No, that's…
"Right, Mary."
Her troubled face gave a brief flash of pleasure as he used the right name.
"You and your sister are going to have to cover our backtrail."
TheScourgeofGod
CHAPTER NINE
"And I though our political speeches were dull," BD said quietly. "Shhhh!" Murdoch said.
They'd gone on for hours, in the great oval amphitheatre where the yearly Round-Up was held. At least they were over, and the VIPs and their families had shifted into the Bossman's house with the coming of sunset. She could hear the fiesta for the commons going on outside, a surf-roar of music and voices in the distance.
The Bossman's residence was a compound rather than a single building, out at the northwestern corner of town at the edge of the river and surrounded by its own strong wall. Within were barracks and storehouses and workshops, as well as the patios and gardens around the actual house, a rambling two-story structure with a red-tile roof and arches upholding balconies with wrought-iron grills. Strong yellow light spilled through the tall windows of the house, and torches on the pillars and walls round about lit the brilliantly clad couples, the servants in their white jackets and bow ties, and the charro costumes of the mariachi bands who moved about.
Long tables were set out buffet-style, with chefs in white hats waiting to carve the roasts and hams; whole yearling steers and pigs and lamb roasted over firepits behind them, the attendants slathering them with fiery sauce wielding their long-handled brushes like the forks of devils in the Christian hell. The rich scent of roasting meat drifted on the air, and the little spurts of blue smoke rose in the lantern light.
Interesting assortment of costumes and uniforms, BD thought, accepting a glass of wine.
She wasn't wearing a peplos tonight; no point in hanging out a notice. Instead she'd opted for a long denim skirt embroidered with geometric patterns around the hem, jacket, belt with silver-and-turquoise conchos and tooled-leather boots… what a Rancher's wife or mother would probably wear here. The owners of the big herding spreads were the most numerous element, many of them getting a little boisterous as they talked about what they'd do to any invaders of the sacred soil of Pendleton; those that weren't feuding with one another, of course.
When the hour came, her job would be to stick close to Bossman Peters. He was a big man, broad-shouldered and with the beginning of a paunch straining at the buttons of his embroidered waistcoat. His dark brown hair was thinning on top, and his bushy muttonchop whiskers were going gray, but his laugh boomed hearty, and the little eyes were shrewd.
Estrellita Peters was beside her husband, in an indigo dress with a belt of sequins, and ivory-and-turquoise combs in her high-piled raven hair. She was seven or eight years younger than her husband's mid-forties, slight and dark with a face like a ferret, albeit a pretty and extremely cunning one. Rumor said that she was rather more than half the political brains of the family business. Two sons in their teens followed dutifully behind their parents, one rather heavyset in a way that only the families of the rich could be nowadays, the other lean and quick.
Not time to get close to them, BD noted, swallowing past a dry throat and covertly drying her palms on her skirt. Just keep an eye on them. And in the meantime, look for anything unusual.
The foreigners were gathered together in two clumps, on the tiled veranda near the broad iron-strapped wooden doors of the house proper. BD sidled closer.
One group was in blue, or long robes of a dark reddish brown color. The Church Universal and Triumphant, she thought.
They all wore neat little chin-beards; the soldiers in blue-green had their hair cropped close, the robed priests-Seekers, she'd heard they were called-were shaven-pated. The priests were glaring at any number of things; some of the guests were smoking tobacco, which their faith forbade, and there were women with uncovered hair, or some wearing pants, and mechanical clocks. All of them maintained a disciplined quietness, except their leader.
Could it be him, here? BD wondered. He's around thirty, that's the right age… medium height, brown beard, hazel eyes… Trouble is, that's a description of Every-man just as much as it is of the Prophet Sethaz!
He was certainly more sociable than the others, smiling and chatting easily with a succession of Pendleton VIPs. Some of the Ranchers avoided him-the Mormon ones, in particular, who were a fair scattering of the total. And the smaller minority who'd taken up the Old Religion as it drifted eastward were even more frankly hostile.
And that's Jenson's cowboy… George, she thought, puzzled.
The young man was in one of the dull-red robes, his head newly shaven. Their eyes met just for an instant, and BD shivered. The rage she'd seen was still there, but it was transfigured, focused like light from the edge of a knife, a gaze as blank and pitiless as the sun.
The other clutch of outlanders were even more exotic. BD's lips quirked; they were exotic because they were so like things she'd seen in her youth. The green uniforms with the service ribbons, the berets, the polished black shoes, the archaic shirts with collar and tie, even the neat high and tight haircuts. The only thing different from the old Army of the United States was the swords at their belts; shortswords, or cavalry sabers for a few. Young men, mostly from their mid-twenties to their thirties, and notably hard-faced even by modern standards, with impassive rock-jawed features and wary, watchful eyes.
Their commander turned, the four stars of a general on his shoulders. BD's eyes went wide in shock, and she turned naturally to place the wineglass on a tray.
Martin Thurston himself! she thought; self-promoted since his father's excessively convenient death. Oh, Astrid, I think yo u 've let yourself in for more than you thought!
"My Lady Grand Constable, there's a deserter," her squire Armand Georges said. "She's asking to see the commander, and she has documents."
"She?"
"It's a woman, my lady. A cavalry sergeant; Boisean army."
Tiphaine d'Ath's brows went up; that was rare in the interior.. . and of course in the Association territories. And the Meeting had sent this army here because they were afraid the US of Boise and the Prophet might be intervening; apparently they hadn't been worrying without cause.
"I'll see her here."
She flipped the empty porridge bowl back to the scullion, yawned and finished coffee brewed snarling-strong to wash down the taste of the bland mush and dried fruit and the scorched bacon that had gone with it.
At least coffee always smells good brewing, she thought. Even when it tastes like soap-boiler's lye.
She was feeling a bit frowsty this morning, with wisps of her pale hair still escaping from the night's braid. The black arming doublet she wore-like a jacket made up of vertical tubes of padding-and the leather pants tucked into her boots both had the faint locker-room smell that never came out once they'd been worn under armor, with metal-and-oil from the patches of chain mail under the armpits that covered the weak points in a suit of plate. The leather laces that dangled from strategic spots to tie down the pieces of war-harness always made her feel like an undone boot at this stage, but there was no point in putting on sixty pounds of steel just to look spiffy. Not yet. It tired you fast enough when you had to wear it.
That freedom and the coffee were about the only mark of rank, that and a private privy. You didn't take pages or hordes of servants or a pavilion on campaign-at least, she didn't, not even when they were operating along a railway-and her tent was barely big enough to serve as a map-room when her bedroll was tied up.
The war-camp of the allied army was just waking, a growing brabble across the rolling plateau as light cleared the far-distant line of the Blue Mountains beyond Pendleton. The high cloud there caught the dawn in streaks of ruddy crimson that faded to pink froth at their edges. Fires smoked as embers were poked up and stoked with greasewood and fence-posts and brush. Faint and far to the south she could hear the Mackenzies making their greeting to the Sun: