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 – jor 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 Dunedain 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.
Ath was on a hill not far south of the town of Forest Grove and a little west of old Highway 47, just where the Coast Range began rearing out of the Tualatin Valley in green forest-clad heights, walling off the Pacific. Orchards and groves of filbert and walnut had covered it before the Protector's labor gangs came, and still mantled the lower slopes. The castle itself was of a simple design the Association had put up by the dozens as the vacant lands were resettled, and then handed out to knight and baron; unlike many, it hadn't been enlarged. In the southeast corner of a walled enclosure stood a rectangular tower whose outline was about the size of an ordinary suburban house, but four stories tall; smaller round towers stood at the other three angles, one of them sporting a metal windmill whirling at its peak to keep the reservoir filled. The gate ran in beside the main keep, with portcullis and drawbridge, and a dry moat full of barbed wire and angle iron surrounded the whole; the wall itself was crenellated and half the main keep-tower's height, and it enclosed an acre and a half.
North and east and south the castle commanded a broad view of land where patches of cloud-shadow drifted over smaragdine brightness in an infinite variety of greens, dappled by occasional squares of red-brown plowed land. It was good to be back from the wild lands and the dead cities, back among the fields that fed mankind. Fingers of higher, tree-clad ridge stretched out into the rolling farmlands; those were busy now with ox-teams and people planting barley and oats and potatoes, and sugar beet for the new factory in Forest Grove.
My barley, my oats, and my potatoes. My cows, and wheat, and vineyards: my farmers, for that matter, Tiphaine thought.
It was pleasing and daunting and exciting at the same time. And the Lord
Protector and Lady Sandra certainly hadn't been cheap about it; there were barons without much more than this, and most ordinary landed knights had a lot less.
It can be sort of disorienting when you finally get what you've been aiming jor. I'm twenty-three. What do I do now? Do I want to be: oh, Mathilda's right hand and her Grand Constable and bone-breaker when she's Lady Protector?
On south-facing slopes peach trees were in blossom; sheep grazed beneath on the crimson-clover sod. Swaths of the grassland below the castle walls were bright with yellow daffodils. Down by Carpenter Creek a mile northward, horses and black-coated cattle drifted through the meadows; southeast lay a big block of vineyard drawing square regularity over rumpled land. A hamlet of frame cottages with ditch and bank around it stood on the south side of the roadway that led west to the castle gate, and anxious-looking civilians and their families in their best tabards stood there, waiting to greet her-those would be the castle service staff, most of whom lived outside the wall in normal times. The castle garrison and their families were inside the gate, in the courtyard, the men drawn up in ranks for inspection.