And the pommel, a sphere of crystalline moon-opal gripped in antlers. Light swirled in it—
“Rudi!”
Mathilda’s voice was sharp as she called him back to the world of common day. He snapped the weapon home with a click of guard against chape.
“It’s so creepy when you . . . go away like that.”
He looked up at her and smiled. “Don’t say it’s always bad, acushla,” he said. “Here, put your hand on mine, and we’ll see together what I glimpsed.”
She did, where his left—his sword-hand, since the wound that nearly killed him leached a hair-fine edge of the strength and speed from his right—rested on the hilt. Then she gasped.
Rudi went on one knee in this very spot, sinewy wedge-shaped torso brown and bare above his kilt. But older, a little, with scars she didn’t recognize, and his hair longer and worn Mackenzie-style, tied back with a spare bowstring into a queue. He smiled as he extended his arms, and a two-year-old toddled towards him, a girl in a yellow shift, chubby feet bare, white-silk hair falling around her shoulders, huge turquoise eyes sparkling above a gap-toothed elfin grin. Rudi seized her beneath the arms and tossed her high, catching her and tossing her again.
Mathilda watched, laughing, an infant in her arms . . .
They took their hands from the Sword and looked at each other, wondering.
“Is . . . that what will be?” she asked.
“No. It’s what might very well be, though, which is close enough for government work, which is appropriate, eh? Making it so is up to us.”
“Two children,” she said wonderingly; he could hear happiness bubbling up beneath it. “In a few years from now, at least, and maybe more later. Oh, thank you, Holy Mary, mother of God. My children! Our children!”
“A daughter and a son,” Rudi added, nodding; then his mouth quirked. “Crown Princess Órlaith, and little Prince John.”
Mathilda looked at him sharply; the order of succession hadn’t been settled yet, whether it should be the eldest or the eldest son. The conservative nobility of the Association mostly wanted the latter, of course; and he knew she was ambivalent herself. Then her eyes went wider.
“You know their names. The Sword knows their names?”
“Well, we could choose others now, just to spite it, so. But they have a nice ring to them, don’t they? So we might as well . . . though it’s most surely a matter of the snake biting its own tail . . .”
“Órlaith,” Mathilda said. “That means . . . Golden Princess, doesn’t it?”
“So it does, in the ancient tongue. Her hair will be like white gold as a child, and palest yellow when she’s grown, with eyes like the sunlit sea; she’ll be tall and graceful as a willow-wand, stronger than sword steel.”
He frowned seriously. “And she’ll be mad for strawberries and cream in season, and love cats, and play the mandolin—”
Mathilda mock-punched him in the chest. “Now you’re making it up!”
“That I am. It’s true about the hair and all that, though.”
She paused for a moment. “And John . . . that was Dad’s middle name.”
“And so it was,” Rudi said mildly, meeting her eyes.
“I wouldn’t have dared suggest naming him Norman. I know that’s impossible. The politics.”
“Your father did great things, my heart, for good and ill. Let that part of him which did well and saved lives and built for the ages be remembered with the name, and the part of him that loved your mother and you. Let all else . . . be forgotten.”
Mathilda looked away for a moment. “Thank you,” she whispered.
Her father Norman John Arminger, the first Lord Protector and founder of the PPA, had been a very able man. A warrior to be feared with his own hands, and himself fearless as a lion, and still more to be respected as a battle-leader. Intelligent and quick-witted enough to see immediately what the Change that stopped the machines meant, while others dithered and denied and died. And with power of will enough to inspire and bully others into following him. Without him most of what became the PPA would have been ruins and charred bones split for marrow and wilderness long since. He’d truly loved Mathilda also, and in his odd way her mother Sandra.
A strong man, Rudi thought. Even a great one, but bad at the heart; though no man is all one thing.
