The Given Sacrifice

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Barony Harfang

County of Campscapell

(Formerly eastern Washington State)

High Kingdom of Montival

(Formerly western North America)

August 28th, Change Year 32/2030 AD

Órlaith Arminger Mackenzie wasn’t bored with the train ride, though they’d been travelling for days. There were too many interesting things to watch outside the windows. Besides, she was with her mother, and her father, and they were the most fun people in the world. And Butterball, her new pony, was in a car of his very own at the end of the train, and she could go and visit him any time she wanted, and ride him when they stopped to change teams or visit.

Also her puppy Maccon was back there. Maccon meant Son of a Wolf, but Maccon’s grandmother was Garbh. Garbh had been Uncle Edain’s dog on the Quest, and bards had made songs about her, which hardly ever happened with dogs, though it had with Da’s famous horse Epona. Maccon would be just as brave and loyal and fierce as Garbh had been, when he was big, and go on adventures with her. He was already brave for a puppy, and smart, too-he already knew her and licked her face whenever she came. Uncle Edain had said that he’d train them both up, and teach Maccon not to chew her shoes, which he’d done with her best shiny red silk ones.

She folded up her book, which was about Dorothy of Oz with pictures, put it neatly away in the bookshelf with the strap as Dame Emelina had taught her; Dame Emelina was wonderful, but strict. Then she knelt on the seat and looked out of the window with her elbows on the sill; the leather cushion made a sort of sighing sound. She liked the story, and she could read now.

Well, read a bit, she thought, with stubborn honesty. Some of the words are still too hard.

But after a while she wanted to move. The window was pushed up, so she could put her head out and let her long yellow hair fly in the breeze of their passage, and the air was hot with summer and smelled like dust and dry hay and a little like thunder somehow-she was glad she was in a kilt and shirt, though they were here in the north. The new girl’s kirtle she’d gotten for her birthday was very pretty, with little birds around the hems in silver and gold thread that sparkled, but it could be too warm for anything but sitting around. She had to sit around sometimes, but she didn’t like it.

There were hills outside, odd smooth-looking ones, this was a place called the Palouse that was all hills but no rocks, and the railroad wound like a snake through them, staying on the tops of the ridges mostly. A little while ago she’d seen a herd of Appaloosa horses running across them, with their manes flying in the bright sunshine and their coats all spotted against the brown of the summer pastures. Da had taken her up the ladder onto the roof of the car, where a couple of the archers rode, and stood with her on his shoulders so she could watch and wave and whoop. Now the ground was sort of a dark yellow where the wheat had been, and there were rows and rows of sheaves piled up together in tripods curving across the hills, brighter yellow than the stubble, looking like. .

“Tipis!” she said. “They look like tipis! Like the La-ko-tah had when they came on the visit. Chief Three Bears said I could sleep in a tipi sometime!”

Her father looked up and smiled, his blue-green eyes crinkling. He was the handsomest man in the world, and the bravest knight, and he was King. It was wonderful that he was King, though it meant he was busy a lot of the time. Now he put down the paper he’d been reading and came across and knelt down on the floor by the seat so that their eyes were level as he looked out the window.

“Well, by the Powers, so they do!” he said.

“Can I really sleep in a tipi?”

He nodded solemnly. “That you can, if Rick promised you could, for he is a great warrior and a wise chief and a man of honor; also he has little girls your age and knows their ways and how important a promise is.”

“Can I sleep in a Lakota tipi?” she said, thinking of the stories about the lords of the high plains. “Chief Three Bears fought with you in the great battles, didn’t he?”

“Not only that, he aided me on the Quest, when we used a stampeding buffalo herd to hide us from the Cutters who pursued us.”

“I remember that story!” she said, eyes shining. “That must have been the most fun ever!”

There was something a little odd in his laugh. “It was. . exciting, that it was in truth. And so the Seven Council Fires are also among our peoples. In a few years you’ll come with your mother and I when we go east for the summer buffalo hunt. You can see the Sun Festival where the camps of the Lakota carpet the prairie, and the dancers, and the great stone faces carved by the old Americans into the Black Hills, the kings of the ancient world. They’ll give you a Lakota name, and perhaps you will become one of the girls who apprentice to the White Buffalo Woman’s Society or the Sacred Shawls, and you will indeed sleep in a tipi. Though the Lakota themselves sleep in ger, most of the time now-tents on wheels with round tops. Tipis are for ceremony, to respect their ancestors.”

She laughed and clapped her hands at the thought of the tipis and the gers, and put an arm around his neck; his hair was redder than hers and had less yellow, and smelled like summer.

“That sounds like a lot of fun!”

“It will be.” He turned and kissed her cheek, his mustache tickling a little so that she giggled. “But it will be important too, for these are sacred things. You understand?”

She nodded solemnly. Then something occurred to her.

“Da,” she said. “I was wondering. The horses make the train go, don’t they? Walking on that treadmill thing up at the front.”

“Indeed they do.”

“But how can we go so fast? This is like a gallop. Horses can’t go this fast for long. Horsemaster Raoul told me so, that it would hurt them if you made them go fast for too long.”

“Very true, and when he speaks on horses Sir Raoul is a man to listen to most carefully. It’s the gearing that lets them do it, so that they walk at their best pace and the wheels are made to go faster.”

