A Meeting at Corvallis (67 page)

And I'm fairly certain she has absolutely no interest in women,
Tiphaine thought; she and Kat had both had a mild, Platonic knight-and-fair-lady crush on her for much of their teens, and she'd made it gently but unmistakably clear that it had better stay that way.
She seems to like them better than men as daytime company, though.

Sandra's lips turned up. “I trained you well,” she said. “Waiting patiently for me to say too much, are you?”

Tiphaine chuckled, as her mind snapped automatically back to the here and now. “Actually, my liege, I was just noticing the slight differences in the way you speak to me now that I've been ennobled. It's much more subtle than the way most of the court has reacted.”

“Bravo!” Sandra said, her eyes sparkling, and made as if to clap. “Although on occasion a flood of words can be a disguise as efficient as silence. In any case, take a look at these.”

She used one finger to slide a folder across the table. It had the Eye stamped on the cover, and was bound with black ribbon. The blond woman opened it, and flipped rapidly through typewritten pages and hand-drawn maps. As she did, her pale brows rose farther and farther. When she'd finished she closed the file and spent a moment running the data through her mind, and considering implications.

“I gather that the official announcement of
setbacks
in the grand Crusade of Unification was a bit of an understatement,” she said dryly.

Sandra snapped her fingers, and the servant-girl slid forward again, taking the file away and locking it in a cabinet disguised with a birch wainscot. She laid the key before Sandra and stepped back; the ruler picked it up and toyed with the little metal shape as she spoke, her eyes focused somewhere far away.

“This war is over,” she said flatly. “Bungled into wreck. It was bad enough that those Corvallan ‘volunteers' saved the Bear Lord, but losing our
second
Marchwarden of the South in the space of a year is embarrassing. Emiliano…what's the warrior expression? Screwed the pooch? I'm afraid ‘looks good with an arrow through the head' is becoming a qualification for that job.”

Tiphaine's lips compressed to hide the chuckle that almost startled out of her.

Sandra nodded and went on: “The Grand Constable managed to save most of our forces, but the net result is that we're back where we started, with no territorial gains or plunder to compensate for our losses—including, unfortunately, many knights and members of significant families. The Lord Protector is…annoyed.”

“And your policy, my liege?”

“To avoid throwing good money after bad. As I said, my husband is a very capable man, and very determined; he wouldn't be where he is otherwise. Unfortunately he's also stubborn, which is the flip side. And he's extraordinarily vindictive. So am I, of course, but it's less…personal, shall we say. I make a point of not letting it interfere with serious matters.”

Tiphaine nodded soberly. She'd heard nothing that she hadn't figured out for herself, parts of it long ago, but the fact that Lady Sandra was willing to tell her, and in so many words, was an important fact in itself.

“So what do you want
me
to do, liege-lady?” she said.

Sandra smiled wryly. “I want you to keep my options open,” she said. “By taking up that little property of yours; it needs the fief-holder's foot, as the saying goes. And I'd like you to entertain some guests there. No need to have daily propinquity give dear Norman ideas. Or His Holiness.”

Dun Juniper, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 11th, 2008/Change Year 9

“O Goddess gentle and strong, protect him,” Juniper said, feeling the blood drain from her face, tasting the acrid sourness of vomit at the back of her throat, smelling her own fear-sweat. “I hadn't thought Sandra hated me so much, or would be willing to torment a child.”

“Wait a minute,” Nigel said.

Juniper looked up. It wasn't the sympathy in his voice that made the cold nausea in her gut subside a little, but the sharp common sense.

“Would you mind reading that to us again, Lady Juniper?” he said.

This was semiformal; they were in the third-floor bedroom-loft-office of her Hall, sitting near the north-face hearth that held her personal altar as well, with a mandala and images—a tile plaque of Cernunnos playing the flute, and a blue-robed Lady of the Moon. A low blaze crackled in the small hearth and dispelled some of the damp chill of a spring night. Lanterns cast yellow-red light over bookshelves and desk, filing cabinets and ritual tools, her rolled-up futon and the big vertical loom down at the edge by the dormer windows. The loom held a blanket she was working on, in zigzag stripes of cream white, taupe, cinnamon brown and a darker brown that was almost black, the natural colors of sheep's wool. She was weaving it on two levels, so that her eight-heddle loom could produce a stretch eight feet across; it had been intended for Rudi's bed…

Sam Aylward was there, and Chuck and Judy Barstow, and Eilir and Astrid and their men.

And Nigel is mine,
she thought, drawing a deep breath.
Trust him.
She read the report again.

“The day after her investiture and oath of fealty, Tiphaine d'Ath left Castle Todenangst for her Domain; this caused some surprise. A closed carriage accompanied them, and Rudi Mackenzie and the Princess Mathilda were not seen afterwards in the Castle.”

“
And the Princess Mathilda
is the operative phrase here, my dear,” Nigel said, a hunter's expression on his face. “She knows what close friends the children are. Surely she wouldn't risk her own relationship with her daughter so soon after getting her back. She most certainly would not send her along to a place where Rudi was to be mistreated—if she planned that, she'd separate them.”

And Mom, it was Sandra who announced that Rudi should be treated like a prince,
Eilir signed.
All the accounts agree on that. She couldn't lose face by reversing herself in secret.

“You have a point, so,” Juniper said slowly, feeling her mind begin to function again. The loss had hit her much harder here at home, where every board and window shouted memories of Rudi. “I thought…this Tiphaine is an assassin, and she hates us so bitterly….”

“I don't know about that,” Alleyne Loring said, brushing the downy yellow mustache on his upper lip with a fingertip. It was a habit he'd acquired from his father, and Juniper found it peculiarly endearing. “I had the impression that she hated Astrid, specifically, and others only in relation to her. Eilir, of course, and myself, and John. Not that she wouldn't be willing to kill anyone she was told to, but that was the
personal
element.”

Even then, a corner of Juniper's mind noticed something; when the Lorings had arrived in Oregon a year ago, young Alleyne had usually referred to the other Englishman as “Hordle” or “sergeant,” for all that they'd been companions since childhood—some peculiar English Frodo/Samwise thing, she supposed. Now it was just “John”….

Our American egalitarianism at work, I suppose,
she thought.
Or the Clan Mackenzie's ways.

She thought for a moment, then asked: “I didn't see much of Tiphaine Rutherton—and particularly not together with Sandra Arminger—or fight her. What's your take?”

Eilir hesitated, then signed:
I think it's some sort of sick guru-chela thing with those two. I got the impression she'd trained her—and Katrina Georges—for a long time. Not their warrior training, but mental disciplines.

Astrid nodded. “She was very, very good in the warehouse. Movement as fast as anyone I've ever seen, beautifully fluid, and she was
thinking
every second—good improvisation and use of externals. And when we talked later, she fooled me completely.”

And me,
Eilir said.
Sorry, anamchara, but you're not as good at reading people.
Astrid nodded, unfazed; that was a truth they both acknowledged. The deaf woman went on:
Doesn't the report say that the two of them were taken in by Sandra Arminger right after the Change?

Juniper nodded. “They were Girl Scouts, oddly enough…I think, given what I've learned of her over the years, that Sandra Arminger delights in her own cleverness. And what better way to mark it than fashioning…shaping…very clever people herself? So that they develop their minds and become formidable in their own right, yet she remains the center of their universe. She would not hesitate to hurt Rudi to suit her own purposes, or even simply to hurt me. But I think Nigel is right; she would not throw an advantage away to gratify cruelty, nor would she ever act on impulse.”

She gave a short, bitter laugh. “And it is my best hope, that my son is in the hands of such a person.”

Alleyne nodded. “What intelligence do we have on this Ath place?”

Sir Nigel coughed discreetly. “It's the land Arminger tried to buy us with, last year, Alleyne. Ath is the name of the castle he mentioned…a small one, he said, if I recall correctly.”

The younger Loring's eyebrows went up. “They didn't stint young Tiphaine's plate,” he observed. “That's better than four thousand acres, and those lovely vineyards, with a big tract of woodland in the Coast Range tacked on.”

Sam Aylward spoke up, startling them all a little: “Roit you are. They're smart enough to reward success. What was that saying the old-time general used, sir?”

Nigel frowned in thought. Then: “Ah, yes.
To command armies, it is sufficient to pay well, punish well and hang well.
”

Judy Barstow spoke: “We have some people in the villages near there. A small coven, though the High Priestess died last year. Perhaps we could get information from them, if any are on the castle staff. There's a traveling liaison, a peddler and his family…”

Aylward took up the thread: “And when we do, we can see about getting young Rudi back—perhaps Mathilda as well.”

Juniper surprised herself by shaking her head: “Not Mathilda. We were wrong to keep her so long. Remember the Threefold Law. And we…” She swallowed and made herself go on. “We needn't be in a desperate hurry. Sandra Arminger would rather corrupt than kill, and she's very patient. She'll need to be; my Rudi isn't one to be corrupted easily!”

“Right you are, Lady,” Aylward said grimly. “But we'd best remember that she isn't the only player at the board. There's her husband.”

Astrid nodded. “The Dúnedain Rangers will do all they can to rescue Artos…Rudi,” she said.

Eilir nodded vigorously. Sam Aylward thought for a moment, then nodded himself, with a rueful sigh. “A youngster's job, right enough.”

When all had left, Juniper Mackenzie extinguished the lights and knelt before the altar, hands crossed upon her breast. She took a moment to empty her mind, then opened herself to the night—to the crackle of fire and the smell of fir burning, to the wind that brought the living forests into the room, to the distant murmurs of sound that faded into the creaking, rubbing, crackling stillness of the mountain forests. When she launched her will, it was like a spear—and like the cry of every mother, to the Mother:
Save my son!

Castle Ath, Tualatin Valley, Oregon
March 15th/16th, 2008/Change Year 9

“Welcome to your domain of Ath, my lady,” the steward said.

He was middle-aged—in his late thirties—and looked as if he'd be more comfortable in a suit and tie than the tabard and tunic of ceremony, but post-Change clothes were the prestige dress in the Association's territories. His eyes went wide as he recognized the gold chain around her neck and across the breast of her hauberk, made up of linked sets of letters reading PPA; that could only be a gift from the Protector's own hand. Swallowing, he went on: “I am Richard Wielman, the Lord Protector's steward for this domain of Ath these last nine years, and yours as well if you wish.”

“Thank you, Goodman Wielman,” Tiphaine Rutherton said as she leaned a hand on her saddlebow.

A slight smile lit her face as she looked up at the gray bulk of the fortress, sharp against the bright blue sky, and took a deep breath of fresh country scents, cut grass, turned earth, fir-sap, wood smoke, and just enough of horse and manure to add a little pungency. Then she turned her attention back to Wielman; a good estate steward would make
her
work a lot easier, and this one had actually been a farm manager
before
the Change, and knew bookkeeping as well. He'd probably want to keep this job, but there were plenty of landholders who'd snap him up if he left.

“I examined the Exchequer records at Castle Todenangst, and you appear to have done a fine job. I was particularly pleased with the price you got from those Corvallis merchants for the spring wool clip. I'm sure we'll get along well,” she said.

The man bowed again and babbled thanks, then pulled himself together and introduced his wife and children and the other important staff; Father Peter, the priest; the bailiffs of the three manors, the head stockman and the vintner…All of them looked nervous; the offices on the estate were in her gift now, even the clerical ones if she didn't mind a head-butting session with the local bishop, and she might not want the same men holding them.