A Meeting At Corvallis

Chapter Twenty

Near Dallas, Willamette Valley, Oregon

April 2nd, 2008/Change Year 10

"T hanks," Michael Havel said, gripping Alleyne Loring's hand. "Christ Jesus, but I wish I was going with you!"

The little party of Dunedain and Bearkillers waited in the gathering shadows beneath the edge of the trees, some already mounted, some holding their mounts' reins. Westward the sun sank over the Coast Range, casting their shadows towards the croplands. Eastward a strategic hamlet stood a mile away, behind its ditch and mound and stone-and-concrete wall, with an A-lister's fortified steading not far off, within mutual supporting distance. As he shook hands with the Bearkiller lord Alleyne saw a bright blink of light from those walls as a militiaman's steel caught the dying light. The rich smell of plowed earth came on the wind, mingling with the fresh fir-sap scent of the great forests westward, and the horse-leather-wool-oiled-metal scent that meant action.

"We'll get him back, sir," Alleyne said, giving a squeeze back.

The word came naturally; this was a man you had to respect, even if he was a bit of a rough diamond. His wife, on the other hand, was a stunner-not better-looking than Astrid, which wouldn't be humanly possible, but more human. Her blue eyes were steady on his as she nodded; then she stepped forward and gave him a hug, which was pleasant enough even though she was wearing a mail hauberk. Like the rest of the Rangers, the young Englishman was in mottled camouflage-patterned clothing of green and brown, with a brig-andine covered in the same material, and a war cloak rolled behind his saddle. They all carried sword and bow, but this mission could only be done by stealth and speed, not hammer blows.

"I pray to God you do," Signe Havel said sincerely. "And take care of my little sister, too." She looked at the others. "All of you take care."

Havel went on: "I wish you could take more supplies, but you're right to limit the load. Still, it's better than a hundred and fifty miles by the paths you're going to be following, and the mountains can be cold and wet this time of year."

There were a dozen of them, and only half as many pack horses, beside the riding animals. Alleyne smiled. "By now I've spent enough time in your Ore-gonian forests to feel quite at home, I assure you."

"Yeah, well, the Coast Range isn't quite the same as Silver Falls," he said.

Astrid stirred where she stood contemplating the sunset. "That's Taur-i-Mithril, or in the Common Speech-"

"-Silver Falls State Park," Havel said, smiling his crooked smile. "You take care too, Sis. Get the kid, and get out."

"We will," she said, and Eilir and John Hordle nodded. "And it's time to go. We want to get as far as we can before moonset."

Havel nodded. Alleyne swung into the saddle and turned his mount westward, touching it into a fast walk and bending his head as they passed beneath the branches of the oak at the head of the trail. A last look showed him Michael Havel staring after him, and pounding his right fist into the hollow of his other palm.

Village of Montinore, Tualatin Valley, Oregon

April 8th, 2008/Change Year 10

"Come and hear!" Estella Maldonado said. "Come and buy! Come and laugh!" She circled the wagon dancing and rattled the tambourine in the air as her mother played her fiddle from the driver's seat, and her brothers juggled cups and eggs and daggers, flinging them high to catch the evening sun. They were slender, dark-haired, olive-skinned young men, dressed gitano -style in dark pants and baggy shirts, boots and spangled vests, with kerchiefs bound around their hair and big gold hoop earrings, and daggers-just barely of legal size- thrust through their sashes. She was younger-twenty to their twenty-two and -three-and wore a silk kerchief herself, but her strong black hair flowed waist-long behind it; a flounced scarlet skirt swung around her calves as she swayed her hips, and a red bodice thrust her full bosom up into the low-cut, embroidered white blouse, enough to show an enticing amount without quite bringing down the wrath of some village priest. Her jewelry was gaudy and abundant and quite genuine; it was a convenient way to store the family assets: and fun.

"Come and buy! Come and laugh! Come one, come all, people of Montinore Manor!"

The tinerant wagon-the legal term for its owners was licensed itinerant -was a simple box with a curved sheet-metal roof, but gaudily painted. Light trucks had furnished the wheels and springs; four red-and-white oxen drew it. Right now they were lying down and chewing their cuds unconcernedly while her father walked around the vehicle and unfolded the sides. Another much like it followed; that was their sleeping quarters and for baggage, with the family's one horse hitched behind the door in the rear, and a tin chimney through the roof.

Rogelio Maldonado opened the cargo wagon up in cleverly arranged stepped metal trays on both sides, a staircaselike arrangement that reached almost down to the muddy surface of the village green. There was a tempting smell from bottles of perfume, and from trays of spices-curry powder, dried chilies, ground sage and sesame seeds; there were rock candy and crystallized ginger; toys and picture books and tops; cloth in bolts and little cakes of wild-indigo essence and saffron and madder. Ribbons and precious cotton sewing thread (and the newer, distinctly inferior linen variety for those who could not afford it) shared space with buttons and vied with tools and pans and pots and a few luxury foods like potted shrimp and pickled peppers and jams. There were also the miniature anvil and hammers and punches, last and awls, that proclaimed the travelers to be tinkers and shoemakers and repairers of leather goods as well. Bundles of wildflowers hung from twine set along the sides of both wagons, in the first stages of drying to make sachets.

A crowd was already gathering from the homes and cottages along the single patched asphalt street of the settlement below Montinore Manor, drawn from wheel and loom and garden hoe and workbench by the noise and the gear and the prospect of a break in the dull round of days. There were three hundred souls in the village, a little more than average, most of them here on the Saturday half-holiday: holiday meaning for most it was time to do for themselves and their families instead of the landholder. A few in the crowd were probably servants from the manor or castle from the embroidered tabards, and a pair were off-duty soldiers in the padded gambesons usually worn below armor for protection, and now keeping their owners warm against the spring evening. She looked around, deliberately waking her memories; when you moved every couple of days that was necessary, or you could get lost because your mind used its map of some other familiar place.

Yes, there was a glimpse of white off to the north and west, over low, rolling hills covered in leafy rows of vines-the manor house, a pre-Change mansion that had been the center of a vineyard estate. A little more west of north, and the brutal exclamation point of the tower of Castle Ath reared over a low hill, flying the black-and-red of the Lord Protector and the more complex heraldry of the new baronet; mountains green and forested rose beyond, and to the west. That was all demesne land. South more vineyards, east the old railroad tracks and the five open fields where the tenants had their strips of land, looking more settled every time they visited as the trees planted along their edges grew.

Hmmm, Estella thought, considering as she danced. They're better-dressed than last time. Especially the peons. More shoes, too. And the place looks tidier, the church has been painted. As we heard, there's a new broom here:

The fiddle squealed on as Papa unrolled the awnings above the slanted steplike trays of their goods. He claimed to have a little gitano blood, but it was probably not true, though she and her brothers looked the part-which in his rare moments of candor he admitted was what you got when you crossed Sonoran mestizo with small-town Arizona Anglo. The half-believed claim had gotten them help that let them live through the Change-she remembered little of that, since she had been barely ten-and nowadays some of the other tinerants were the genuine article, and it was the fashion among the rest to imitate it. Hiding in plain sight; if you were suspect and despised because you were a tinerant and a gypsy, you'd be less likely to be suspected of witchcraft.

Other than size Montinore village was similar to hundreds of others in Portland's territories, which was no accident; they were built to a standard pattern out of the Lord Protector's history books. The church was brick, and a few of the free-tenant houses were pre-Change, ordinary frame structures covered in clapboard. Others had been moved here, hauled with ox-teams or disassembled and rebuilt. The peon cottages were all new-built from salvaged materials, one room and a loft, with a toolshed and chicken coop attached. Each house was on its own garden plot, a long narrow rectangle stretching back from the road; the tenant farmhouses had barns and byres attached on their larger allotments. There was a mill here, built on a water-furrow from a dam on the creek a few hundred yards away; the wheel wasn't turning right now. The bailiff's house stood near it, and the miller's, the two best in the village with the priest's cottage right behind.

"Come buy!" Estella shouted again. "Come buy!"

Suddenly an off-duty soldier grabbed her around the waist from behind, hands groping at her breasts. "I'll buy!" he said, laughing.

You think that's funny, pig? Let's see how you laugh at this. But no, better not be too emphatic.

Fortunately he wasn't wearing his hauberk, which would make it easier to reach behind and grab so: and then he howled and let her go.

"That would be renting," she said sweetly, as he bent and rubbed at himself and laughed-it had been more of a playful tweak than a real wrench-and-twist. "Ask someone else, soldier, and don't believe all the stories you hear about tinerant girls."

Then the steward was there holding his white staff, with the fat bailiff in tow; she let the tambourine fall silent along with the fiddle. Both were looking more sour-faced than usual, and the bailiff's even more loathsome son looked more like a sulky boar than he had the time before.

"You have your permit?" Wielman said.

Her father bowed-the whole family did, except for Estella and her mother, who curtsied. Then he produced the stamped, signed authorization they had for travel and petty trade; it was countersigned by a bishop and several priests, all of them deceived by the ostentatious piety of the Maldonado family. Such permits were something the PPA gave out only grudgingly, and only because they knew that otherwise swapping and barter would go on underground.

Which they do anyway, Estella thought. Along with a good deal else, by the Lord and Lady!

"You can stay four days and nights," he said at last, after checking that the signatures were up-to-date and taking the bag of "gifts" her father offered, along with the regulation fee; the bailiff got another. "We have a new lord: lady: here, so be careful. I don't have the right of the High Justice, but she does."

And nobody would care if she used it on tinerant trash, Estella thought, grim behind her smile.

