The Chancellor frowned. “I thought you were a gymnast? Olympic hopes and all that?”
“Gymnastics first, but Kat talked me into the Scouts in ’ninety-seven, my mother pitched a fit. . Sandra pulled some strings to have us attached to the reconnaissance element for the Dawson campaign. Norman thought we were a joke, but she wanted us to broaden our skill-sets. And get some mojo with the regulars.”
“Ah, right. I remember you two mousetrapped that Mountie deep-penetration patrol. A nice change from all the times the sneaky bastards did it to us. Yes, and you marched up and plopped the heads down on the breakfast table and said Pray allow us to present some friends, my lord. He didn’t think that was a joke!”
“He laughed, Conrad. He laughed so hard he snarfed his porridge and you had to pound him on the back. Kat offered to do the Heimlich on him and then he turned blue.”
You can always tell when older people are reminiscing, Lioncel thought indulgently. They start using that old-fashioned way of speech, even my lady isn’t quite a Changeling that way.
“He didn’t think you were a joke anymore. The heads, yes, that hit him right in the funny bone.”
“We did think it would cheer people up,” Tiphaine said, a little amusement in her tone.
“That was when I really first noticed you. That girl will go far, I thought, and now you’ve got my old job.”
Conrad shivered reminiscently and crossed himself before he went on:
“I also thought I’d never feel warm again, and it was so damned dark all the time. . ”
Tiphaine gave a half-snort: “I remember trying to pee and my armor being so cold that skin stuck hard to the metal anywhere it touched,” she said. “That and the way the Canuk ski troops kept working around our flanks through the woods. If they’d had more body armor and cavalry it would have been impossible.”
Conrad sighed as he referenced a letter and murmured to his clerk. “Enough about the old days, let’s get the rest of these supply projections sorted.”
“All right, let’s start with the barges and that elderly hardtack we have stockpiled at Goldendale-”
Watching the Chancellor and my lady the Grand Constable do their work is. . educational, Lioncel thought as he stood and directed the page boys with flicks of his hand. Well, I’m the Grand Constable’s squire; I’m supposed to be learning.
They went through the rest of the stack of documents at a pace that made him blink, usually talking in an elliptical compressed way that showed how many years they’d worked together and stopping just long enough to chew when they took a bite of the lunch collation.
“That’s all for now, Mistress Brunisente,” Conrad said to the senior clerk when they came to the bottom of the stack. “Get me a typewritten transcript by tomorrow and do a précis.”
“Copies, my lord?”
“No carbons. We’ll circulate it under seal to the Queen Mother and Chancellor Ignatius after we go over it. No need to bother Their Majesties with this unless the Chancellor-slash-Questing Monk says so. Rudi and Mathilda have enough on their plates.”
The clerk took the hint, bobbed a curtsy and left.
“Good enough,” Tiphaine d’Ath said.
She leaned back, stretching her arms far behind her and tilting her head to one side and then the other until there was a sharp click.
“As far as the Association contingent goes we’re golden on the supply situation for the rest of this campaigning season,” she said. “Especially since His Majesty’s letting a lot of our infantry go back to their villages and plow.”
“The downside of that is that we’re cutting the size of the field force because we can’t feed that many so far from the Columbia, not because Rudi couldn’t use the men,” Conrad grunted. “Anyway, it’s time the rest did their share, and their foot soldiers are just about as good as ours. Nobody else has anything like our men-at-arms, though.”
“The Bearkillers come fairly close. Nobody else has anything like the Mackenzie Archers, either,” Tiphaine said and shrugged. “Our knights are more use on campaign than they are back home beating on each other at tournaments and hawking and boozing, and only a little more expensive.”
“You don’t have to find the money to pay their stipends,” Renfrew said. “Or pay to replace their beloved destriers when the bloody things die in the field-you wouldn’t think something so big would be so fragile. Those damned gee-gees cost more than a suit of plate and they wear out a whole hell of a lot faster.”
