make sure we have enough rations, grains and vegetables especially. You can see here, these are Genon’s requirements for nutrition…”

“Oh, you were counting,” she said, when she saw the long columns of figures. His eyebrows went up in surprise.

“On my fingers? Well, we can’t all of us do sums in our heads.” His face was still stern, but after many hours of bored observation, she thought maybe he wasn’t offended or being sarcastic. “We have to provision not just the current population, but also all the incoming craftsmen and builders, and Auber’s family, when they arrive. So you see, we have to compare how much we need now and add the requirements for the new people to project how much we’re going to need then, and get the supply wagons moving. They don’t arrive overnight.”

“Can I help?” she asked, rapidly skimming the page. There wasn’t much to it, just lots of sums.

“Show your work until Edemir is satisfied.” The duke picked up a spare feather and pulled out his belt knife to trim a new quill. “He makes all his assistants pass a test before he lets them manage accounts.”

“Did you have to take it?” Ophele bent her head over the page. She hadn’t had any formal education after her mother died, but there were bookson mathematics in the Aldeburke library, and she had occasionally opened them to satisfy her curiosity on some point of geometry or economics. Rou had once explained how he chose his routes through Firkane to visit as many villages as possible in the least number of miles, and she had spent the whole winter with an atlas, fascinated by the problem.

“Yes.” The duke sounded amused. He watched her work for a few minutes and then pulled a fresh document from the pile.

This was useful, wasn’t it? Ophele wouldn’t have called the many pages of arithmeticfun,but she was careful with her reckoning and showed her work in long, tidy columns, and there could be no doubt that every page she completed was a page the duke didn’t have to do.

“Does it help?” she asked shyly, handing him a sheaf of completed papers.

“Yes,” he said, rifling through them. “I hate such work. But it was time Edemir got out of his office, he was getting soft behind his worktable.” He bent his head and lowered his voice conspiratorially. “He was counting on me making a hash of the accounts so he wouldn’t have to work on the palisade. Won’t he be surprised when he sees these?”

She had to cover her mouth to stifle a giggle, shocked by the mischief in his eyes. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined that Remin Grimjaw could look like a naughty boy.

“I’ll take them to the office now,” he said abruptly, pushing out of his seat, and left her staring after him as he ducked out the cottage door.

He often did that; he would make some small joke or tease her and then make an excuse to move away. She didn’t understand why he seemed to reach out and withdraw in almost the same moment. And it still seemed like too much to hope that this new friendly feeling between them wouldn’t evaporate the next time her father decided to remind the duke of his disfavor.

But the next night, the duke proved again that he was serious about mending things between them.

For the first week after her sun sickness, Ophele slept often and deeply, and it seemed like the moment the light faded behind the cottage shutters, her eyes slammed shut. She had assumed that the duke was going out as he always did after she went to sleep, donning his armor to take his place among the watch. She understood. He was the commander of the army of the Andelin, it was his responsibility to protect everyone.

But it still meant that she felt a growing knot of dread in her belly as she lay in bed that night and tried to will herself to sleep. The curse of an active imagination was that she could summon the sounds of the devils at any moment, whether she wanted to or not, and Ophele’s creative mind presented her with dozens of fresh horrors every night.

Surprisingly, though, the duke showed no sign of getting ready to go out. All he did was light the pair of lamps on the table and then return to his papers. At the first cackling shriek of a strangler, she gave up all pretense of sleep and stood on the bed to pull a book from the shelf.

“It will never get anywhere near you,” said the duke from behind her.

She nodded, curling up in the corner of the bed behind her book and opening a page at random. She had read her books too many times. Her eyes skimmed over the words without absorbing a single one.

“Wife.” The duke came to sit on the edge of the bed and patted the place beside him. “Come speak with me.”

“Are you going out tonight?” she asked, moving beside him without hesitation. It was the safest place in the whole valley.

“No.”

“Is it because of me?” she asked, subdued.

“Yes,” he said bluntly. “But it’s not your fault. I haven’t done my duty to you. You never even had watch training.”

“Watch training?” she echoed doubtfully.

“Yes. Everyone that comes to the valley, even Sousten Didion, is taught about the devils. My soldiers aren’t allowed to stand guard until we’ve told them what to look for,” he explained. “You can’t expect a man to keep calm when he’s sitting alone in the dark and doesn’t know what’s out there. Anyone would be scared.”

“Even you?”

“Of course, even me.” He frowned, and she looked down at her lap, her fingers knotting together until his big hand closed over them, quelling the anxious motion. “I was afraid, the first time I saw one. And that was just a ghoul. At the time we weren’t sure what they were or if they were even real. Some of us thought they were big wolves, or some new hairless bear, or any damned thing but a conjuring from a Vallethi sorcerer.”

“What did it look like?” she asked, torn between interest and prickling awareness of his warm hand on hers. “The first one you saw?”

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