Later that night Estella walked away from the bonfire where a sudden ah from the gathered crowd said her brother Carlos had swallowed the sword. They had done well today, in coin and in supplies and barter-the miller had sold them three bolts of the lovely woolen twill that his daughters wove and two great sacks of shelled filberts in return for a set of big metalworker's files salvaged from the ruins of Olympia, and they'd picked up enough flour, spuds and flitches of bacon and hams to last for two weeks in trade for sundries. Tomorrow they would start repairing pots and making shoes:

And speaking of the miller and his daughter, she thought with a smile. It will be good to see Delia again. I could use cheering up, and she is fun.

Delia waited behind the millrace scaffolding, where deep shadow made the night even blacker, and the fires and noise were comfortably distant; if anyone noticed she'd gone from the crowd around the wagon, they'd suspect the reason, though hopefully not the person, for she'd cheerfully flirted with half a dozen, including the undiscouraged soldier. Water gurgled by overhead, making the spring night chilly and damper than elsewhere, with a scent of wet earth and soaked wood; Estella pulled her shawl over her shoulders.

But she can get us in the mill, which has a nice comfortable pile of grain sacks, she thought with a warm glow of anticipation.

They exchanged the murmured recognition signals, as much to cater to the younger woman's sense of drama as from real need-both had been raised witches-and the ritual kiss of greeting; both were tailored to be meaningless to someone outside the hidden Coven network. When she tried for a real kiss, though:

Estella laughed ruefully at the dodge; a relationship conducted at month-long intervals just didn't have a long shelf life.

"Well, you've found someone at last," she said, taking the other by the hands and giving them a squeeze. "Alas!"

"Yes, I have: can we still be friends? You're not angry?"

"Of course we'll be friends! We always were, for years before we were lovers. And I always said I couldn't be here for more than visits, remember. We were lucky to have what we had; the memory will always be warm."

Delia grinned in the darkness. "Well, now maybe I should be angry! Aren't you sad at all? Disappointed?"

"I'm heartbroken, mi coraz n. Have they hitched you to the bailiff's son, with his pig face and little curly tail?"

Delia laughed. "As if! I'd be sobbing on your shoulder and asking for comfort if that had happened! And you, heartbroken? You've probably got a girl in every village."

"Only half a dozen," she said, with some exaggeration. "Boys in one or two," she went on, and laughed at the other's grimace. "Purist! But tell me who, then. I hope you're not being careless!"

The girl was practically dancing with delight. "You'll never guess!"

"Of course not; that's why I asked."

Delia leaned forward and whispered in her ear. "Tiphaine: d'Ath!"

Estella felt her eyes go wide in shock, unseen in the darkness. She grabbed the other by the shoulders:

"She didn't hurt you?" she asked sharply, then shook her head. "No, evidently not-"

"Oh, Estella, it wasn't like that at all. I practically dragged her off!"

A soft whistle. "Dangerous! You couldn't be sure she wouldn't turn you over to the priests!"

"Well, it was a bit scary at first. She looked sort of: forbidding, you know? Beautiful, but like a sword blade would look if it walked. But I felt prettier when she looked at me, so I took a chance. She's sweet, and was so lonely-her friend who'd been with her forever died last year."

Yes, killed trying to kidnap Lady Juniper's son, Estella thought. And this one succeeded, and left some of our brothers and sisters dead behind her.

Slowly, she went on aloud: "Querida, you are taking a big risk here. Think how the soldiers are, think how all the castle people are, like rattlesnakes in a bucket. Because this woman likes to make love with you doesn't mean she loves you."

"It isn't just that. When we're alone we talk about our lives, and play games-she's teaching me chess-and laugh, and she plays the lute and we sing: "

Estella winced at an unexpected stab of jealousy, as much for the privacy and safety as anything else; it was easier to arrange your life when you had your own castle. Not that I would have one on a bet!

"Darling, she's an Associate. She has been an Associate since the Change, in the Protector's Household-"

"The consort's."

"She was still raised to kill people for a living, and take what others grow and make, by threat of death and pain. The Associates are the sword arm of the Church, and the Church burns witches. Nice is not something the Portland Protective Association are very good at; killing and taking, that is what they do. Think what might happen if you two quarreled, or you yourself changed your mind: "

"No, really, she's not like most of them! Not just to me-she's starting a spinning and weaving school for the peon women, with me and Rose and Claire to teach, and she's buying the equipment-and she spent fifty rose nobles on cloth, so people wouldn't have to wait until then to have decent clothes, and she's gotten Wielman and the bailiff and Keith the Pig under control so they're not squeezing people nearly so bad, and she keeps the soldiers in line. And hardly anyone's been whipped or put in the stocks unless they really deserved it."

That's all interesting, but it doesn't necessarily mean she's nice, just smart and foresighted, Estella thought. Let's not argue. I recognize the tone. This poor girl has fallen hard. I hope she is not hurt too badly, but such is life. We must not let it endanger the Craft: but it could work to our advantage, as well. She will hear things and see things she would not otherwise.

"And she's like an older sister to the Princess Mathilda-Mathilda's nice too-and to Rudi. I gave Rudi the pattern-"

"How?" Estella asked sharply.

Delia giggled. "In some gravy, so nobody else could see-he wouldn't have himself, if he weren't so sharp. We haven't said a word beyond that, but he knows, and it makes him feel better. His poor mother must be so worried, and he's homesick and lonely sometimes, but like I said, Tiphaine treats him like her own family.''

"That will be a relief to Lady Juniper. We can pass it on: never mind how. And if we must, we can have you pass a message to him. The risk, though! He's still not quite ten years old. That's why we don't tell children about the Craft until they're older than that, and able to keep secrets."

"Not with Rudi. He's a wonderful kid, so brave! And smart too. He's teaching me my letters, well, how to read them better, and he tells lovely stories about how the Mackenzies live. And you can see the Lord and Lady walk with him, all the time, not just at the special times."

She hesitated. "Can we have an Esbat while your family are here? Since Mom died"-her voice caught for a moment-"we haven't had a High Priestess, and nobody else knows all the things she did, not here or in the other villages. She was teaching me, but I hadn't learned nearly as much as I need. Dad was so sorry we couldn't have a passing rite for her. We couldn't find her books, either."

"Good!" Estella said. "If you can't find them, the Hounds of God can't either."

Delia nodded, completely serious for the first time in their meeting. Excellent, Estella thought. She may be eighteen and infatuated to giddiness, but she knows that is a matter of life and death. Aloud, the tinerant went on.

"I'll talk to my parents, and see what we can do. But first you must tell me all about Rudi; where he's kept, and what he does each day. Leave nothing out." She sensed a hesitation. "This is for the Old Religion, and for the Queen of Witches."

"Well: OK. I don't suppose it can hurt."

Near Cherry Grove, Tualatin Valley, Oregon

April 10th, 2008/Change Year 10

Astrid tapped him on the sleeve. There, the gesture said.

Alleyne could see it too, the faint shimmering blink of a campfire ahead, wavering through half a mile of forest and brush and a gathering ground-mist that muffled the strong, musty scent of rotting leaves and fir needles and cones. He stroked the soft blond stubble on his chin-shaving while moving fast and secretly through the woods wasn't very practical-and compared the lie of the land about him to the map in his head, then nodded.

Astrid made a sound beneath her teeth, held up two fingers and tapped them to right and left, and half-glimpsed figures spread out and moved forward. The nighted forest was not quite pitch-black, but fairly close to it; they'd left their war cloaks behind with the horses further up the slope of Mt. Richmond for the sake of speed and quietness. Here the unpeopled mountains that stretched west to Tillamook and the ocean met the cultivated eastern lowlands in a maze of twisting valleys. The one ahead was called Patton-not, he thought, for the general-and held the upper stretches of the Tualatin River. There was a village called Cherry Grove a few miles to their west, lately rebuilt on the pre-Change ruins because there was a good fall of water for a mill. Its fields stretched eastward along the valley this mountain overlooked on either side of the river, and there the contacts they were to meet should be camped. They'd picked the location because the little hamlet on the edge of the mountains had no manor and no garrison to speak of. That made it a little safer, but not much.

So that campfire is them: or they were discovered, and it's an ambush. Well, no time like the present.

Astrid and he eeled forward. The hillside had been logged off recently enough that the trees were only fifty or sixty feet high above them, and there was plenty of bush; even after better than a year gone he was still conscious of how different the sounds were from an English wood at night, sharper and harsher, with more buzzing and clicking of insects. The birds were surprisingly similar, though he missed the nightingales. They ghosted downslope; once a red fox leapt aside in panicked surprise as they passed from tree to tree, and shot off with a crackle of leaves under churning paws. He grinned to himself at that, since it was like meeting an old friend from Hampshire. As if to remind him where he was, from somewhere in the northern darkness came the appalling, rowling screech of a cougar, probably just after it dropped on a passing deer, or perhaps in disappointment after it missed.

They went to their bellies a hundred yards from where woods gave way to the scrubby pasture where the wagons waited; beyond that was a road, and beyond that a field of some sort-probably grain, from the strength of the scent of wet earth. A few dogs lay around the fire, and a pot bubbled above it, and something roasted on a wooden spit close beside it; that was the best way to do small game, and let you catch the drippings in a pan. The smells made his stomach cramp, since they'd had nothing but cheese and waybread today.

A last halt, and Eilir and John came in on either side, quiet and slow. The big man put his mouth next to Alleyne's ear: "Nothing. We've got scouts out on all sides now."

Astrid smiled and rose. "Mae Govannem" she called.

The figures around the fire rose; one spilled something in his haste, and began an abortive snatch for a hunting bow.