Lioncel was mildly shocked at the way the Count was talking about the noble beasts. Nearly everyone he knew loved their destriers and coursers, but you had to make allowances for the older generation. It took six years to breed and train a charger fit to bear an armored lancer into battle wearing armor of its own. He’d been unpleasantly surprised to find out that their average life expectancy on active campaign was around ten months. Even the High King’s fabled steed Epona, who’d gone all the way to the Sunrise Lands and back with him on the Quest, had died at the Horse Heaven Hills.
“The knights pay war-tallage anyway,” Tiphaine said. “So it’s out of one pocket and into another. And the Crown owns a lot of the horse-breeding farms, plus we have insurance. The Counts aren’t complaining really seriously either, it’s just the usual moaning bitchery and mine-is-bigger bickering. Ah, the delights of feudalism.”
“If you think this is bad, you should have seen what SCA politics were like before the Change. Truly murderous, at least as far as emotions went.”
“Society politics? With so little at stake?” Tiphaine asked.
“Because so little was at stake by modern standards. And notice that the Counts bitch to me,” Conrad said. “Not to you.”
“They’re not as afraid you’ll kill them, my lord Chancellor. And you are a Count, of course.”
“Nobody likes paying taxes. . also of course. Wait until they see what Matti plans to levy on them for the reconstruction program,” Conrad said, using the familiar form of High Queen Mathilda’s name.
Of course, he’s been around her since she was a baby, Lioncel thought charitably. And the older generation. . well, you have to make allowances.
The Count of Odell shuddered slightly for effect, then rubbed his hands together and grinned. “Sandra’s drawing up one of her little lists.”
“You seem to be working well with Father Ignatius, by the way,” Tiphaine said.
“He’s very capable,” Conrad Renfrew said, nodding and running a spade-shaped hand over his head, mostly naturally bald now rather than shaven as had been his custom for decades. “Even if he disapproves of me.”
“Ignatius disapproves of me a lot more,” Tiphaine said. “I can’t say he’s my favorite person in all the world either, though he and Matti are close. And he’d better be able, with his job. He gives it everything he’s got, I grant him that.”
The Knight-Brother was a Lord Chancellor too, but of the whole of the new High Kingdom of Montival. The warrior cleric had won great glory and ringing fame for himself and his Order of the Shield of St. Benedict at the High King’s side on the quest to Nantucket. He’d had a vision of the Virgin, too, which was awe-inspiring.
But Their Majesties gave him high office for his talents, Lioncel thought. The Order are scholars as well as warriors.
They’d also been leaders in the old wars. . on the side against the Portland Protective Association, despite the Lord Protector’s championing of the Faith. Of course, technically the Protectorate had been in schism in those days; all contact with Rome had ceased on the day of the Change and for better than a decade after, and Norman Arminger had found a bishop willing to claim the Throne of St. Peter. Rome was a haunted ruin now, but a legitimately chosen Holy Father ruled the universal Church from the Umbrian city of Badia.
Curiosity as to why the Lord Protector’s chosen antipope Leo had survived him by less than a month was strongly discouraged in the Association lands. Officially it was a heart attack, providentially easing the task
of reunion.
Unofficially, from things overheard at home, Lioncel knew Sandra Arminger had sent one Tiphaine d’Ath to untraceably turn him from a problem into a memory, though it had been before he was born. That sort of thing didn’t happen nearly as often nowadays. .
Conrad laughed. “Though unlike me, Ignatius only has to bust his ass for the Crown metaphorically.”
“That joke was funny the first seventeen times, Conrad,” she said in a coolly neutral voice. “And you started the minute the field medics told you what the problem was.”
“Not until they got the morphine into me; before that I just screeched and swore. And I paid for that joke with months of my ass being literally in a sling and I’ll use it as often as I damned well please,” he said cheerfully. “Still, it’s all more fun than it was in the old days.”
He nodded out the pointed-arch window that lit the dayroom. That looked south across the courtyard to the glittering gold-tipped black height of the Onyx Tower, the Lord Protector’s old lair.
