"Why didn't you take it to Angelica, or Will?"
"Welclass="underline" it's a complaint against an A-lister, and he's not serving in their household, Lord Bear. And: " She twisted in embarrassment.
"And people like to go to the top," Havel said.
True, Loring thought. More to it than that, I think. At a guess, she thinks you'd be less eager to judge her about something.
"OK, you're a member of the Outfit, you've got a right to appeal to me, so spit it out," Havel went on. He'd banished his air of impatience, and waited with all his attention on her face.
She flushed and looked around, then steeled herself.
"He" -she pointed-"promised to marry me. Now I'm pregnant and he won't. I wouldn't have: well, you know, my lord. Not unless I thought we were getting married."
Havel turned on one heel towards the man, stripping off his mail-backed gauntlets. "OK, Morrison, now you. Did you make a promise to Ms. Hawkins here? And you're the father?" The young man hesitated, then nodded twice.
Havel went on, with a chilly glare: "That was smart. Lying to Ms. Hawkins would be bad. Lying to me would be stupid."
He didn't add fatally stupid. From the way young Morrison's tanned face went pale as he nodded again it wasn't necessary, but he kept his eyes level. He was a big blond youngster in his early twenties, with the enlarged wrists and corded forearms of a swordsman, and a small dark scar between his brows.
"OK, there's no law here against being a fink," Havel began, and the girl's face fell. "But there is a regulation against dishonorable behavior among A-listers, in case you hadn't noticed; we've got more privileges than other people, and more obligations, too. Breaking promises is right up there with things we're not supposed to do; and that does not mean just promises to other A-listers and their families, in case the regs aren't clear: and they are. Any explanation, Morrison?"
"My lord, I: I just didn't want to get married yet," the younger man said helplessly. "It's not-I don't have a holding of my own yet, I'm still doing household service with my brother Karl, and-"
"Well, you should have thought of that, shouldn't you?" Havel said. "Christ Jesus, son, do I have to tell you where babies come from? Or what to do about it if you're not angling to reproduce yet?"
The girl flushed more deeply; Morrison shuffled his feet. "We did," he said. "I mean, we were careful but: it just didn't work, and then Yvonne wouldn't listen to me at all when I said how difficult things were."
Loring stroked his mustache, smiling to himself. Barrier contraceptives still worked, but they were a good deal more cumbersome than the vanished Pill, and a bit less reliable.
"He wanted to get rid of the baby!" she snapped. At Havel 's raised brow. "I won't. It's not right. I'm Catholic."
As are the Huttons, I understand, Loring thought.
Havel pointed at Morrison again. "You?" Then: "Speak up, I can't hear you, Morrison!"
"The Old Religion, sir."
There seem to be a good many of them about, here, Loring thought.
He wasn't altogether surprised; accidents of survival in the period right after the Change had left odder imbalances in the lands he'd seen-most of the few people left in Spain spoke Basque, for example. It all depended on who lived; a single charismatic leader or small group could be very influential. Witness His Majesty in England -or for that matter, Colonel Sir Nigel Loring.
Havel 's grin was less pleasant to see this time. "And what exactly do you think Juney-I mean, the Mackenzie, would say about the way you've been acting? Something about a threefold rule?"
Morrison winced again, and this time there seemed to be more in the way of genuine fear in his expression. Loring's eyebrows rose. The Mackenzie leader had seemed a mild sort to him, without any of the hard-man menace you could sense under Michael Havel's rough good humor. And her authority here in Bearkiller territory would be religious, not secular, from what he understood.
A lady with unsuspected depths, he thought. Hmmm. For a woman to emerge as a leader in times like these: A lady with very considerable depths, I should think. Besides her obvious charm, of course.
"OK, it's your kid, and you promised to help look after it, so you owe the young lady big-time, one way or another," Havel said briskly. "That's my judgment. You can appeal to the A-list assembled, Brother Morrison, if you think I'm overtreading your rights. I wouldn't advise it, seeing as Brother Hutton would be speaking for Ms. Hawkins, and if I know Will, he and Angelica would be somewhere between furious and ripshit. With you, not her."
Morrison shook his head this time, emphatically. "I'll accept your judgment, Lord Bear."
"Ms. Hawkins, do you still want to marry this man? He's not a bad sort, just young and using his head for a helmet rack and not much else."
She hesitated a moment. "Yes, my lord Bear. He's: I'm angry with him, but I still love him."
He grinned again, in more friendly wise than before. "Smart girl. Not everyone can keep the difference between being angry with someone and not liking them straight in their heads. What about you, Brother Morrison?"
"Yes, my lord. Definitely."
Havel's expression softened. He thumped a hand down on the young man's shoulder. "Good." Then he leaned closer, and spoke softly; Loring could make it out, but he didn't think that the girl could. "And just between me and thee, Brother, I was going to assign her a third of your income for the next eighteen years if you said no. Glad you got smart."
He shook his head as the youngsters walked away; as they did, the two figures grew closer. "Christ Jesus, I didn't expect this sort of thing would be part of the job."
"Stranger things have happened," Loring said reminis-cently. "There are times an officer has to be a father to his men. And at Tilford-well, you wouldn't be interested in an old man's maunderings."
"You can learn by listening, or by getting whacked between the eyes with a two-by-four. I always found listening easier. Right now, let's go get dinner." He grinned. "You haven't met Mike Jr. yet; he's still in a high chair. But feeding him, thank God, is something I can still unload on Signe and the nanny."
He shrugged again, this time the sort of gesture a man made before settling down to a heavy task. "And tomorrow, it's back to work."
The map room of Larsdalen had been a sun porch before the Change, with half its roof of glass, and tall windows on two sides. The leaders of the Bearkillers and their allies sat at a long table with the glass behind them and the maps before; the military apprentices had set out spirit lamps with pots of herbal tea and platters of oatmeal cookies studded with raisins, then left before the serious talking began. The evening sun gave excellent natural light; the maps looked as if they'd been drawn by hand post-Change, but by experts, and they showed the Pacific Northwest in considerable detail at half a dozen different scales. Nigel Loring appreciated the skill that had gone into them, and their value. Knowing what was where, which roads were passable:
"Everyone who hasn't met him, this is Sir Nigel Loring; he's given the Protector's nose a good hard yank; details are sort of classified. Sam Aylward knew him before the Change, and vouches for him. He was an SAS colonel then, and apparently ran the whole British army afterward, until he had a falling-out with the government there. Sir Nigel, this is Major Jones of the Corvallis University Militia," Havel said.
The soldier was a slender, strong man in his thirties, in a green uniform that looked as if it was designed to be worn under armor, and glasses held on with a rubber strap. The map indicated that Corvallis lay south of the Bearkiller territories, and that it ruled a broad swath between the Williamette River and the Pacific.
"And Councilor Edward Finney of the agriculture faculty there."
The councilor was a square-built man of about. Loring's age; his hand was square as well, callused and strong. "I'm actually just a farmer," he said. "Air force before the Change-logistics specialist; my dad owned a farm near town, and I got out, got back there. Pete, here, was a teaching assistant in the history department, and in the SCA. The university, or part of it, ended up running things in our area: long story."