"I hadn't expected them to come it the heavy gypsy quite so much," John said to him quietly as he passed to get a refill from the pot.

Alleyne made a subdued noise of agreement; the rabbit stew was taking most of his attention, nicely thick with peas and onions, and fresh bread as well. It was true, though. He'd met a few real Rom before the Change, and some since in Gibraltar, and they generally weren't nearly so much like a Romantic-era operetta, all headscarves and earrings: Of course, a few clans of an extremely traditional variety had survived in remote Carpathian valleys, and they'd drifted westward since to get away from ongoing chaos and warfare there, where the die-off hadn't been quite as complete as it had in the lands west of the Elbe.

And this gentleman and his wife are rather obviously ordinary Americans of Mexican and what-they-call-Anglo-here descent, he thought. Bits of mispronounced Romany notwithstanding: Is there anybody in this country who isn't putting it on?

"Te auel mange bakht drago mange wi te avav po gunoy," he said with malice aforethought. And it was true; luck was all they needed, and they were in a bit of a dungheap. Mind you, we need a great deal of luck.

Mr. Maldonado looked slightly panic-stricken, then shrugged, looking trapped by the circle of firelight that wavered on the gaudily painted wagons to either side.

"I'm afraid I have only a little of the old language," he said, and his wife gave a wry smile.

Eilir winked at him from behind the man's back. And we're not actually Nu-menoreans, she seemed to be saying. But it's fun, so why not?

Turning back, he caught a twinkle in Astrid's eye; you could never be quite sure: and he remembered King Charles and the smock frocks and Morris dancing. Perhaps it was a seeking after reassurance, given the terrible shock of the Change and its aftermath.

The younger Ms. Maldonado unfolded a map and a sheaf of notes. She looked the part; she might have stepped out of a tavern in Gibraltar, in fact, with that creamy olive skin and lush figure, the pouting lower lip Astrid elbowed him in the side, and he grinned, a little apologetically. The young woman went on.

"This is the layout of Ath castle; the barracks, the inner Keep, the guest rooms where the princess and Rudi sleep. And I have the patrol and guard schedules."

"Excellent," Astrid said. "You must have good sources inside the castle: no, don't tell me, I don't need to know."

Estella Maldonado shrugged interestingly, with something oddly wry in her smile. "Sources very close to the top," she said.

"Hmmm. We could come in from the west," Hordle said, tracing one thick finger over the paper. "Around this big lake-"

"Hag Lake," Estella supplied. "People seldom go there, particularly this early in the year. It's said to be haunted by a hag who cursed a band of Eaters after the Change-"

Castle of Ath/Hag Lake

Tualatin Valley, Oregon

April 15th, 2008/Change Year 10

"I just want you to find me charming and wise;

I just want you to find me somewhere inside-"

Tiphaine let the tune die, leaning back against the pillows with a calf over her knee, idly strumming the lute, watching Delia sew for a moment before she spoke: "You know, sweetie, your dress sense is a lot like Lady Sandra's. At least, you pick the same sort of stuff for me that she used to tell me to wear when I was in the Household. Black with white and gold accents for me, brown and russet and silver for Kat-Kat had dark hair and fair skin and blue eyes, like you."

Bright morning light streamed in through the narrow eastern window; sunrise and sunset were the best-lit times in the tower bedchamber. The air was cool and fresh, made more so by the sprays of cherry blossom in vases on tables and mantelpiece and the headboard of the bed.

Delia replied as her fingers moved deftly with needle and thread and fine cambric linen: "So, what's she really like? Lady Sandra, I mean?" she asked, holding the fabric up. "Besides having good taste in clothes. I brought her some hot rolls once, that my mother baked, when the consort was visiting Montinore Manor. I was really nervous, I was just fourteen then, and she said thank you very nicely. I thought she was wonderful."

Lucky you didn't meet her husband, then, Tiphaine thought, surprised at the surge of protective anger she felt. Hey, I guess I really do like her a lot.

The girl continued: "Is she really sinister and cruel and evil, the way the stories say?"

Tiphaine reached over and took a stem of raw asparagus from a bowl by the table that also held the first snowpeas of the season, and crunched on it, savoring the fresh, intense, nutty-green flavor, like eating springtime, or what she imagined fresh grass tasted like to a horse. She looked at the file of accounts tossed aside on the bedcover; they kept saying you're in the nobility now, tra-la, anyway; that didn't make them less boring but it did help.

"Sinister? Yup, in spades. But I wouldn't say cruel, exactly," Tiphaine said thoughtfully. "She's certainly pretty evil, though."

She tuned the lute and played a trickle of notes. Now, how to sum up Lady Sandra: slither of minor key, plangent, fading to something soft and wild: you couldn't really get fingering complex enough. A harpsichord might be better for it.

Delia considered the loose-sleeved linen shirt critically, bit off a thread and stuck her needle in the pincushion. "There!"

She rose from the chair beside the swept and empty hearth and handed the shirt to Tiphaine. The design around the neck and down the seam of the sleeves intertwined the letters PPA and the new arms of Ath, the black and gold and silver stitching neat and precise.

"Did she treat you and your friend badly?" the younger woman went on, turning to one of the cupboards as if to hide the flash in her eyes. "Is that how you know she's evil?"

Tiphaine smiled at the indignation in her tone as she set down the instrument and bunched the linen. "Nope!" she said through the fabric.

Then, as she pulled it down, laced up the three-quarter opening in front, buttoned the cuffs and tucked the tail into the new black doeskin riding breeches she was wearing: "She took me and Kat in, protected us from everyone, got us training and education that nobody else would have. Taught us plenty herself, too. Being around Lady Sandra sort of forces your wits along, like starting this asparagus early under glass frames."

Delia smiled over her shoulder as she sorted through the clothes with quick, skilled fingers. "Then she's really a nice person underneath, like you."

"Oh, I'm pretty evil too, sweetie. I'm just nice to you, which isn't the same thing at all."

Delia laughed; so did Tiphaine. Though she's laughing because she thinks I'm teasing, and I'm laughing because I'm not.

"If she's so evil, why did you work for her?" the seamstress said.

"Well, since I'm evil too, it sort of makes sense: "

Delia made a rude gesture with two fingers and stuck out her tongue. Tiphaine went on, more seriously: "It's my duty; she's my liege-lady, and I owe her, big-time, so honor requires it. Plus in this world we've got you're either on top of the heap or on the bottom, and I prefer to be the one on-"

She stopped: Delia was looking at her with an exaggerated innocent-surprise rounding of the eyes, making a rosebud of her lips and laying one index finger on it, the picture of astonishment.

"Stop that!" Tiphaine said, laughing in earnest now. "I am not that bossy in bed!"

She threw a stem of asparagus; the girl caught it and ate it, then tossed back the thigh-length sleeveless jerkin she'd picked out for the seigneur of Ath. It was black-dyed fawnskin, even slighter and more supple than doe-leather, finished like soft suede and lined with thin silk; the delta and V of her arms was done on the front in gold and silver thread, with a mandarin collar closed by a gold button. Tiphaine pulled it on and tugged it into place, swung her legs over the side of the bed to buckle on her boots, slung the lute over her back on its ribbon and walked over to the floor-length mirror.

"Ohhh, not bad," she said, and tossed back her shoulder-length hair, still slightly damp from the shower. "Not bad at all."

"You are one babelicious chick-magnet, Tiphaine d'Ath," Delia said, with a chuckle. "And that outfit looks very sinister and: andyrowgenerus?"

"Androgynous," she supplied, turning and preening slightly. "And no it doesn't. I never was boyish, even at fourteen, just athletic."

To herself: She's so smart I forget she can't read very well, sometimes. I must do something about that. Formal education for people below the Associate level wasn't illegal, just sort of seriously frowned on except for bright children picked for the Church. Nobody would really mind with a miller's daughter, though. It wasn't as if she was a peon; the family trade required literacy and arithmetic. So would supervising the domain's cloth-making enterprise.

The seamstress-weaver nodded critically, circling behind her, examining the clothes with professional skill and tugging down a hem, then went on with a thoughtful finger tapping at her jaw: "Well, it looks nice and sinister and evil, which I suppose is good, since you say you're evil and all. And it does so look andyer-iogenous to me. I mean, nobody could mistake that gorgeous ass for a guy's, but you could bounce a rose noble off it, and the way the jerkin sets off your shoulders and legs against the tuck of your waist and the bosom-"

Tiphaine nodded: I suppose it does look that way, these days. It's sort of a different effect now that most women don't wear pants very often.

Delia handed her the sword belt-her second-best one, with monochrome tooling rather than inlay and a cut-steel buckle, since she was going out for a ride and a picnic, not to a festival-and she put it on, settling it fashionably just above her hips and just below the waistline. The sword was new, made to her preferences by the best war-smith in Forest Grove and layer-forged from fillets of mild steel and tough alloy; double-edged but relatively slender, with a yard of blade tapering to a long, vicious point, checked-ebony hilts and a silver fishtail pommel. She speed-drew it and did a quick figure-eight flourish, making the air hiss as she neatly snipped off a spray of cherry blossoms and cut it in half again before it fell an inch. Then she sheathed the sword again with a sweet tiinngg as the quillons kissed the metal rim of the scabbard.

"Beautifully balanced," she said with satisfaction, tucking one bunch of the flowers behind her own ear and one behind Delia's; the miller's daughter was wearing her hair in braided coils over the temples. "I don't care what the Period Nazis say; the fifteenth-century model is just way more effective against anyone wearing decent armor than those Franco-Viking meat cleavers."