As a ruler he’d also been a brutal terrorist and outright tyrant both from policy and by natural inclination, and from a half-mad determination to bring his obsessions to life and impose them as far as his sword’s writ reached. One who killed with a relish and delight that would probably have appalled even his idols and models, William the Bastard and Strongbow and Bohemond and Godfrey de Bouillon. Opportunities for that had been many in those early years of chaos and despair, when the most of human kind perished in a welter of famine and plague and desperate violence.
And ten years after the Change he’d have killed me, if Matti’s mother hadn’t hustled us out of his way after Tiphaine d’Ath rescued Matti from us Mackenzies, and captured me in turn. Killed me with embellishments, just to give Mother anguish, I think. His mind worked that way, the creature. But Sandra saw she might have use for me, even then.
Lady Regent Sandra Arminger was just as ruthless as her spouse had been. She was also even more intelligent, vastly more patient, and not hagridden by his inner demons. Since Norman’s death at the end of the War of the Eye she’d even been a good overlord to the Association from pure rational calculation; a hard ruler, very hard indeed, but not vicious. She had men killed without passion when she thought it necessary, like a croft-wife picking a chicken for the pot, and with as little regret; in just the same spirit as she calculated taxes or which bridges needed repair or how to balance factions in the dance of intrigue. She was even popular with the commons in the PPA territories, because the Counts and barons feared and obeyed her and she kept them in check and enforced the law on high and low alike.
Out of . . . craftsmanship, I think. It’s with good reason they call her the Spider of the Silver Tower. Yet she wept tears of joy when she saw Mathilda again; and she raised Mathilda . . . me too, when I was spending those months there every year after the war . . . as well as could be asked. Certainly we both learned much of kingcraft from her. We can never know the whole inwardness of another, nor all the paths their souls take from the Eastern to the Western gate. Not even our own, until the Dread Lord comes for us, and we stand before the Guardians in the place where Truth is seen whole.
“Our children,” Mathilda said again, leaning against him.
“When we’ve made a world safe for them,” he said. “So, let’s be about it, eh? We’ve troops to muster. Nearly as important, we need to get a better handle on what’s been going on here while we were away questing for the Sword.”
Mathilda nodded vigorously, her eyes going narrow with calculation. When she did that, she could look disquietingly like her mother. Rudi knew he was quick-witted; he suspected that in her way his handfasted wife was more intelligent still. More subtle, certainly, and perhaps a little more systematic.
“And not just the big things, battles won or lost, castles defended or not,” she said. “All the details. It’s going to be crucial to manage the politics properly from the start and we can’t assume things stood still while we were gone.”
“That’s my girl!” he laughed. “Though Chancellor Ignatius will have to take most of the burden perforce . . . and I’ll need him in the field eventually.”
“He’s a very able man. And not from the Protectorate.”
“Sure, and that’s one reason I appointed him. That and being absolutely sure of him.”
She frowned, still lost in thought. “And that’s why I’m glad we sent your Aunt Astrid off on Operation Lúthien.”
“I took your advice on that, acushla, though it’s a thin chance, but what’s the relation?”
“Mom always said you have to remember that individual people exist in themselves, but things like nations and clans and arm
ies and classes and religions only exist because people think they exist. They’re not rocks, they’re a swarm of people all flocking in the same direction. I mean, think of Montival—it didn’t exist two years ago, and now it does, and that’s because we pretty much talked people into thinking it did. By letter, at that.”
“A point, though we were pushing on an open door. The folk wanted to believe in a . . . dream of greatness. When people by the scores of thousands are convinced something is true, that truth can hit you very much like a rock. Hence our problems with the Church Universal and Triumphant and its Prophet Sethaz, the creature.”
She nodded. “That’s so. But Mom also always said that when bunches of people are fighting against each other, whether it’s with arms or words, you have to remember that they’re not rocks colliding. They’re people colliding. Every helmet has a head under it, and the head can think. The whole point of politics is to get people to do what you think they should. Bashing them is just one way of doing that. That’s why Operation Lúthien is so important. I think it might help us . . . talk some people out of thinking that a certain set of rocks exist. And make them believe in our rocks.”
