Largest was the great striped many-peaked pavilion that flew two banners. One was easy to make out; it was the crimson-on-black Lidless Eye of the Portland Protective Association, and not often seen on Mackenzie land. The other grew clearer as they approached and the wind caught at the heavy dark silk, a blue-mantled Virgin Mary standing on a depressed-looking dragon with drooping ears.
That was Sandra Arminger's personal banner, and Juniper suspected it was a joke in a subtle way; her household guards stood beneath it. Well-born young men in black armor of articulated plate and mail, graceful and arrogant as cats… though much better disciplined, and under the eye of a grizzled veteran who bowed and bent the knee to the Mackenzie chief and her spouse with punctilious Association courtesy. He had the golden spurs of knighthood on his boots.
"Lady Juniper," he said. "Sir Nigel. You are expected, and most welcome. Bors, Drogo, announce our noble guests."
Even so there was an indefinable bristling from the men-at-arms, and the same from the kilted Mackenzie armsmen behind her. A few of them touched the yellow yew staves of the longbows slung over their backs beside the quivers… perhaps unconsciously, perhaps not.
"Silence in the ranks," Nigel Loring said quietly, and it subsided.
Juniper looked over her shoulder. How young they are! she thought. Changelings…
They'd been children when the new-made Clan fought the PPA in the War of the Eye twelve years ago; few had been so much as toddlers at the Change, many not even gleams in their parents' eyes.
"Sacred is the guest upon our soil," she said softly, and saw them blush and shuffle a bit; the new world was all they'd ever known. "To even think them harm is geasa so long as they keep the peace. Even if we were at feud with them, the which we are not."
They touched the backs of their hands to their foreheads at that, and then managed to smile in friendly fashion at the household men of the Regent. One of those held the flap of the tent open. They went through, into the stillness of an anteroom hung in gray silk, and then into the main chamber. A ripple ran through the two-score of guests, everything from elaborate curtseys to casual waves.
She looked around, nodding. This being a formal occasion and she fifty-three, she'd decided to forego the kilt and wear a tartan arsaid, a long cloak wrapped around the waist like a skirt and then pinned at her shoulder with a broach of silver knotwork, over a shift of linsey-woolsey dyed in saffron and embroidered at the hems. Her belt was linked silver worked in running patterns, and she had a diadem with the Crescent Moon on her forehead. Even so, she felt a bit underdressed compared to some of the guests.
And this whole pavilion is so Sandra, Juniper thought. She's gone camping… with a palace wrapped around herself, so.
The ground was covered in softly glowing not-quite-Oriental rugs, and the walls with tapestries, both made in the workshops of Newberg and Portland; flowers and vines, lords and ladies hawking or hunting boar and tiger or dancing stately pavanes in pavilions out of dream. Lamps of fretwork in gold and silver and carved jewels hung from the peaks of the ceiling. The light folding furniture was inlaid with mother-of-pearl and rare woods. A prie-dieu and icon of the Virgin stood in one corner; Juniper made a gesture of respect to the Madonna and Child there.
"You can tell the economic pyramid up North comes to a demmed sharp point," Nigel drawled under his breath, echoing her thought.
"And that we've been married so long we're starting to finish each other's sentences," Juniper replied. "Even the unspoken ones!"
A minstrel wearing a great hood with ridiculously long liripipes and tippets elaborately decorated with foliated dagges strummed a lute and sang softly from a corner:
"Her only will I sing
Who, challeng'd by the Boy
Or bids him wing or crowns him King
In courtesy and joy."
Serving girls in tabards and double tunics were carrying around trays of drinks and nibblements, salty cured sturgeon roe on crackers and bits of caper and smoked salmon and goose-liver paste-what Sandra insisted on calling canapes-and pyonnade, fabulously expensive because the main ingredient was candied pineapple shipped in from Hawaii or the Latin countries.
Juniper grinned as she accepted a glass of white wine from the Lady Regent's demesne estates and a little sausage on a toothpick. She'd heard that when she was being informal Sandra Arminger referred to this sort of thing as faculty fodder. Her gossoon of a husband, Norman, had been a medieval history professor, of all things-specializing in the Norman duchy and its offshoots-as well as a Society fighter before the Change. After March 17, 1998, he'd branched out into warlording, conquest, torture, murder and general wickedness, with the gleeful relish of a man at last living out the dreams of his heart.
Though it's true he saved many a life in that first year, if only so they'd be alive to serve him.
"Speak of the devil's widow," Juniper murmured beneath her breath.
Sandra came towards her, hands extended, the silk of her pearl-gray cotte-hardi skirts rustling, her face framed by an elaborately folded noblewoman's wimple of white satin confined by a net of diamonds and platinum. The buttons from waist to high lace collar and down the long sleeves were carved from old ivory and mother-of-pearl.
"Juniper, dear, it's wonderful to see you again," she said with a smile. "And to visit your home at long last."
For the rest she was no taller than Juniper, and her face was quite unremarkable except for the care which made her look younger than her mid-fifties… and the depth of thought in her brown eyes, like a shifting complex pattern at the edge of sight, never quite glimpsed.
They exchanged the air-kiss of peace; Nigel bowed over her hand. "I like your little twelve-bedroom pup tent," Juniper said. "It takes the rough out of roughing it, sure and it does. Though a little heavier than a sleeping bag on a trip, I'd think."
Sandra chuckled. "Getting in touch with nature or back to the land always struck me as more a matter of wallowing in the dirt with the bugs. And the railroad runs most of the way here now."
Which was a point; horses could pull fifteen times more on rails than on the best road.
And why do I suspect Sandra would have brought the pavilion just the same even if she had to have it carried on the backs of porters?
There were two grandees with her. Juniper was glad to see she hadn't brought any of the ordinary Protectorate nobility along-the Stavarovs in particular gave her the crawls. But she could tolerate Conrad Renfrew, Count of Odell and now Lord Chancellor of the Association. He was a thickset, shaven-headed man in his fifties, with a face made hideous by old white keloid scars. His arms of sable, a snow-topped mountain argent and vert were in a heraldic shield embroidered on the breast of his T-tunic.
"I never managed to haul as much freight this way during the Protector's War," Renfrew said, grinning like something squatting on a cathedral's waterspout. "Even with an army of two thousand men to feed. The logistics were hell."
Nigel gave the man who'd commanded the Association's armies in the War of the Eye a nod of wary respect.
"We didn't expect you to besiege Sutterdown so quickly," he said.
Renfrew chuckled. " I didn't expect you to corncob me by looping through those damned mountains and cutting our siege lines at Mt. Angel and beating Lord Emiliano's army." A pause. "Though he was a complete idiot, granted. Most of those jumped-up gangbangers never did learn a war isn't an enlarged drive-by."