She grinned reminiscently. "One time Conrad Renfrew-this was at a tournament, I'd just cleaned up the intermediate foot-combat event-asked me if I didn't have any respect for the Norman broadsword. He was sounding sort of indignant, and I bowed and told him, My lord Count, if I ever have to butcher an ox, the broadsword shall be my first choice."

Delia sighed and began to dress herself; her interest in swords roughly matched Tiphaine's in furniture. Looking at the asparagus and snowpeas, she said: "Mind if I have the rest of these?"

"Sure, sweetie. I was only eating them because they're fresh," Tiphaine said. "You know, I remember a few things from before the Change-"

"That's more than I do," Delia said, pulling on knitted hose made for riding, with leather inserts on the insides of the thighs, what Tiphaine had heard Sandra call a bastard cross between pantyhose and a sweater.

She paused to eat a stick of the asparagus. "All I really remember is the Change, the way it hurt inside my head, and then being hungry and afraid and Mom and Dad hiding us. I used to remember more, but it gave me bad dreams. And then the Association came that fall: at least we had food, and we went to work helping to build the mill."

Tiphaine shuddered slightly; she had certain memories of her own about those first months that she'd like to be able to forget, and the dreams had gotten less frequent but never gone away entirely. Particularly what had happened to Ms. Darroway, their troop leader, when she got an infected cut on her leg after leading them in fighting off a bunch of would-be Mountain Men who thought a Girl Scout troop was a gift from God. Things had gotten really bad after the wound went gangrenous and she died, until Tiphaine and Kat took off on their own :

With an effort of will, she shook herself back to the present: "Well, what I was going to say was that I really like the taste of cherries, you know-"

She stopped and made an exasperated sound at the other's wide-eyed expression, then laughed; it was hard to look guilelessly surprised when naked to the waist and holding a stalk of asparagus between the teeth, but Delia was bringing it off.

Tiphaine extended an arm and index finger at her: "You were not! Not, not!"

Delia curled her tongue around the asparagus, bit the stalk in half with a flash of white teeth, gathered the pieces into her mouth without using her fingers and then slowly licked her lips, keeping up the innocent stare in the process.

"God, that has got to be the most lascivious thing I've ever seen!" Tiphaine shook her head, slightly dazed. "Anyway, back then you could get fresh fruit out of season, even if you were just an ordinary person; I remember my mother buying peaches and grapes and things at Christmas. Now I'm rich and I can't have cherries until June. Not even the Lord Protector and the Consort could."

The seamstress finished pulling on her own tunics; for riding, the longer undertunic was split, with a flap that could be buttoned over to close it when on the ground. That and the leggings were the respectable female's solution to riding astride, though some Associate-rank women wore men's clothing for the purpose and a few used a sidesaddle, which was the only way you could back a horse and wear a cotte-hardi at the same time. Lady Sandra's opinion of that was short and pungent, and she'd outright forbidden them at court, with the Protector's backing because sidesaddles weren't period. Of course, cotte-hardis weren't eleventh century either, more like fourteenth, but they'd become firmly established before Norman Arminger noticed.

Against fashion, even tyrants struggle in vain, she thought.

"So," Delia said, putting on her own belt, which had a knife with a legal four-inch blade, the universal tool of the countryside. "If Lady Sandra's sinister and evil but really sort of nice, what's the Lord Protector like?"

The smile died on Tiphaine's face. Wordlessly she extended her hand, palm up, then slowly curled the fingers into crooked predator talons that quivered with the tension in her tendons and strong wrist.

Delia swallowed, silent for a moment. "It's sort of hard to remember sometimes that you're: one of: them."

"Them?" Tiphaine asked.

"The castle-folk-Association people."

Who, we both know very well, aren't too popular with a lot of commoners, Tiphaine thought.

She didn't answer, but instead took a moment to put on her hat, the usual rolled-edge affair with a long palm-broad tail of black silk down one side, and Lady Sandra's livery badge of the Virgin and the Dragon at the front in silver. Today she turned the tail up under her chin and pinned it on the other side, which would keep it from flying away completely in a high wind or a gallop.

Tiphaine's mouth quirked when she spoke. "You should have thought about that before you asked me to take a look at your embroidered underwear, sweetie. I might have been cruel as well as evil, you know, and you'd have been stuck with me regardless."

"I didn't think so." Delia's spirit bubbled back. "And it was you or Keith, the bailiff's son; his dad had been dropping these awful, heavy hints and Keith wouldn't go away, and my dad's scared of them, they're the bailiffs, after all. And he has pimples and crooked teeth and bad breath and he's mean and his father's worse, and oh, God, he's boring!"

She picked up her own Chinese-style straw hat and mimed throwing up in it. "Besides being a guy."

"Well, I don't have halitosis or pimples, and: " They kissed.

After a moment Delia sighed. "I don't like having to hide, though. We wouldn't have had to do that before the Change, would we?"

Tiphaine laughed grimly. "OK, someday I'll have to tell you about being the 'Designated Homo-Loser-Goat' in Grade Nine at Binnsmead Middle School, 1997-8. I wanted the world to end-and then it did!"

The excursion party was forming up in the courtyard when Tiphaine and Delia came down; Rudi, Mathilda, two men-at-arms and four mounted cross-bowmen, and a varlet with the two packhorses that carried picnic panniers, fishing rods and her lute, spare clothing in case it got cold: The rest of the midmorning bustle of the castle was well underway, the noisiest part of that being Sir Ruffin leading most of the garrison in full battle kit on circuits that involved running up the inner stairs to the top of the wall and around and down and up again, over and over, clash and clatter and clank. Ruffin waved to her as he passed, face streaming sweat; the rest kept their heads down and concentrated grimly on putting one foot ahead of another, panting like bellows:

At least none of them are falling down and puking now, she thought. Although two had quit over the past month, and been replaced with farm-boy recruits, both of whom were shaping well despite some-unstated-trouble with their families.

"I was out to Hag Lake myself once before," Mathilda burbled to Rudi. "We went sailing; it's real pretty. My dad says it has the best spring trout fishing anywhere near here, too."

Rudi nodded. "Is it called Hag Lake after the Wise One?" he asked.

Mathilda frowned. "I'm not sure," she said. "I don't think so, not here."

Tiphaine grinned to herself. It had been named Henry Hagg Lake, after a politician, when the stream was dammed back in the seventies; of course, that was before she'd been born. God alone knew what local folklore would make of it eventually, back-filling from the suggestive name with a legend; Lady Sandra called it mythogenesis.

"They say-" Delia began.

It was a good idea of Lady Sandra's to get the brat away from Castle Todenangst or Portland, though. And away from the Holy Father; it's painfully obvious Rud just never learned to watch his mouth. That was amazing in itself, if you'd been brought up in the Household. I'd hate to see him get -

Then she stopped for an instant, surprised. You know, that's the truth. I would hate to see the Mackenzie brat get hurt. How odd.

Master, lead your Hunt tonight

Bathed in the Lady's silver light

Earth, Air, Fire and Water

Ride in Your train Rudi whistled rather than sang as they rode; it was a hymn to the Horned Lord, so it might not be too tactful to use the verses here where they followed a face of God they thought jealous. Mathilda, who didn't know the words, whistled along with him as she caught the tune; Delia, who did, joined in. Then they all started to do counterpoint, topping each other until they were laughing too hard to go on.

It was easy to laugh, on a bright morning like this, with the sun breaking off on polished metal and bright on dyed cloth as pennants snapped, and he had a good little Arab under him-though nothing like Epona of course-one of a pair Mathilda's mother had brought out last week in a brief whirlwind visit:

Matti's still happy with it, he thought. And I miss Mom and home so much. He squared his shoulders. Well, you're a warrior of the Clan. Act like it!

They rode northward down towards Carpenter Creek from the castle gate, along a dirt road that ran through sloping orchards of pear and peach, plum, nectarine, cherry and apple. All were in some stage of their blossom-time now, in a froth of pink and white, drenching the mild spring air until they were almost giddy with the scent and the buzzing of countless bees, and petals drifted over them like snow with every gust of wind. The crimson clover beneath the trees was in blossom too, and the grassy verges by the side of the road were thick with wildflowers, the daffodils fading but camas bright blue, chicory the darker color of the eastern sky at sunset; taller bracts of henbit reddish purple, all thick with hummingbirds and sphinx moths feeding on nectar.

Birds of all kinds swarmed, familiar friends from Dun Juniper; a red-tailed hawk watching them pass from the branch of a roadside tree, the majesty of a bald eagle wheeling high overhead, jays calling raucously from the bright new leaves of the cottonwoods and alders and bigleaf maples beside the stream, pintail ducks on the spring-swollen waters that tumbled down from the low mountains to the west:

They turned upstream, in a clopping of hooves and clink of horse harness, creaking of saddle leather and the rhythmic rustling chink of chain mail, the bright morning sun casting their long shadows ahead of them. Past the orchards the field on their left was plowed and harrowed dirt, raked every two feet with furrows where a team was planting quartered potatoes, along with dollops of fertilizer. That was familiar from home too, and the oxcart full of the seed stock and another bigger one of stable-muck, and even the cauldron bubbling over a fire.

The workers who had been at it since dawn weren't homelike at all; glum and quiet, though they'd stopped to eat the morning meal, a score of scarecrow figures-even those who owned better clothes now didn't wear them for field work. Many wore pre-Change clothing, ranging from rags to overalls still fairly intact, if frequently patched. They stopped and rose and bowed or curtsied at the sight of the lady of Ath and her party, leaving a litter of spades and hoes and buckets where they'd been sitting.

Rudi winced at the look they gave the well-dressed riders and the armored men behind them; he recognized hopeless fear and throttled anger, and something like dull awe among the teenagers, and even the young children brought along so their parents could mind them as they worked. A few looked excited at the break in routine-except for a couple still at their mothers' breasts, of course. One ginger-haired, pug-nosed young man of about twenty was rather cleaner than most and much better dressed, in modern Portlander linsey-woolsey breeches and shirt, t-tunic and knit cap; he had a broad smile that didn't reach his eyes as he swept the cap off and bowed, and his nostrils showed like caves.

Tiphaine reined in and turned her white courser aside; Rudi noted how its hooves sank silently in the soft turned earth once they were off the packed dirt and gravel of the roadway, and how much deeper the destriers of the mail-clad men-at-arms did as they followed; the crossbowmen spread out behind them in a semicircle, leaving him and Mathilda and Delia to peer between. A couple of short spears and the bow allowed free-tenants-no stave longer than four feet, no pull heavier than thirty pounds-leaned against one of the carts. That and farm tools would do against coyotes, dog packs and sneak thieves; there were no bandit gangs within striking distance, and tigers would rarely attack a group of humans, though they were dangerous to lone travelers in the wild. A few bundles or backpacks lay there as well, one with the heel of a loaf sticking out of the cloth wrapping, another with a dead rabbit beside it, probably shot on the way to work in the gloaming before dawn and intended for lunch. It wouldn't go far among twenty.

"This field is demesne land," Tiphaine said, in that water-over-smooth-rocks tone. "And these are tenants doing boon-work, aren't they? And you're Keith Anton, son of the Montinore bailiff?"

He nodded and bowed profoundly, cap in hand. "Yes, my lady," he said, the same fixed smile on his face. "I'm overseeing the planting of this field for you."

"Then stop grinning and hand me up a bowl of that and a spoon," she said crisply, flicking the riding crop she held in her right hand towards the cauldron.

The young man looked surprised, but he ran to obey. "Not bad oatmeal porridge," she said, handing it back to him after a considering mouthful. "There's some milk in there."

One of the fieldworkers, an older man with a graying brown beard, spoke: "There wasn't before you got here, miss. Uh, my liege."

A man-at-arms sitting his mount behind her stirred, and lifted the butt of his eleven-foot lance from the ring riveted to his right stirrup-iron.

"Watch your manners, dog!" he barked, the voice blurred and menacing through the mail coif whose flap covered his mouth; only his eyes showed, dark and angry on either side of the helmet's nasal bar. "And keep your place!"

Tiphaine held out a hand in a soothing gesture as the farmers cringed. "Easy, Bors, easy. His village hasn't had a resident lord. They're old-fashioned. You can't expect them to know modern manners yet."

She turned her face back to the tenant-farmer, who was looking as if he wished the earth would swallow him, or as if he wished very much he'd kept his mouth shut.

"You don't say my liege: " Tiphaine paused and raised a brow.

"Uh, S-s-steve Collins, mmm, Lady Tiphaine. Bond-tenant."

"-to me, Collins," she went on, and used the crop to point around at the armed men behind her. "They say 'my liege,' and their families do. They're Association warriors and my vassals, my menie, my fighting-tail. You bond-tenants just say 'Lady Tiphaine' or 'my lady d'Ath,' or 'your worship.' I prefer 'my lady,' plain and simple. Now go on."

The man licked his lips; he had glasses on, clumsily patched where one earpiece had broken, the hinge replaced by a lump of sugar-pine gum. "Uh: I hold sixteen acres on Montinore, and my due is three days a week on the demesne, and this is the first month in the last ten years we haven't done our boon-work hungry. It used to be just oatmeal and water and salt, and only two bowls of it in a damn long day at that. Anything extra you brought yourself. Now it's better and we can get seconds. I think this: Keith: and his father had some sort of deal cooked with the steward, Wielman, to keep what we should have gotten, until you came and they were too scared. Thanks, uh, my lady d'Ath."

"You're welcome, Collins." She turned to the bailiffs son. "I'm not going to ask too many questions about what happened before I took seizin of the fief," she said carefully. "But the law says that peons, and tenants doing boon-work, are entitled to be fed twice a day when they're working demesne land, fed 'full and sufficient' meals."

He bobbed his reddish-sandy head and his hands made unconscious washing motions around each other.

"Yes, your: my lady. You can see, there's plenty for everyone here, good and hot, and a barrel of clean water. And a break at nine for breakfast and an hour for dinner at one-thirty, and a rest every couple of hours, and nobody kept past the time you can tell a white thread from a black."

She nodded. "That's all very well, Goodman, but men aren't horses; you can't expect them to work all day on oats. I don't want a harvest-home feast laid on every day An anonymous snort said that the harvest feast hadn't been much to talk about, either. Tiphaine ignored it.

"-but there should be soup or stew for midday, lentils or beans or barley with vegetables and some meat in it for the taste-sausage, or salt pork, or chicken. And a two-pound loaf of whole meal for each grown worker, and butter and cheese. And some beer; enough for a pint or two each. It's your family's responsibility to organize things like that; it's what you give for the reduced dues. See that it's done starting tomorrow. Draw on the Montinore manor storehouses as needed."

"You should check on whether he does it, my lady," Delia called suddenly from the rear. "He'd skin a louse for the hide, that one, and his dad's no better."

Keith Anton evidently hadn't realized who it was behind the iron wall of the men-at-arms and under her broad-brimmed straw hat; he went white as he recognized her, flushed, started to say something, then looked at the ground again, crushing the cap between strong, calloused fingers.

"Look at me, man," Tiphaine said quietly. When he did: "Do not let me hear that I've been disobeyed, or you'll get a whipping and a day in the stocks, with your father beside you. Steal from me and it'll be worse. Understood?"

"Yes, my lady d'Ath. I'd never disobey my overlord, your worship."

"No, I don't suppose you would," Tiphaine said.

She lifted her voice slightly to take in the other workers, who stood staring at her wide-eyed. "Now listen to me; I'm your overlord, not your mother, or a priest. But I intend that the law shall be followed-to the inch. Tattletales who waste my time will go away sorry and sore, but whoever has a legitimate grievance can come and tell me about it. Understood?"

There was a mutter of agreement and bobbing nods. Rudi thought a few of the smiles were even genuine this time.

The party moved on; two crossbowmen riding well ahead, then Lady Tiphaine, then the two men-at-arms, Bors and Fayard-Association people tended to have strange names, he'd found, something about an old Society custom-then him and Matti and Delia, and then the varlet with the packhorses, and two more crossbowmen bringing up the rear.

Delia was beaming-she rode with the children, of course, and was theoretically there to serve them, for propriety's sake by local custom. She called out: "My lady!" Tiphaine turned in the saddle. "I thought you said you were evil?"

"I didn't say I was stupid, girl," she replied, grinning for a moment before she turned back to the front again; it made her rather stern face light up and look younger than her twenty-four years.

"When my lady said she'd give us good lordship, she meant it, your highness!" Delia said happily to Mathilda, who liked her. "Things are going to be a lot better here now! We needed a real lord, one who could keep people like Keith and his father and the steward honest."

Mathilda nodded agreement. "My mom and dad can pick them," she said proudly. "My mom raised Lady Tiphaine in her own Household, you know."

When the others looked at him, Rudi said carefully: "She's certainly very smart. She knows what she's doing."

Which had the advantage of being truth that wouldn't hurt anyone's feelings, particularly not people he liked like Matti, and Delia was nice too, and a Witch here where it was a hard and dangerous thing to be. But:

Who's going to keep a lord honest if they don't want to be? People shouldn't have to cringe like that. It's not right, he thought, remembering the raucous assemblies of the Clan. Nobody's scared when Mom talks to them: not like that, at least. And they shouldn't have to lick someone's hand like a frightened dog just for not being treated badly. Tiphaine isn't as bad as she could be, but she shouldn't be able to do that. The Law should be above everyone.

Tiphaine looked over her shoulder again and gave him a raised eyebrow and a quirking smile. She'd heard, even two horses away and with all the clatter, and she'd known what he meant. Rudi made a small thumb-to-nose gesture and she shook an admonishing finger at him, then turned back.

The plowed field gave way to a meadow with forested hills rising on either side, like lobes stretching down towards the creek; he shook off gloom as he and Mathilda and Delia laughed at the antics of the lambs. Then they turned southward-left-onto the forest tracks. At first there were abundant signs of humankind, stumps and woodchips, the tracks of oxcarts and horses, an old gravel-pit overgrown with brush and half-full of water green with algae, and a four-by-four light truck abandoned ten years ago, overgrown. Birds exploded out of the rusted hulk's broken windows as they passed, small and blue-headed with mauve underparts.

Nobody was there right now, and soon the scented green twilight glow of untouched deep woods closed around them, mostly tall second-growth Douglas fir, grand fir and western hemlock in rough-barked brown columns seventy feet high and better, their branches meeting overhead. He could see off a fair distance, though there was undergrowth; yew with its orange sapwood showing through gaps in the loose purplish bark, the delicately contorted branches of vine maple, nodding sword fern taller than he was; bushy Indian plum with its bunches of hanging white flowers, yellow violets and fawn lily with its golden core and rose pink blossoms. Insects darted through, their wings catching in an occasional slanting ray of sunlight, dragonflies soaring among them like glittering cobalt blue flying wolves; a squirrel ran like a streak of living silver-gray up a tree trunk and around it, then peered back at him, chattering anger.

Sorry, little brother, just passing through, he thought. Peace between us now.

Aloud to Mathilda, he went on: "You know, it's odd how you can tell morning sunlight from afternoon even in thick forest. Even if you don't know which way east or west is."

"Yeah," Mathilda answered. "It's sort of: newer, somehow, in the morning. Brighter even when it isn't."

