The Tears of the Sun

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK CHARTERED CITY OF WALLA WALLA PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 23, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

T he streets of Walla Walla were crowded, as Tiphaine had expected.

With soldiers, of course, for a beginning. The household troops of the Count, armored and steady. A bristle of pole arms and crossbows from parties of the city’s own regiments, marching on foot behind standards blazoned with the images of the patron saints of their guilds and drummer boys wielding their sticks to a snarling rattle. The menies of those of his vassals serving here were much in evidence, from the plumed arrogance of knight and baron down to the spearmen trotting behind. And simply with people, swarms of them and their bicycles and pedicabs and horses and mules and oxcarts, and bewildered peasants with great bundles on their backs.

Even with the Count’s trumpeters and outriders they made slow headway, the more so because loud cheers broke out after the ripple of bows at the sight of the Crown’s banner, and those of Ath and Forest Grove on the pennants fluttering from the lances of their escorts. Now and then they passed a priest or friar haranguing the crowds; she caught crusade and holy war in their shouts. They broke off to lead the cheers for the Count and the Crown’s officers.

Scared as hell and hoping this means they’re saved, Tiphaine thought behind her impassive face; de Aguirre waved back cheerfully. It may, people. Or it may mean you’re fucked. Time will tell.

Walla Walla had been low-built before the Change, most of the buildings one- or two-story brick and frame. Afterwards there had been a lot of infilling of vacant ground as was usual in walled towns and quite a few half-timber second stories, with workshops on the ground floor and families living over it. And far more churches and the little roadside shrines than you saw in most of the Association territories, and things like guild houses and public baths and so forth. Though they’d kept most of the tall shade trees and obviously the sewers and water supply were still working.

But the ambience would have warmed the cockles of Norman Arminger’s black heart, she thought. You have to hand it to him, his notions actually worked under modern conditions. Even he couldn’t have pulled it all off if they didn’t.

Every smithy and carpenter’s and leatherworker’s and tailor’s shop was spilling over with work as the city prepared to stand siege, masters and journeymen at their benches and anvils, apprentices dashing about playing fetch-and-carry knave; furnaces cast draughts of hotter air into the already warm streets; there was a sweet smell of cut wood and a musky one of glue and leather; seamstresses and tailors bent over their treadle-worked sewing machines amid a whining hum. Some workers paused to wave or bow, but she saw one man completely oblivious to the aristocrats’ passing as he tapped hobnails into the sole of a marching boot.

“Now, he’s got the right attitude,” she said, and the Count and Forest Grove laughed agreement.

It wasn’t all cheers for the banners of Ath and Stafford. Here and there a priest or layman scowled at Tiphaine; one friar actually turned his back. Tiphaine shrugged with a slight clatter of pauldron against breastplate.

Being universally loved was never my ambition, she thought. Which is a good thing because I’ve never had a prayer of getting it. Delia and the kids love me; a few people like me; and everyone else respects, which is to say, fears me.

Half the rooftops were spotted with cloths covered in turn with small objects, and small children sitting perched among them with switches to keep off birds and insects. There was a heavy sweetish smell she recognized, like a jam factory.

Drying fruit and preserves being put up inside, Tiphaine thought. And tomatoes and whatnot drying too. And everyone with an oven making double-baked service biscuit.

Though soldiers used unofficial names for the hardtack ration, dog biscuit was the least scatological. De Aguirre noted her glance as a child stood up and waved the switch he’d been using.

“Many of the country people have come in from the manors within three days walk,” he said. “The castles…”

Would only have space for some of them even crammed to the gills, because we built them to hold down the folk of the countryside, not shelter them, Tiphaine thought mordantly.

A castle’s perimeter had to be kept as small as practical; every foot of parapet that you needed to hold made it weaker, other things being equal. That was why a city like this required a huge garrison in comparison to even the largest keep, though its walls might be just as high and strong. She had some ideas about helping with that.

“So we’re putting them to work,” he said. “They welcome it. Everyone knows we have to pull together.”

“You got in most of the harvest?” she said.

“Most of the fall-sown grain, and the garbanzos and field peas,” he said. “We’re threshing as fast as we can and getting it in sacks and under cover, but a lot’s still in loose piles on the floors of churches and whatnot. Plenty of fodder, since we’ve sent so much livestock west, but it’s bulky, we don’t have enough presses for the loose hay that’s normally kept in the fields or barn lofts. And a fair amount of vegetables for pickling and drying. The early fruit is coming in, cherries, apricots, peaches and pears-we’re guarding the workers in the fields and risking enemy raiders, and preserving all of it we can, my lady wife and the other gentlewomen have organized supplies of extra jars and sugar and heating pans and are leading the effort. We’re slaughtering everything but the breeding stock of our remaining beef herds and swine and drying, salting and smoking the meat wholesale.”

Tiphaine nodded in sober approval. Food was always one of the most important factors in war; when you came right down to it, fighting was manual muscle-labor as hard as any in the fields, and like farming it also depended on the energy of huge numbers of draught animals who had to be fed as well. If an army didn’t get enough to eat it mutinied or disappeared or just plain died, and hauling food from far away was a nightmare unless you had water transport or at least rails. A city or a castle under siege had to have rations too, and fruit and vegetables were important to prevent scurvy.

You could live a long time on bread and cheese, beans and a little dried fruit and pickled meat.

“But we’re going to lose the rest of the fruit and the apples. Worse, the vintage,” the Count said, wincing slightly. The local wines were famous and a major cash crop. “And it’s not all that long before we have to plow and sow the fall grains.”

“You probably won’t be able to,” Tiphaine said bluntly. “The Kingdom will see that your people don’t starve, and you can plant more spring acreage next year. It’ll be settled by then.”

One way or another, she did not add aloud.

“If we have the seed grain and oxen and horses,” de Aguirre said.

“The Kingdom will help there too,” Tiphaine said firmly. “I have the High King’s word on that, by the way. Everyone’s going to contribute to help rebuild the damaged areas, my lord. If anyone suffers, then we’re all going to do it together. Mutual help is what a Kingdom means.”

The gloomy young nobleman perked up a little. “It’s good to remember we’re a kingdom now,” he said. “And that we have a King. A High King!”

Then he crossed himself. “And the Sword we’ve heard of…”

“Quite real, and everything the tales say,” Tiphaine said, copying the gesture. “Everything and more.”

