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, gaslight
s 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?”
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