Delia was simply clinging to her saddle-she rode badly, and had been put on a contented old plug that would walk obediently with the other horses- and looked around in awe. He'd been shocked to learn she'd seldom been beyond the edge of the forest, though she'd lived near here since she was his age.

And her a member of a coven! he thought. Of course, we haven't had much chance to talk about that. And she has to keep it real secret. I bet she can't even tell Tiphaine. That must hurt.

He'd always found people in love a bit ridiculous-even Mom and Sir Nigel, who were more sensible about it than most, got all spoony.

But then, I'm too young to really know about it. Never make fun of the Lady's gifts! Bad luck, bad luck, three times three, bad luck. Mock them now, lose them later!

He made a gesture of aversion, the Horns pointed down. They broke out of the tall forest, into what had been a clear-cut before the Change and had burned in a wildfire since; now it was spring meadow like a living carpet before the horses' feet. Tiphaine whistled and pointed for them to turn, and they rode upward, through grass high enough to brush the horsemen's stirrups, full of tall blue lupine and yellow western buttercup. The wind was in their faces, strong with the scent of the forests that rolled from here to the Pacific, when they came over the sharp crest of the hill and into the path of a herd of elk walking the other way.

Rudi and Mathilda whooped to see them, thirty or so big fawn-and-brown animals, and Delia clapped her hands. The crossbowmen whooped on another note, and began to unship their weapons as the herd milled for an instant, then turned and flowed away like a torrent of water downhill, squealing and barking as they went and showing the yellowish patch on their rumps.

"No," Tiphaine d'Ath said. "Not this time of year. They're mostly pregnant females, and skinny with winter. Wait until autumn, Alan, and I promise you some sport."

"There were a couple of nice fat yearling bucks and does, my lady," the corporal of the crossbowmen grumbled, but slung the weapon again. "There's nothing like fresh elk liver right out of the beast and onto a fire in the woods."

Tiphaine began to neck-rein her horse around, then suddenly stopped with her clenched right fist thrown up for a halt.

"Quiet!" she said sharply.

Everyone fell silent, the loudest sound a wet crunch as a horse bent its neck to tear off a mouthful, and the wind through the trees. Rudi closed his eyes and let his mind go quiet, with nothing to get in the way of his senses: something: no.

"Alan, did you hear anything just then?" she asked, her voice crisp. "A horse, maybe?"

"No, my liege," he said, shaking his head; he was an older man, a year or two past thirty, and a hunter in his spare time.

Tiphaine shrugged. "Maybe a cat walked over my grave." She grinned. "In which case I should have sneezed, not shivered."

They rode on through the meadow, and through more forest ranging from saplings to something near old growth, and then the glittering surface of the lake showed through the trees, hundreds of feet below. It was roughly a rectangle, running three miles from northwest to southeast, with tongues of water stretching into the hills that gave it the shape of a distorted gingerbread man. They had come seven miles at a gentle walk on the winding trails-Delia for one would have fallen off at anything faster-and it was a little before noon. Water glinted like hammered metal beneath them, save where the shadows of clouds drifted over the lake and turned the color intensely blue. They rode down to the water, where there was a recently repaired dock, a gazebo, and an aluminum canoe left upside-down beneath it. Mostly the shores were very steep, forested hills running straight into deep water.

"So, what'll we do first?" Rudi said happily. "Swim, fish?"

"Can I just sit for a while?" Delia said, rubbing her thighs in between unloading folding chairs and pillows. "Sit on something soft that doesn't move, that is. I don't see why you castle people like riding so much, my lady."

The soldiers grinned, but didn't say the things they usually would. Rudi was glad. He didn't mind bawdy humor even when he didn't see the point, and there was plenty of it back home, but here it had an edge he didn't like at all, or fully understand.

Tiphaine smiled slightly. "If we're going to swim, we should have a fire ready for when we get out. The water's cold."

They built one a little way up the shore-the soldiers and the varlet had to take turns going well away for their dip, and stand at a distance with their backs turned while Rudi and the others came up out of the water to warm themselves near the fire.

"Why?" Rudi asked, throwing off the towel and reaching for his clothes.

"Because they're men," Mathilda said.

"Well, so am I," Rudi said reasonably.

"No, you're a boy. It's all right until your voice breaks. And they're commoners, even if the warriors are Associates. We're nobles."

"I'm not," Rudi said. "Delia isn't either."

"Well, you're sorta like a noble-I mean, your mom's the Chief of the Mackenzies, right? That's like being a count or something, so you're a viscount."

"No, being Chief is not like being a count!" he said indignantly.

"I know. I said sorta like. And Delia can be here because she's a servant, and a girl."

"Oh. Weird," Rudi said. "You've got some really strange geasa here, Matti. And Delia's here to fish and swim and play with us, isn't she?"

"Oh, no, young lord," Delia said-grinning as she came out of the water and wrapped herself in a towel. "I wouldn't dream of doing anything so presbumptuous."

"Insolent wench," Tiphaine said calmly, following her to the fire.

Rudi finished dressing and galloped his horse up and down the shore with Mathilda by him, then came back to the pier; they hobbled the mounts and threw a Frisbee around for a while before they got out fishing rods and folding chairs. Tiphaine was already there, with a fair-sized trout hanging in the water with a sharpened twig through its gills. The two cast their fly-lures out, and settled down to watch the water as the last shreds of morning mist burned off it, enjoying the plop of occasional fish jumping, the flight of wildfowl over the water and up into the steep green trees:

"So, this is fly-fishing," Delia said, after a few minutes. "When does something happen?"

"Something is happening," Tiphaine said from her recliner, making another cast. "We're fishing."

"It looks a lot like sitting staring at the water to me, my lady," she said. "We could do that at the millpond."

She got a book out of the picnic baskets and began reading aloud, pausing whenever anyone got a bite. Rudi pricked his ears with interest even though she stumbled over a word now and then; it was something like the older old-time stories, and there were even witches in it-though not good ones. And the names:

"Isn't that name a lot like yours, Lady d'Ath?"

"It's the same. When I was entered on the Association rolls I took a new one; a lot of people do that."

"People in the Clan do, too, when they're Initiated."

Tiphaine nodded. "And they had the same custom in the Society, I think, except that back then they kept the old name too. Mine was: Collette, originally. We picked the new ones out of a hat."

"It's a pretty name, my lady," Delia said.

"Yes, Lady Sandra thought so. But the character named that in the book is totally lame; all she does is get raped by a bandit named Joris, have a baby- who eventually kills Joris when it grows up-and then get massacred by some peasants. I would have picked Herudis or better still Lys, but in the book Lys is a witch and that wouldn't be : prudent. I think those books would be on the Index if they weren't favorites of the consort; she even had them reprinted. She named half the younger set in the Household out of them, it's quite a fad."

"Shall I get the food ready?" Delia said, looking a little uneasy. "The fire's down to nice hot coals."

Rudi pitched in to help, ignoring the girl's objections when she tried to shoo him away Mathilda looked a little guilty, and helped the men-at-arms clean the trout. Evidently anything to do with wild game was sufficiently noble, and Rudi got away with helping-just-because a picnic was like field cooking, which a warrior could do if servants were short.

Weird people, he thought again. Work is work. Everyone has to work, or should, or how do things get done?

The food was hamburgers in folds of waxed muslin, ready to be peeled off onto the grill, fresh pork sausages with sage and garlic, rolls and onions, a salad of pickled vegetables and early greens, and a honey cake with dried fruit and nuts in it. They added the trout, lightly brushed with butter, which was the best part of all, the flesh white and flaky and delicate. Bors-the senior man-at-arms-grinned at Rudi as he loaded a tray with food to take to his men.

"I'm glad it's Lady d'Ath who got the fief," he said. "Even though she's working us until we drop. I thought it was sort of funny, at first, you know, a woman as lord. But she's tough as nails, and she knows how to look after the troops- I know nobles who wouldn't have thought to bring anything along for the rest of us, or just cheese and bread. Maybe that's why they wanted the little princess here with her, to learn that sort of thing."

"A Chief or an Armsman has to look after the warriors first," Rudi said seriously. That was something all his teachers agreed on. "He should never rest or eat in the field before they do, or sleep warm and dry when they can't."

The soldier gave him a grave, approving nod. Rudi took his plate to sit beside Mathilda on the pier, looking out over the blue, unrestful water, where the wind cuffed white from the chop. He tucked in; the morning and the swim had given him an appetite, and some types of food always tasted better cooked over an open fire in wild country. After he'd satisfied the first pangs of hunger and was addressing a piece of cake he noticed: something.

What is it? he thought.

Tiphaine had been standing as she ate a hamburger, looked eastward towards the earth dam that held back the waters of Hag Lake, with a frown on her face. Rudi followed her gaze; there were a lot of ducks and geese taking to the sky there. Suddenly she flicked the remains of the food into the water and walked over to her courser, tightening the girths and slipping the bridle over its head.

"Bors!" she said, swinging into the saddle and reining around. "Fayard! Alan! Get everyone ready."

She set the horse at the upslope northward. Rudi felt a strumming inside, as if he were a string of the lute that lay abandoned by the lounger. The man-at-arms and the crossbowman did what they'd been told, with a quick, rough efficiency; Delia's eyes were wide with concern, and Mathilda's sparkled with excitement.

"What is it?" she said.

Rudi shook his head. Tiphaine had spurred up through a belt of light forest and out onto open meadow. That made her doll-tiny with nearly a mile's distance, and hard to see through the trees; he could see her coming back all right though, because she did it with reckless speed and casual skill. When she pulled up by the remnants of their fire her face had gone tight and hard, the ice gray eyes as blank as glass.

