That and a view over the room were privileges of rank. The sun was just up, and the verandas outside made it a little dim here without artificial light; god-faces and colored symbols loomed out of the tall dimness above. Racked spears and swords glittered near the big side doors; men, women, children and dogs wandered in and out, along with a damp, chilly spring morning air.
She threw hellos and good mornings left and right as she walked up to the head table; eating there had come to seem normal, albeit a little like living forever in a hotel. Sometimes it was a relief to sneak down to the kitchens late at night and have a muffin with just Eilir, or make something herself with a few old friends.
"At least when I was a singer, I wasn't on display all the time," she muttered, after she'd set her tray down and made the blessing and Invocation over the food and began to ply her spoon.
"Getting nostalgic again?" Chuck Barstow said.
He set down a tray heaped with eggs and fried ham and potatoes and biscuits beside her and started stoking his leanly muscular frame; Second Armsman and Lord of the Harvest were both jobs that kept you sweating. In the seat beyond him Judy yawned and blinked over a bowl like Juniper's. It was just six o'clock and she'd never been a morning person, one of the few serious incompatibilities she and Juniper had; it was also one reason she and Chuck lived in the Hall, where you didn't have to get your own breakfast. Her black cat clambered painfully onto her lap, curled up and went to sleep, not even waking up for the cream-pouring, but then Pywackett was fourteen and a bit decrepit, which made it natural. Cuchulain thumped his tail on the floorboards behind her chair and then went back to sleep himself, despite determined attempts at dog-bothering by a couple of young Hall cats just out of kittenhood.
"Noooo," Juniper said uncertainly. "Not nostalgic in general, if you know what I mean. Just nostalgic for, well, being just myself. I'd undo the Change if I could, of course, but otherwise: I like this better. It's more the way human beings were meant to live."
"It's gotten so I feel that way most of the time, when I forget what we had to go through to get this far," Chuck said. He used his point-trimmed beard to indicate the table at the other end of the great room. "But I doubt those poor bastards do."
That was where the gangrels and beggars sat; they had to be washed first, of course, since lice and fleas carried disease, but they still looked shaggy-ragged and unkempt, their faces weathered and often scarred or gnarled. Some twitched or spoke to nothing; others cowered on their benches; more hunched over their food, snarling at anyone who came too near. Juniper looked at them with pity, even though most of them chose a wandering life, depending on casual work now and then, eked out with charity and petty theft. Certainly anyone willing to really work was welcome to stay past the hour-and-a-day granted mendicants, here or at one or another of the clan's duns. Food was abundant now, but producing that or anything else just took so much sweating-hard effort!
I think most of them are mad, poor souls, probably since the Dying Time. Just functional enough to survive: for a while. Or too haunted by what they did to survive to settle among ordinary folk again.
Chuck sighed and shrugged: "Well, they're not much worse off than homeless people before the Change."
"There are a lot more of them, relatively speaking," Juniper said.
"And I suspect some of them are spies, you know. It'd be a perfect way for Arminger to slip his men through here."
"You're probably right," Juniper said soberly; it was part of Chuck's job to worry about that.
Then she flashed him a grin: "But some may be the Lord or Lady in disguise, or some other spirit you wouldn't want to offend. Remember why we leave an empty place at Samhain!"
He nodded-joking aside, they both knew that was entirely possible-and changed the subject. "Judy and I should be coming with you," he said.
"No, you shouldn't," Juniper said, firmly but with a smile. "I have to be at Sutterdown for Beltane"-the reasons were essentially political; the Clan Mackenzie's only town thought it should be the Chief's residence-"but Dun Juniper's folk need a High Priest and High Priestess for the rites too, don't they?"
Unspoken, her eyes added: And if you and Sam Aylward and myself myself disappeared afterward, there wouldn't be much doubt as to what we were up to, would there? Plus an Armsman's needed here, in case quick decisions have to be made.
Judy was coming back to consciousness halfway through her breakfast. She stretched, yawned, poured on more cream and returned to her latest hobbyhorse: "This sept thing isn't working out the way we planned."
"No, it isn't," Juniper said cheerfully, enjoying the intense flavor the dried Bing cherries cooked into it gave the porridge under the smooth richness of the cream; the clan's milking herds leaned heavily to the Jersey breed. "So they're spread between the settlements, instead of each being concentrated at one. So what? Sure, and it'd be dull if things always went as planned. It's actually better that way. You can always look up another Wolf or Raven if you're away from home; it ties all the Duns together."
"Well, yes, but how do we know people are picking the right totem?"
Juniper looked at her, blinking. "Well, how do we know they're not? Meditation and dreams seems a pretty good way to me. I suppose we could: "
She paused to think of methods, the loopier the better. Flip coins? Throw dice? Do the I Ching? No, that would work. Blindfold people and spin them around until they point at a totem sign?
"I've got it! We'll make a magic hat, and put a really powerful spell on it so it can talk, and let that sort people when we put it on their heads!"
Judy snorted, then laughed; she didn't do it all that often, but the deep rich chuckling was worth waiting for. "Time you were off, then," she said, as Juniper scraped her bowl. "Merry met, and merry part: "
": and merry meet again!"
The party from Dun Juniper relaxed when they reached the base of the streamside road that sloped southward down from their hillside bench; they had the Sutterdown god-posts with them, and together the two carved black-walnut trunks weighed enough to make anyone cautious with a horse-drawn wagon and its elementary brakes.
Everyone halted and gave a cheer, where the road and Artemis Creek reached the head of the valley and both turned westward. From here you could look down the long swale, where the rolling patchwork of field and wood opened out towards the valley proper. Behind them the sun was just up over the low green mountains and the higher Cascade peaks behind, throwing their shadows before them. Dennis started a song-his deep voice could carry one a lot better than it once had, with nine years' practice:
"The weasel whistles and the herons hum
And the pixie pirouettes upon my thumb
So I know the day has finally come-:
It's: time: to: roam!"
Juniper laughed at the familiar tune and reached for her guitar, joining in:
"Pack our bags and harness the horses
For the dog just danced, the cat just grinned