Then he smiled. “At first the regiments from the Yakima League didn’t like serving under the Grand Constable.”
“I suppose the Free Cities remember the old wars,” Huon said. “My father fought there, when we took the Tri-Cities; I’m too young to remember it.”
“Mine too. And do they ever remember the old wars! Not the way we Associates do, either. But by the end, they were cheering her whenever she rode by. And the enemy got a lot more cautious, even with their numbers. I grew up with her, but that was the first time I knew, really knew, why so many people are so frightened of her.”
Huon nodded respectfully; they both served warriors of note and of famous deeds, even if they were women.
And running the Grand Constable’s messages or carrying her spare lances must have been pretty dangerous too. He’s younger than me, but he’s already well-blooded.
He glanced through the door of the tent; Lady d’Ath was speaking, referring to a notebook in her left hand and tracing something on the map. Just to add to the puzzle, she looked a lot like Lioncel, enough to have actually been his mother herself; blond and regular-featured and tall. Not ladylike or feminine, but not really mannish, either-very female and very, very dangerous, like a she-tiger.
“You’re Baron Odard’s younger brother, aren’t you?” Lioncel asked. “The late baron, of course. We’ve all heard about his deeds and how well he died.”
Huon nodded. Lioncel was looking at him a little oddly, too, because the Barony of Gervais wasn’t exactly normal either. House Liu had produced his elder brother, Odard, who had been one of the Companions of the Quest with the High King and Queen, all the way east to Nantucket. He hadn’t come back.
So far, so good, he thought. I miss Odard. He was a good guy and a good brother when he remembered me at all, but a knight has to expect to die by the sword-and he died like a hero from a chanson. He brought honor to our House and he saved Yseult and me. Without him, when Mother was arrested for treason…
The problem was that their mother hadn’t just been arrested and executed for treason; she had been guilty as the proverbial Dragon of Sin itself, in league with the Church Universal and Triumphant, and so had his uncle Sir Guelf been. They’d both died for it, and nearly taken House Liu down with them; he and his sister had spent a lot of time under arrest and parole, not to mention constant suspicion. It hadn’t been any fun at all.
That’s over by now, thank God and His Mother, but I’m still feeling…prickly…over it.
The High King and the Queen had been generous to a fault since they got back from the Quest. He was a royal squire now, a post a lot of young noblemen would kill for, and Yseult was a lady-in-waiting to the Queen; she’d been promised a dowry of manors from the Crown demesne, and it had been made known the High King and Queen would stand godparents to any children either had, a priceless cadeau. All that made them a lot less of a pair of lepers socially. It still hadn’t stopped suspicious glances out of the corners of eyes.
He wondered if anything would, except the passage of more time than he liked to think about.
“Huon!”
The High Queen’s voice snapped him out of his reverie. He left his tethered horse and strode briskly into the tent, sweeping off his brimless squire’s flowerpot hat and bowing before standing to attention.
“Your Majesty,” he said.
Mathilda Arminger had been a kindly mistress to him in the month of his service, but she was all business in the field. Which was just what you wanted, of course. Nobody who’d met her was going to tease him about being a woman’s squire.
“You’re going here,” she said, tucking a lock of her dark-brown hair back into place with one finger, then tracing a path on the map.
He watched closely as she tapped four points in the high country north of the town and Crown castle of Goldendale.
“There are posts here…here…here and here.”
He memorized the locations; map-reading and knowing terrain were skills a nobleman had to master. She handed him four envelopes with the Crown seal.
“You’re to take these messages to the commanders at each; they’re just signal and scout detachments. Take any reply — written or verbal, they won’t be urgent or they would have used their heliographs.”
“Your Majesty?”
That was Tiphaine d’Ath, in her cool inflectionless voice. “Sending him alone is almost completely safe. Remember what we have Ogier nosing around up that way for.”
The High Queen smiled, her strong, slightly irregular face lighting for a second. She was in her mid-twenties, a decade and a half younger than d’Ath, but tired enough by the labors of the last few days that you could see what she’d look like in middle-age when the freshness of youth was gone. Indomitable, like weathered rock.
“Good point, my lady Grand Constable,” she said with a nod. “Which is not the same as absolutely completely safe.”
D’Ath raised her voice in turn: “Lioncel!”
The blond youngster seemed to appear magically. “My lady?”
“Her Majesty’s squire is carrying dispatches to the posts north of the city. Accompany him, under his orders. Both of you keep a sharp lookout. If you see any sign of enemy activity, get out immediately and report it to Castle Goldendale. It’s not likely, but the unlikely happens sometimes.”
“Yes, my lady!”
Huon inclined his head. “When and where shall we rejoin, Your Majesty?”
Mathilda looked at her watch.
“Nine fifteen. We’re moving out to Castle Maryhill down on the Columbia in a couple of hours, once we get this cleared up. Rejoin there by no later than sundown, we’ll be moving east at dawn.”
“And you have a new sister,” d’Ath said to Lioncel, handing over a parcel and a sealed note on lavender-colored paper. “Her name is Yolande. Your lady mother sent this for you with the courier.”
“Thank you, my lady! That’s wonderful news!”
Huon suppressed a pang of envy; his mother probably wouldn’t have sent the parcel. Even before she turned strange. Certainly not just before or after an accouchement.
So much for unnatural mothers, he thought a little sourly, seeing Lioncel’s unaffected delight.
Both the squires bent their knee and turned about smartly. Both were smiling as they left; a day spent dashing about was a lot more exciting than standing and watching the grass grow. And they had all day to do it in, plenty of time. He suspected it was partly a test of his land-navigation skills, too; he hadn’t been given a map.
“Congratulations,” Huon said. “Sisters can be fun; Yseult and I get along really well.”
“Thanks, but she’s older than you, isn’t she?”
“Two years,” Huon said. “It was Odard, then Yseult, then me. Then my father was killed in the Protector’s War, so I was the last, that’s why it’s such a small family.”
“You’re the youngest, but I’m the oldest in ours. Little Heuradys is still toddling and drooling, and when they’re babies they’re about as interesting as a lump of dough and not nearly as cute as puppies. Plus a puppy doesn’t take years to housebreak, as Lady d’Ath says. I’m happy for my lady my mother, though; she always wanted two sons and two daughters. A matched set, she called it.”
“Don’t worry now, they’ll both be old enough for you to be worrying about their suitors in no time!”