"Abandon the packhorses," she said calmly. "Armed men headed this way, a dozen of them, most of a conroi -lancers in Protectorate gear, moving fast. And they've got the covers still on their shields."

Bors swung into the saddle. "All lancers?" he said. "I'd have thought some crossbows would be a good idea, here, for support-it's a bit broken."

He didn't seem surprised; the Protectorate's nobility had their own internal feuds, and raid and skirmish weren't unknown by any means.

"Not if they're after the princess," Tiphaine said. "They wouldn't risk hurting her; the Lord Protector would keep anyone who did that alive-for months and months after they wanted to die. Now let's see what we can do about getting her away."

The man-at-arms grinned; Rudi could see a little fear in his eyes, but it was way back. "I knew life would get less boring once you took over, my lady."

Astrid of the Dunedain held up her hand. "That's fighting," she said, as the small column stopped.

Alleyne's head turned; his hearing was about as good as hers. The harsh, flat, unmusical clamor of steel on steel carried a long way; the banging of sword on shield nearly as much, with shouts and the screams of men in pain. It was difficult to tell exactly where the sound came from, except northward; the winding trail and the steep ridge on either side played tricks with sound, and so did the deep forest all about. They looked at each other and nodded, reaching for the helmets at their saddlebows.

This is too close to the place they're holding Rudi, she thought. There are no coincidences. And aloud: "Go!"

Rudi drew his bow and shot his last arrow. The shaft bounced off a man's helmet, and made him flick his head back instinctively. The impact wasn't enough to hurt, but it distracted him:

With Tiphaine d'Ath before him, that was quite enough. The sword moved with a deceptive smoothness, darting out and back like the snap of a frog's tongue. A trail of red followed it through the air, and the man-at-arms staggered backward with his metal-backed gloves clapped to his face, dropping sword and shield. He fell and began to shriek as he rolled down the hill, the weight of his armor pulling him faster and faster until he struck a tree, grasping its roughness like a drowning man at sea, still pawing at his ruined eye. Then she was backing again as the other two pushed doggedly uphill, toiling, using their shields to hold her off. Metal on metal; she leapt backward and up, a broadsword hissing under her boot soles:

"Here!" Mathilda cried. "I've got it spanned!"

Delia took a long breath and accepted the crossbow Norman Arminger's child had taken from beside the fallen Alan. It was heavy, too heavy and long for a child to aim, but the weaver's arms and shoulders were strong from long years at the loom and wheel. What made Rudi bare his teeth was the desperate clumsiness of her grip. In fact "Duck!" he yelled.

Tiphaine did, spinning aside from a thrust and out of the path of the bolt. The tung of the steel bow releasing was not over when the crack of impact sounded, and one of the enemy screamed a curse and threw his shield aside; the thick, heavy missile had gouged far enough into it to wound his left forearm.

"Oh, Goddess, I nearly shot her!" Delia moaned.

The mistress of Ath slid forward again, moving to her left into the man's now-shieldless side. He turned desperately to keep his face to her, but blocked his comrade at the same time. Their swords struck, sparked, slid down to lock at the guards. The dagger in her left hand punched up with the twisting drive of her arm and shoulder and hip behind it, the narrow point breaking the links of riveted mail under his short ribs. The man went to his knees and clutched at himself. She skipped back once more; the slope was more gentle now, flattening to the hilltop meadow. The last man-at-arms began a rush, then stopped and ducked back beneath his shield as he met the smile and glacier eyes and realized that the odds were now even. That made him slip, the long grass crushed into slippery pulp under his boot soles, holding him for an instant while he scrabbled for balance and his weight pinned the bottom edge of his kite-shaped shield into the dirt. Tiphaine bounced back with a long running lunge, and the point went home over the shield and into his face with a crackle of breaking bone and shattering teeth.

Rudi wheeled at Delia's scream. Another armored man had her, his left arm clamping her close behind his shield and the right holding the edge of a sword to her neck; he recognized the china blue eyes-Joris Stein. None of them had noticed his approach from the rear.

"Bravo, Tiph," he said as she freed her blade with a jerk and wheeled, poised in a perfect stance. "You're good, and I'd be the last man to deny it. Checkmate, though. This black-haired piece of peasant ass is your squeeze, isn't she? Can't fault your taste; she smells fine. It's true what they say; blonds like us have more fun."

Tiphaine straightened, flicking the sword and dagger to the sides, shedding a spatter of red from the blades; she was panting deep and slow, sweat and red blood running down her face, her own from a nick on one cheek mingling with sprays from others.

"I should have known," she said. "That was always your idea of misdirection; have somebody else grab them by the nose while you snuck up to corncob them."

"And you were always too subtle for your own good, Tiph. This time my approach worked, though, didn't it?"

"Not quite yet," she said. "What's the word, Joris?"

The knight's face moved; you could tell he was smiling behind the coif. "Simple. I'm here for the witch-brat, dead or alive-preferably alive. The Lord Protector wants him, and as a loyal vassal you'll hand him over, right? Do that and you get your fucktoy back intact. I think that's important to you, Tiph; you were always the sentimental type."

"Compared to you, I suppose I am: which is a judgment on both of us, when you think about it."

"And you get to keep the princess, so you don't look too bad."

"You've got a written decree?" she asked, her voice that cool water-flowing-on-rock tone again.

She walked towards him as she spoke, with her hands out to either side and the blades pointing down, looking at him from beneath pale brows with eyes the color of ice at the edge of a winter pond. Each step was delicately precise. Calmly, she went on: "Somehow I don't think you do, seeing as you just pitched into us without warning, and I don't think those were Household regulars. Not unless Conrad's letting the standards slip."

"Of course there's nothing in writing. And not one step closer. I know exactly how far you can lunge, all right? We sparred often enough."

"Where did you get that conroi of so-called men-at-arms, though? Clown school?" she asked, halting, seemingly casual and relaxed.

Joris shrugged, and Delia took a sharp breath as the sharp edge dimpled the white skin of her throat. A tiny, slow trickle of blood started.

"They were the best I could get on short notice, for a job like this, who wouldn't ask too many questions. Still, they were good enough to soak up crossbow bolts. And now that you and your trusty vassals have conveniently killed them, I don't even have to split the money."

"Well, I do have an explicit order from the consort to keep Mathilda and Rudi here. Orders from my liege. Who's also yours, last time I looked."

Joris tensed, and his voice went from friendly conversational to a snarl for an instant: "You always got the plum jobs-she always favored you and Kat! It wasn't right!"

"Well, Joris, that was because she knew if a situation like this ever did come up, you'd be the one who'd rat her out for a higher offer."

"I suppose you can't be bought?" he spat.

"No, you're the one who can't be bought, Joris. That's the problem. You can only be rented. And she's not going to be happy with you for putting her daughter right in the middle of a running fight, either."

"That's why we didn't do any shooting."

"Oh, that'll make it all right, then."

"The Lord Protector's orders take precedence," the knight said, cheerful again. "Also, unless you hand the witch-brat over-I'll be leaving him to the Hounds, by the way, so the Lord Protector gets a pass from the missus-I'm going to cut your little bed-buddy's throat, and I don't think you're into necrophilia, right? Not really practical considering the anatomy."

"No, you're not going to do that, Joris," she said.

"Why not?"

"Because if you did kill her, you still wouldn't get the boy, and I'd kill you very slowly instead of quickly."

"I'll take my chances," Joris said. "I wouldn't like to face you on even terms, Lady d'Ath, I admit it. You're fucking unnatural in more ways than one. But me in full harness and you in that fancy riding outfit? Yeah, I like those odds. The armor and shield make up for the speed, and I've got you beat on strength and reach."

Mathilda spoke, her voice hot with anger. "You'd better let her go, Sir Joris."

The blue eyes flickered to her without the least particle of attention being diverted from Tiphaine. "This is a very bad woman, Princess," he said. "They both are. You'll understand when you're older."

The girl's temper overflowed and she stamped her foot, immediately regretting the gesture, face flushing brick red and burying her hands in her hair. "I'm nine, not four, you oaf-nearly ten! I'm old enough to remember your face and I'll see you broken on the wheel someday unless you let her go!"

Joris laughed, but there was the slightest edge of uncertainty in it. Rudi knew what he must do. He shouted as he ran in, and the bow was in his hands like a spear. Like a spear he thrust it up at the knight's face, aiming for his right eye. The response was automatic, when the shield was pinned immobile by the woman he held behind it; he cut backhanded at the threat to his face. The sword flicked out, the heavy blade moving with the blurring speed of a strong man's trained wrist and shoulder. It cracked through the tough yew and flashed within a fraction of an inch of Rudi's nose, even as the boy threw himself flat with a yell. That saved him, but it put him flat on his back as the longsword drew back to pin him to the ground like a butterfly on a board. What was left of the bow cracked uselessly against the shin-guard as he flailed it at the walking armored tower.

Skrinngg.

Tiphaine's sword came down across Rudi's body, like a slanting rafter. It bent under the impact of Joris' heavier blade, but the fine steel sprang back and the man's weapon buried itself in the dirt. Joris wrenched at it with desperate strength, and in the same instant used his shield in a slamming blow against her. That wasn't as effective as it might have been, with a suddenly screeching and madly clinging Delia on his arm, but Joris Stein was very strong. And with Tiphaine d'Ath at less than arm's reach he was striking for his life, as a man might lash out when he discovered an adder coiled under his pillow.

She had leapt headlong to cover Rudi's body, with no choice but to sacrifice balance. Now the double blow of shield and sword knocked her own blade from her hand, and sent her rolling half a dozen paces with Delia falling on her with a squawk.