“Then with a Sword granted from the hand of the Queen of Heaven-I’ve heard of Father Ignatius’ vision of her too-we have the certainty of God’s favor! And with that, what need we fear?”

Rudi-Artos-has become our Lucky Rabbit’s Foot, she thought. Poor bastard, he doesn’t dare lose anything substantial, now. He’s what’s keeping our morale up, or at least his legend is. But it’s a young legend, and still fragile. Well, no, it’s not just a legend. The Sword is real.

“We’ve been given a chance, and deliverance from the CUT’s… magic, sorcery, Jedi mind-tricks, whatever they were. The rest we have to do ourselves, and be ready to sweat and bleed for it,” Tiphaine said. “God expects us to work for His favor, my lord.”

Or Someone does, she thought, conscious of the owl amulet around her neck beneath the breastplate and arming doublet.

Tiphaine’s eyes narrowed as she looked at the City Palace of the Counts Palatine of the Eastermark. Someone who knew her very well would have read a detached amusement in the expression.

The Palace had been the Marcus Whitman Hotel before the Change; a three-stepped pile twelve stories tall at the highest point, built of brickfaced concrete in the 1920s’ version of a vaguely Renaissance style. Education in Sandra Arminger’s household had included a full course of actual history rather than the Society mythology turned from play into deadly seriousness which passed for it in the PPA territories most of the time. The Lady Regent herself had spent time seeing that her particular proteges really understood it, too.

Which added layers of ironic flavor to life. The people who’d built this hotel had had a great nobleman’s town house as their model; in fact, back in France before the Revolution “nobleman’s town house” was what the word hotel had usually meant. It had acquired its modern meaning only after Madame la Guillotine resulted in an abrupt turnover and repurposing in Parisian real estate.

The joke was that now it was exactly what they’d dreamed, what a hotel had originally been; and that it had been taken for that purpose simply because it looked suitable to men who were shrewd and practical and wouldn’t have known the Italian Renaissance from an Olive Garden dinner special.

It had still needed a great many modifications over the last generation, and not merely because electric machines didn’t work anymore. A palace wasn’t just a place for a ruler to live comfortably, exhibit their stuff and hold parties, though those were essential parts of government. It had to be a barracks for troops and have dormitories for servants, workers, clerks, pages and squires; a clutch of offices and strong rooms; chapels and their attendant priests; armories and repair shops; an infirmary; schoolrooms; kitchens to feed all those as well as put on banquets; and court chambers to hear cases and settle disputes, with their records and law books and land-title registers; and stables and carriage houses and more, including dungeons.

Probably being in the middle of a chartered town full of skilled artisans and well-stocked merchant warehouses meant it didn’t need the dairies and winepresses and weaving sheds and gristmills its rural equivalents would have, but it was still the center of a Great House with hundreds of residents and a ceaseless to-and-fro.

They rode through a low outer wall that closed off several blocks; it was mostly ornamental, which meant that the Counts didn’t feel the need for a real fortification between them and the citizenry, though at need they could always retire to the castle. A small guard of halberdiers clashed the butts of their polished weapons down outside the gates; she was glad to see the Count wasn’t wasting manpower. The cast-bronze lions there looked more recent than most of the decor.

“Made here in Walla Walla in my father’s day, my lady, may God receive his soul,” de Aguirre said proudly as they dismounted and varlets ran to take their horses. “We have a fine foundry and good artists.”

Tiphaine nodded; she was already running over what she would say to the assembled local magnates.

Not to mention I’m hungry. A hunk of bread and cheese in the saddle isn’t much of a lunch, particularly when you had dog biscuit and jerky for breakfast.

The gilt-bronze and mahogany and marble splendors of the lobby had been carefully updated; the hiss of gaslights overhead might almost have been Todenangst. Everyone parted with more bows. She thanked.. . whatever was Up There… inwardly that this was an emergency. The full panoply of courtly etiquette had always bored her like an auger, however necessary it was to keeping the wheels greased, and a painstaking provincial imitation was even worse.

The housekeeper showed her to a third-floor suite. Sir Rodard was at the door, with a towel over one armored arm.

“This isn’t your job anymore,” Tiphaine pointed out; then she sighed slightly as she used the hot damp cloth to wipe her face; the momentary coolness afterwards was even more welcome.

Rodard shrugged. “I’m still a household knight of yours, my lady,” he said. “And it’s a bit late to train an immediate replacement as body-squire.”

He bowed her through. Lioncel was standing there directing a couple of pages and Walla Walla varlets with lordly insouciance as they unpacked and laid things out. He knelt, undid her sword belt and added it to the rest of her gear on an armor stand. The half-armor and her riding boots came off with equal efficiency, while she looked around and moved as necessary. The first Count’s architects had probably knocked three or four suites together to make these guest quarters; excellent rugs that looked Indian of some sort, burnished furniture, chandeliers with their candles already lit in the gathering dusk, adding the scent of a lavish display of fine beeswax to the flowers in many vases. There was an ornamental but very practical set of wroughtsteel bars set over all the windows, fine smithwork giving them the appearance of leafy grapevines.

Rodard had some of her papers already neatly set out on a half-acre desk, and her seal and a supply of colored wax to hand. There were even typewriters and adding machines in an alcove for anyone who had their accountants along. It hadn’t been worth the trouble to bring in hers, since it was already so late and she was leaving in the morning. The last light was fading from the windows and glimmers of flame were showing across the city, gaslights and alcohol lanterns for the public buildings and homes of the rich; workaday tallow dips and canola oil for the rest. The city-glow was brighter than usual; mostly people went to bed with the sun, but the emergency meant they’d be working into the night.

“Quick work,” she said to Rodard. “I wasn’t sure you’d get here before I did, with the state the streets were in.”

“Easier for a nameless knight and party to move through the streets than a Grand Constable, a Marchwarden and a Count, with three conroi of lancers behind them, my lady,” Rodard said. “Incidentally it was Lioncel who suggested we just get the gear moving, trot the packhorses around to the east gate, and then ask for the details when we got here rather than trying to follow you. Saved a fair bit of time.”

He winked as he said it; he’d have done exactly the same thing, but it was an excellent sign that it had occurred to the youngest squire as well.

Lioncel bowed, blushing with pride. “Your bath is drawn, my lady,” he said. A quick grin: “This is the highest floor with running water and a boiler. I checked. The top eight are all used for storage with cranes and treadmills for hauling things up the old elevator shafts. Family quarters below us, staff housing and offices on the fourth.”

