Ritva made the gesture of reverence that the Dunedain shared with the Old Religion towards the holy images, clapping her palms twice, softly, and then bowing with them pressed together and fingers beneath her chin. Her people were courteous towards the fanes of others, whether it was reciprocated or not. Then she stood easily, waiting a moment for the lady of the plain clean chamber to speak first if she would.
It wasn’t a bleak room, though; the austerity was of a friendly sort, the bareness chosen because it sufficed and didn’t distract from things thought more important. The stern-faced woman behind the desk probably looked friendly often enough too, judging by the way the lines around her mouth and eyes lay. Right now she looked very tired, and not just because she’d probably been up all night, and extremely serious. Her face was rather horselike, and Ritva judged she’d been about the Ranger’s age at the time of the Change.
No point in a who-can-wait-longest match, and I’m the guest here asking for a favor, Ritva thought.
Then she put her hand on her heart and bowed. “Ni veren an gi ngovaned, naneth aen,” she said. “In the Common Speech, I am very pleased to meet you, Reverend Mother.”
“Sit, my child,” she replied, with a wry quirking smile. “I have been expecting this visit for some time, since my last talk with Rancher Woburn.”
Ritva pulled a small knife from her boot-top first, slit open a seam on her belt, and produced a set of thin onionskin paper documents. The abbess took them in worn fingers, fished spectacles out of a pocket, turned up the lamp and read. At one point she looked up sharply. “The leaders of the Dunedain?”
Ritva spread her hands, and the Abbess nodded.
“Yes, there is no need for me to know more about that.”
At last she sat back and sighed, then crossed herself and bent her head over clasped hands for several long moments, in prayer or meditation.
“You come highly recommended,” she said when she looked up again. “Not least by Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski and Father Ignatius. I know of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict, and news of the good father’s vision of the Virgin in the Valley of the Sun-”
She paused to bow her head to the Madonna.
“-has spread widely to us of the Church.”
“I was with him on that journey, Reverend Mother,” Ritva said. “I’m not of your faith, but he is a very holy man. And a very clever one as well; clever, brave, a faithful friend. The High King has appointed him Lord Chancellor of Montival.”
The eyes of the Abbess were a cool blue-gray. They studied her for a moment before the religious spoke herself: “But his is a militant order, and necessarily involved in politics and war. We… are not. We have our life here according to our Rule, here and in the daughter-houses we have established since the Change. We work, we teach, we heal, we help God’s poor, and for our joy and our rest we have prayer. All this I would endanger, if I help you and you fail. Possibly even if you succeed, in the end.”
Ritva nodded gravely. All that was perfectly true. Reverend Mother Dominica had to think of it. She was responsible for her followers, after all; and for all those who depended on her Order.
“Everything you are and do is endangered if we lose, Reverend Mother. As it was in the days of Duke Iron Rod, but more so.”
The older woman flinched; very slightly, but Ritva was sensitive to such things. Oops, she thought. She must have been a member back then too. Or one of Iron Rod’s prisoners, or both.
“I have tried to forgive,” the nun whispered after a moment. “But to forgive evil men is not to submit to the evil they do. You are right that we owe your family a debt from those days.”
She sighed. “I’ve also heard of this Sword of the Lady. A pagan thing, and a pagan King wields it.”
I’m a pagan thing myself, Ritva thought; she restrained herself from arguing: It’s all different avatars of the same Lady, right?
Christians could be irritatingly rigid about that. She’d had two years of Father Ignatius’ implacably polite certainty to drive home the lesson.
“I’m the High King’s half sister,” she pointed out instead. “And I’ve known him all my life and besides, it’s the same with us Dunedain as it is with the Mackenzies: it’s a point of our faith that everyone finds their own path to the Divine. We’re in more danger from you than you from us. There will be a lot more Christians in Montival than anyone else, and your type of Christian is the commonest. Matti… the High Queen Mathilda… is one of you. Whereas the Church Universal and Triumphant…”
“They are evil and they serve evil,” the Abbess whispered. “I don’t say that idly or simply because their theology, the public version, is absurd. There must be freedom-even for error.” She smiled a little. “Even for taking the stories of a long-dead Englishman who was a good Catholic with appalling literal-mindedness, for example, my child.”
Ritva suppressed an impulse to stick out her tongue. She suspected that the Abbess read it anyway.
“But while that may be wrong, it is not evil,” the Abbess continued earnestly. “And General-President Thurston has… changed since he came back from his meeting with the false Prophet Sethaz in Bend last year. He was always a very hard man, very ambitious, but.. . the new decrees are ominous.”
“They’re straight out of the CUT’s book,” Ritva said; she’d been reading the briefing papers the leaders had brought along during the ride south. “And they’re just a start.”
“Can you tell me what use you will put our aid to, if we give it?”
“No, of course not, Mother Superior. You don’t need to know. That’s need to know in the technical sense. You know we’ll use it to fight the CUT and the parricide Martin Thurston and I can’t give details.”
A long silence, during which the older woman’s gaze turned inward. Then: “Yes. Tell me what you need us to do.”
“No more questions?” Ritva asked.
The Mother Superior smiled. “If it is to be done at all, it should be done well. When you make a decision, think carefully, pray, consult where appropriate, and then make it. Half measures give you all the drawbacks of each alternative and none of their advantages.”
Ritva rose and bowed a salute, hand to heart, as she would have done for her own superiors.
“So also says the Lady of the Rangers, and the other leaders of our people, my kinsfolk,” she said. “And my brother Rudi… Artos. .. as well. Are you sure you were never a soldier, Reverend Mother?”
She smiled and shook her head. “Only a foot soldier of Christ, my child. But in this office I have had to make decisions in plenty. Your aunt is a wise lady, if she grasps that, because it is not an easy thing to do. And your High King doubly so, because he is still a young man.”
A slight wince. “It is no easier when lives ride on it.”
Ritva listed the aid that Operation Luthien would need. The Reverend Mother sighed, pushed herself back slightly from the desk, and opened a drawer that proved to hold a typewriter.
“What you need, then, is primarily information and recommendations,” she said, as she inserted a sheet of paper in the roll. “Between us, St. Hilda’s and Rancher Woburn will be able to furnish those.”
Then she smiled; it made her face much younger for a moment, reminding Ritva of Mary’s-which was to say, herself-when they were thinking up some prank.
“In fact, we may be able to furnish unexpected help from above, so to say.”
Ritva nodded. I wish I could be as carefree about this as Mary and I used to be on missions, she thought. But this time it’s not just my life. It’s the life of my home… not just the Dunedain, either. All of Montival.
CHAPTER FIVE
CASTLE ODELL, COUNTY OF ODELL (FORMERLY NORTHERN OREGON) PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) JULY 31, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
C astle Odell was small compared to the great fortress-palace of Todenangst, but substantial compared to anything else built in the PPA’s territories since th
e Change; towers and curtain-walls and rearing central keep beneath bright banners. Conrad Renfrew had started it in the second Change Year, right after he was granted the fief to hold as tenant-in-chief, direct vassal of the Crown.
After he’d conquered it for the Association, Sandra Arminger thought.
The carriage of the Lady Regent of the PPA rolled past the tents of the levy’s encampment and men gaped or gathered to cheer as the black-and-gold coach and its escort of men-at-arms and mounted crossbowmen of the Protector’s Guard swept by. More bowed and then waved and called greetings in the town.
Though considering who was in charge before, it’s no wonder he’s always been popular here. Not something that you could say about all our new lords. Mind you, Lady Valentinne had a good deal to do with it, starting with being native to the place. Tina mellowed him, which caused problems with Norman if not with me. He was still angry about the accident and the scars in those days, and she helped him deal with that.
His engineers had used Lenz Butte as the base, rising nearly two hundred feet over the rolling surface of the valley; the little red-tiled town of Odell clung to its base to the east by the road and railway, dwarfed by the castle and the newly completed Cypriot-Gothic cathedral. The slopes below the white-stuccoed ferroconcrete ramparts were terraced gardens. Just now they were a blaze of roses, the scent full and sweet in the warm drowsy summer air through the open windows of the carriage. The clatter of her escorts’ hooves came through as well, then the hollow drumming on the drawbridge; trumpets rang from the gatehouse, and they passed into its gloom beneath the arched ceiling that held the murder-holes and portcullis and out into light once more.
“This is a bit private, Jehane,” she said to her amanuensis as the driver pulled up with a whoa. “It’ll be easier to tell the Lord High Chancellor to act his age and stop being an idiot if it’s all in the family. Keep going on the precis of those reports.”
“Yes, my lady. The Castellan here is currently Lord Ramon Gomez Gonzalez, Baron de Mosier, his family are vassals to House Renfrew. Arms, Gules, a castle of three towers argent, in base a key fessways the ward to the sinister or. His wife is Lady Gussalen of House O’Brian, and they just had their first boy. Named Bertrand. He’s taking the field with the rest of the arriere-ban, and Lord Akers, Baron de Parkdale succeeds him as Castellan then.”
“Lord Akers the elder?”
“Yes, Sir Buzz is down on the southern border with the forces of the Three Tribes and his own menie. They’re screening against the enemy concentrated in the Bend area.”
“Thank you,” Sandra said warmly.
She had most of the same facts at her fingertips, but it was nice to see that Lady Jehane had made such progress. She smiled again, a closed secret curve of her lips.
“My lady?”
“Just remembering how much raiding there was back and forth across that area during the Protector’s War. Castle Parkdale was built to guard against the Three Tribes. Time, politics and war make strange bedfellows.”
A varlet leapt down from behind the carriage to open the door and fold down the step. Sandra gathered the pearl-gray silk skirts of her cote-hardie and let Tiphaine d’Ath hand her and Jehane down. The courtyard was bright, and she blinked for a moment amid the stamp and clatter of destriers and coursers and rouncys, the rattle and gleam of armor. The interior walls all glowed with color as well, climbing roses twined through light lath trellises, until they seemed to flame and shimmer in green and crimson and white and pale pink. There was another clank and thump as the soldiers present all brought their right fists to their chests and bowed, which was protocol for fighting-men under arms in a public venue.
The roses are Tina’s work, Sandra thought. And she does it very well. She hasn’t much head for politics but she’s not stupid at all.
“Baron de Mosier,” she said to the dark-faced nobleman who saluted Tiphaine and bowed Sandra through into the gate of the keep.
He had a neatly trimmed black mustache and goatee. Which makes him look like Evil Spock from the Mirror Universe. And nobody here but Conrad and possibly Tina would have the least idea of what I was talking about if I said that.
“How pleasant to see you again,” she went on. “I trust that Lady Gussalen is well, and young Lord Bertrand?”
“She is very well, God be praised, and thanks be to my patron St. James, to whom I have lit many candles,” the man said, trying to hide his flush of pleasure as he crossed himself. “My son is also well, my lady Regent.”
“The Grand Constable and I wish to see my lord Count Renfrew. We’re expected, you needn’t have us announced.”
“He and the Countess and their children are in the solar, my lady Regent,” the baron said, looking a little dubious at the informality but obedient nonetheless. “We were expecting them down momentarily. This way-”
“I’m sure you’re extremely busy with getting the garrison ready to march, Lord Ramon,” she said with a smile.
“That is so, my lady,” he said as he took the hint.
“Though if you could show my lady-in-waiting Lady Jehane to the reception chamber?”
“I’ll see to it at once, my lady Regent. God give you good day.”
The escort from the Protector’s Guard fell back as well, when Tiphaine raised one pale brow at their commander.
“I think I can take care of the Lady Regent, Sir Tancred,” she said dryly at his hesitation.
The Baroness of d’Ath was like a slender silver statue in a full suit of plate, and her fingers rested on the pommel of her long sword. The grip had scales of dimpled black bone; they were cut with twelve small notches, and each had a tiny piece of silver wire hammered in for emphasis. Those represented only the noble Associates she’d killed in formal duels, of course. Mostly on Sandra’s clandestine orders; a few had just been people she thought needed to be dead.
