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.
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 further and further. 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?"