“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 famou
s 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!”
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