“With the Sword in my left hand, and you at my right, I’m going to be invincible,” Rudi grinned. Then more soberly: “Though we’d best remember this is far bigger than either of us the now, the story of many and not ours alone. We may be at the center, but it’s the wheel that matters, not just the hub.”
One arm went around her shoulders. He put the other hand’s thumb and forefinger to his lips and whistled sharply. There was a moment’s silence, and then figures with long yew bows in their hands came trotting down out of the trees, hard to see at first in their green-covered brigandines and Mackenzie-tartan kilts and plaids. As they formed up around the High King and Queen for the walk back to Dun Juniper one began to sing, and they all took it up. When he recognized the tune so did Rudi, despite Mathilda’s laughing gesture of protest:“Near Sutterdown, in the country round
One morning last Beltaine
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she was whistlin’ Rudi’s Tain.
She looked so sweet from her sandaled feet
To the sheen of her nut-brown hair
Such a coaxing elf, sure I shook myself
To see if I was really there!”
“That song’s a mutilation!” Mathilda said. “I’ve heard the original.”
“I call it an improvement,” Rudi said. “This isn’t Erin, after all!
And he continued in a strong tenor:“From Ashland’s plays up to Portland’s quays
From Bend down to Coos Bay town
No maid I’ve seen like the fair colleen
That I met near Sutterdown!
As she onward sped I shook my head
And I gazed with a feeling rare
And I said, says I, to a passerby
‘Who’s the maid with the nut-brown hair?’
He smiled at me, and with pride says he,
‘That’s the gem of our own Clan’s crown . . .’ ”
CHAPTER TWO
SHATTUCK HALL, TEMPORARY CHANCELLERY
CROWN CITY OF PORTLAND
(FORMERLY PORTLAND, OREGON)
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JULY 31, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
“ My Lord Chancellor,” his executive assistant said. “Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski to see you.”
“Thank you, Ms. Wong,” Ignatius said, with a polite nod.
Many hats to keep straight, he thought; the title still felt a little unnatural.
Though at present, with the hood of his scapular thrown back, there was nothing between his tonsured head with its rim of raven hair and the ceiling. He was a slim broad-shouldered man of medium height, with a pale weathered regular face and slightly tilted black eyes, the legacy of a Vietnamese grandmother brought back here after some half-forgotten war of the ancient world.
Knight-brother of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict, priest, Lord Chancellor of Montival. Remember that names do not make the man. You are a human soul like uncounted millions more, the smallholder’s boy baptized Karl Bergfried; as precious to God as they, and no more so.
“Please send him through immediately,” he went on. “Then the mustering reports from the Ashland . . . no, it’s the Liu matter, isn’t it?”
He concealed a rush of embarrassment at her raised eyebrow. Adjunct Professor Felicia Wong was from Corvallis, part of the University Faculty of Administration there—which meant that she was a junior-to-middlinglevel bureaucrat on secondment from the city-state’s government, and hoping to get in on the ground floor of the new High Kingdom’s administration. Faculties were the term Corvallans used for what most people called guilds; a little confusingly they were also part of the University’s teaching structure. Like their terminology, they also insisted on dressing in what Ignatius considered an absurdly archaic manner; in her case, a button-down dress shirt, a tweed jacket with leather patches on the elbows, blue denim trousers and a painstaking modern re-creation of an old-world type of shoe known, for no discernible reason, as a sneaker.
She was also hard-working and efficient, and everyone was entitled to their foibles. Even if she was in her early thirties, scarcely older than he. Effectively they were as much Changelings as those born after that day in 1998.
“Yes, my lord Chancellor. The Liu children are expected momentarily.”
“Notify me when they arrive.”
I have been lurching from emergency to emergency all month. This lack of system wastes time, but there is no time to introduce a system! I must delegate more! But there is no time to test and come to know my subordinates. I must know more, I have been absent for two years, but there is scarcely a moment to spare to read, think or question people.