Rudi lay on the ground, clutching as if it were his mother as well as the Mother. Black wings seemed to flap about him, gauzy as veils, more solid and vaster than worlds. A deep thudding came from the soil as the blade was wrenched free and rose to kill, like a great heart throbbing:

Crack.

The hooves would have killed an unarmored man. They hurt Joris Stein badly, even in the diamond instant of concentration, when every dream of for-tune and rank seemed to be glittering just beyond the point of his sword. He dropped as the great black mare reared again, her forefeet milling like a deadly circle of steel war-hammers, bugling out her challenge. Curled beneath his shield he felt the frame crack and the tough plywood shatter as the pile-driver feet stamped downward with half a ton of bone and muscle behind them, the loops coming free of the inner surface as it broke.

"Epona!"

Rudi shouted it, a trumpet-call of rage and joy. The horse dropped to all fours and trotted over to him, and he threw his arms around her neck, lost in the grassy scent as she nuzzled him against her side.

Tiphaine leapt even as the horse attacked, landed rolling and came erect with her sword back in her hand; she whipped it through a quick figure eight as Joris rose. Rudi took two steps back, leapt himself, grasped the big horse's mane and pulled himself over her withers. And shouted for sheer exhilaration as he felt her move beneath him: "Free! Free!"

Joris Stein had his own sword; he shook his ruined shield free and drew his dagger with his left hand, wincing a little as he forced the wrenched muscles to work. He dropped into stance.

"You know," Tiphaine said in that cool voice as she walked forward, "I never liked you, Joris. And you've just come onto my land, slaughtered my vassals, threatened to cut my girlfriend's throat and tried to kill a little kid I was ordered to guard."

She smiled a slow, stark smile. "But hey, you know what they say-all's well that ends well."

"I'll see you rot in Hell!"

"Undoubtedly. But we won't meet there today, I think. Usually it's just business, but I'm going to enjoy this. Let's get it on."

"Go, Epona, go!" Rudi called. "Find them!"

Astrid Larsson trotted up the hill. The wreckage of the fight was on either, side; men dead, men wounded and moaning or trying to patch their injuries. A trained eye could see how it had gone-the charge, the volley of crossbow bolts and then the savage running scrimmage up the winding pathway, the defenders failing one by one. For the last fifty yards it had been one defender, and her eyes went a little wide as she read the evidence of scuffed soil, bodies, sprays of blood on the trunks of the thinly scattered Douglas firs, a sword left where a desperate dying stroke had driven it into a trunk as deep as the blood-channel down the middle of the blade. The heavy iron scent of slaughter was as familiar as the sap and musty scuffed earth and duff of the forest floor. Eilir pointed with the tip of her bow, moving from one sign to another, and John Hordle's lips shaped a low whistle.

Then Astrid's head snapped up at the rapid thudding of hooves. It was very steep here for a horse, even one as agile as her Asfaloth or her soul-sister's Cele-broch; that was why they'd dismounted a ways back. Alleyne gave a shout of exultation as Epona halted and pawed the earth with one hoof, but the face of the titian-haired boy on her back was strained and set.

"Follow me," he said. "Quickly!"

"Wait-" Astrid said, but the big horse turned in place, graceful as a cat, and plunged away back uphill.

The four looked at each other. The rest of the Dunedain were beating the woods all around: and there was no choice at all. They bent their heads and ran up the forty-degree slope, banishing exhaustion by an act of will. The trees thinned still more, turning to an open meadow that tilted from steep hillside to sloping plateau, blue distance opening around them as they passed from the shadows of the trees into knee-high grass starred with flowers and dotted with prickly Oregon grape. There were more dead men, more wounded, and two figures that still fought-one in armor, the other in white linen and black leather, with pale hair swirling around her shoulders. As the Dunedain approached the armored man reeled back, his sword turning circles in the air as it flew away from a wrist half severed by a drawing cut.

The blond woman's sword moved with a speed that only those themselves experts could follow. The man screamed and screamed again.

"That's for finking out Lady Sandra," Tiphaine d'Ath said in a panting snarl as she struck in a blurring flurry, every blow lethal but none instantly so. "That's for risking the princess. That's for trying to kill Rudi. That's for hurting my girl, you son of a bitch!"

The man tottered and fell to his knees, moaning and clutching at his wrist.

"And this is for the character in that stupid fucking book!"

He tried to scream once more, but the sword transfixing his throat through leather and mail had cut the voice box, and his eyes alone spoke as the blood swelled through his mouth and clenched teeth in a growing tide. When the blade withdrew with a twist he fell and beat his mail gauntlets on the ground for an instant, then slumped limp. Grass and blue lupine waved in to hide most of the metal-clad shape.

Tiphaine d'Ath, Astrid thought, and felt herself smile as she raised her bow. Rudi back with us and you here to kill. This is a good day!

The Association warrior stood and let her breathing slow, eyes flicking from face to grim-held face, seeing implacable Fate in each. Then she spread her arms, sword and dagger held loosely, the spring breeze flicking wet elflocks of her pale hair around her face.

"It's a good day to die," she said, preparing for a final leap.

"No!"

A girl Astrid didn't recognize sprang in front of Tiphaine, trying to cover her body with her own; she was full-grown but younger than Astrid herself by a few years, wide blue eyes desperate, long black hair falling past her shoulders.

"No, don't hurt her!" The girl's hands moved in signs. "I'm with the Coven, you've got to listen to me-don't hurt her!"

The drawn bows remained unwavering; at this range any of them could shoot past without injuring anyone but their target. Astrid's eyes flicked to Eilir, and she nodded-the claim was true, then. That didn't mean they shouldn't dispose of so dangerous an enemy, of course.

"She saved Rudi's life!" the young woman went on.

"She did," Rudi said, calming Epona with a hand down her neck. "Twice."

Mathilda nodded vigorously, laying down a crossbow far too big for her. "She did! Joris was going to kill him! Tiphaine jumped and got her sword between them and Joris missed, but then he nearly killed her too."

That's different, Astrid thought as Tiphaine urged the black-haired girl aside.

"Go see to the princess, sweetie," the noble said to her. "These people and I have unfinished business."

Astrid closed her eyes for an instant. Threefold, she thought with a sigh of regret, and lowered her bow. The others did as well, Hordle with a low almost-grumble of protest and a roll of his eyes.

"Tiphaine d'Ath," the Lady of the Dunedain said. "I owe you nothing for your friend Katrina's death; that was honest war. But we do stand greatly in your debt for saving Rudi. Take a life for a life then, and count us quits. I am not eager to deal out death in judgment."

Their eyes met for a long instant, ice gray to silver-blue. Then the Protectorate noble shrugged; she drew her sword blade through a cloth and sheathed it.

"You can't have the princess back," she said carefully. "Not while I'm alive to guard her."

"We don't want her. Lady Juniper's orders are to leave her in her mother's care. You're not in a position to make conditions, though, are you?"

The other's lips quirked a little. "Oh, I was going to challenge you to single combat. Now, that would have been interesting."

"Yes: " Astrid said, with a momentary pang. Like Eowyn and the Lord of the Nazgul before the walls of Gondor. "Except that I wouldn't have accepted. Duty would forbid."

"With its shrill, unpleasant voice." Tiphaine bowed her head slightly and sighed. "It's time to let Kat's ghost go, I suppose. Take the brat, then. He's a good kid, but sort of spooky: and that horse is worse. And a favor for a favor; you'd better hurry. I got one of my men out before the fight started, and there'll be a rescue party heading this way fast."

The Dunedain nodded, and silently turned to go. Rudi took his hat off and waved it at Mathilda. "See you, Matti!" he called, and then whooped as the great horse pirouetted and followed.

As the hooves faded in the distance Tiphaine took a deep breath, suddenly conscious of how distant shrieks of pain cut through birdsong and the sough of wind through forest and meadow. Some of them would be her men, and the others should be given mercy.

"We'd better get to work," she said, turning towards the head of the trail. "We might be able to save some of the wounded; Joris and his merry band didn't have time to finish them."

Mathilda nodded, standing silent and forlorn, staring after the path Rudi and his rescuers had taken. Delia cried silently into her hands.

"Hey, sweetie, come on," Tiphaine said, touching her on the shoulder, urging her forward. A hug wasn't really practical, considering what coated her hands and face and much of her body. "Work to do."

Delia looked up. "I told them all about the castle, and where Rudi was-"

"Yeah, but they weren't the ones who tried to kill us and him, were they?"

"I betrayed you!"

"Funny, I could have sworn you just now jumped between me and four drawn bows," Tiphaine said gently. "And you stayed, when you could have gone with them. Just don't deliver any intelligence reports on me in future, OK?"

"I'm: I'm a witch."

"I won't tell Father Peter if you don't."

A curled trumpet sounded through the hills from the north, a harsh urgent scream: We're comings! We're coming!

"Good," Tiphaine murmured. "They'll have medical supplies and a doctor with them."

And soon Joris' head will be off to Castle Todenangst pickled in a tub, with a report nailed to it which ought to cover my ass fairly thoroughly at court unless the Lord Protector wants to break with Sandra, which I doubt. And Rudi's going back home, probably Mathilda too, and the war will start again after harvest, but there's the summer to live through first. And for the first time in a while, I'm actually looking forward to that.

"You're not angry? You don't want to punish me?" Delia said doubtfully.

Tiphaine grinned, tired and triumphant. And most of all, I'm still alive.

"Well, if you insist, I could spank you a little," she said.

And administered a gunshot slap to the appropriate location. Delia yelped and leapt, startled back into functionality.

"Come on. Get that cloak and start cutting it into strips."