A Meeting at Corvallis (84 page)

“Next, you have to renounce any claim on our lands and recognize all the free communities as equals. Peace on the border.”

“Agreed,” Sandra said at once. “You
have
won this war, after all. I warn you that Norman couldn't control what every baron did in detail, and I won't be able to do so either, but I will try.”

“And promises are worth their weight in gold,” Juniper said; she was a little surprised when Sandra chuckled and made a gesture of acknowledgment.

“And you will decree, and have the decree read in every domain, castle, manor and village, that any resident of the Protectorate is now free to leave, now or at any time in the future, without bond or let, taking their personal property with them.”

“Ah.”
Sandra Arminger closed her eyes for an instant. “Now, that's the big one.
That
would be difficult to sell to the barons.”

“Better lose some than lose all,” Juniper said ruthlessly. “Not all would go; I imagine a lot of the free tenants and even some of the bond-tenants would stay. They've put their lives into that land, after all, and leaving would mean starting over again penniless, without land or stock. They can't carry their farms on their backs. But you'll have to stop squeezing the rest so hard, and that's a fact, and get rid of those iron collars, if you want any of your peons to remain. They're already penniless and abused to boot, the which they wouldn't be in the south.”

“Which means we'd have to cut back on the army,” Sandra observed. “We couldn't afford it any more.”

“Exactly, unless your nobles preferred to sacrifice their standard of living.” Sandra made a rueful twist of the lips that wasn't quite a smile, and Juniper went on: “
That
is how we can trust your word; you won't have that great standing army hanging over our heads like a hammer anymore. I suggest you settle the ordinary soldiers on farms and call them a militia—or whatever piece of old-world foolishness you choose to hang on it, fiefs-in-ordinary or whatever suits your fancy.”

Sandra's left eyebrow went up again, and she silently looked at Juniper's kilt and plaid and the raven-feathers in the clasp of her flat Scots bonnet. Juniper fought down a smile.

And if she weren't a cruel, murderous bitch who's evil to the painted toenails I could like this woman, sure.
She had an uncomfortable feeling that the other could read the thought, as well.

“Anything else?” the consort—now the Regent—said.

“There's to be a yearly meeting of all the communities, to consider grievances and settle disputes.”

“Where?” Sandra asked curiously.

“Corvallis. They're further from you and have fewer feuds. Also, later people from south of there may wish to join.”

Sandra nodded thoughtfully, looking at the dignitaries scattered around the field outside the pavilion. Turner and Kowalski were there with a clutch of other Corvallan magnates. Juniper could see the calculations of political advantage going through the other woman's brain.

But two can play at that game, my lady Regent. Any number can, in fact. It's not my favorite sport, the game of thrones, but I like it better than the game of swords.

Sandra nodded. “Agreed. A…oh, God, let's not call it a United Nations, shall we? That would doom things from the start.”

“We could simply call it the Meeting.”

“A yearly Meeting at Corvallis, agreed. And that's all?”

“By no means. There's the matter of Mathilda.”

Sandra Arminger went very still. She took another sip of the coffee and put the cup on the folding table with its surface of mother-of-pearl and gold.

“Yes?” she said, her voice full of pride and danger. “There's something about my daughter you don't like?”

Juniper smiled; it wasn't even an unkindly expression. “On the contrary. She's a sweet girl, and nobody's fool, and we agree without dispute she's to be your heir. So much do we all love her that we'd insist on her company, for, shall we say, six months of the year.”

Sandra's basilisk glare went blank and opaque; Juniper could see twisting pathways behind the dark brown eyes, like one of those old Escher prints, and felt dizzy for an instant. To help the process of thought along she gently pointed out: “And Rudi is very fond of her, so. And she of him.”

The pathways were joined by gears, meshing in silent smoothness. Sandra smiled, a somewhat alarming expression.

“There is that. It would be cruel to part the children, and I'm quite fond of Rudi, as well.”

Which I think is even true,
Juniper said to herself.

“Two months, though, not six. Her name is Mathilda, not Persephone.”

Juniper forced down a startled chuckle. “Five,” she said.

“Three.”

“Four.”

“Agreed, four,” Sandra said. “Provided, of course, that Rudi spends four months with
us
.”

She held up a hand to stop Juniper's startled retort. “I can't agree to anything that will make most of my barons…or their widows, now…abandon me. Letting their laborers leave at will is bad enough. If I send my daughter as a hostage without you doing the same, it's a symbol of humiliation and defeat, and it will be the straw that breaks the back of their pride. You have to give them a gesture of respect and hope.”

Juniper sat and wrestled with herself. She knew that Sandra Arminger was enjoying every moment of her internal torment, which made her end it the sooner: “Done. Mathilda will come to us at Mabon and stay until Yule; Rudi will return with her and come back to us at Ostara. And when they're old enough, they can visit as they please, of course.”

“Whittled it down to a bit
under
three months, when you had to wear the other shoe, eh?” Sandra said. Then: “Agreed. And each to bring a suite of no more than six with them. No religious pressure on either.”

“Oh, agreed.”

Sandra finished her coffee and said musingly: “I'll send Tiphaine d'Ath and her little friend the witch along with Mathilda. They'll enjoy that, and I've wanted to poke Pope Leo in the eye for some time now, not to mention trim back his pretensions a bit….”

She extended a hand. Juniper took it and they gave one firm shake before releasing. A murmur rose from the crowd outside, and the two women looked at each other.

Juniper sighed. “Now we have to make them think it was their own idea.”