Tiphaine snorted slightly, but Lioncel thought it had a wealth of meaning.
“Granted Norman blossomed into a tyrant’s tyrant when he got the opportunity, but he wasn’t all bad,” Conrad said a little defensively.
Conrad of Odell had also been a fixture of Lioncel’s life-besides his duties, his Countess and her daughters were good friends of Lioncel’s mother-but at times like this you remembered that the unofficial uncle who’d played “bear” with you in front of the hearth had also been the Lord Protector’s right-hand man. He was beginning to suspect that being disconcerted that way by sudden shifts in perspective was another. . disconcerting thing about being his age.
Mother told me once she’d heard from the Countess of Odell that the Armingers stood by him when he got those burns on his face, way back before the Change.
“Ninety percent absolutely rotten bad,” Tiphaine said shortly.
“Except that we’d all have been gnawed bones without him. I sure as shit had no earthly idea what to do when the Change hit and the machines stopped, and he did. Ah, well, it’s ancient history. I think we’ve wrapped up all the essentials and you’ve had a chance to look over the replacements we’re sending forward. They’re eager enough.”
“They’re ironhead macho imbeciles who need to be bled, to correct the balance of their humors,” she said crisply. “Which I will see to. Not to mention learning that there’s more to war than couching a lance and sticking spurs in a horse’s ass.”
“Better to restrain the noble steed than prod the reluctant mule. Give my regards to Rudi. . His Majesty. . when you’re back in the cow-country.”
“The Prophet’s men did a good cloud-of-locusts imitation out there to slow pursuit. It’s gnawed bones country, since you brought up the phrase, with cows pretty scarce. The buzzards there have to carry their own rations,” she said.
“Speaking of which, here’s the grant,” he said, pulling a last formidable-looking document out of a folder and tossing it in front of her. “That’ll keep you travelling out there the rest of your life!”
“Joy,” she said. “Thank you. . I suppose.”
“Hey, it’s free! That’s always a bargain.”
“Like getting fifteen million tons of undelivered Arizona sand for sixpence ha’penny,” she said dryly. “Don’t work yourself to death while I’m gone, Conrad. I’d rather snog wolverines in a confessional booth than be saddled with the job you’ve got now.”
The Count of Odell picked up the ebony cane that leaned against his wheelchair, tapped it on the marble tiles of the floor and waved it forward as he cried:
“En avant!”
There was a ripple of bows as his squire wheeled him out.
“Clear this up, Tasin,” Lioncel said, when nobody was left but the Grand Constable’s household.
The senior page-he was Tasin Jones, one of the younger brothers of Count Chaka of Molalla-slid forward and helped the younger pair clear the remains of lunch. His square brown face was intent; he’d entered the d’Ath household barely six months ago. Lioncel had been a page himself until last August, and he remembered how anxious you could get at the thought something would go wrong while you were attending the lords. It would be worse for Tasin, since he hadn’t grown up with the Grand Constable, just knew her fearsome reputation.
He was shaping well, though, now that he’d gotten over homesickness. Lioncel gave him a discreet wink and a thumbs-up when the job was done, and got a brief broad smile in exchange.
The plates held the remains of a lunch of cold spiced pork loin, a long loaf of white bread, sharp Tillamook cheese, sweet butter, a green salad and fruit tarts; the sort of plain good fare Tiphaine d’Ath preferred even at court. At a gesture, Tasin poured her another glass of watered wine and one for the squire and left the carafe. The pages made a little procession as they took the plates out to hand off to the castle staff; they were eyeing the uneaten blueberry tarts too, since those were their lawful prerogative. . though as he remembered it the staff would get them as often as not.
One of the points of page service was to teach young noblemen humility, learning to obey among strangers before they commanded at home. And that good things didn’t simply appear by magic when you waved your hand.
“Lioncel, attend,” Tiphaine said.
