A Meeting at Corvallis (5 page)

“And would you like a bit of a hug too, my fostern girl?” Juniper Mackenzie said.

“Ummm…yeah. Thanks.”

She got one, and a kiss on the forehead; the Lady of the Mackenzies ruffled both their heads before she sent them off to their end of the high table. Nigel Loring was there at his mother's right hand; he nodded solemnly to Rudi as he passed, then winked. Rudi grinned back at the English guest; besides saving his life last year, and becoming his main tutor in the sword and horsemanship, Sir Nigel was just plain fun. He knew a lot of stories, too.

Those Hall-dwellers on kitchen duty brought out bowls and platters and set them out, then sat themselves. Most families in Dun Juniper had their own hearths, but there were always a fair number eating in the Hall, besides the Barstows, Trethars and others who lived there; guests like the Bearkillers, or people from elsewhere in the Clan's territories come to learn craft skills or to share the holy mysteries or do a hundred types of business. Even a wandering gangrel could find a meal in the Chief's Hall in return for a little wood-chopping or other chores; after all, any such could be the Lord or Lady in disguise. Though it was hard to believe a lot of the time, since they were always smelly and often mad.

“We start to decorate the tree tomorrow,” Rudi said. “Nine more days of the Twelve, and then it's Yule.”

“Christmas,” Mathilda said, nodding. “But the twelve days come
after
Christmas.”

Rudi grinned; he liked explaining things, and the grown-ups had been really careful not to say anything at all against Mathilda's religion, or even tell her much about the Craft. That didn't apply to him, of course; it was one of the few advantages of being a kid.

“No, this is
Yule,
Matti. That's the shortest day, the twenty-first this year. On the First Day we go out and find the tree and cut it, on the Second Day we bring it here, and Third Day we put it up; for the Maiden, the Mother and the Crone, you know? And the Tree is the Holly King's…well, you know. Then we've got nine days for the rest, cooking and making presents and getting ready for the Solstice Vigil. Mom says we stole the Twelve Days and changed them round 'cause the Christians stole Yule and messed it up.”

“We did not!” Mathilda said, then hesitated. “At least, I don't think so. What do you decorate it with?”

“Oh, all sorts of things. Old-time stuff, and strings of popcorn, and little carved sprites, and, oh, lots of stuff. It's fun.”

“We didn't decorate our own Christmas tree at home, but it was very pretty,” Mathilda said. “We always had Christmas at Castle Todenangst. I'd come down in the morning, and open the presents with Mom and Dad.”

Rudi frowned. “But decorating it yourself is half the fun!”

They loaded their plates from the platters and baskets as they spoke: corned beef, chunks of grilled venison with a sauce of garlic-laced yogurt, mashed potatoes with bits of onion, fresh steamed kale, boiled cabbage and glazed carrots and fresh brown bread and hot cheddar biscuits and butter. Mathilda slipped a sliver of the beef to a big black tomcat crouched under her chair; he bolted it and then went back to glaring around with mad yellow eyes. Saladin had come as part of the ill-fated diplomatic mission from Portland last Lughnasadh, and the other Hall cats hadn't accepted him yet…or vice versa.

Juniper Mackenzie stood, and the hum of conversation stilled. She raised both her hands in the gesture of power and blessing before she spoke, her strong soprano filling the Hall, half song and half chant:

Most of the crowd joined in the final
Blesséd be;
then they waited politely while the Christians said their grace. The two Bearkillers at the top table crossed themselves and murmured words:
Bless us, O Lord…
So did Mathilda, in another fashion—Catholics who followed Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski at Mount Angel used a slightly different rite from the Orthodox Catholic Church of the Protectorate's Pope Leo.

Juniper went on: “And special thanks to Andy and Diana and everyone working the kitchens, who managed to produce what looks like a great dinner right in the middle of preparing for the Yule feast.”

The Trethars stood and bowed as everyone clapped. Rudi's mother took from its rest a silver-rimmed horn of wine—that had started its life as one of a pair of longhorns over a Western-themed bar in Bend—and poured a small libation in a bowl. Then she raised the horn high over her head and cried:

“To the Lord, to the Lady, to the Luck of the Clan—
Wassail!”

“Drink hail!”
fifty voices replied, raising their cups and drinking with her.

Rudi dutifully sipped at a tiny glass of mead, watered for a youngster's strength; he preferred the cream-rich milk in the waiting jug, but the proprieties had to be observed. The hum of conversation began again, along with the clatter of cutlery. Rudi poured himself milk and a glass for Mathilda, spread his napkin on his lap and ate with the thoughtless, innocent greed of a healthy nine-year-old after a day's hard work in cold weather and with a holiday in prospect.

“Blueberry tarts for dessert!” he said happily. “With whipped cream and honey.”

“So that's Arminger's kid,” Luanne Larsson said, meditatively mixing some melted butter into her mashed potatoes with her fork as she glanced down the table; one advantage of the white noise that filled the Hall was that conversations could be private, if you spoke softly and leaned a little close.

“No,” Juniper Mackenzie said, using a spoon to put some horseradish beside her corned beef.

She did it cautiously; the crock was a gift from Sam's wife, and though nuclear weapons didn't work post-Change, Melissa Aylward's horseradish sauce was an acceptable substitute.

“No,” she went on. “She's Mathilda, a girl whose parents are Norman and Sandra Arminger, through no fault of her own, so. And who for the now lives with me and my son.”