“Certainly, my lady Grand Constable,” he said, saluting stiffly.
Though you can feel their paranoia burning, convinced that Cutter assassins with curved knives are lurking behind the tapestries, Sandra thought. Or possibly that the Lord High Chancellor and his family will strangle me and the Grand Constable. Then again, you don’t want much of a sense of humor or proportion in your bodyguards.
A solar was always on the higher levels of a keep’s towers; that was the only place where it was safe to have larger windows. Castle Odell didn’t run to elevators, either. She lifted her skirts slightly and toiled upward, reminded of the loathed but conscientious hours she put in on the Steppercizer back home. The floral motif continued in tile and wall-paintings as they climbed-a castle had to be strong, but that didn’t necessarily mean bare concrete. Her soft shoes scuffed upward through the narrow bands of light cast by the arrow-slits, beneath the ring and clang of the Grand Constable’s steel sabatons-Tiphaine could walk like a cat in anything else, and didn’t apparently feel the fifty pounds of armor at all.
They were as alone as possible; in fact, she couldn’t recall being more alone anytime recently, and spent a moment enjoying the unfamiliar sensation. Then she halted at a landing, as if for breath, and spoke quietly.
“What do you think of Operation Luthien? From your own experience doing special operations for me back in the day.”
“I was your assassin, my lady.”
“Same thing, and answer the question.”
“It’s insane, my lady,” d’Ath replied. Grudgingly: “That doesn’t mean it won’t work, necessarily. The Rangers are good at what they do, and they’ve pulled off stunts nearly as weird. It’s just… I’d prefer fewer trappings out of myth and legend. Astrid Loring is always the starring lead in her own production of Middle-Earth: the Fifth Age and the Rebirth of Glory, playing on the inside of her eyelids.”
Sandra laughed, a gurgling sound. “Baroness d’Ath, where are we? At this moment, I mean.”
“Castle Odell… oh.”
Sandra saw a rare moment of confusion on the Grand Constable’s impassive, regular-fea
tured face. She was a borderline Changeling, old enough to remember the world before that March day in 1998, but young enough that she usually didn’t unless reminded.
“Point taken, my lady. This… well, it’s not what I expected as the rising gymnastics star of Binnsmeade Middle School, let’s put it that way. But unlike the Third Age, the Middle Ages actually did exist, once.”
“Not like this, they didn’t,” Sandra said.
“As they should have been,” Tiphaine quoted sourly.
“Exactly. I have studied history, and believe me I know. And I made sure you did, too.”
“I wonder what a real fourteenth-century European would make of the Association?”
“Fascination and horror, I should imagine. He’d probably think he’d been carried off to Faerie or Avalon by Morgan le Fay.”
“Or gone to heaven, if it was a woman.”
“A good point. Now, Operation Luthien might work?”
“Yes. With Astrid and her merry band doing it in person.”
“Could you pull it off?”
“Not now. I’m still better than she is with a sword-in my own opinion-but I’ve been playing general for years; I’m a little rusty at the ninjitsu. Of course, there are probably plenty of very able up-and-comers, but while they might be a hair better physically none of them would have had as much practice in planning and execution. Both of us are just about to reach the point where increased experience no longer fully compensates for the reflexes slowing down. And even back in the day I wouldn’t have recommended anything so risky
… though the upside if it does work is large?”
“Huge,” Sandra said flatly; that was a political question more than a military one.
“And if it fails”-Tiphaine said, and a slightly anticipatory note crept into her normally expressionless voice-“if it fails, all we’ve lost is one deranged fangirl and a few adults who are still obsessed with tree houses.”
“Tsk, tsk, I believe you’re letting your personal dislikes influence your judgment, Tiph. Besides which, the Dunedain Rangers may be very useful to the dynasty in the long run.”
The Tears of the Sun tc-5 Page 11