She left and held the door for the next entrant; a clicking noise of counting-boards and scritch of pens came through from the open-plan spaces beyond, and the clatter and ring of typewriters and adding machines. Ignatius rose from behind his desk and advanced with a smile of relief. The man was in his sixties, twice Ignatius’ age, balding and white-haired with penetrating blue eyes under tufted brows, but likewise in the simple black Benedictine habit. Around his waist was a broad leather belt with a plain cross-hilted long sword, a dagger, a rosary and crucifix; the buckle bore a shield-and-raven badge that was the emblem of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict that he had founded.
Don’t be excessive, Ignatius, he told himself. Yes, he is a very intelligent and holy man. But you are not the hero-worshipping novice Karl Bergfried anymore. You have your own tasks to do and cannot always run to the Reverend Father for reassurance.
Dmwoski had been thicker-set than the younger man but was growing gaunt, and stooped a very little now. Ignatius bowed and kissed his bishop’s ring.
“Are you well, Most Reverend Father in God?”
Dmwoski shrugged. “At my age and in this world of ours, a man is either well, or dead, my son,” he said. “At present I am consumed with curiosity at this task you have for me. Curiosity and eagerness.”
Ignatius indicated a chair and poured cool water before he resumed his seat behind the desk; the day was hot for Portland, probably over eighty. Dmwoski removed his sword belt and racked it beside Ignatius’ on the stand to the left of the door before he sat.
“I ask you only because, Reverend Father, you are one of the few able men I know who is not impossibly busy. Merely very busy.”
Dmwoski nodded. “The forces of the Order and of the lay militia of the Queen of Angels Commonwealth march even as we speak; the Abbey and its daughter-houses and the civil administration are functioning well.”
“I expected nothing else,” Ignatius said. “It’s not the first time we’ve marched north towards Portland.”
They both appreciated the irony of that; the last time it had been to fight the Associatio
n, at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, at the end of the War of the Eye.
“And now . . .”
He indicated his desk as he sat behind it. It wasn’t precisely cluttered; he was a man of painstaking neatness, the habits of a monk and a soldier and an engineer combined. But it was certainly crowded, and it also held a tray with the remains of a working lunch of bread, butter, cheese, sausage and a vegetable salad. The room was brightly lit by an overhead skylight, but the shabbiness of long disuse lingered in corners that had evaded a whirlwind of hasty patching and renovation.
“I am in the midst of trying to erect the skeleton of an administrative structure to coordinate our efforts while His Majesty fights a major war. All in the course of a month and without a legal or constitutional framework as yet. Not to mention no source of funds once what we brought from Iowa runs out.”
“I hope that is not self-pity I hear in your tone, my son. The reward for work well done . . .”
“Is more work, yes.”
“It seems the Association is providing generous assistance,” Dmwoski said, a slight dryness in his tone.
“As you see, rather too much so; that is why I picked this building, unused since the Change and obviously temporary. It would have been easier just to use the Lady Regent’s administrative apparatus . . .”
“. . . which would have meant a most unfortunate precedent, and all the other states would be justly terrified that the new kingdom is the Association in disguise, yes,” Dmwoski said.
“Your lecture to the novices on that curious old concept of initial path dependency suddenly seems much more relevant,” Ignatius said.
They shared a brief chuckle. The Order was a militant offshoot of the original Benedictine house at Mt. Angel; that mutation had been a necessity of survival in the terrible years, approved by the Church a decade later when contact had been restored with the new Pope and Curia in Badia. It had organized an enclave of survival, and it had played a significant role in the wars against the Association and Norman Arminger’s schismatic antipope Leo. In the years since the Order had helped bring civilization back to remote areas, spreading skills, teaching and guarding. That necessarily meant a fairly close acquaintance with politics, if only to protect their bailiwick around Mt. Angel and the daughter-houses.
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