Droyn was on her left in Associate dress, beyond him were the Dúnedain cousins, in the long loose-sleeved robe that Rangers wore for social occasions; his was black silk with cable-work in bullion around the hems and in two bands down the front, hers dark indigo linen worked with silver thread and turquoise beads in the forms of fantastic birds. Between them Susan Clever Raccoon wore a bleached deerskin tunic with a blue-and-red yoke of beadwork and elk teeth over the shoulders and beadwork elsewhere, fringes along the seams, and leggings likewise fringed above strap-up moccasins decorated with colored porcupine quills. Two eagle feathers were thrust in the long braids on either side of her head.
The plump, jolly-looking House chaplain in his cassock rose and said the Catholic grace, ending by crossing himself as those of his faith in the room did likewise and murmured along with him:
“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts, which we receive from Thy bounty, though Christ our Lord, Amen.”
Heuradys made her small offering to Hestia the hearth-Goddess, and Órlaith and the Mackenzies drew the Pentagram over their plates and the invocation that ended with . . . their hands helping Earth bring forth life. Faramir and Morfind put their hands to their hearts and bent their heads to the westward; in the silence of their minds the form of words would be:
To Númenor that was, and beyond to Elvenhome that is, and to that which is beyond Elvenhome and will ever be.
Susan Mika murmured something that started with: Ate Wankantanka, Mitawa ki; thanks to the Sword Órlaith spoke fluent Lakota—several dialects of it, in fact—but as usual when she was at a social occasion she made a slight practiced effort and didn’t mentally translate that and tried not to focus on the truthfulness of what anyone was saying.
You had to be cautious about the Sword’s gifts; her father had said that if you didn’t restrain yourself you’d become impossible for ordinary people to be around with any degree of comfort or even liking.
When you could say to someone how do you feel about me and know exactly how true the answer was, for instance. There were reasons her parents laughed bitterly when they heard of someone envying them the right to bear the Lady’s gift. And it explained why they’d trained themselves to be extremely honest with each other without allowing it to hurt.
“One thing I’m looking forward to when I get to the coast is tasting fresh seafood,” Alan said lightly. “We’re not much for fish on our home-range.”
She’d notice that he just bent his head while the others said their various thank-prayers, rather than joining in or hammer-signing his plate. The main branch of the Thurstons offered to the Aesir, which was a major reason that branch of the Old Faith had spread widely in Boise’s domains these last decades; they were popular rulers, both from the war and from Fred’s firm and just hand since. A substantial majority were still Christian though, many of them Latter-day Saints, and Protestants outnumbered Catholics among the remainder, in vivid contrast to the near-monopoly of the Church in the Association lands.
She was curious, but didn’t ask. By Boisean standards that would be rude if he didn’t bring up the subject first. Their tradition was that religion wasn’t a matter strangers had any right to ask about. And that those in power should be strictly neutral, as far as their public acts went; they were like that in Corvallis too.
“Apart from trout,” he qualified. “We’ve got plenty of trout, and bass. Smoked and salted ocean-fish we see occasionally, and potted shrimp or canned salmon or sardines, but it isn’t the same. Or so my grandmother said when she visited.”
“No, it isn’t,” Órlaith answered, smiling at the fondness in his voice and eyes as he mentioned her.
Yes, Cecile would have visited there, even if she didn’t mention it. He and his brother are her grandchildren, even if she repudiated his father and never liked Juliet.
“She said fresh oysters were like kissing the ocean on the lips,” he chuckled. “Which she says my grandfather Lawrence said to her while they were courting—dating, they said in the old days, didn’t they?”
She’d met Cecile Thurston, and liked her, though there was a deep well of sadness in her that left her wholly only when she was with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren. After the war she’d busied herself with good works, too; most notably in the chaos and despair of Nakamtu, where the fall of the Church Universal and Triumphant had left a gaping void in the hearts and souls of the folk as well as hunger in their bellies. Órlaith’s parents had been glad of that, and had funneled a good deal of the Kingdom’s aid through her. As her father said, they remembered him there with a sword in his hand against a background lit by burning roof-trees. He’d added that some wounds healed faster if you didn’t poke at them.