“Good work,” she said, and restrained an impulse to scoop a bound report off the desk as she passed. “Get me a drink-beer, cold if possible.”

He put it into her hand just as she threw the arming doublet behind her; that had been a safe bet for anyone who knew her. She walked into the bathing room through a bead curtain. The marble tub not only held steaming water but aromatically scented suds, and there was a pleasant cross-breeze from windows on two sides of the corner room. This was going to be a pleasant memory in a few weeks; she’d always been fastidiously clean when she could be, which in her line of work wasn’t all the time. The beer was icy-chilled and very good; some of the best hops in the…

Montival, she thought. Got to start thinking of it that way. Not just the Association territories anymore.

… High Kingdom were grown around here. That and the hot water managed to relax her enough to almost doze for a few minutes of soaking. At thirty-eight she could still do nearly everything she’d been able to do at twenty, but she found it took more and more effort plus recuperation was slower, and the last weeks had been hard. A sputtering jerk brought her head up as it slipped below the surface.

There was even a genuine sponge to go with the lavender-scented local soap, which was true luxury these days. Scrubbing briskly helped her back to alertness.

It beats washing with a cloth and a helmet full of water all to hell, she thought as she climbed out. Damn, but I wish this war was over and won.

The floor was some sort of slightly coarse-surfaced stone, easy under her feet and not slippery. She stood and looked at herself in the full-length mirror with a coldly objective eye, and at last nodded satisfaction. Naked she looked less slim than she did in clothes or armor, and the startling muscle definition was clearer. At just a hair under five-ten she weighed a solid hundred and fifty, and she’d never been more than a few pounds either side of that since she got her full growth. Of course, she’d spent a lot of that time doing very energetic things while wearing fifty pounds or more of steel strapped all over her body, besides conscientious training and recreations that included hunting boar, bear and tiger with spears.

“Conrad’s right,” she murmured; the conversation with Rigobert had reminded her of her youth, and so had the ceremonies that marked passages in the cycle of life. “I’m a big blond horse of a woman and I’d never, ever have made it to the Olympics as a gymnast. They were all little pixies and even at thirteen I was getting too tall. Pentathlon, maybe, if I’d switched to track and field in time. Still, I was good.”

She’d kept it up, too; on impulse she bent backward until her palms were on the floor behind her feet, brought one leg up and pointed the toe at the ceiling, then the other so that she was on both hands. Then a ninety-degree side-split, a scissors flip back upright onto the balls of her feet and a tucked back salto flip ending with her arms raised in that rather silly but obligatory ballerinalike posture you used to finish a floor routine-

That brought her face-to-face with the maid who’d just come through the doorway, with a pile of towels in her arms and a bulge-eyed expression at finding a naked and wetly glistening Grand Constable falling out of a midair somersault right in front of her. They were close enough that Tiphaine could feel the warmth of the heated fabric.

“Yes?” she said.

“MyladyIwassenttoattendyouasyouhavenomaid-” came out in a rush.

“Leave the towels,” she said calmly.

“Yyyyyes, m’lady.”

Tiphaine sighed inwardly as the girl set the heap of fluffy white fabric on a stone bench and knotted her fingers together.

I don’t know what’s more irritating, the usual goggling horror, or the occasional come-on.

“That will be all,” she said patiently. “You may go. My body-squire and pages will attend me.”

Hmmm. Bit of a pout along with the curtsy and swift withdrawal. Irritation Number Two, I think. Higamous hogamous, I am very monogamous.

Since she was alone, she allowed herself a very slight grin as she toweled down. Delia was fond of playing a game involving a lot of running and giggling she called “The Lustful Knight and the Innocent Country Maid” in honor of their first meeting at the feast when Tiphaine had taken seisin of Barony Ath during the Protector’s War. It was always fun, especially when Tiphaine returned from a long absence.

“Now granted, I was a newly made knight, and I was both lustful and fairly thoroughly drunk by that point, but it was definitely Delia who murmured an invitation to inspect the fine embroidery on her underwear into my ear. Not that I needed to be asked twice in that state,” she added to herself.

She tucked one of the towels around herself under the armpits as she walked out into the bedroom. Lioncel discreetly turned and looked out the window as she tossed it aside and pulled on the briefs, bias-cut linen sports bra and silver-gray silk shirt with a high mandarin collar and loose sleeves tied at the wrist. Then he whistled sharply for the pages over whom he now had authority-the general rule was that pages helped you put on clothes, and squires helped you don armor-and oversaw the younger boys as they helped her into semiformal dress. Assistance in dressing was something she’d finally gotten used to; it helped that this style really required it.

That started with the hose, also skintight and bias-cut; Sandra had told her once that it was amusing beyond words that the macho toughs of the warrior aristocracy had all ended up shaving their legs and wearing something quite close to pre-Change panty hose.

It is funny, if you think of it that way. I’d forgotten what panty hose were… and she didn’t say, but I think part of the gleam in her eye was that it means I shave my legs and wear panty hose too, of course, which also wouldn’t have happened without the end of the world.

Her hose were onyxine black, as was the sleeveless neck-to-thigh jerkin of butter-soft doeskin that went on next, fastened up the front with ties of braided black silk. Her shoes were black chamois as well, except for the gold buckles that secured them at each ankle, and the toes turned up-moderately, not the exaggerated length that high Court fashion decreed. The loose black knee-length houppelande overrobe had obsidian buttons and a collar open at the front and ear-high behind; the lower hem was dagged, and so were the turned-back sleeves that hung almost as low, showing the rich dark forest-green jacquard lining.

She put her arms out horizontally while the pages fastened the belt of tooled black leather around her waist. The purse on one side was largely ornamental, but the dagger on the other was ten inches long and fully functional, for all the tooling and silver cutwork on the sheath.

Lioncel insisted on getting on a stool and combing her hair, though strictly speaking that was no longer his duty, and carefully placed the chaperon hat of the nobility on her head. It was round and black, with a broad brim of rolled cloth and a long flat green tail called a liripipe down the back; he arranged the end over her right shoulder. Then he gave the livery badge above her brow a quick buff; it was Sandra’s arms quartered with her own.

Two pages brought a flat carrying case. Lioncel used a key to open it, and drew out the gold chain of office he placed around her neck; with similar reverence he pinned the knot of ribbons that was Delia’s favor on her upper sword-arm.