He held up a hand. “I’ll show you later, and you can help grease the gears, but don’t expect to understand it right away. ’Tis a mystery of the mechanics, and requires mathematics to really know.”

“Oh.”

She pouted a little. She wanted to understand it now, and usually her father and mother would explain things to her, though the greasing part sounded like fun. Math was. . OK, she supposed. She could already add some numbers, but the times table was too difficult for now. Then something else occurred to her.

“Why does the train go more clackety-clack now than it did yesterday?”

“Ah, well, that I can explain. In the ancient times, the trains were much bigger and heavier than they are now, and they needed rails of solid steel, which we still use where they remain and which are very smooth. But now in modern times, when we lay more track we make wooden rails and then fasten a strip of steel on top. That’s fine for our trains, and takes less of the metal, which has many uses. The rails here were torn up during the war, and now we’ve fixed them. . the Lady Tiphaine and the Lord Rigobert have, their folk. . and that’s why the noise is different.”

She nodded happily; she liked knowing why things were the way they were. Her father sat back in the seat, and she sat back in his lap; he put an arm around her. His arms were long, and you could feel how strong they were, almost the way you did when you touched a horse; when he threw her up in the air it was fun-scary, like being a bird and flying until she swooped down and he caught her. When she watched him practicing at arms with the guards, it was almost really scary sometimes, but when he held her like this it made her feel very safe, like pulling up the covers in winter when a storm was lashing against the windows and draughts made the candles flicker.

Her mother was in the seats across from them, which were like a big sofa; she was in a travelling habit, brown hakama divided skirt and a green jacket with pretty jade buttons over a blouse, not the High Queen’s court dresses that shimmered. But the little golden spurs on her boots showed she was a knight too, who’d ridden with Da on the Quest and his adventures.

Her little brother John was curled up with his head in their mother’s lap, snoring a little. John was only four, and still napped a lot; he had brown hair like their mother and looked more like Mom, when he wasn’t just looking like a baby. But he could sing already, better than her at least; the court troubadour said he had perfect pitch, which meant he could listen to a note and make the same one.

Sometimes that drove her crazy, because he’d pick two or three and do them over and over and laugh. She loved him but he could be a jerk and of course he was still so young.

Mom was dozing too. There was going to be a new sister around Yule, and that made her sleepy a lot; Órlaith couldn’t remember much about when John came, she’d been just a two-year-old herself then. The High Queen opened her eyes and smiled at Órlaith and then closed them again, letting her head fall back against the cushion. Her round hat with the trailing veils was hung from the back of it, the peacock feathers standing up.

The railcar swayed and clacked. It was just like a nice room on wheels, there were chairs and sofas, rugs with flowers and vines, and a table where they’d had lunch, and where she sat with picture books and coloring books and did her lessons with Dame Emelina. There were ten more cars in the train, including the one with the little beds that folded down, which she liked.

“Will Heuradys and Yolande be there when we get to Lady Tiphaine’s manor?”

“Yes, they will; and their father, and their mother.”

“Oh, good,” Órlaith said.

She could feel her father’s deep chuckle through his tunic-he was wearing shirt and jerkin and breeks and a T-tunic, the way people did up here, rather than a kilt the way he did down in the Mackenzie lands.

“Indeed, and it’s good for you to have some your own age to play with.”

“They’re nice, but they’re not my age. Well, Heuradys isn’t. She’s older.”

“Not so much.”

“Two whole years older,” she said. “And don’t say it isn’t important. It is, and Heuradys thinks so too.”

He laughed, his beard tickling her neck. “To be sure, darlin’ girl, that’s the third of a lifetime, isn’t it? I was forgetting.”

“I like their Mom, though. Tell me a story. Tell me how you snuck into Boise and opened the gate!”

“I and some others. Well, if you must, though you’ve heard it before.”

“I want to know all the stories! I need to hear it a lot so I’ll remember all the parts. You have the best stories, anyway.”

“It’s my life, darlin’ girl, but I suspect it’s your story the now.”

She wasn’t sure exactly what that meant, but she settled back to hear his voice.

“There we were, sitting outside Boise, and no way of getting through the walls. Well, now, if you can’t go through, you must go around; but there’s no way around a city wall, for the wall itself goes around. And if you can’t go through, and you can’t go around, you must go over or under. Men holding a wall watch for you to try over-so, we thought, what about under? Now, Fred’s father-”

• • •

Rudi set Órlaith down and sent her to Dame Emelina as the whine of the locomotive’s gearing died, more conspicuous by its absence for a moment. Mathilda’s lady-in-waiting and tirewoman appeared as if by magic to tidy her up as the train coasted into the village of St. Athena-theoretically named for a virgin martyr who’d died in Thrace about seventeen hundred years ago, though Rudi had his doubts; the other train of the Royal party was already there, having put on a sprint, and the two-score of the High King’s Archers were already double-timing over to line up before he got down and stand in ranks with their longbows in their arms. Through the window he heard Edain say:

“Now, let’s show these haughty northern lords that we know how to. . Talyn, for Lugh of the Long Hand’s own sake, try to look like you didn’t spend the afternoon muckin’ out a byre, man!”

Mathilda yawned a little as she checked that her habit was tidy and let the tirewoman redo her braids and put them up under the broad-brimmed hat and scarf.

