The blond woman smiled. "Me? I was curled up with a good book at the consulate, Lady Astrid," she said. "Isn't it enough you see elves, without adding ninjas?"
That got a laugh that was mostly genuine; for the first time, Astrid looked startled and worried. Right, Havel thought. That was too convenient to be real. Damn, but it would have been nice to do a Perry Mason!
Sandra Arminger caught the byplay, and smiled a small, secret smile. Franks rapped sharply on the wood of his lectern. "I repeat, this is not a criminal court, or a court of any sort," he said shortly. "I have to say, Lady Astrid, that you're not helping your cause by bringing these feuds into Corvallis."
"It's not we who are doing that," Juniper said. "Mr. President, I draw your attention to the codebook we captured this spring from the late Baron Liu, the Association's Marchwarden of the South. We've decoded it-"
"Made it up?" Sandra Arminger murmured, loud enough to be audible on the dais; her skeptical expression could be seen from much further away.
"-and it shows plans to attack Corvallis and Newport. Sir Nigel Loring here can tell you how the Protector tried to force him to salvage nerve gas from the old Army storage dump at Umatilla to support this attack. We've had copies of the coded plans and their plain intent printed up and distributed."
"This entirely fictional attack," Sandra Arminger said, raising a hand in a brushing-away gesture. "Really, Mr. President! Secret codes, ninjas, weapons of mass destruction: need we take any of this seriously? We could instead focus on facts. It is a fact that the Bearkillers and Mackenzies are deliberately blocking the trade routes between Corvallis and Portland, despite the natural unity of the Willamette Valley. It is a fact that: Ms. Larsson and her friends: have graduated from playing harmless games in the woods to chopping heads off wholesale, and dragging people in chains into your city. And it is a fact that the Association wishes to end this anarchy and open the railway between Corvallis and Portland once more, to our mutual benefit."
Franks knocked on the podium before him again to still the murmurs that swept through the bleachers. Havel scanned them; then his head snapped to the entrance. Another Mackenzie:
Sam Aylward Mackenzie, he thought. Looking like a fox in a henhouse. And the good Major Jones, as well. Kreegah, tarmangani!
Jones curtly ordered the guards to stand aside; he and Aylward walked forward to stand before the dais.
"I hope there's some good reason for this interruption," Franks said sharply as the militia officer saluted, with his helmet held under his left arm.
"Mr. President, members of the noble Faculty Senate and the Popular Assembly, there is," he said grimly.
Havel grinned like a shark as the Corvallan began to speak, an expression Signe echoed. Sandra Arminger rested easily in her chair, elbows on the armrests and steepled fingers under her chin. When Jones was finished, the rumble of the crowd had taken on a distinctly hostile air:
"Lady Sandra, do you have any explanation for this?"
"Several, Mr. President," she said easily. "Starting with the fact that anyone can wear a blazon or a surcoat or a helmet of a particular type. Major Jones doesn't have any of these supposed Protectorate men-at-arms with him, does he? Any documentary proof? It's scarcely our responsibility if bandits are operating on Corvallan territory; we of the Association have our problems with the scum as well."
Jones scowled and clenched the hand that rested on his sword hilt into a fist, but Aylward tapped him on the shoulder and whispered in his ear.
"I can only report what I saw, Mr. President. But as a citizen, I do say that this-combined with the affidavit of Brother Andrew of the Mount Angel border patrol-strongly supports Lady Astrid's argument that the Portland Protective Association, or elements in it, are acting in cooperation with the bandit gangs. In this case, I saw Corvallan citizens being kidnapped as slaves with my own eyes."
"But apparently did nothing about it," Sandra Arminger put in.
Ah, that was a mistake, Havel thought. This time the growl from the audience was ugly; Jones was a popular man, and too many people knew him personally for a slander to have much effect.
Astrid rose, and spoke in that beautiful, cool voice: "We Dunedain Rangers spend our time in the wilderness, fighting bandits and maneaters. Some of us have died fighting them."