“You can carry the sword, Lioncel,” she said.

He started to grin and then composed his face gravely though his blue eyes sparkled with excitement; he’d managed to make himself quite presentable, too, in a dark brown outfit with a squire’s brimless flowerpot hat.

You didn’t wear a long sword to a formal meal; not these days, when Eaters or enemies were less likely to crawl down the chimney or burst through the door between the soup and the main course waving rusty kitchen knives and lusting for your flesh or at least your dinner and shoes. But a squire would carry hers behind her with the belt wound around the scabbard, sign of the High Justice and her jurisdiction throughout the Association by right of office. It was a more practical reminder than a gold chain with a heraldic medallion, since the hilt would be within reaching distance. And in the Association they didn’t bother to deny that Justice carried a sword.

“Sir Rodard,” she added as she signed the pages away and picked a rose out of a vase, trimming it and threading the stem through a buttonhole, leaving the great red bloom at her throat. “Did you send that girl in with the towels?”

“Yes, of course, my lady,” he said, coming through the door and looking her over critically. “Splendid, my lady. Just the right touch of the sinister amid the dark elegance.”

“Why did you do that, may I ask?”

“Modesty, my lady. It wouldn’t be fitting for a man to carry the towels into your bathing chamber.”

“Rodard, how many times have we ended up squatting over the same trench in the field?”

“This is the City Palace of the Counts of the Eastermark, my lady.”

“Bullshit. I think it was your perverse sense of humor.”

“I have been well trained in skill and courtesy, my lady.”

Tiphaine’s face was blank save for a very slight lift of the eyebrow at the unspoken, by you.

Rodard had changed out of the plain set of battle armor; he’d be sharing the watches outside her door, but right now he was in a modest, sober set of gentlemen’s evening garments, a simpler version of what she was wearing. With a sword, though, and she knew that particular outfit had a lining of very fine mesh-mail in the houppelande. He and his brother were very good swordsmen; she’d trained them herself, passing on what Sandra’s instructors had drilled into her along with a fund of lethal experience that spanned two decades now. Along with many other skills.

“Armand’s on duty right now, isn’t he?”

“Yes, my lady.”

“Good. Get a crossbow; ordinary Armory pattern issue model. No quarrels, just the bow. Bundle it up and put it somewhere in the dining hall we’ll be going to. Get it done right now, then tell Lioncel where it is before we go in.”

“At once, my lady,” he said and was gone.

“My lady?” Lioncel said.

“Was that a question, squire?”

“No, my lady.”

There was a stamp and clash outside the door when she left; five crossbowmen in three-quarter armor came to attention, and three men-at-arms headed by Armand. She returned the salute and nodded aside slightly. The new-made knight stepped close enough not to be overheard.

“How would you get into those guest chambers, Sir Armand?”

Armand had the curved semicircular visor of his sallet helm up; it stuck out like the brim of a billed cap as he turned his head thoughtfully upward.

“Up the old elevator shafts to the storage levels,” he said after a tensecond pause. “If they’re anything like what I’ve seen in pre-Change buildings elsewhere they’ll be very climbable.”

Then another pause, and: “Hide until around three o’clock in the morning, then rappel down to one of the windows of the suite I wanted. A diamond-coated cutting cable would go through those grills in a few minutes; they’re just mild steel. I’d have used alloy there, myself, even if it’s harder to work into pretty vines.”

“How long?”

“The trip down and getting into the suite, fifteen minutes. Depending on how alert my lord the Count’s guards are; but usually, men don’t look up.”

“My thoughts exactly. Your suggestion?”

“Four men awake at all times in our quarters, moving in pairs between the rooms in the guest suite, beside the guard on the door here.”

“See to it. And would you have any difficulty in getting into the palace, given the perimeter wall and security arrangements you saw?”

“My lady, it’s commendable that the Count feels no need of any great precautions against his people.”

“Plain English, please, Sir Armand. Could you get in, and unobserved?”

“My lady, Rodard or I could do that at any time of day or night. Naked, while riding on a grizzly bear and playing a mandolin.”

“My thoughts exactly, for the second time.”

Lord Rigobert met her at the top of the main staircase. He was in much the same type of outfit as she, except that his houppelande and hose were parti-colored, scarlet on the right and pale gold on the left, and the liripipe was much longer, reaching to the level of his belt of gold links wrought in twining patterns with cabucon-cut garnets for the grapes. She had to admit that he could carry it off magnificently, and it went well with the arrogant jut of his short golden beard and large, shapely but scarred warrior hands. He bowed her forward, giving her a step’s precedence.

“Lord Rigobert,” she said quietly over her shoulder.

They walked downward past an honor guard on the landing where the staircase turned to the ground floor; that was the family quarters, and she was pleased to see strong grillwork doors on either side, evidently closed and guarded at night.

Not totally trusting. Or his father wasn’t, and established the routine.

“Yes, my lady?”

“Does it strike you that this city is probably swarming with every possible variety of enemy agent?”

“Not a bit, Lady Tiphaine,” Rigobert said. “The influx of refugees and troops from everywhere on our side and other strangers and general confusion would make it nearly impossible for anyone to slip in unnoticed.”

“Ha ha big fucking ha, Rigobert, everyone’s a court jester tonight.”

“My guard captain is taking precautions, entirely serious ones.”

“So is mine, but we need to talk to the Count after the dinner; I don’t think he’s considered the implications of us all being here for this one night.”

As promised, the dinner was relatively small and select. The dining chamber was medium-sized, and windowless; the gaslights on their bright, expensive incandescent mantels showed murals of sporting scenes set in the Blue Mountains on the walls, with hounds coursing a stag on one side and a grizzly bear at bay before hunters with spears on the other. Those were far enough from the T-shaped table that she was fairly confident that nobody could eavesdrop through hidden grills, even with a focusing horn behind it.

A herald blew a short note as Tiphaine entered, then announced her, without the annoying bellow some used:

“Lady Tiphaine d’Ath, Baroness of Ath and tenant-in-chief, Knight-Commander of the most noble order of the Golden Horseshoe, Grand Constable of the armies of the Portland Protective Association! Lord Rigobert Gironda de Stafford, Baron Forest Grove and tenant-in-chief, Marchwarden of the South!”

