A Meeting at Corvallis (66 page)

And you're right. The Lord Protector will not be pleased. But Norman Arminger is going to get a piece of my mind.

Castle Todenangst, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 10th, 2008/Change Year 9

N
orman Arminger had wanted to hold a full meeting of the War Council, in a presence room where he would sit on a throne of sable granite and gold. Sandra had talked him into using this chamber, high in the Dark Tower but much more informal, with a window that looked down over the gardens outside the keep, and plain except for the carpet, table and chairs…and the black stone of the walls. Those were partly covered in maps. Only three sat there; herself, the Lord Protector of the Association, and its Grand Constable. Fresh spring air poured through, smelling of cut grass; the scent mingled with that of the rhododendrons in their shallow bowl in the center of the table, but it was not enough to cut the curdled psychic stink of rage and fear under the arched groin-work of the chamber's ceiling.

“What I did,” Conrad Renfrew said, “was bring my troops back intact and pick up a thousand or so of Emiliano's, including a lot of his knights and men-at-arms. Thus preventing a
defeat
from turning into an
absolutely catastrophic
defeat that would have left us open to invasion or revolt.”

Arminger gripped the arms of his chair. “Conrad, you told me that you didn't think the Mackenzies could get around north of you.”

“No, I didn't think they could do that,” the Count of Odell said. “Not over those trails. Bold move. Very risky. It paid off, for them.”

“Which means that while you were standing looking at Sutterdown they got around behind you
and ass-fucked you
!” Arminger snarled; his fist hit the table surface with a dull thudding sound—it was four inches of solid teak.

Renfrew's hideously scarred face was calm, the blue eyes impassive. “That's one way of looking at it,” he said. “Or you could say that I'm the only commander you sent out this spring who didn't get his army either beaten up like Alexi or completely wrecked like Emiliano.”

“That's
my lord,
when you address me,” Arminger grated.

Ever so slightly, Sandra's eyes rolled towards the ceiling. Renfrew shook his shaven head.

“No, here with just us three it's
Norman
from me to you, Norman,” he said. “Look, I've been carrying water for you since the day of the Change, when you and Sandra came bopping in and talked me around. You didn't make me Grand Constable because I was a complete fucking idiot, did you? So try listening to me for once. Try listening to
this
.”

The Grand Constable was in military dress but not armor; black leather pants, shirt, and a black tunic with his own arms on it inside the outline of a heraldic shield—sable, a snow-topped mountain argent and vert. He reached inside the neck of the baggy woolen garment and produced a sheet of paper. The calluses on his fingers scratched on it as he spread it out.

“This is the minutes of the Council of War, back in February.
We're leaving our left flank open for sixty miles,
quote unquote.
We're attacking three ways at once, thus carefully throwing away the advantage of superior numbers,
quote unquote.
We should have Alexi stand on the defensive and tie up the Bearkillers without getting the Corvallans hot and bothered, and invest Mount Angel with six thousand men, even if it takes a year,
quote unquote. Because then it wouldn't
matter
what the God-damned kilties did. Instead
you
got greedy, and yeah,
we
got collectively ass-fucked. The above is the voice of the only man on the Council with the balls to tell you what you need to know, Norman.”

Arminger controlled his fury with an effort of will that brought a bead of sweat to his forehead; the smell of it was a faint, rank musk. “Corvallis was supposed to be neutralized,” he said in a flat voice. “Alexi's report is pretty clear that he had the Bearkillers back on their heels until that happened.”

Sandra spoke for the first time, her voice like cool water. “We
did
have the Faculty Senate neutralized. What happened was that the Corvallans who wanted to fight us just strapped on their armor and jumped on the bicycles and started pedaling north. Unorthodox, illegal, unconstitutional…but there you are.”

Renfrew slapped the table, a gunshot sound as his palm struck dense, oily wood only a little harder. “Yeah. Precisely. Which happened because we tried to take away the buffer between them and us. Made our protestations of peaceful intent look pretty much like complete bullshit, didn't it? OK, yeah, they always
were
bullshit, but did we have to make that entirely plain to the most wishful wishful thinker? And all that effort we put into cultivating Turner and Kowalski?
They'll
be lucky not to get lynched, and there goes years of work.”

Arminger jerked to his feet, a move with none of his usual feline gracefulness. Then he stalked over to the tall, narrow window, looking down across the lands that acknowledged him ruler. His hands writhed together behind his back, but when he turned at last his face was calm.

“What do you recommend?” he said. He turned his head slightly. “Both of you.”

“That we pull in our horns,” the Grand Constable said promptly. “Inside our own borders we've got enough manpower still to fight off anything the other side can throw at us, easy. We're bigger and we've got interior lines and strong fortifications—which is why we've been squeezing so hard from the first to get the damn castles built. In a year or two we can convince the Corvallans that we're really just little lambs, baaa-lambs, and that they should sell us the rope we use to hang them; they're almost as gullible that way as people were before the Change. Then we attack the Free Cities League, and digest it, and
then
we see what's possible next. You're not going to conquer the world all at once, Norman. But if we stick out our dicks again
right now,
and if we have a couple of inches trimmed off
again,
like Alexi did or even worse the way Emiliano did, God alone knows what might happen. The Free Cities might have a slap at us, for starters. And a lot of our farmers would rise the minute they thought we were losing our grip.”

Sandra nodded. “That'll be true until the last people who grew up before the Change die. And we do have to worry about the Free Cities, darling.”