They were about as alone as you ever got at court. A tinkle came from a wind chime near the windows, and one of the interior walls of the big room was mostly bookshelves and map-racks, with a trophy of crude spears taken in some skirmish long ago crossed over a shield made from a battered-looking STOP sign above the swept and empty hearth. The furniture was understated and strongly built, mostly rubbed oak lightly carved and brown tooled leather held by brass rivets; a tapestry showed Castle Ath across a landscape of forest and vineyard and huntsmen bringing in boars, and the rugs were patterned with birds twining through vines.
The decor suited the Grand Constable perfectly, down to the hunting trophies-a stuffed boar’s head, tiger and bear-skins-but she wouldn’t have bothered about it herself. His mother had furnished the place, part of her duties as Châtelaine. In effect, general manager of the whole civilian side of the barony, from interior decoration to keeping the reeves and bailiffs honest and arranging apprenticeships for deserving youngsters. In the last few years he’d started to realize just how much work that involved, something that had taken a while not least because his mother always made it look either effortless or enjoyable. And how not only the baron’s interests but the comfort and livelihoods of hundreds of families depended on it.
“My lady?” he said.
“Time for a little question-and-answer, boy.”
It had also been just recently that he really realized what it meant that Lady Delia de Stafford lived with the Grand Constable, and that his father was perfectly content with the arrangement. It hadn’t made all that much difference, though he was a good Catholic himself. They were the people he’d grown up around, after all, the ones he knew and loved.
His liege jerked her thumb towards a stool. Lioncel de Stafford was a dutiful young man. He bowed and sank down with a perfectly genuine expression of alert interest. Squirehood involved a lot of lectures, if your liege was conscientious; it was the aristocracy’s equivalent of apprenticeship. His liege-lady was always worth listening to and didn’t just talk because she liked the sound of her own voice.
“What did you gather from all that?” she said, inclining her head towards the door the Lord Chancellor had used.
Tiphaine had always been kind enough to Delia’s children, but the Grand Constable wasn’t a woman who had much use for youngsters. As he got older she was paying more and more attention to him, which was intriguing and disturbing in about equal measure. They were a long way from equals; he didn’t know if they ever would be that, since she was terrifyingly capable at all of a noble’s skills save some of the social ones. But he’d put his foot on the bottom rung.
“That some of the great families a
re starting to bicker and complain, my lady. Even though the war isn’t over!” Lioncel said, trying to keep the heat out of his voice.
He’d had a ringside seat the last few years, old enough to no longer assume victory was automatic, and things had often looked. .
Very bad indeed, he thought. Before the Quest returned with the High King and the Sword. . very bad.
“We won the decisive battle at the Horse Heaven Hills, and Rudi killed Martin Thurston to put the brandied cherry on the whipped cream,” Tiphaine said in a cool even voice, wine-cup between her long fingers. “That leads to. . premature relaxation. Mistaking are winning for having won.”
“Last year the enemy were winning, and look what happened to them. The Prophet isn’t dead yet! Are these people stupid?” Lioncel burst out. “My lady,” he added hastily.
“Some of them are. The rest. . just arrogant and shortsighted and obsessed with who’s getting precedence. And in love with their own supreme awesomeness, particularly since it was a classic chivalric bull-at-a-gate charge with the lance that finished off the battle, like something out of a chanson. They tend to forget the rest.”
Lioncel looked down at his glass. He’d always loved the songs and still did, and the great charge had been like one of the chansons about Arthur or Charlemagne and their paladins come to life.
When eight thousand lances crested the ridge in a blaze of steel and plumes and rearing destriers. . and then the oliphants screamed the charge à l’outrance. .
It would be a thing of pride for the rest of his life to have taken part, even in a junior squire’s place behind the line. . but he’d seen enough of real war now to realize that the troubadours tended to dwell on a very narrow part of it.
And to leave out things like what a man looks like after a conroi’s worth of barded destriers have galloped over him. Or maybe it was a man and a horse to start with, I couldn’t tell for sure in a single glance.
Tiphaine raised one pale brow, as if she was following his thoughts.
“When we were desperate, politics got damped down,” she said. “Now, not so much.”
The Given Sacrifice c-7 Page 5