“How are you feeling, my love?” he said.

“Worn out, but no worse.” She crossed herself and made a gesture of steepling her hands. “But thanking God and the Virgin that the morning sickness is over,” she said; she was pious, but not sanctimonious. “Though why they call it morning sickness. .”

“A wishful hope, perhaps,” he said, making the sign of the Horns.

He was thankful to the Mother as Brigid, she Who watched over childbirth, and as Matti’s blue-mantled patron too that her births had all been-relatively-easy, with no complications. Hopefully this one would be too, and he had reason to so hope. . but no certainty.

Dame Emelina had the children in hand; literally, with a hand to each. He gave her a friendly nod. She had dark freckles across skin a few shades lighter, handsome full features and keen black eyes; she’d been Órlaith’s wet-nurse, having lost her own babe about the time Mathilda was brought to bed, but she’d also been a scholar of sorts before her husband-a belted knight and an Associate, but the third-son-of-a-second-son variety-was killed at the Horse Heaven Hills.

Between her own good birth and years of being Órlaith’s wet-nurse it had been possible to appoint her to the governess position without offending any of the great houses in the old Protectorate who’d have schemed to get the job for protégés or daughters unlikely to do it with half her skill or devotion. They’d put out that Matti was deeply attached to her, which was simply true. Sandra had arranged the whole thing to start with, and that triple-play was like her.

“There will probably be a chorus of children and a bouquet,” he said.

“I’ll bear up,” Mathilda said as she took his arm. “Let’s not disappoint the audience.”

“And my mother says a travelling bard’s job was hard back before the Change,” he said. “Always putting on a show. At least nobody gave her a second glance when she was driving her wagon around the Willamette between performances!”

He’d sent instructions for minimal ceremony, and he knew the Grand Constable shared his sentiments on that sort of thing most exactly. Her Châtelaine. . not necessarily so much, but she would do her best.

A cheer went up as they descended from the train; varlets were bustling about, unloading gear down to Órlaith’s pony, and Maccon in a basket-quite a substantial one, for the young beast had huge ears and paws already. A bright eye and pulsing black nose were visible through the wicker, wiggling with the desire to get out and smell and taste and acquire new admirers. This was an informal visit-up here in the Protectorate he generally used the full fig of a Crown visitation only on nobles he didn’t trust, that being a polite way to use up resources they might otherwise put to mischief. They couldn’t even complain, since it was an honor.

D’Ath was there, leaning on a stick, and Lady Delia with a lacy parasol protecting her creamy skin. Rigobert de Stafford was too, his bowl-cut blond hair and short dense beard showing a little more nearly invisible gray as he doffed his chaperon hat. So was his current partner, Sir Julio Alvarez de Soto, a slim handsome swarthy man in his thirties, quiet and dangerous-looking in dark country-gentry clothes that contrasted with Rigobert’s peacock fashionability of blue velvet, black satin and crimson linings on the sleeves of his houppelande. He still had the lean erect broad-shouldered build to carry it off, though, and Rudi hadn’t the slightest doubt that when he didn’t he’d switch to something more appropriate.

That’s six years they’ve been together, since the tag end of the war, so perhaps Rigobert is settling down in middle-age.

He hoped so; he liked the Baron of Forest Grove, both as a man and a valuable servant of the Crown, and had sensed a loneliness under his good humor and active social life.

Lord Maugis de Grimmond, Baron of Tucannon, was there too, and his wife Lady Helissent, and their son Aleaume, now a likely-looking lad of twelve just home for a holiday from page service in Walla Walla to Lord Maugis’ overlord Count Felipe.

And taking after his mother, save for that rusty-nail hair-which is to the good because Maugis is, frankly, a homely man. It’s also a very good thing they haven’t far to come from Grimmond-on-the-Wold, which keeps this all looking completely casual and social, which it is, only not totally.

Mathilda made a gesture-hand palm-down and then turned up, which was Associate court etiquette for don’t kneel. The noblemen and women responded with deep sweeping bows and curtsies respectively, except for the Grand Constable who bowed as well. The assembled commons behind the gentlefolk knelt anyway, several hundred of them in their best Sunday-go-to-Church outfits, splashes of embroidery on hems and necks, bright printed wimples for the women. The village priest signed the air.

“Rise, my friends,” Rudi said; they did, and cheered, waving straw hats and holding up children to see.

Pleasant to be popular; and to be sure, they get a party at their baron’s expense out of it, he thought.

Yearling steers and pigs were roasting over open pits in the town square, filling the air with a pleasant savor as cooks basted them with paintbrush-sized brushes on the end of long sticks, and trestle tables had been set up with wheels of cheese and bowls and dishes of each household’s prize contribution, and barrels were waiting in the shade along with tall baskets of new loaves. Another carried the lutes and hauteboys, drums and accordion that would provide music for the dancing later.

He and Mathilda extended their hands for the kiss of homage. The Grand Constable was limping and using her stick as she came forward.

“How is the leg, Tiph?” Mathilda asked.

“Healing, but damned slowly,” d’Ath said. “He shouldn’t have been able to touch me. I was careless.”

“He was twenty-five and you’re forty-six!” Lady Delia said sharply. “You’re not getting those awful lettres de cachet from Sandra anymore, you don’t have to do this.”

A small chilly reminiscent smile from Tiphaine: “The bearer has done what has been done by my authority, and for the good of the State. Sandra always absolutely loved writing those. That was back before she got religion, of course.”

Mathilda winced. Baron Tucannon looked up briefly as if considering the weather, unconsciously disassociating himself from the display of high-level dirty linen, while his son looked bewildered at the byplay and his wife carefully blank-faced. Rigobert simply laughed. Delia cleared her throat and went on:

“And you shouldn’t be fighting duels at your age anyway! I spent far too much time sending you off to the wars; now that you’re home I expect you to live for a while.”

Her eyes flashed; she was in her thirties herself, and one of the most beautiful women Rudi had ever seen in a sweetly curved way, with translucent eyes the color of camas flowers in a cloud-shaded mountain meadow and hair of iridescent black, glimpsed in braids beneath her tall headdress. She had a reputation as an arbiter of fashion, which she showed now by the elegant variation on what she had christened afternoon dress. August in the Palouse was hot to people used to the Willamette. Lady Delia’s red linen shift came to a daring two inches above her ankles, trimmed with a ruching of darker red and a scatter of pink ribbon roses. It was sleeveless and the light silk half-dress over it was a pale pink that took the warm tone below. From the waist to the knee it descended in long thin daggers of cloth, each neatly bordered with cream and crimson. The sort-of-sleeves were also dags of the translucent silk, dangling to her elbows and more thickly embroidered. Her wimple was more of the pink silk, held in place by a light ribbon braid in graduated pinks and reds, cascading down her back.

Rudi caught Helissent and Mathilda’s tire-women both eyeing it intently, clearly memorizing details for later. Lady d’Ath’s irritated answer brought him back from contemplation of feminine frivolities, though he’d always found Delia’s skills in that regard seriously impressive.

“I’m alive and getting older, and he isn’t, like that uncle of his I killed back in the old days,” d’Ath pointed out. “And he challenged me, not vice versa.”

“And forbye, for that very reason if he were alive, he’d be in very bad trouble,” Rudi said grimly.

“I’m Grand Constable, for what it’s worth these days,” d’Ath said. “That’s a Protectorate appointment, covering the Association, not one by the High King. You couldn’t have touched him, legally.”

“I could,” Matti said flatly. “I’m Lady Protector. And I would.”

There were two carriages drawn up with the d’Ath arms on the doors; sable, a delta Or over a V argent. They managed to disengage themselves, after the inevitable bouquet and chorus of children, singing quite nicely under the direction of a young and nervous priest, and after a sharp glare from the Baroness of Ath and a quiet word from Delia dissuaded the bailiff of the estate from proceeding from an introduction to a plan for a tour of the newly installed and state-of-the-art dam, well, hydraulic ram, windmill and solar-heated waterworks that he obviously had his heart set upon.

Rudi grinned to himself. He’d just received an anguished howl in the form of a petition from some Corvallan manufacturers complaining that workshops in Portland and Walla Walla had stolen the thermosiphon design. He’d replied politely, pointing out that the Faculty Senate had refused to include a patent law in the Great Charter and that they might want to take it up with them. .

Tiphaine grumbled as she levered herself up into one of the coaches, and the High King’s Archers deployed their bicycles; there were a dozen men-at-arms on coursers and mounted archers on quarter-horses, their look of grim efficiency marking them as much as the d’Ath arms, and smaller detachments from the menies of the other nobles. Rudi sympathized with the injured Grand Constable as he handed Mathilda up and seated himself; he would vastly have preferred riding horseback, after days of sitting in a train. There had been times he was tempted to go walk the treadmill with the horses, not being a man used to inactivity. Órlaith was on her Butterball, to the unspeakable envy of all the other noble children.

The whole settlement was on the south-facing slope of a declivity in the hills. The carriages jounced across the stone-paved central square with its church, tavern, smithy and workshops, school, bakery, bathhouse-laundry. There was rather more than the average, since this was to be the home-manor of the whole estate, and had a railway to boot. A long low building with large windows was a weaving-shed, where households with a loom could use it and store their yarn and gear without cluttering up the house; behind the whole ensemble was the tall skeletal shape of the village windmill on the ridgetop, its three airfoil-shaped vanes rotating with majestic deliberation.

The village was raw and new, the trees and plantings still small and struggling, but looked prosperous; the tile-roofed rammed-earth cottages of the peasants and craftsmen were on lanes lined with young trees, each in its rectangular fenced toft with sheds and gardens at the rear. Even the small dwellings of the cottar laborers had three rooms and a loft and an acre of allotment ground attached. A few excited peasant youngsters ran after them waving as they drove up the winding road to the manor between rows of fir saplings; Órlaith waved back with a broad smile, and various mothers and elder siblings dragged the youngsters back, often by one ear.

The manor sat on its own gentle south-facing slope some distance away, beyond the demesne farm complex with its squat circular grainaries and boxy wool-stores and a bit higher up for the view, behind a wall that enclosed its lawns and ambitious but rather tentative terraced gardens. The Great House and outbuildings were rammed earth too, the more expensive variety with some cement mixed in and covered in a warm cream stucco with just a hint of reddish gold. The composition was so charming that you took a minute to discern the dry moat disguised by a ha-ha and the fact that all the exterior windows were narrow and could be slammed closed in moments by steel shutters. It wasn’t a castle but it was definitely defensible against anything short of a formal attack with artillery, and while certainly big it was by no means excessive for a moderately prominent baron.