“Just so. Strange, isn't it, that it's always more difficult to talk people
out
of killing each other than
into
it?”

Larsdalen, Willamette Valley, Oregon
September 6th, 2008/Change Year 10

The funeral cortege made its slow way up from the gate of Larsdalen, the pennants of the lancer escort and the manes of the horses fluttering in the warm wind from the east, a wind that smelled of baked earth and drying grass as much as wood smoke or massed humanity. Michael Havel's body rested on the flat bed of a two-wheeled wagon drawn by four glossy horses; his charger followed behind, boots reversed in the stirrups. The brown-and-scarlet flag of the Outfit was draped over the coffin, and his unsheathed sword and bear-headed helm rested on it. Silence ran under the sough of the wind, under the crunch of gravel beneath feet and hooves, despite the huge crowd gathered; every adult of the Outfit who could come had, and many had brought their older children to see the passing of the first Bear Lord.

The day was cruelly bright on the white and yellow of the great house and on the gardens, but the lawns were covered right to the edges of the flowerbanks that trembled in sheets of gold and purple. To the edges, but not beyond, for Bearkillers were an orderly and disciplined folk, and today they came to mourn. Flowers brought from their own homes flew out to land beneath the horses' hooves, roses and peonies and rhododendrons, until the destriers seemed to tread on a carpet or a spring meadow. Hats came off in a wave as the coffin passed by behind its escort of mounted A-listers led by the dead man's brother-in-law, and heads bowed. They remained that way in respect as the family passed behind: the dead man's wife and children, his sister-in-law, Ken Larsson and the rest.

Signe walked behind the cart, Mike Jr.'s hand in hers; the boy was sobbing quietly in hopeless bewilderment, knowing that something very bad had happened, and that he couldn't bawl the way he needed to or ask:
When's Daddy coming home?
Mary and Ritva were old enough to understand; their tears were more silent, but more bitter. Signe herself walked like an iron statue from a Viking myth, in A-lister panoply but with the crest of the helmet under her right arm dyed black. Today you could see what she would be like when the last of her youth left her.

He's gone,
she thought.

The knowledge was there, but her mind couldn't really take it in.
Ten years, and suddenly he's gone.
He's
gone. He'll never smile at me that way again, mostly on one side of his mouth, and I'll never look over in the morning and find him rubbing his face the way he always did right after he woke up. None of it, ever again.

She remembered his eyes, that first time when he'd walked into the room in the airport: cool and polite and showing no sign that he was mentally undressing her, which she'd known damned well he was.
Cute, but a spoiled rich kid
had been visible if you knew how to read men, which she had even then. It had driven her wild…and then the terror when the Piper Chieftain's engines had cut out, and the way his face had turned to a slab of granite as he wrestled with the controls.

He's gone. Forever.

Her son's small hand tugged at hers, and she looked down. His hair was hers, white now; it would be corn gold when he grew. But the eyes were his father's, slanted and gray as Lake Superior water on an overcast day, and so were the promise of cheekbones and small square chin.

But my kids are here.
His
kids too. Everything isn't gone. Not yet.

The cart creaked to a halt on the terrace that held the house. Signe turned, picked her son up and handed him to Will Hutton. The older man's face was graven too, grief and strength in the brown eyes. They widened a little in surprise as the blond boy was put in his arms. The child's own went around his neck, and the tear-and-snot-streaked face was buried in the crook of it.

That immobilized him as she vaulted up into the cart and stood beside the coffin; she stood for a moment, and then touched two fingers to her lips and bent for a moment to press them to the polished wood.

Then she stood, looking out over the sea of faces below, and filled her lungs.

“Bearkillers!” she shouted. A murmur, then hushed silence again, with a soughing sound like some great beast breathing quietly as it waited.

“Bearkillers, Michael Havel is dead!”

There was a fringe of A-listers along the edge of the great crowd nearest the roadway and the house; nobody grudged them the position today. Many were bandaged; some were on crutches; a few were in wheelchairs, pushed along by friends or kin or retainers. The least she saw anywhere were the grave, shocked faces that wondered:
what will become of us now?
Some of them wept; a few covered their faces with their hands and sobbed unashamed. Nor were the A-listers the only ones.

I hope you can see this,
alskling,
wherever you are,
she thought, with a moment's wistfulness.
They always respected you, but now they know they loved you too.

Then she pushed down tenderness. Mike had fought his fight; hers was still to be won.

“When the Change came, I and my family were flying over mountains. A lot of people died that day. How many didn't die, who were in the air when the machines failed? Michael Havel saved our lives.”

She let one hand point for an instant to the man holding her son. “This is Will Hutton. You know him; a strong man, and a wise leader. But Mike Havel rescued him too, and his wife and daughter—rescued them and me and my sister from bandits out to rape and rob and kill.”

She looked over the rapt audience, feeling their eyes like a huge wind bearing her up. The real wind blew a strand of her yellow mane into her eyes, and she brushed it aside with memories of terror and helplessness.

Mike taught me. I was never helpless again. I never
will
be helpless again. Nor will our children.

“Who among all of you
didn't
he save? He found you here and there—starving, hiding, hiding from Eaters and bandits and warlords, hiding from each other, in basements and culverts and little hollows up in the hills, all of you waiting to die like the rest or get hungry enough to do the forbidden thing. Who brought you together and made you into the Outfit, where nobody's alone and everyone has brothers and sisters who'd die for them? Who was it taught you how to fight and made you strong?
Who?
”