The usher directed her to the seat on the Count’s right; and there was a sudden tormenting smell of things grilled and boiled and simmered as the wheeled trays came in. The archbishop rose and said an elaborate grace; he was three seats to the left of the Count. The ceremonial jeweled saltcellar was at the junction of the upper and lower tables; the Count, his lady, principal landed vassals and noble officers like the city castellan were at the upper table. She noticed Baron Tucannon, both because of the distinctive red hair and because they’d been discussing him earlier. And if she was any judge, a number of the other vassal barons were listening to him very carefully.

Below the salt were the important commoners. Those included the Lord Mayor of the city, the guildmasters who headed their militia regiments, and a middle-aged abbess and a younger attendant in the dark blue habit and white wimple of the Sisters of Compassion, a medical order who’d spread widely in the last generation and who were apparently in charge of the hospital and clinics in the area.

And in a lot of places they’re the only medical care the really poor see, the ones without a guild or confraternity or even a lord.

Tiphaine did more listening than speaking as the meal was served; the locals were talking business, and to the point, although they were also often taking up arguments and discussions they’d been at for months or years. Most of them seemed to be in good heart, and not just because of the Sword and the return of Rudi and Mathilda.

And I’m not one of the youngest present. I’m not even below the average. That’s happening more and more often. It’s a Changeling world, or at least the world of the Changelings and their elder siblings. People like me, who’ve spend most of their lives in the modern world.

Meanwhile she ate; tiny venison sausages with candied apples, a green salad with goat cheese and the famous sweet onions of the area, a frito misto of seasonal vegetables, and…

She chewed a bite slowly and swallowed. “That is possibly the best steak I’ve ever tasted,” she said. “And I like steak.”

Tender, the firm marbled meat brushed with an oil infused with garlic and herbs before it was put on the grill, slightly seared at high heat on the outside and red in the center…

“We have sacrificed a good deal of our demesne herd of Aberdeen Angus,” Countess Ermentrude said. “With the disturbed conditions it was necessary.”

She was a pale willowy young woman in a chocolate-colored cote-hardie and twin-peaked headdress, about five months pregnant and with a roundvoweled accent that Tiphaine took a moment to identify as from one of the very northernmost baronies.

Barony Dawson, up on our border with the Dominion of Drumheller. Not to mention our border with trackless wilderness stretching to the Arctic Circle. Yes, she met Felipe while she was a lady-in-waiting at court just before the war started. Her parents were locals who’d taken over Dawson before we arrived and decided getting a title and giving Norman a smooch on the hand were a better bargain than trying to fight us. They did well in that war with the Drumhellers.

Sandra had always encouraged marriages between distant fiefs and lordly families of different backgrounds, to keep the PPA’s elite united. In fact, it was one reason why noble houses were strongly encouraged-required, practically speaking-to send some of their scions to Portland and Todenangst and the university at Forest Grove for a few years to mingle with their peers of the same ages.

The abbess spoke, unexpectedly; she’d been silent except when something relevant to her Order’s area of operation had come up, and she and her attendant had been dining sparely on the salad and the excellent local bread, drinking water rather than the equally excellent local wines.

“The Lady Countess fails to note that most of those cattle were donated to our clinics and the public soup kitchens we and the regular clergy have established for the displaced,” she said.

I don’t think that’s brown-nosing, she really likes her, Tiphaine decided. Evidently Ermentrude takes her duties seriously.

A lord’s wife was supposed to be the one who organized welfare measures in the lord’s fief; it was a real and demanding job, if done properly. Unofficially she was also supposed to be the voice whispering in his ear that tempered justice with mercy. Delia certainly worked hard at both in Ath and Forest Grove.

The plates were cleared, and then the servants set out platters of pastries and pots of monstrously expensive real coffee, moderately expensive sugar made from locally grown beets, and thick cream and decanters of brandy and discreetly retired. Tiphaine approved as she bit into an apricot tart. Far too many people assumed that servants didn’t have ears, though Sandra had never made that mistake, and had any number of them on her clandestine payroll. Everyone looked up as she rapped a knife against a wineglass.

“All right, my lords and ladies, goodmen and goodwomen.”

Public speaking had always been something that she loathed, but she was fairly good at it by now.

“I’m going to say a few words for all of you, and then I’m afraid there will be a private consultation with your lord and his barons and war-captains. I’m absolutely sure that all of you are loyal, but it’s a simple fact that the more widely information is spread the more likely it is to leak.”

She stood with her fingertips on the table and slowly looked them all in the eye. Most of their faces were neutral, politely attentive; everyone at this table was a politician, in their way.

Including me, she thought. Dammit.

“First, I bring you the greetings of our High King, Artos the First, and the High Queen Mathilda, our own Princess of House Arminger.”

There was a murmur of pleasure, mostly genuine from the expressions. The Associates were generally happy that the grandchild of the Lord Protector would end up ruling the whole shebang, albeit by marriage rather than conquest. The dynasty was popular these days, far more so than it had been in Norman’s time. For that matter, a lot of people still thought of him with gratitude. Commoners might be pleased for that reason-they were, after all, alive because of what he’d done-or because the next High King wouldn’t wholly be the scion of House Arminger. Plenty still remembered just how heavy his hand could be, too.

“Next, I have intelligence to share with you concerning the larger course of this war. As of a month ago, the armies of the Lakota nation

… now part of the High Kingdom… and our allies of the League of Des Moines and the three Dominions have crossed the borders of the territories held by the Church Universal and Triumphant. Those armies are more than ninety thousand men strong, horse, foot and artillery, and they are converging on Corwin, the Prophet’s capital in the Valley of Paradise. They’ve already won several engagements. Taken together, we-the alliance against the Prophet and Boise-now have superior numbers. That changes our long-term prospects rather substantially.”

This time the pleasure verged on delight. Tiphaine held up one long hand.

“And the CUT has withdrawn some of the troops they were massing in Boise’s territories to attack us, taken them back across the Rockies to the Bitterroot country and the High Plains while the passes are still open. We think that shifting forces around to compensate for the new eastern front is the reason we haven’t seen a full-scale attack yet this summer. However, that attack will come, and very soon. The Prophet has not taken all his men out to face the threat from the east and north, and Boise is ignoring it altogether.”

“That’s bad strategy,” one of de Aguirre’s barons said, a forty-something man with a scarred face that looked as if it had been adzed out of a stump, and very cold eyes. “Dividing their forces in the face of converging attacks? They’re risking being weak everywhere. They’d be better advised to defend against us and throw everything they have east. Or the other way ’round, of course, my lady.”