Arminger looked at his wife. She spread her hands on the table. “My dear, they're quiet now because we frightened the daylights out of them last year and broke down a lot of their irrigation canals, not because they love us. The problem with that is what happens if they
stop
being afraid of us. Which is true more generally, too, you see.”

“I hate to say—” Renfrew began. “No, let's be honest. I
love
to say ‘I told you so,' and I told you we could forget about the Willamette for a while and take the Yakima, because the Free Cities League was isolated from anyone else—they're too far away for Boise to support them effectively. That would have given us a base to take the rest of the Palouse country, which is good wheatland. I know you've got a hard-on for the kilties and Mike Havel, Norman, but let's not get irrational about this.”

Suddenly Arminger smiled; it was an amused, rueful expression. “I
do
tend to get obsessive,” he said. “And they've been driving me absolutely mad for years now; the more so as things have gone so well everywhere else. I confess to a
very
strong desire to see them suffer, and that's one of the perks of being the overlord, isn't it? All right, we'll make up some face-saving thing about the Grand Constable ‘saving the host' and stand on the defensive, at least until after harvest. Then we'll see. We can talk a little at dinner tonight, Conrad. Right now I'm going to go to the sparring room and hit things for a while. Better still, I'll hit
people
.”

Silence fell with the lord of the Association gone. After a long minute Sandra Arminger tapped the papers before her into neat piles. “Well, that was easier than I thought it would be,” she said in a tone as neutral as the spring sunlight.

Conrad Renfrew nodded. “Norman's being reasonable.”

Their eyes met, with a common, unstated disquiet.

In the corridor outside, Norman Arminger snapped his fingers. A messenger in black livery knelt.

“Find Sir Joris Stein,” Arminger said calmly. “Tell him to attend me in the Salle d'Armes of the Dark Tower guardroom, immediately.”

The Mackenzies would be celebrating. Time for them to feel a little grief.

The Silver Tower looked west from Castle Todenangst's keep; the pearly granite that sheathed it had come from a number of banks in Portland and Vancouver and Oregon City.

In popular slang, it was known as the Spider's Lair. Sandra Arminger thought that extremely amusing; in fact, Tiphaine wouldn't have been surprised if the consort hadn't started the necessary rumors herself. She took a deep breath and walked past the guards at the arched entranceway, nodding to their stamp and crash of metal since she was in civilian garb.

My first time as a member of the nobility,
she thought.
Granted, the lowest rank of the nobility, but it's still a big change. And don't forget who
got
it for you.

The same gray-and-silver theme was continued within, when you came to the upper chambers that were Sandra Arminger's private quarters; off-white marble floors, silvery silk hangings with the occasional tapestry for contrast, cool restraint in the furniture, only the Oriental rugs providing a blaze of colors—there was an experimental workshop in FOregon City which was patiently laboring to duplicate the best Isfahans for her. The air smelled slightly of jasmine and sandalwood; from the opened windows she could hear the evening sounds of the great fortress-palace, guards tramping, faint music in the distance, wind flapping a banner, the
skree-skree-skree
of a hawk in the mews. Gaslights kept the interior light, and recessed hot-water radiators made it pleasant despite the chill of the spring night.

And the only problem is the damned cats,
Tiphaine Rutherton thought, quietly nudging one aside as it tried to chew on her boot; she was mildly allergic to them, but
nobody
dissed the consort's felines.

I wish she'd drown the nasty pug-faced Persian monstrosities. And they always shed on your clothes when you're wearing black. Well, not my problem anymore.

She bowed deeply, and one small, elegant hand gave her leave to sit.

“My husband, Lady d'Ath, is a very capable man,” Sandra Arminger said after a moment's silence, leaning back in her chair on the other side of the table and stroking a blue-eyed cat curled up in her lap. “Very forethoughtful, in many respects—did you know he had a plan of this castle made
before
the Change? However, like even the greatest men, he has a few weaknesses.”

Tiphaine Rutherton bowed her head, a slight, silent gesture. A servant slipped forward noiselessly and filled her cup with herbal tea. She'd really have preferred wine, and it was late enough—after eight and after dinner—but admittedly they needed clear heads for a task so delicate that nothing could be said explicitly even in strict privacy. She also knew that there was no point in speculating until her liege gave her more information; trying to get ahead of the consort in a guessing game was a short route to gibbering madness or a very nasty shock, or both.

Instead she let her mind drift, passively ready to absorb information or act suddenly and without hesitation, otherwise free-associating. She spared the servant a glance; it was the same girl they'd taken to Corvallis back in January, and it was typical of Lady Sandra that even a trusted operative like Tiphaine wasn't entirely sure what her capabilities were or what she was tasked with besides pouring tea, except that it was much more than that. It no longer felt like disloyalty to notice that the girl was extremely pretty; she'd sworn vengeance for Katrina Georges, not eternal celibacy.

One of Norman Arminger's “weaknesses” was shagging anything that moved, as long as it was in its teens, female, and good-looking, like this one. In the old days he'd certainly had dozens of them running around in extremely skimpy outfits; she could remember the tail end of that, before the consort and the Church talked him out of it, amid the general settling down after the wild years. That wasn't a reputation that hurt him with most of the Association warriors, quite the contrary—being a “real three-ball man” was an advantage with them, if not with Pope Leo.

Pigs,
she thought, hiding a slight sneer; but it had never been a matter of much concern to her and Kat, since the Lady Sandra protected
her
Household quite thoroughly.

Rumor also said that the consort helped hold them down for him on occasion. She found the image rather disturbing; it was odd to imagine the Lady Sandra involved in anything so sweaty and…complex.