Just a wing on that thing in the Venetian style the Renfrews are building in Odell, Rudi thought. Though to be sure, Conrad is a Duke nowadays.

The roofs were bright unfaded red tile and fairly steeply pitched; most Palouse winters had more rain than snow, but you couldn’t count on it. It was newer even than the village, so new that there was still roofer’s scaffolding on the top of the four-story square tower at one corner. When they’d been shown to their quarters-which from the battered gray suit of plate on a stand in one corner he guessed were the Grand Constable’s ordinarily-there was still a faint damp scent of curing pisé de terre and plaster.

“This is lovely,” Mathilda said once their bags had been unpacked and the staff left.

She looked around the bedchamber’s expanse of smooth pale mosaic tile and the French doors opening onto balconies with their decorative wrought-iron balustrades overlooking the fountain, walkways and gardens in the courtyard below. Like many modern manor houses, it made up with interior inner-facing windows and glass doors for the light excluded by solid exterior walls. There was a big fireplace with a carved stone surround of owls and olive wreaths, swept and garnished with dried wildflowers for summer, but discreet bronze grill vents showed a central heating system.

“Handsome work,” Rudi agreed.

“Beautifully proportioned, and I love the coffered cypress-wood ceiling. . I like that arched-passageway Romanesque style too. . though the murals and the tapestries aren’t up yet, of course. It’ll be even prettier than the Montinore manor house back on Barony Ath. Delia has exquisite taste and she got to start from scratch with modern methods here.”

Órlaith came barreling through side by side with Yolande de Stafford, a dark-haired girl of her own age who resembled a younger version of her mother, and her elder sister Heuradys, who had a mop of dark-auburn curls and resembled neither of her parents. Maccon was at her heels skidding on the smooth floors in a rattle of claws and just ahead of the determined-looking Prince John, whose shorter legs were pumping to keep up with the older girls; Órlaith paused to give them both a hug while Yolande and Heuradys bobbed a preoccupied curtsy. Then she dashed on dragging her brother by one hand. Dame Emelina followed a moment later, with a half-apologetic glance, then went in pursuit with the folds of her riding habit swishing.

“If we could bottle that energy and commission the Guild Merchant to sell it, the Crown would have no financial problems at all, at all,” Rudi said.

“Right now I’ll settle for a nice long soak. That sunken tub looks attractive.”

“Not nearly as attractive as you, in it.”

“Why, whatever could you mean, good sir?” she said, batting her eyes and giving him a smoldering smile.

The hall of the manor was a little more finished, when they descended to dinner several hours later in formal garb, an hour before the summer sunset. The building itself was essentially an E-shape; the hall occupied most of the central arm with archways on either side filled with French doors, now open to the cooling evening breeze. Normally the whole household from baron to garden-boys and laundresses would dine in the hall; that was old Association custom, with the ceremonial golden salt cellar marking the transition from the gentry on the dais at the upper table to the commons below. Tonight it was a more intimate affair, since most of the staff and garrison had been given leave to join the celebrations in the village; at the upper table were the nobles, and the gentlefolk among their retainers, and Edain as commander of the High King’s Archers. He kept a pawky eye on the detail standing against the walls.

Delia resolutely steered the conversation away from Tiphaine’s wound, duels or anything connected to them; evidently she was embarrassed at her lapse by the train station. The closest she came to the subject was after the salmon bisque had been replaced by a salad of summer greens and cherry tomatoes garnished with slices of melon wrapped in paper-thin envelopes of cured ham.

“And Heuradys wants to be a knight,” she went on, rolling her eyes.

“I don’t see why she shouldn’t,” Tiphaine observed. “Lioncel and Diomede are both well above average for their ages and they’re going to be very dangerous as adults. And don’t give me that but she’s a girl. I’m a knight. Her Majesty is a knight. Yeah, it’s harder for us, but it can be done. It involves beating the crap out of a lot of assh. . contumacious persons, but that’s a perk, not a drawback.”

“I think Órlaith will be a warrior,” Rudi observed thoughtfully. “She’s got the doggedness, she’s naturally active, she’s worked hard at the basics this last little while as much as we’ve let her, and from her hands and feet she’ll have the heft-she’ll be taller for a woman than I am for a man, or I miss my guess, which means that she’ll have more reach than most men, and as much weight or nearly.”

And to be sure there’s that vision I had at Lost Lake, at the Kingmaking, but let’s not put a chill on the occasion. It bothers me, and others understandably more so.

Aloud he finished: “And her balance and reflexes and situational awareness are excellent for her age. As good as mine were, folk who knew me then say. But if Lady Tiphaine says Heuradys has the potential-”

“She does,” d’Ath said decisively.

“Then there’s no better judge.”

Delia frowned slightly. “Well, Órlaith’s a princess. Crown Princess, at that. And Your Majesties spend a lot of time elsewhere in Montival, outside the Protectorate where customs are, ah, different from those of Associates. It will be. . hard for Heuradys if she takes that road. I mean. . you know.”