Eric Larsson grinned in his dense, short-cropped yellow beard and raised a glass of red wine in salute. He was a broad-shouldered, long-limbed man who stood two inches over six feet; his features were sharply cut on a long, narrow head, eyes a bright blue, golden hair falling to his shoulders beneath a headband of leather tooled and stamped. The face it framed was a Viking skipper's born out of time and place, down to the kink a sword had put in his nose and thin white scars that made him look a little older than his twenty-eight years.

“Gotcha, honey,” he said to his wife. “It's touchdown to Juney, point and match.”

“OK, enough with the mixed metaphors,” Luanne said. “OK, OK, I get it. No sins of the fathers and all that.”

“And she's…what's the word, Juney?” Eric replied.

“My fostern,” Juniper supplied.
He's grown into himself,
she thought to herself.

She'd met Eric Larsson in the fall of the first Change Year, and known him fairly well since as he developed into Mike Havel's right-hand man as well as just his brother-in-law.

Back then he was eighteen and just trying on a man's life, like someone with a new coat that's a little too big for him. Now he's like a big golden cat—good company to his friends, and very dangerous to something he decides might be good to eat. Vain as a cat, too, though with reason. And more at home in the Changed world than we who were full-grown can ever be, though not so much as his children will be.

He also added flamboyant touches to the long jacket and pants most Bearkillers wore: embroidered cuffs on a coat left open to show more embroidery on his linen shirt and neckerchief, a gold hoop earring, silver buttons on his jacket worked into wolf heads, rings on the fingers of his large but curiously graceful hands.

“Arminger's still going to come at us,” Eric said. “Kid or no kid.”

“Sure, and you're right about that,” Juniper said. “He's a bastard of a man with the soul of a mad weasel, and no mistake. And that was obvious even before the Change.”

The two Bearkillers looked at her. “You knew him then?” Eric said in astonishment.

“No, but I knew
of
him. Under his Society name—Blackthorn of Malmsey—so it was years after the Change before I realized who it was; I haven't
seen
him since, and knew nothing of him beyond his Society persona, you see. He was the one who brought an ox to a tournament.
That
I had from an eyewitness.”

“He brought an
ox
? He's into bestiality, on top of everything else?” Eric laughed.

“Not as a date,” Juniper said in quelling tones. “He had a taste for sweet young things even then. No, he wanted to demonstrate how out of touch with reality the Society fighters were, bashing each other with rattan blades and relying on the honor system.”

She grinned and quoted:
“Come back here, you coward, and I'll
bite
you to death!”
At their blank looks she went on: “Classical reference. Anyway, he killed the ox with a real sword, the same one he carries now. With one blow, actually; it was supposedly impressive, in a sick sort of way.”

Nigel Loring raised his brows; he knew how difficult it was to kill a large animal that quickly. “What did they do with the ox? The Society chappies, that is.”

“Grilled it whole and ate it, but the other Society—the Humane Society—got on his case.”

Luanne snorted laughter, and then returned to business. “Arminger knows you won't hurt his daughter, no matter what he does. And I'm not sure he'd care if you did. Not enough to stop him, anyway.”

“Oh, I think he cares for the girl,” Juniper said. “She wouldn't have been as…healthy as she was, otherwise. Even a bad man often loves his children, and he's invested a good deal of his ego in having one of his blood follow him, to be sure.”

The scowl left Luanne's face, on which a smile looked more natural. She was a year or two younger than her husband, her skin coffee-dark, blunt features a comely full-lipped mélange of her Texan father's African-Anglo heritage and her Tejano mother's mestizo blood. Faded and dusky blue, a small scar between her brows marked her as one of the Brotherhood, the A-listers of the Bearkiller Outfit; her husband had an identical brand from the same red-hot iron. Mauve silk ribbons fluttered along the outer seams of her jacket, making her a little careful when she reached across one of the laden platters.

“It's just hard not to see Arminger, looking at his kid,” she went on a little defensively.

“Well, it's important that we don't see only that,” Juniper said, pouring her more dark, frothy beer from a pitcher. “Since the Lord and Lady saw fit to put her in our hands…wait a moment.”

She thought, looking inside herself, and then she sighed. “There's something I should have done some time ago, but I hoped it wouldn't be necessary to get formal about it. I hate throwing my weight around…oh, well, if it has to be done, it has to be done.”

She sighed again, then rose to her feet and waited until the buzz of conversation died. A little way to her left Chuck Barstow was looking at her quizzically; beside him was his wife Judy, with dawning understanding in her dark eyes and handsome proud-nosed face. They'd been friends since they were teenagers, and they'd discovered the Craft together.

Of course she'd know,
Juniper thought.
Well, my old friend, that's why I'm doing it, you being so stubborn and all, and others taking their cue from you.

Aloud, she said: “You all know we've had a guest among us, a girl by the name of Mathilda.”

Rudi was staring at her, delight in his dancing blue-green eyes. Mathilda was too, puzzled and a little apprehensive.

“Mathilda was captured through no fault of her own, in fighting against her folk that we of the Clan took on ourselves for reasons we thought good, and still do. And later her folk tried to take her back, and in that fight some were killed, and some were hurt—my own son Rudi among them. Now, some here have held that against her, and I was waiting for that to vanish through its own lack of sense and unkindliness, but it hasn't altogether. And that diminishes my honor, and the honor of Clan Mackenzie. So here and now, I say that while this girl is with us, she is
fostern
of mine, and is to be treated as if she were a child of my blood, necessary precautions aside, until I unsay this word, or she leaves us and so breaks it.”

Juniper took a deep breath, and raised her hands in the V of power, palms out, closing her eyes and feeling the current of it running through her, like a fire in the blood until the little hairs along her arms and up her spine struggled to rise. When her green gaze flared open again her voice rolled high and clear through the great space of the Hall, linking her to every soul like chains of fine silver light: