The door to the vestibule opened as he mused, and he looked up with the wariness his wandering years had bred. A group came in, three women and two men, all younger than him but not by that much; they all wore longswords and daggers, which they racked by the door. They moved as if they knew how to use them, too.
He noticed the twin girls first, since they were identi cal and dressed so alike he guessed they worked at it. Both were tall, five-nine or so, with yellow-blond braids down their backs, dressed in dark trousers and boots rather than kilts; when they took off their jackets, they revealed sleeveless jerkins of black leather over their shirts, blazoned with a white tree and seven stars surmounted by a crown.
The other girl was a year or two older and an inch or so shorter, with brown hair cut shoulder-length and brown eyes and features a little too bold for beauty. She was in pants and a short-sleeved thigh-length tunic of fine-woven wool, forest green, over a full sleeved shirt of indigo dyed linen. The tunic had a slit-pupiled eye wreathed in flame on a black shield woven over her chest, and the same device showed on the buckle of her silver-chain belt; it carried a rosary of worked coral and crucifix opposite a dagger.
Saba returned with two small glasses of applejack. Ingolf smiled at her, lifted his and tasted cautiously. It was potent but made from good mash, light-crushed and well strained, and aged a couple of years, just right for sipping liquor.
"Who are those?" he said quietly, nodding to the group as her father bustled over to them.
VIPs, he decided by himself.
Tom Brannigan wasn't in the least servile, but there was an indefinable air of respect. Ingolf's eyes narrowed slightly in professional appraisal.
"The big fella with the bright hair particularly," he said.
One of the men was in a kilt and was about Ingolf's own height, six-one or a little more; a bit lighter than his own one ninety, he estimated, but not much. Broad shouldered and long-limbed, well muscled but moving like a racehorse, looking like he was about to leap even when completely still. And strikingly handsome in a way that was almost beautiful without being in the least pretty, down to a cleft in the square chin.
"Oh, that's Rudi Mackenzie," Saba said, with the tolerant tone of a woman towards a younger man she'd known when he was just hitting his teens. "The Chief's kid."
Ingolf's eyes flicked to look at hands and wrists, the way the young man held himself and moved. And at the scars that showed when a sleeve of his saffron yellow shirt of linsey-woolsey fell back from a muscular fore arm; there was another along the angle of his jaw. He looked young-probably looked younger than he was; the well-to do didn't age as fast as ordinary folk-but formidable.
"That's not just a kid," he said. "That's a fighting man. And a very dangerous one, or I miss my bet."
"Well, yes. He fought with Raen… and very well, by all accounts. Took that cut on his face pulling my man out of the water with a Haida trying to spear him, but it was too late."
"He's your bossman's son? The heir?"
"Our Chief's a woman," Saba said. "Juniper Mackenzie, herself herself. But he's her son, right enough-and her tanist."
At his inquiring glance: "A tanist is… sort of an un derstudy. His father was Mike Havel-Lord Bear, some called him, the head of the Bearkiller Outfit, over west of the river. The twins are Havel's kids too, Rudi's half sisters; their mother's Signe Havel.. . He fathered Rudi with the Chief before he married Signe."
"Yeah, there's a family resemblance," Ingolf noted.
High cheekbones and slanted eyes; a trace of Injun there, he thought. The man's eyes were a light change able gray-blue-green, the girls' the bright blue of corn flowers; his hair was worn shoulder-length and there was a strong tinge of copper red in its yellow curls. He looked as if he laughed a lot; right now he was grinning at the innkeeper.
"Greetings to the Mackenzie!" Brannigan said grandly, then winked and made a sweeping bow. "You honor our humble establishment."
"Hey, Tom, I'm not the Mackenzie," the young man-Rudi-said, shaking his hand; that lilting accent of Saba's was stronger still with him. "My mother is the Mackenzie. I'm just a Mackenzie, like you and the rest, to be sure."
"You're just a clansman, and I'm the Horned Lord come in the flesh," Brannigan said.
"Well, you are, " Rudi pointed out.
"Only in the Circle," Brannigan said.
Ingolf looked a question over at the innkeeper's daughter. "Dad's High Priest of the Sunhill Coven here," she said casually. "So when he Calls, the God comes to him. Mom's the High Priestess. Lady Juniper is High Priestess of the whole Clan, of course-she's the Goddess on-Earth. The living vessel of the Mother."
"Oh," Ingolf said. And I'm not going to ask more about that until I know my way around! he thought.
"You're not staying at Raven House?" Brannigan went on to… Rudi, Ingolf thought. Rudi Mackenzie.
"Nah, Mom and Sir Nigel and the infants are in, and some guests from overseas, and a whole lot of other people from Dun Juniper, so we just dumped the hunting gear there, said hello, and came on over. You mind putting us all up? The girls can share a room if it's tight, and you can put me and Odard in another."
"You snore, Rudi," the other man in the party said; that must be Odard.
He was dressed like the brown-haired woman in T-TUNIC, shirt and pants; his were of beautifully woven dark blue cloth embroidered around the neck and hem with gold, but there was a circle on his chest with what looked like a Chinese symbol in it-Ingolf knew enough to recognize them. He went on with the air of a man making a concession:
"You could chivalrously sleep here on the floor by the hearth and give your room to the Princess. It would be more suitable to her state to have one all to herself."
"I'm not sharing with you, Odard," the brown-haired woman said, pointing a finger.
"Oh, of course not, Your Highness," the man said smoothly. "I said all to yourself, didn't I?"
"Then you'd have to sleep on the floor too, Odard." Rudi grinned. "Which isn't like you. Chivalry or not."
"No, no, you sleep in front of the hearth, Rudi, and I'll share with the twins."
"And then you wake up, Odard," one of the siblings said.
Her sister just snorted; they both looked down their noses at him-about half-serious, Ingolf thought.
"No, plenty for you and the princess and your friends to have one each," Brannigan said, laughing at the by play. "Business gets slow after the Horse Fair, and slower after Mabon. Highway 20 won't be open much longer-it may be closed now. They've already had snow up there, though we got one in from over the Santiam Pass just a little while ago-that's him. He's from far back east, way far. East of the Mississippi!"
He nodded towards the booth in a corner; Ingolf raised his glass politely as they nodded at him; they looked in frank curiosity, then gave him what he recognized as the same expert's once over he'd given Rudi. There was a little more than that in the way the three young women looked at him; they put their heads together and said something in a language he didn't recognize, and giggled for a moment.
Then they went off to their own table, still bickering amiably. Like pups in a litter, he thought tolerantly, from the lofty height of twenty-eight, and asked: "Princess?"
"Oh, that's Mathilda Arminger," Saba said. "She comes from up north; her father was the Lord Protec tor of Portland, and she's his heir, so they call her the princess. Mike Havel and he killed each other in the War of the Eye, eleven years ago-no, sure and I'm lying, it's twelve years the now. By the Sun Lord and the Foam-Born, but the wheel turns faster each time!"
Ingolf felt his brows go up. "Their kids seem awful friendly," he said.
And meant it. He recognized the playful banter, of a style you used only with those you knew well, and it brought a pang of loneliness. He hadn't had the like since the Villains were wiped out last year.