Tiphaine grinned sharklike as she broke open a roll and buttered it. “Sweetie, I do know. Abundantly.” To Rudi and the rest: “Heuradys is eight, and it’s obvious she’s going to take after her father-”

She inclined her head to Rigobert.

“-as far as her build goes.”

Delia nodded. “Her coloring’s more like my mother’s.”

“Or my father’s,” Rigobert said. “She has his eyes.”

“I think she’s serious, too, and she’ll have the talent,” Lady Tiphaine went on. “Whether she wants it badly enough to take the crap involved is another question. Time will tell, but I don’t think we should discourage her. Just make it plain how difficult it’s going to be.”

Mathilda frowned. “Well, there’s no actual religious prohibition, I mean, look at me. Or legal ones; there were some women knights even in my father’s time.”

Maugis put in: “Weren’t you knighted by the first Lord Protector, Lady Tiphaine?”

“No, by Sandra; but Norman was right there and he’d have done it if she hadn’t claimed the right as my patron. Just as well; when he gave the colée, Norman always hit hard enough to draw blood.”

“That’s right,” Mathilda said. “I was there, I remember, I think. It’s just custom that knights are largely men.”

“That and it’s hard to combine with small children,” Lady Helissent said.

“Oh, tell me!” Mathilda said, and they all chuckled. “Heuradys is eight. . how’s this, Delia? If she still wants it in two or three years, she can come to the Royal Household as a page. That’ll give her the best possible tutors, she can train with Órlaith, and we can keep an eye on her to make sure there’s no absolutely outrageous bullying. I know what kids can be like at that age.”

“Thanks,” said Tiphaine. “And I can train her until then, and when she’s home after.”

“And I,” Rigobert said.

“No better examples,” Rudi said sincerely; Tiphaine had trained him, and if de Stafford wasn’t quite at her level he was still very good indeed.

Delia sighed. “We’ll see in a few years, then.”

The salads were removed, and followed by roast suckling pig with honey chipotle glaze, florets of baked potato with flecks of caramelized onion, steamed colored beets with a delicate cream sauce, and new asparagus. .

Let’s let everyone get comfortably full and into what the Dúnedain call the filling-up-the-corners stage before we get on to the more dramatic part, for all love, Rudi thought.

• • •

“Did you hear that, Herry?” Órlaith whispered. “You can be a knight!”

She whispered very carefully, because the gallery around the hall hadn’t been furnished yet, not even with rugs, and it echoed. They lay on their stomachs side by side, only their eyes over the marble lip, below the carved screens of some pale hard wood that made up the waist-high balustrade. It was densely shadowed now, since the chandeliers hanging from the hammerbeam rafters overhead weren’t lit, only the lamps on the table.

“I knew it,” Heuradys whispered back, or lied. “I’m going to work twice as hard now! I’ll be your liege-knight, Órry, and fight by your side and everything!”

Órlaith nodded solemnly. “Like Da’s companions were, on the Quest,” she said.

Heuradys put a hand on her shoulder for a moment, then said: “Shhh, I want to hear the rest, too. We’re scouting. And it’s funny. . Dad never talks about his parents.”

Órlaith put her finger to her lips; she wanted to hear everything.

“Your harvest looked good,” Órlaith’s father said; the hall was built so that sound travelled well, for during feasts musicians would play up here.

“Thankfully,” Tiphaine said. “Developing this place has been swallowing money, fencing alone costs the earth. About time we got some return.”

Delia nodded. “Sixty bushels of wheat to the acre on the demesne land this season and nearly as well on the tenant strips in the Five Fields, and very well on the barley and lentils. That’s better than we do on Barony Ath out west, though of course there we have the vineyards and orchards and we’re closer to the market in Portland. Fruit trees grow reasonably well here with some watering but there just weren’t any, they didn’t do anything but wheat here apparently in the old days, so we have to start from scratch and you need to find the right varieties just to begin with. I think we can have vines if we select the ground carefully for aspect and frost drainage.”

“We manage in Tucannon, and it’s only a little south of here,” Maugis said. “The Boiseans didn’t damage the vines at St. Grimmond-on-the-Wold, thanks be to St. Urban, though the winery was a wreck.”

“Vines will take a while,” Delia said. “Sheep are much faster and we’re getting twelve pounds per fleece. The bunchgrass here is just fabulous for livestock in general and flocks in particular. It’s a pleasure to watch them eat.”

“Merino?” Mathilda asked.

“Corriedales. The wool fetches nearly as much and the yield is better and they make better mutton carcasses,” Delia said.

“The sheep actually make most of the returns so far-don’t judge the rest of this estate by St. Athena manor, we started here,” Tiphaine added. “Most of the land is still native grazing.”

“I resemble that remark,” Rigobert said. “We’re running six thousand head in our flocks on Barony Pomeroy this year.”

The silent Sir Julio spoke for virtually the first time: “You haven’t worked as hard at your grant as Lady Delia has on this.”

“I’m leaving something for Lioncel to do, now that he’s a belted knight and his father can put him to work,” Rigobert said. “When he gets back from visiting Huon Liu at Gervais. He’s there to attend his friend’s knighting vigil.”

“When he gets back from mooning over Huon’s sister Yseult, you mean, Rigoberto mio,” Julio said dryly.

“She’s a nice girl, well-dowered, and beautiful. Smart, too,” Rigobert said.

“She is. She is also too old for him, she has an acknowledged lover who carries her favor in the tournies and whom she will almost certainly marry soon, and she does not squash his tender young heart like a bug beneath her shapely foot solely for her brother’s sake because Huon is Lioncel’s brother-in-arms.”

“Hopeless passion is good for a knight’s soul. They say,” Helissent de Grimmond said.

The adults all found that funny, for some reason.

“Lioncel and Huon both did very well in the war as squires,” Mathilda said, and Lady Tiphaine nodded. “And afterwards in the San Luis expedition-that was more diplomacy than fighting, of course. It’s a pity about Yseult in a way, but there you are.”

Maugis de Grimmond spoke: “I’m surprised at how much both of you have gotten done, starting from nothing with land mostly abandoned since the Change or at least since the Foundation Wars or the border skirmishes with Boise back in the old days. We’re only now getting back to where we were before the Prophet’s War on Barony Tucannon, and we brought nearly all the people through, which is the important thing.”

“We moved some younger peasant families in from our manors in the west,” Delia said briskly. “One’s not in line to inherit holdings if we didn’t assart land from the waste or common, which we’re not doing there for obvious reasons.”

“And there were broken men, refugees from the interior, looking for a place where someone would lend them the price of the tools and seed. That’s drying up, now,” Rigobert added. “Lioncel really will still be working on this when he’s my age, particularly since we can’t neglect Forest Grove.”

“And Diomede will be working here,” Delia said. “At least when Yolande and Heuradys come of age they’ll have manors on the estates. That will make it easier for them whatever they decide to do. A girl who’s heir to three manors is in a different position from one with an annuity.”

Órlaith’s father leaned back and cleared his throat as the desserts were brought out; she wiggled a little and nudged Heuradys with her elbow, knowing that was something he did before he surprised people.

There was an ice-cream cake carved into the shape of a ship, which she knew was deliciously studded with hazelnuts and fruits; a smaller but identical one had been served at the children’s dinner earlier. She had gotten an extra two servings to bribe Yolande to watch John while they were supposed to be playing quietly in the nursery-Yolande was nice, but she didn’t like sneaking around as much as Órlaith or her own older sister did.

“You’re both of you”-the King nodded towards Lady Tiphaine and Lord Rigobert-“doing the Protectorate and the High Kingdom well here. Still, this County is mostly a wasteland.”

“Tell me,” Tiphaine said.

“There are still bandits, too,” Rigobert said. “I think some of them may even be deserters from the Cutter army still at large, at least the core of them. There aren’t enough people living here to keep eyes on all the likely pockets where the scum can hide. And you can tell Fred Thurston from me that his patrols don’t do enough in the hill country east of here over the old border. There are jurisdictional bunfights over hot pursuit both ways all the time, and there have been what, four Crown castellans at Campscapell since the war? As soon as one learns his business and the country here he gets reassigned. I’ve lost livestock, and we had a shepherd killed last year.”

Rudi nodded gravely. “It’s a puzzlement to find a Crown castellan who’s both able and not needed more urgently elsewhere. Which is why, Rigobert, you’re going to spend your old age working harder than you want. Here.”

He slid a parchment he took from the wide trailing sleeve of his houppelande across the table. Rigobert glanced at it and choked on his sip of brandy.

“Congratulations, Sir Rigobert de Stafford, Baron of Forest Grove. . Baron of Pomeroy. . and Count Campscapell. We’ll have the ceremonial investiture later in Portland-Matti will be appointing you, strictly speaking.”

There was a lot of noise for a moment, and Lord Rigobert stopped gaping and coughing; his friend Sir Julio pounded him on the back.

“And as for a Castellan and second-in-command, well, that will be your responsibility. I’ve heard good things of a certain Julio Alvarez de Soto, though.”

Wow, Órlaith thought. Campscapell is a big castle.

There was a murmur of congratulations from below. Heuradys sighed very slightly, getting a bit bored, but Órlaith loved to watch her parents being King and Queen, even if she didn’t understand it all yet.

Delia stopped with a snifter halfway to her lips. “And Lioncel. . Lioncel will be a Count!”

“Only when I’m dead, Delia,” Rigobert grinned, and she blushed. “I might point out that you are now a Countess. Don’t be alarmed, I think I can handle it without demanding Baroness d’Ath give up her Châtelaine.”

“You’ll do a good job of it, Rigobert,” Tiphaine said. “Better than I would. You’re better at getting people to cooperate, especially in peacetime, but you’ve got an excellent record in the Prophet’s War too.”

“And in my fifties, people have different expectations. I can delegate. . certain matters.”

Sir Julio laughed, a low sound that made Órlaith feel a bit shivery, and flexed his sword-hand.

“Speaking of jobs,” Rudi said. “Lord Maugis, you did say most of the war damage has been repaired on your Barony of Tucannon?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. The basics; only time will cure some things. My vassals and everyone down to the very cottars worked like heroes, just as they fought during the war.”

“Good. Then I won’t be taking you away from your folk in their hour of greatest need.”

He produced two more parchments, and slid one to Lady Tiphaine and one to Baron Tucannon. Maugis read his, frowning and then blurting:

“Grand Constable of the Association?”

Tiphaine spoke simultaneously: “Marshal-Commander of the High King’s Hosts?”

Her father threw back his head and laughed. “That’s squeal-of-complaint followed by Your Majesty, if you please, my lord, my lady.”

Maugis rose from his chair and went down on one knee, bending his head. Aleaume was fighting to keep an incredulous grin off his face.

“Your Majesty, I am not worthy of this honor.”

“That is for your sovereigns to decide, and we have,” Mathilda said. “Do you accept the office, my lord?”

That’s me-and-Da ‘we,’ not the other type of ‘we,’ Órlaith decided.

Maugis sighed, and looked at his wife. She nodded. . after an instant’s hesitation. “Yes, your Majesty,” he said.

“You needn’t look as if I’d sent you to the mines, Lord Maugis,” Órlaith’s father said. “Get back up and enjoy your cake, for all love.”

Mathilda spoke: “I wanted an able man for this, one with a good war record in independent commands, administrative talents. . and one who was not heir to a Duke, which is why Érard Renfrew Viscount of Odell isn’t getting it, to be blunt. Also I trust your liege Count Felipe to be sensible about it, given that you’re not a tenant-in-chief.”

Maugis sat back down slowly, and Lady Helissent gripped his hand. “I. . I will do my best to fulfill the trust you have shown me, Your Majesties. Though it will be hard, following such a Grand Constable as the one who led the Association through the war.”

Tiphaine had been frowning. When she spoke it was slow and considering, her voice even more cool than usual. “Your Majesty, you’re appointing me commander-in-chief for Montival as a whole? Creating a new ministry and me to head it?”

“Exactly. You’re fit for the job, and you’re also the only Associate most of the rest of the realm would accept. Being, as it were. . unconventional.”

“But you don’t have a Host in peacetime for a Marshal-Commander to command. All you have is a Royal guard regiment and some people the provinces send in rotation. You need a general the way a bull needs a mandolin! It would be like calling me a Lord High Admiral because you gave me a rubber duckie for my bathtub. If you and Matti don’t want me as Grand Constable anymore, fine-the job’s routine now anyway and I’m tired of it and the Gray-Eyed knows I’ve got enough other things to do. But this is make-work. I don’t need my feelings soothed.”

Órlaith’s father raised a hand. “The job’s organizational, not operational, yes, but none the less real for that. I need a staff structure that will be there and ready if. . when, alas. . it’s needed and I call up contingents.”

Tiphaine started to nod, then glanced sharply at her Châtelaine’s carefully concealed delight.

“Wait a minute,” she said. “This is an appointment by the High King.”

“And High Queen,” Mathilda put in.

“Both of you, yes. That does mean you could punish anyone who challenged me, have their head and forbid the encounter; the High King’s ministers are immune, extraterritorial, even if they’re Associates.”

“That’s in the Great Charter, yes, Marshal-Commander.”

“I don’t need protection-” she began sharply.

“Shut up!”

Órlaith blinked; that was her mother, and she’d accompanied it by a cracking slap of her palm on the table, and she was using the High Queen’s voice.

She wasn’t the only one surprised; she could see that all the grown-ups were too, except maybe Lady Delia. Mathilda pointed a finger at the silent face of Lady Tiphaine:

“Look, d’Ath, you’ve been carrying water for House Arminger since you were fourteen years old. You rescued me when I was ten. You saved Rudi’s life not long after. You held the Prophet out of most of Montival until the Quest got back. You only killed what’s-his-name’s uncle-

“Sir Vladimir. Minor Stavarov connection. The late young idiot who just bit it trying to avenge his uncle was Sir Bogdan.”

“Sir Vladimir in the first place because it was politically convenient for my mother to deliver a pointed message after the Protector’s War. Do you think that we-that I-am going to let Lady Delia and the children be left alone because of blowback you earned serving us?”

“I’m not asking-”

“I’m not asking you. I’m telling you, Tiph. It’s good lordship to protect a vassal, and you’re going to get our good lordship whether you like it or not.”

Tiphaine opened her mouth. Rigobert leaned forward. “Tiph, don’t be an ass,” he drawled. “And if you think either of us has anything to prove at this late date, that would be exactly the case. With gray fur and long ears yet.”

“Darling, please,” Delia added.

Slowly, Tiphaine subsided back into her chair and sipped her brandy. “All right,” she said grudgingly. Then to Rudi and Mathilda: “I’ll do it. Your Majesties.”

Rudi sighed. “Thank you. And now, friends, why don’t we have another drink, and perhaps some songs? And tomorrow. . I understand the partridge are plump and plentiful hereabouts this time of year, by the kisses of Angus Og MacDagda. And that Marshall d’Ath has most excellent falcons.”

“Wow,” Heuradys whispered to Órlaith. “Your mom is something. I’ve never seen anyone tell Lady Tiph off like that!”

“Mom and Dad are really something!” Órlaith said.

A voice whispered not far behind her in a Mackenzie lilt: “And the pair of you are little monkeys.”

The horn tip of a bowstave rapped her behind the ear, just enough to sting a little. Heuradys gave a small squeak, hastily stifled with a hand. Órlaith slowly turned her head. Edain Aylward Mackenzie was standing there, scowling; she hadn’t even noticed him slipping away from the table. Behind him was Dame Emelina, with her arms crossed and a foot beginning to tap.

“Ooops,” Heuradys said.