“Who was the Dawson commander?”
“Sir Othon Derby,” Tiphaine said.
Conrad Renfrew closed his eyes, consulting some inner file before he spoke:
“He’s the second son of Lord Hardouin Derby, Baron de Taylor, one of Count Enguerrand of Dawson’s major vassals. Arms: Argent, on a bend azure three buck’s heads cabossé d’or. With a crescent of cadency, of course. Twenty years old, reputation as a hothead, engaged to one of the Count’s daughters. Bit young for an independent command, I’d have thought.”
“Temporary command; Enguerrand sent him back north to bring in this bunch as replacements for others we’re letting go home for one reason or another. The new levy were mostly men who’ve come of age since the Prophet’s War started.”
“How long since they were called up?” the Chancellor asked.
“When they arrived at Oliver it was twenty-three days since they took the oath at Castle Dawson’s muster-yard,” Tiphaine said, a hint of satisfaction in her voice.
Ah, Lioncel thought. That’s the official start of their period of service.
Landholders, from counts and barons down to footmen holding fiefs-minor in sergeantry, were liable to war-service whenever their overlords or the Crown called. That was what being an Associate was about, after all-fighting to protect the realm, which was why a special dagger was the mark of belonging to the Association. The first forty days after a summons to the ban were at the fief-holder’s own expense, though. Only after that was the Crown obliged to furnish maintenance, with a right to draw on Royal storehouses.
So they wouldn’t be able to plead even a shadow of lawfulness, he thought.
Unexpectedly Tiphaine turned slightly. “Lioncel,” she said. “Your opinion-concisely.”
Lioncel gulped; having questions like that shot at you was one of the less attractive parts of moving up from page to squire.
“Umm. . definitely unchivalrous conduct towards a gentlewoman, my lady, unworthy of a knight. And a violation of the terms of service. This Sir Othon was obliged to see to his men’s provisioning, but that doesn’t mean he can act like a bandit on Association territory. . or anywhere in Montival. Plus it will leave a hole in our supply plans in that area, and it’s a major north-south corridor. My lady.”
“Correct,” Tiphaine said, making a small gesture that stiffened him back into anonymity.
“Sandra so does not like getting ripped off,” Conrad of Odell said, looking upward. “We used to call it an aggressive zero-tolerance policy.”
“You don’t say,” Tiphaine said dryly, glancing in the same direction. “She is my patron too, Conrad.”
She snapped her fingers without looking around. “Boy! The Count of Dawson’s status reports,” she said.
The Baroness of Ath was forty and looked ageless in the way people who spent their days outdoors in all weathers often did, a tall woman with a build like a swordblade, her sun-faded silver-blond hair cut in a bob much like those worn by pages, and eyes the gray of sea-ice. Her male-style court dress of curl-toed shoes, hose, shirt, jerkin and houppelande coat were as plain as ceremony allowed and mostly shades of rich dark fabrics, relieved only by her chain of office and the small golden spurs of knighthood. A round chaperon hat hung on one ear of her tall chair, the liripipe dangling.
Lioncel slid the logistics file she’d called for forward and stepped back behind her chair, standing in the formal posture with one hand on the hilt of his sword and the other over the heavy cut-steel buckle of the sword belt. That let him feel more than hear the rumbling of his stomach. He’d had a very substantial lunch and he was hungry again hours short of dinnertime; everyone laughed and told him it was being fourteen and shooting up like a weed.
“Oh, by Our Lady of the Citadel,” Tiphaine said after a moment, flicking pages.
Odd, Lioncel thought. I’ve never heard that used as one of the Virgin’s titles before.
She went on: “Did the man seriously expect to ship fodder all the way south from Dawson for his destriers? Without the railway draught teams eating everything they were pulling by the time they got to the Okanagan country? Enguerrand’s a Count these days; it doesn’t give him supernatural powers.”
Conrad flicked through the same file and grinned, an alarming expression as the thick white keloid scars on his face knotted.
“They’ve got a lot more oats than money in the Peace River country and Dawson levies haven’t fought down here in the south much. At a guess, back when the ban was called out at the start of this war my lord Enguerrand told his quartermasters to get the fodder wherever it was cheapest and then forgot about it. Then they tried to draw on his own elevators full of nice cheap tribute grain before they realized how shipping costs would screw their cash flow, and ever since then they’ve been robbing Peter to pay Paul. Coming up short now and then, which was where young Sir Othon found himself, I’d wager. And there’s not much coin circulating up there even now, too remote. Just not used to paying cash for grain.”
“The Count will pay for this, and a fine, plus compensation-money to Lady Aicelena for the abuse of her hospitality,” Tiphaine said flatly. “Or Baron de Taylor will. And the bold Sir Othon can see how he likes a month of attitude adjustment in Little Ease.”
Lioncel winced behind an impassive face as the older nobles smiled, or at least showed their teeth. Little Ease was a dungeon oubliette beneath the Onyx Tower, a cramped cell carefully designed to make it impossible for an inmate to either lie or stand or sit properly, not to mention the rough knobby surface and utter blackness and total silence and cold and filth and damp. Sending people there was done by the prerogative Court called Star Chamber. . over which the Queen Mother would preside.
“Oh, a month. . that’s a bit much, unless you want a gibbering madman,” Conrad said cheerfully. “A week would be about right. It’ll just feel like months. Like forever and a day in Hell, in fact.”
“All right, a week. You’re getting soft, Conrad.”
Conrad’s smile grew more alarming. “You can be a bit. . drastic. . when you’re peeved. That’s probably why Sandra had you consult me, you know. We want to discipline Sir Othon and his lieges, not drive them to desperation. Besides, we’ve reformed. We’re the good guys these days. Sorta.”
“Sorta, kinda.” Tiphaine rubbed one hand across her forehead. “I don’t have time for this crap. Our command structure is still scrambled six ways from St. Swithin’s Day. I’m being bounced back and forth from here to Portland to the front like a Ping-Pong ball. Trailing files and letters like a comet’s tail. And you would be too, Conrad, if you weren’t in that wheelchair.”
Conrad Renfrew shrugged.
“If the High Kingdom of Montival were a human being it’d still be in diapers,” he said. “And His Majesty is trying to run a war with what used to be six or seven separate armies two years ago. Us, and six separate armies built to fight us plus bits and pieces of odds and sods. It’s not our command structure, even if we’re the biggest single element; it’s Montival’s command structure. And yes, it’s fucked.”
The Lord Chancellor chuckled like gravel shaken in a bucket.
“And Ping-Pong? Pre-Change metaphors are so twentieth century for a near-Changeling like you. You’re dating yourself, Tiph.”
“Dating myself? Doesn’t that make you go blind?”
Didn’t dating also mean something like courtship before the Change? Then-