The abbess spoke again: “The CUT are diabolists. They serve the Adversary, the lord of Evil. And the ultimate definition of Evil is futility. It may appear strong for a time, but in the end it destroys itself.”

That brought a moment of uneasy silence; the archbishop looked a little annoyed that she had beaten him to the punch, but not as if he disagreed. Tiphaine was glad she had. He would have been far more long-winded and less accurate.

Someone said: “We’d be a lot better off if Castle Campscapell hadn’t fallen last year.”

Tiphaine nodded; that had been at the old town of Pomeroy, and it had plugged the area between the northern slopes of the Blue Mountains and the deep canyon of the Snake River. Men had opened the gates of Campscapell and then killed themselves rather unpleasantly, for no reason anyone had been able to find, except that a red-robed magus of the CUT had stood there laughing as they did.

“We would. That was… whatever it is that the CUT does. Or did. Note that since this spring-when Artos took the Sword of the Lady in his hand and drew it by the light of common day-nothing similar has happened. And our holy men and women have rooted out a great deal of the CUT’s evil since then.”

The archbishop nodded. He had a soft plump face-a rarity these days-but his hazel eyes were extremely shrewd.

“Our exorcists have been busy. The compulsions their devils lay on the CUT’s followers are foul, but we have detected many, and even cured some,” he said.

“As important, no more castles have fallen… mysteriously,” Tiphaine said; the thought of such things still offended her tidy soul and bleakly practical mind. “That doesn’t mean they can’t be stormed or undermined or battered down by trebuchets. The High King directs me to tell you that the defense of this city, and of the strongholds of the Eastermark more generally, are absolutely essential to his larger strategy for victory in this war. You must hold and the whole Kingdom will do its best to see that you do.”

“Artos!” someone shouted. “Artos and Montival!”

The others took it up; Tiphaine waited it out. High morale was important, and besides she agreed.

“The High King is mustering the whole strength of the Kingdom farther down the Columbia, and I’ve brought out a considerable force. I’ll consult with your good Count as to the disposition of our field army here. What I’d like to talk to you about is your role in defending your own homes.”

“We’ll fight, my lady Grand Constable,” one of the Guildmasters said in a growl. “We’re not noble Associates, but by God and the Virgin and St. Amand our patron, we’ll fight for our homes and our children and our city.”

He bowed in his seat to de Aguirre and the archbishop. “And for the good lord who leads us, as his father did before him, and for Holy Church.”

“Stoutly spoken!” she said. “I’ve brought out considerable equipment for you all, including fortress model catapults and flame-throwers stripped from the western castles, and their crews and ammunition.”

Happy surprise showed at that; she winced slightly at the struggle it had taken. One or two instances had required walking the lord of the keep through the gates with a steel point held encouragingly close to his kidneys to remind him of his obligations as a vassal.

“And we’ve unloaded four thousand extra crossbows from the Portland armories.”

That brought a puzzled silence. “My lady… that’s more than our militias can use,” one baron pointed out. “Considerably more.”

Tiphaine nodded. “My thought exactly, but the High King showed me different. Now, we all know it takes a long time to train a soldier. Years for a man-at-arms, or a horse-archer, or for that matter a Mackenzie longbowman. However, you can learn to shoot a crossbow in a couple of weeks. Less, if it’s at a big target. A couple of days, if it’s just a matter of blazing away into the brown.”

“That doesn’t make a soldier!” came a protest from the scar-faced baron. “Not a real crossbowman.”

“No, it doesn’t, my lord. It doesn’t mean being able to march twenty miles in armor and being fit to fight at the end of it, or knowing how to use sword and buckler, or maneuver in units to the word of command or fire volleys, or stand in ranks under fire and close up the files over the bodies of the wounded and the dead, or a hundred other things including being a genuine marksman. It does mean, however, that the one you’ve trained can run upstairs to the wall of a city, aim over the parapet, and shoot at a massed assault column. For that, all you have to be is able to walk and work the cocking lever and see something the size of a battalion in close ranks. Lioncel!”

The young squire had been standing motionless with Tiphaine’s sword cradled in his arms. Now he laid it respectfully down on one of the side tables and opened a basket. The crossbow came out and he stood with it at port arms, his young face calm and attentive.

“This is my squire, Lioncel de Stafford. He’s a very junior squire, a page until earlier today, and while he is in excellent training for his age and inches he’s thirteen years old and as you can see far from his full growth. That is a standard-issue crossbow of the sealed pattern. Lioncel, span and fire!”

The youngster brought the weapon up before his face in the first move of the drill-book sequence. His right hand held the grip, and his left went to a metal loop set into the base of the forestock.

The weapon was still made as the Lord Protector’s conscript engineers had designed it in the first weeks after the Change. The stock was hardwood, modeled after an old-time rifle called an M-14, with adjustable aperture sights over the trigger, a groove down the center for the bolt and a spring catch to hold it in place. The prod-the short horizontal bow bolted into a slot at the end-was a thirty-two-inch section of shaped automobile leaf spring.

Making the weapons was a Crown monopoly, and charging vassals for the ones they required to outfit their troops a source of revenue. The whole assemblage had a blunt, functional grace, rather like a war hammer.

Lioncel pulled on the loop, and the lever it was attached to pivoted down. Then he worked it, using his grip on the stock to make the two a scissors-style source of mechanical advantage. Click- clack , click- clack, click- clack, click- clack, click- clack, click- clack, as the pawl-and-ratchet mechanism in the stock forced the thick string back; then a louder click! as the trigger nut caught it.

The squire slapped the lever back into its slot and held the weapon by its forestock with his left hand as his right snapped down to an imaginary belt-quiver. He mimed pressing a short bolt into the groove, brought the weapon up to his shoulder and aimed at a snarling bear in the mural.

Tung, and a slight whapping sound as the string vibrated.

“Again.”

He repeated the process. A crossbow didn’t have the suave elegance of a Mackenzie longbow; the short prod had to draw at much more raw weight to give a bolt the same speed and range as the superbly efficient spring the long subtly curved yew stave made, and arrows were more aerodynamic than the stubby bolts. Even with the built-in spanning mechanism, a good bowman could get off three shots to the crossbow’s one. But it had the supreme virtue that you didn’t need to start at age six and practice all your life to master it, and at short range the bolts had a brutal authority that would make nothing of most armor.

“Again.”

When Lioncel had fired three imaginary bolts he came to port arms again. Tiphaine looked around the table.

“Reverend Mother, may I borrow your attendant Sister…”

“Sister Fatima.”

“Sister Fatima for a moment.”

“Yes, my lady,” the abbess said.

Sister Fatima stood immediately, standing with her eyes slightly cast down and hands linked before her. Tiphaine nodded approval; she’d seen soldiers less disciplined.

“Sister Fatima, you are… what, twenty?”

“Nineteen, my lady.”

Nineteen, and of no more than middling height and slim, though healthy-looking, as far as you could tell with the voluminous habit.

“Your birth?”

“My father has a fief-minor in sergeantry on a manor of the Count’s, a day’s travel south of the city, my lady. Ferndale Manor.”

That put him in the lowest class of Associate. As an infantry reservist called up a month a year in peacetime he would have a double-sized peasant farm and pay less rent and labor service; his sons would spend a couple of years in the Count’s garrisons as young men. Such families were as close to a rural middle class as the Association had.

“Have you ever handled a crossbow?”

“No, my lady. My father and brothers are spearmen.”

“Your occupation?”

“I helped with all the usual farm chores, my lady. Now in God’s service

I am an orderly at our hospital, and a student of medicine, and assist with clerical duties in the Mother Superior’s office as needed.”

“Excellent, Sister. Lioncel, give the good Sister the crossbow. Sister Fatima, please span and shoot three times.”

Lioncel presented the weapon across his palms with a polite bow. The nun’s eyes went a little wide as she accepted it, and it wobbled slightly as she adjusted to the solid nine pounds of weight. Then she settled it in a rather clumsy copy of Lioncel’s posture and went through the loading procedure. She was awkward, and made elementary mistakes-holding the butt away from her shoulder in a way that would have given her a painful thump if there had been a bolt to launch. But it was obvious that she was handling the basic effort without much strain.

“Thank you, Sister, Reverend Mother,” Tiphaine said, as Lioncel retrieved the weapon, replaced it in the basket and retrieved the sword.

“And there you have it,” she went on to the room at large as he took up his position behind her. “You can quickly identify the natural shots. Bolts are reusable, so there’s no limit on practice. Any laborer, any healthy peasant girl, can load. Have two or three behind the shooter handing forward loaded crossbows. That will augment your firepower quite a bit, especially here with the large circuit of the city walls to hold, and let you use your trained men where you really need them. The enemy are not going to sit down to two-year sieges, or an artillery and combat-engineering duel. If they come, they’ll try ramps, siege towers, and plain old ladders, to swamp you with massed assaults regardless of costs. Shoot the guts out of them, break their hearts with losses, and you can stop them. Then your walls will be the anvil against which we’ll hammer them to death.”

Eventually, she thought but did not say.

The commoners were nodding enthusiastically. She thought she saw signs of hidden stomach cramps among some of the nobles, though not the Count, and the Countess was beaming and nodding herself. The Association had conquered as far and fast as it had because its leaders had quickly grasped the consequences of the Change, equipped their forces with effective gear based on pre-gunpowder weapons and armor, and given them at least some training from their own experience as hobbyists. That expansion had slowed and then stopped when the PPA ran into others who’d had variations on the same idea and time to recover from the shock of the Change and implement it. A lot of the nobles here were survivors of encounters with massed Mackenzie longbowmen or Bearkiller lancers or Corvallan or Yakiman pike-hedges, or the children and younger siblings of those who hadn’t survived the experience. She let them take the full force of her glacier-colored eyes for a moment.

There was still a good deal of indigestion at the thought of letting too many of the lower classes have weapons which could penetrate the armor of a knight.

“This program will be implemented immediately and fully. So the High King in his wisdom has decreed,” she said.

Which settles that, her glance said. Or I will settle you.

The silver notches in the hilt of the long sword that was in Lioncel’s arms once more reinforced the message. When the civilians and the clerics had left, the staff came in and removed the lower table. Lioncel and Armand set up the map easel in its place, and a baron tried again while they were at it:

“My lady Grand Constable, are you sure about the crossbows-”

“Yes, my lord. I am. More to the point the Lady Regent, Her Majesty Mathilda, and His Majesty Artos the First are sure. Any questions?”

He subsided and she went to the map, drawing her dagger to use as a pointer.

“Everything I said to the good burghers was true. What I didn’t dwell on-this sort of thing is how we’re supposed to earn our keep, my lords-is that we estimate that the enemy are still going to be coming straight at us with between one hundred thousand and one hundred twenty thousand men.”

Grunts of frank dismay at the numbers, which were horrific; even a generation after the Change, the far interior was still much more densely populated than the areas towards the coast where the big cities had been, and that translated into more fighting men. She was, within limits, glad that nobody here was gasconading about wading ankle-deep in enemy blood. But then these men had been on the front line for more than a year now. She nodded, a crisp gesture of acknowledgement:

“They’re out to break us this year because if they don’t they won’t be in a position to try again. This has been a slow, cautious, methodical war so far. On our part, it was a delaying action. It won’t be anymore.”

Saints were invoked-which might actually do some good, now-and there was a flicker of men crossing themselves. Maugis de Grimmond shrugged and spoke lightly:

“At least the High King didn’t have to sneak into the Prophet’s domains and throw something into a volcano.”

That broke the momentary dismay, and turned it to grim amusement. Tiphaine nodded thoughtfully to the young nobleman, took a sip from her brandy-spiked coffee cup, put it down and went on. The point of her weapon traced lines above the silk of the map.

“That’s the good part; the bad is that the Temple in Corwin isn’t going up in smoke or falling into a pit and his armies aren’t going to flee in despair either, even though the High King has the Sword. They’re massing here outside Spokane, and here at Lewiston on the Snake, we think to keep their horses from stressing the grazing too badly in either place. They can’t move directly west out of Spokane; too dry once you leave the Palouse and hit the Columbia plateau.”

The red-haired baron of Tucannon nodded: “I hunted antelope there with my father a few years ago. I saw the skeleton of a jackrabbit lying beside an empty water canteen it had been carrying.”

A few chuckles at that; a lot of that country had been irrigated from Grand Coulee, but while the dams still stood the giant pumps that filled the canals had stopped flowing at six fifteen p.m. Pacific time, 1998. Those of the population who’d survived had ended up in places like this, where rainfall or windmills or simple gravity-flow ditches provided enough water. Nobody went there anymore except a few hunters.

Tiphaine waited impassively a moment and then went on: “There’s no fodder there this time of year either. We could hold the north-south line of the Columbia above the bend forever, especially with the Free Cities backing us up and supplies and reinforcements easily available from the Yakima valley and the baronies in the east-slope valleys and the Okanagan.”

Her pointing dagger went south of the great river, into what had once been Oregon.

“The enemy occupied everything south of the Columbia last year, nearly as far as the boundaries of County Odell, after that cluster-fuck at Pendleton-which doesn’t seem to care we now have their precious Bossman prisoner. And Bend fell a bit later, along with the rest of the Central Oregon Rancher’s Association territories. Then the enemy spent months trying to force the passes of the High Cascades into the Willamette, and got nothing but bloody noses from the Mackenzies, Bearkillers and Corvallans. Then they died by the thousands in the winter blizzards because they didn’t pull back in time.”

A set of shark grins, or in a few cases winces; this time they were trying to imagine light horsemen riding into the teeth of those singing clouds of bodkin-pointed death the Mackenzie longbows could produce. Or caught cold and foodless in the huge snowfalls that stretched from October to May at those elevations, with the raiding parties of the Clan slipping through the forests around them like the wolves of Hecate they called themselves.

“Meanwhile the forces that the CORA left behind are waging a cavalry guerilla all over the range country and the foothills east of the Cascades, every inch of which they know, with their families safe in the Willamette and the forts for supplies and refuge. So now it’s our turn. We have strong castles at all the crossings of the Columbia from the Wallula Gap to the Gorge, so they can’t try to cross in strength to the north bank-incidentally, my lords, does anyone want to complain again about the way the Lady Regent forced everyone to spend money and sweat on fortifications and stockpiles the last fifteen years? No? Good.”

Her knife-point moved again, through the rolling lands between the Blue Mountains and the Snake River.

“They have only one option; out of the Palouse and down old Highway 12 from Lewiston to Walla Walla, then to the Wallula Gap and west north of the river.”

“How are they going to get past the river at the Gap?” Tucannon asked. “The castles there are very strong. Not much point in sweeping down Highway 12 and then sitting and watching the fish jump and trying to catch round shot and bolts with your teeth.”

“Invest the castles and then use barges and pontoons to cross the river,” she said. “Unless they can take the bridges up near Kennewick. We have castles covering those, but we couldn’t build enough to cover all possible water crossings.”

The fighting-men looked at each other; a few smiles flickered into being.

Good. They’re starting to see the enemy’s problems, not just ours.

“Well, good luck supporting a hundred thousand men on the other side of the Columbia that way,” de Grimmond said.

Tiphaine nodded. “That’s why we can’t fight the decisive battle here in the Eastermark-”

“Why not?” a baron whose estates were near Dayton said.

“Here they’ll still be close to their bases and they can use the railway and the Snake River to bring up supplies. I’m going to fight one or two battles, making them come to me because they’re in a hurry, bleed them, and then withdraw westward north of the Columbia, harassing them with the river to guard my right flank, and ultimately joining up with the force the High King is putting together back around Goldendale in Aurea County. You will hold this city and your keeps; if they leave enough men to invest you closely… Good.”

“Good?” someone asked.

“Good because anyone sitting in front of your gate is out of the fight just as much as if you’d chopped his head off. Or better, because the enemy still has to feed him. If they don’t invest you closely, come out and raid their lines of supply. And we’re going to scorch the earth; I don’t want one kernel of grain or one sheep left for them-”

That led to howls; they subsided quickly faced with the obvious necessity, especially since the Count backed her energetically, along with de Grimmond. When they were listening again she continued:

“That’s why we’ve built all those castles; castellation makes an attacker’s life a misery. We’ll draw them west, and each mile they advance will make them weaker and drive them mad with frustration, like chewing on meat full of gristle. Then, when they’re stretched out and worn down, the High King will bring all our forces against them in a position he chooses and that they can’t get around. By then they’ll be desperate, with winter coming on and a hostile wasteland behind them; they’ll have to go all-out to beat us so that they can get at our supplies. They won’t be able to refuse battle, which means that they’ll have to fight on our ground and our terms. We estimate that His Majesty, Artos, will be able to muster around eighty-five thousand for the decisive battle. If we win that, we win the war-though it won’t be over that day. And that, gentlemen, is our strategy.”

And I hope nobody is stupid enough to ask exactly where and when Artos plans to hit them. Athena, gray-eyed Defender of the Polis, you who love the warrior’s skill and care and craft in defense of home and hearth and those we are sworn to protect, let this work!

That brought a slight mental stutter; it was the first time she could ever recall spontaneously praying about anything without a deliberate decision, even now that she knew there was something to it. And something touched her then, a feeling of chill relentless clarity like the flicker of a great spear moving faster than a beam of pure light. It was gone before she could be certain it was anything more than her own mind functioning in total focus.

Then she went on:

“Lord Forest Grove has been screening against their advanced elements, and will give you the details on their dispositions and probable intentions. Lord Rigobert, the floor is yours. And I believe Lord Maugis has some thoughts on how we can act against the enemy’s rear elements and transport.”

She sat and waited out the discussion that followed, which lasted until everyone was yawning despite the rare, nerve-jolting treat of unlimited coffee. It was focused on details in any case; nobody was trying to talk her into a monumental last stand in defense of their favorite vineyards. At the last the meeting broke up, most of the men looking reasonably satisfied, or at least knowing what they were supposed to do and understanding the reasons for it, which would do. She stopped the Count on his way out.

“Your lordship, there’s something else that my lord de Stafford and I must speak with you about. Something more immediate.”

“Yes, my lady?” de Aguirre said.

His eyes were haunted with the knowledge of what was about to come crushing through his people’s lands, regardless of how the ultimate strategy worked. He’d probably be glad to have something more immediate to worry about.

“My lord Count, the entire military leadership of the Eastermark, plus myself and Lord Forest Grove, are here in your palace tonight. It’s a very tempting target. Or I would think so, if I was on the other side, and I got my start in clandestine operations. Walls keep out armies, not black-operations teams.”

His face changed, and de Stafford set a hand on his shoulder. “Here’s our plan, my lord,” he began.