“Well, there’s seafood in plenty in Portland and Astoria,” Heuradys said. “If we’re out there the same time I can point you to some good places; or we could ask you over to the d’Ath townhouse. Nancy, she’s our cook there, can do things with lobster you wouldn’t believe.”
I’d invite him myself, but that wouldn’t be politic. Not without consulting Mother, Órlaith thought. And she still grinds her teeth whenever the subject of Martin Thurston comes up. Sigh . . .
“I’ll hold you to that, Lady Heuradys,” he said genially, not seeming to notice that Órlaith hadn’t issued any invitation.
Then he leaned a little closer and murmured to Órlaith: “I understand perfectly, Your Highness.”
Oh, sweet Brigid, he even smells nice, she thought in exasperation. And he’s perceptive and sensitive, too.
Aloud he added:
“Though this looks very fine,” as the food was borne in.
Everyone in an Associate lord’s household ate in the same room, but of course not on the same fare. Down below the salt they were getting baskets of still-warm maslin loaves—half wheat, half barley—set beside butter and rounds of cheese. There were crocks of white bean and ham soup, roasts of pork and mutton with gravy, steamed cabbage and carrots and peas and green beans and heaps of fried potato, along with locally-made catsup and pickles. For after there were pies put out to cool on a sideboard, apple and cherry and rhubarb and peach. It was good plain food and plenty of it, much like what a minor knight would have daily or a well-to-do peasant on Sunday. Plus there was a cask of small beer in its carved X-shaped wooden stand from which anyone could draw.
And a noble’s staff saw far less of the hard grind of labor that went with a peasant or craftsman’s life. Positions in a great household were sought-after, as long as the master and his kin didn’t have a reputation for bad temper.
Karl and Mathun could have made a good case for seats at the high table, since their father was Bow-Captain of the High King’s Archers, the premier guard regiment. Like the other Mackenzies, they looked perfectly content where they were, talking and chaffing with the manor staff and retainers and sampling the beer with the air of experts. Some other parts of Montival found the Protectorate’s system of ranks childish—she inclined to that view herself sometimes—and some considered it intensely annoying, while a few held to the view that it was active wickedness.
Which in our grandparents’ day it sometimes was, she thought. More to the point it often was when my mother’s father was Lord Protector. But those were harder times, very hard indeed.
In their own more modern day most Mackenzies treated it as an amusing game, with which they would play along indulgently if it wasn’t too much trouble. The more touchy-proud Associates found that provoking in a way that hatred wasn’t. When someone hated you they were at least taking you seriously.
The food above the golden cellar wasn’t the formal dishes you found at a High Court function either, for which she was thankful. Her father had said he’d had more success beating hostile armies than getting the palace cooks in Portland and Todenangst to stop putting so much of their efforts into making their dishes look like anything but what the makings actually were
, from whipped-cream swans with goldenberry eyes to forcemeat pastries like oceangoing ships.
And the pity of it is that the Protectorate sets fashions in food; though it’s good when they don’t go berserk.
She knew that apart from a passion for asparagus in season Baroness d’Ath liked simple hearty fare, and would have been perfectly content with what the commons were getting here, but also didn’t care enough about the matter to spend much thought on it. Countess Delia had always seen to the kitchen appointments, and her tastes tended to an elegant simplicity largely copied from Sandra Arminger, her original political patron.