And she didn't mention the orcs of the Dark Lord. That must have taken real discipline!
"We guard caravans"-she named a few Corvallan merchants who'd hired them-"and nobody has complained that we didn't do the job properly. Our work benefits everyone in the Valley, and beyond."
Havel came to his own feet. "Mr. President, I and my Outfit have always been friendly to this city. We and the Mackenzies and Mount Angel have all found it worthwhile to help the Rangers, the Dunedain Rangers, in their work. They're doing things we don't have the time for. Leaving aside the bigger issues, we'd like Corvallis to do likewise. It's only fair to chip in, since you're getting the benefits."
Several of the guards around the rim of the old basketball court began to thump the butts of their glaives on the floor. Someone shouted Vote! and others took it up, until the great building echoed and rang with the thunder of the chant: "Vote! Vote! Vote!"
"Well, we didn't get the alliance we hoped for," Juniper said.
"No," Mike Havel replied. "But we will. Not right away, but we will. Ms. Arminger played a weak hand pretty good, but I think she knows it too. Astrid and Eilir got their bunch recognized in Corvallis, and that's a start. Plus I think that codebook made a lot of people real thoughtful. Every bit of weight on our side of the balance counts. And the Protector took a heavy public-relations hit."
"Not so bad a one as I'd have liked," Juniper observed. "Alas, would that it were like a story, where you capture the enemy's secret plan and they're undone at a stroke."
"No, Arminger's bitch played defense very well," Signe said. "And you saw that bit at the end of the coded sequence-he's read the list."
Juniper chuckled unkindly; then her voice grew sober. "There's one thing that's bothering me, then, Mike, Signe. If Sandra knows the Corvallans will ally with us eventually: what will her husband do when she tells him?"
Mike Havel looked at his wife. He could tell the same thought was running through both their minds.
Well, shit. He'll strike before that can happen, is what.
Signe scowled over at the Protectorate party; an attendant was draping a spectacular ermine cloak around Sandra's shoulders, a waterfall of shining black-streaked white fur that swung to her ankles. It must be heavy, but there was a coach drawn up to spare her the effort of walking in it; the space immediately outside the entrance was kept clear for the VIPs.
"I wonder what went on there-" Havel began, and then stopped as Tiphaine walked towards the Dunedain party. "And wouldn't I like to be a fly on someone's head there!"
"So," Astrid said, sneering slightly. "Bauglannen i gos?" Which meant "you chickened out, neener neener," more or less. "Didn't like the thought of that knife duel?"
"Not at all," Tiphaine said, with a smile of amusement copied from Sandra Arminger, and none the worse for that. "I'm going to kill you, all right. But you haven't suffered enough yet."
She turned on her heel, throwing a final word over her shoulder: "I don't know if I'll be able to bring myself to kill you, in the end-because by then, it's going to be a relief."
Chapter Nine
Dun Fairfax, Willamette Valley, Oregon
March 5th, 2008/Change Year 9
"W hoa, there," Sam Aylward said; he could see his stepdaughter Tamar heading his way down the lane from the Dun, with her pair of little red-and-white oxen following behind pulling a two-wheeled cart. "Dinner's on its way. Steady, steady. Whoa, boys."
This would be the last furrow; the field was a little under five acres, gently rolling land near the southwest part of his farm and on the boundary line between Dun Fairfax and Dun Carson; he could see plow teams at work over there too, now and then. Four miles to an acre, back and forth with a double-bottom riding plow that left a yard-wide swath of turned earth; they'd started on this field when the sky was just turning gray with dawn. It was an hour past noon now, and he'd driven the two-horse team back and forth the full twenty miles at about the speed of a man walking briskly, with ten-minute rests every hour. The disks ahead of the plow-blades cut into the sod of the lea-pasture with a long shhhhsshsh, and then the shares made a multiple crinkling tink sound beneath it as the thicker roots of the sainfoin parted before the steel.