Page 120 of Last of His Blood
“I’m sorry to bother you, I know all of you are working so hard,” the duchess was saying as she allowed Miche to steer her to her armchair. “But I don’t know what to do, I think I did something terrible…”
“Why don’t you tell me first, and then we’ll decide if it’s terrible,” Miche suggested, pulling up a chair opposite the lady.
“It’s Remin,” she said miserably. “He won’t have meals here, since Wen got hurt. I even asked Wen how he makes Remin’s food, and I had Azelma make it just like that, and I swear we tasted it and tested it and didn’t take our eyes off it even once, but it still made him sick. And I don’t think he’s eating at all now. Not even tea. I can hear his stomach growling even when he’s asleep, and it’s beenfive days,and I don’t know what to—”
“It’s been that long?” Miche scrubbed a hand over his face, his palm rasping against blond stubble. “I didn’t…I lost track. He’s not eating at the barracks?”
“No! I asked Justenin and he said he wasn’t, he’s not even eating in town anymore, I asked Master Noulen and Mistress Tregue…” Tears filled her eyes. “S-so I tried to make him eat last night, it was justbread,but when I took a bite myself h-he…he knocked it out of my hand, and he was somad,he yelled, and n-n-now…”
The words dissolved as she burst into tears, and as Miche scooted forward in his chair and pulled her face into his shoulder, Mionet had to bite her tongue to keep from instantly lodging a furious protest. It was the oldest trick in the book, thescoundrel—
“Now, now, it’s not your fault,” Miche murmured, in a very different tone than Mionet had ever heard him use before. His hand stroked over Duchess Andelin’s hair, patting her gently. “I’m sorry, I should have been watching. He took it hard when Bon died. It would’ve scared the life out of him to see you testing his food for him. He told you about Bon, didn’t he?”
She nodded, hiccupping.
“Well, it took him a long time to get over that. It was weeks before I could get him to properly eat again, even with Wencooking. He’d sit to supper, but at night he’d lie there and fret until he went off and made himself throw u—”
She should not be hearing this.
Mionet recoiled, literally, physically retreating a silent pace from the door. She did not want to know this. She did not want to hear this, she did not want to listen to Miche explain that the Duke of Andelin sometimes starved himself because he was too afraid to eat. She wished she didn’t know it. She wished she had never heard a word, and she wished even more that she could stop herself from thinking how priceless that knowledge would be in the capital.
How they would laugh, if they knew Remin Grimjaw had such a weakness.
“…can we do?” Duchess Andelin wept.
“It’s not a…rational thing,” Miche replied. “Duchess Ereguil thought the less attention we paid to it, the better. The second time he got poisoned, she would just give Victorin a pocket full of apples and tell him,don’t say anything, just eat one in front of Remin and then leave the rest.And when he got hungry enough, he’d try one on his own. Raw things like fruit and nuts, where it’s harder to hide a poison. Rospalme had a lot of orchards, he felt safe if he went out and picked something off a tree, and the old man taught him to fish. I’m sorry, my lady. I should’ve checked on him. I knew he’d have trouble, after this.”
“It’s not your fault.” Duchess Andelin sniffled. “I should’ve asked. I thought I was so clever…”
“Even the smartest people make mistakes,” he said, sitting her up straight and plucking a handkerchief from his pocket. “Look at me, I make them all the time.”
“You have saved me from a few,” she said with a watery smile. “Thank you.”
“I’ll have Azelma send up something simple from the kitchen,” he promised. “Eat it tonight in front of him, but don’tsay anything about it. You just have to remind him that eating is normal and it’s nothing to be afraid of or fussed over. All right?”
“I will. Maybe we ought to have breakfast in our room again, for a little while?” she said, brightening. “And if you brought it? He trusts you.”
“I’ll talk to him about it. He’ll be all right, don’t worry,” Miche said, sounding more like himself. “We’ve all gone hungry for longer than this.”
“I’ll get Davi to bring up some apples right away,” she added, much cheered. “Thank you so much, Miche. And the hazelnuts, we picked those ourselves, I could roast them—”
“Remember what I said about not making a fuss!” Miche called after her as she dashed away, shaking his head.
It would be best if Mionet pretended she hadn’t heard any of this. She immediately moved back a plausible distance down the hallway, as if she had just come out of Duchess Andelin’s dressing room. But whatever else she might say of the man, Miche was not easily deceived. Coming out of the solar, his eyes met hers and all that good-natured humor vanished.
“I suppose I should have checkedbothdoors,” he said coldly. “Did you hear anything to your profit, my lady?”
“I have no idea what you mean,” she replied, sidestepping him, but he immediately moved right back in front of her, looming in the most unfriendly way imaginable.
“It might be too much to expect,” he began, “but at least during the time when the duchess is useful to you, it would be good of you to remember that allshewants is to be left in peace. That’s all either of them wants. You wouldn’t think it would be that much to ask, would you?”
The look in his tawny eyes struck her like a slap. Not just anger and contempt, but something else, bent as furiously upon himself as her, and the last thing she would ever have expected to see from the scandalous Sir Miche of Harnost. It was a thingthat she knew well. A thing she had sworn she would never let herself feel again.
Shame.
***
With acracklike lightning striking, Remin’s practice sword struck Davi’s andshattered.