They started with little half-moon-shaped fried dumplings of translucent dough filled with a mixture of scallions and minced lamb spiced with garlic and rosemary, and a sauce of hot chilies spooned over it to taste. The soup was a clear beef broth with noodles, several varieties of mushrooms and small veal meatballs made with ricotta, and followed by a green salad garnished with walnuts and dressed with local oil and fruit vinegar. After that came Hungarian pheasant—they thrived on the rangelands and stubblefields around here—done in the Norman style with gently cooked apples, sweet onions, cider and cream until it was tender enough to come off the bone on the point of a fork. Their fried potatoes were elegantly cut in long shoestrings rather than chunks, and there were baked tomatoes stuffed with sweet peppers, mint, dill, and a little sharp sheep’s-milk cheese, along with tender steamed brussels sprouts in a tart lemony butter sauce.
“Is this a local vintage?” Alan asked as the butler poured for the pheasant course and set out the tall gracefully-shaped decanters.
“By Dionysus Oeneus, no!” Heuradys said, sniffing and sipping. “Our vineyard here’s still experimental. We donate most of it to the Church for communion wine, or for the lord’s portion in village festivals on the estate. This is from Montinore Manor back on Barony Ath in the Tualatin. Most of our demesne there is vineyards.”
Órlaith took the scent: freshly-caramelized pear and a pleasant overtone of herbs, like walking through a spring hillside. She ate a forkful of the pheasant, then drank some of the wine. It had a hint of green apple and butterscotch and lime, which went well with the rich sweet savor of the bird, but there was a dry mineral quality that left the palate clear after a moment and ready for more.
“That’s your ’forty-three Pinot Gris Reserve, isn’t it?” she said; she recognized it well enough without a label.
“Yup, my liege. This one can stand quite a bit of aging. Well, quite a bit for a white, and it’s a little tight right out of the bottle. Better decanted.”
Droyn poured himself another glass. “My lord my father is rather bitter about the Montinore vineyards, Rancher Thurston. They were famous before the Change, and are now. Even abroad.”
“They like our wines in Hawaii,” Heuradys agreed. “We have a contract with Feldman and Sons for three thousand cases a year for that market. Though the Goat Killer alone knows what they do with it at blood temperature among the palm-trees and pineapples and breadfruit on Maui. Some of our reds would go well with pit-roasted pig, I suppose.”
Droyn finished his glass. “We’ve good vineyards in Molalla now, but it’s a slow business.”
Heuradys winked at him. “Unless you poach a master-vintner from our winery with showers of gold,” she said.
“No, even then,” Droyn replied, and everyone laughed.
Alan broke one of the dinner rolls—fine crusty white manchet bread here—took a bite to clear his palate and sipped again.
“Very nice,” he said. “But truly, at Hali Lake we were mostly a beer-cider-and-whiskey ranch. Wine was for Sunday dinner, and from the co-ops around the capital . . . Boise City . . . at that.”
Heuradys laughed. “You haven’t lived until you’ve drunken wine made by Mormons,” she said.
The Latter-day Saints didn’t drink anything with alcohol, and there were a lot of them in Boise. For that matter they didn’t drink coffee or tea, either, though that mattered much less in the modern world where both were exotic luxuries.
“Oh, that’s not quite fair,” Órlaith said; not coming from a family with vineyards, she had no dog in that fight. “A lot of the Boisean wines are quite drinkable, whoever makes it.”
Suzie leaned forward from between her two taller companions. “Yeah, I hear you, Alan. Out on the makol we really didn’t see wine very often at all. And that was from Iowa as often as not. I can taste that this is a lot better, but that’s about it.”
Heuradys shuddered with deliberate theatricality. Órlaith laughed; that was a little bit of Montivallan chauvinism. True, Iowa was never going to rival the West Coast of the continent for wine. Their fat black earth was better for grain and livestock, which it produced in quantities both amazing and needful, given Iowa’s enormous population and vast teeming cities. Des Moines alone had a hundred and fifty thousand people, twice the size of the largest urban center in Montival and far and away bigger than any other in the stretch between Panama and Hudson’s Bay. Iowa as a whole had as many people as it had before the Change or possibly even a little more, something very rare in the modern world.
She’d been there herself, as part of a Royal diplomatic visit a few years ago. And her mother and the Dowager Bosswoman there were friends from the time of the Quest.
“Mind you, back home a lot of the older big shots don’t like anyone drinking firewater at all, not that that stops people, you know?” Suzie went on. “Sour old killjoys with their mouths pursed up like a cat’s asshole, the way they talk you’d think White Buffalo Woman was whispering in their ears every damn day. Yeah, I hear it was a bad problem for our people before the Change, but that was then and most nowadays can handle it OK. Though what we drink for day-to-day is airag. I miss that, you just can’t get it anywhere else.”
Faramir and Morfind looked interested. Órlaith and Heuradys kept their faces politely blank as they nodded. Órlaith had enjoyed her long stay with the Lakota in her seventeenth year immensely, for its own sake and because it had been one of the first where her parents had left her on her own.
Not that I didn’t miss them, but it was . . . like growing up. Which back then I was wild to do.
Fermented mare’s milk had not been one of the high points, though, even when served with superb grilled buffalo-hump steak after a hard day’s ride; and it wasn’t even a local tradition. A young Mongol had been studying range management at South Dakota State University when the Change struck, and had already been a close friend of Suzie’s grandfather John Red Leaf. Red Leaf became one of the leaders of the renascent Lakota tunwan, and his friend Ulagan Chinua had become his right-hand man, married into the family and introduced quite a few of his native customs, which had worked well because they were so suited to tent-dwelling herders on a high cold steppe. Airag had been one of them, giving a nourishing and very mildly alcoholic drink to nomads many of whom couldn’t digest ordinary raw milk anyway. Órlaith had gotten used to it, more or less. Heuradys had simply refused to try it more than once.
“I envy you all,” Alan said. “I’ve always wanted to travel. Hali is beautiful, but . . .”
There was a slight silence; the reasons he and his mother and brother had been planted in the backlands and encouraged to stay there were political, and at a level that was still sensitive a full generation after his father’s treason. Órlaith thought she detected a fair degree of sympathy for Alan among her friends, precisely because he’d been born after his father died. They’d all found themselves unwillingly entangled in their parents’ feuds now and then.
“Oh, we’ve just started traveling too,” Faramir said. “Morfind and I were born in the Willamette, but we moved south when we were small, when our parents founded Stath Ingolf, and stayed there. It’s beautiful and there’s plenty to do, but it is the same old round of place and people.”
Which was how most people lived all their lives; without ever goin
g more than a day or two’s journey from their birthplace. Unless war or disaster struck, of course. But the well-born and warriors, often the same thing, moved around a good deal more in ordinary times.
“I’ve heard from Rangers—some pass through Hali—”
“Yes, there’s a Stath in the Bitterroot country in Nakamtu these days,” Faramir said. “And we have an exchange program with the Scouts in the Mountains of Golden Stone. We’ve learned from them, and they from us.”
Alan nodded. “The ones I met say that it’s customary for young Dúnedain to move around between Staths.”
“Oh, yes. The Mincolasira, we call it. The . . . time between, time of the gap, in the Common Tongue; the gap between being old enough to travel and fight, and settling down. You move around between Staths, and help with whatever they do and hone your skills, especially at places like Tawar-in-Mithril . . . Mithrilwood, where our rulers live. And you join expeditions—salvagers, caravan guards, explorers—or reinforce Staths that have fighting to do or need help getting established. We, Morfind and I, ah, we weren’t quite ready.”
Morfind was usually more taciturn than her cousin, and blunter when she did speak: “Our parents didn’t think we were old enough yet.”
“Our mothers weren’t much older when they went on the Quest of the Lady’s Sword,” Faramir said.
“And my father—Hîr Ingolf the Wanderer—left home when he was younger than us,” Morfind added. “He crossed the whole continent three times.”
That seemed to be a sore point, and she finished her wine at a gulp. Faramir was more philosophical, and smiled as he said:
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