Half the people around the table nodded. Dmowski looked troubled at participating in augury, even secondhand… and Sandra a little angry.
" Pardon me if I don't find hints seen in a pool of water too reassuring," she said dryly.
"My lady," Tiphaine said, and then whispered in her ear.
Sandra looked grudging, then nodded. Juniper met the Grand Constable's cool gray eyes for a moment, and then the younger woman looked away. Tiphaine had been there twelve years ago when Raven came to her son in the light of common day, and Juniper thought it had shaken the cynicism she'd learned from her mentor a little. Not Sandra's of course; that would take more than the Change itself.
"And the Prophet certainly seems to take the whole business of the Sword seriously," the Regent said thoughtfully. "Of course, he's likely as insane as his stepfather."
"Insane but dangerous," Tiphaine said; Juniper thought her eyes flickered to Astrid for a moment.
"Which means we may be facing a coalition between Boise and Corwin," Nigel said. "If Martin conspired with them against his father
…"
"Boise has a damned good army," Tiphaine said. "Good infantry, and a good siege train. The Prophet has a hell of a lot of good, experienced light cavalry. Put them together…"
"We have a problem," Juniper said.
Almost enough of a problem to make me forget to worry about Rudi. Almost, but not quite.
"We need to start positioning ourselves," Tiphaine said. "The interior didn't suffer nearly as badly as coastal Oregon did in the Change. Say a million each in the United States of Boise, the Prophet's bailiwick, and what's left of Deseret. Even with immigration and natural increase, they outnumber us heavily."
A silence fell. Sandra struck into it:
"We must hang together, or be hung separately, as Franklin said."
"The Church Universal and Triumphant usually crucify people, but the principle's the same," Conrad added, in a voice like gravel in a bucket.
Edward Finney of Corvallis spoke for the first time, running a hand over his iron-gray hair and scratching the back of his neck; it was a gesture his father, old Luther, had used too, though he'd been taller and skinnier than his son.
"Look, I've got some pull in the Popular Assembly, well, a fair bit of pull. But I can't just tell them to do something. A lot of the farmers listen to me, but there's the Economics Faculty, the town unions… guilds, they're calling themselves now… and the Faculty Senate… and I'll be telling them things none of them want to hear, if we're talking about another big war."
"You can give them a bit of a push," Juniper said.
She looked over at Sandra's slight cat-smile. A white Persian jumped up on her lap, looking disgruntled from its days in a box on the way here. The Regent toyed with it and commented in a neutral voice:
"We should, as my commander-in-chief says, position ourselves. Specifically, Pendleton needs to be brought into the Meeting. Then we'll hold the Columbia as far as the old Idaho border."
" Wait a minute!" Finney said. "What's this we? You agreed not to meddle there after the War!"
"And we're certainly not going to let you take it over again and divide it up into fiefs and build those goddamned castles there," Rancher Brown said. "That isn't right, not on free American ground. Those f-f-foolish things are like nails driven into the map."
Sandra raised an ironic eyebrow. Juniper knew the thought behind it; if the interior Ranchers didn't build castles it was mainly because they couldn't afford it.
"Pendleton's a bleeding sore, a disgrace," the Association's Regent said. "It has been since right after the Change. They harbor river-pirates and they let bandits and Rover gangs fence their loot there and sell them weapons and gear. And they're deep in the slave trade. Pardon me: that's compensated relocation of registered refugees. With accumulated welfare charges. "
Brown shrugged, unable to contradict her. Astrid and her party nodded unwillingly; the Dunedain did caravan-guard work and bandit suppression far into the interior, and knew the truth of what Sandra had said.
Edward Finney looked unconvinced; that was a long way from Corvallis, and he wasn't one of that city-state's far-traveling merchants.
"They were unlucky," he said. "They had that civil war, right after the Change, and…"
"No, they weren't unlucky," Sandra said. "They were very lucky indeed; they had more food than people to eat it, when the machines stopped."
Most of the people around the table had been adults in that year of terror and famine and plague; and the others had been in their teens, old enough to remember much of it. A silence fell for an instant, as memories opened and bled.
Sandra drove the point home: "Then they threw it away fighting one another. By now they've acquired any number of bad habits."
But your arse is so sadly grimy and sooty, said the kettle to the pot, Juniper thought mordantly. Still, you have a point. The problem is, dear Sandra, that you always have at least three purposes behind any one statement.
Aloud, the Mackenzie chieftain went on diplomatically: "They were unlucky in their lack of leadership." It was even true, if not very relevant. "Sure and it would be a good deed to clean it up… and Sandra has the right of it this far at least, that we can't let an invader from the East get their hands on it. The CUT have been active there; missionaries and such."
Nigel nodded fractionally beside her; they'd talked that over last night.
Signe Havel uncrossed her arms and leaned forward; if she and Juniper had never been friends, she'd always been a frank enemy to Sandra and the Association. Norman Arminger had killed her husband, Mike Havel; that he died first by about twenty minutes didn't reduce her personal dislike one little bit. Her voice was sharp.
"But nobody else in the Meeting countries will let the Portland Protectorate Association annex the area again. Nobody liked you snaffling off the western half of the Palouse back three years ago, Lady Sandra. It gave you too much leverage on the Yakima towns. We're certainly not letting you get your hands on Pendleton."
Sandra spread small, beautifully manicured fingers, silently letting everyone remember that the Palouse was in those hands. And that meant it was a buffer between the Meeting countries and the Prophet. Aloud she continued:
"But Pendleton is defenseless to anyone above the twenty-thugs-on-horseback level, and if either Boise or Corwin take it, they'll have access to the navigable Columbia. Which leads to Portland, which is our collective doorstep, not merely my home."
"And Corvallis isn't going to authorize the Protectorate to take the area," Finney snapped. "We host the Meeting and I don't think many would disagree with us."
"It seems we're all forgetting that there is such a thing as the Meeting," Juniper said.
Someone snorted. She nodded, conceding the point but not the argument; the Meeting was much better at stopping things happening-like wars or trade tariffs between its members, or forced labor or slaving-than at actually getting everyone who attended to do anything positive in concert. It was rather like the old UN that way, paralyzed by mutual jealousies and suspicions, although the Dunedain did enforce its resolutions when they could.
"I don't think there would be an objection if someone other than the Portland Protective Association alone were to undertake the task of putting Pendleton in order," she said.
Sandra's eyes narrowed. "We're the only ones with access and the necessary troops… except the CORA, and…"
It was Brown's turn to wince. The Central Oregon Ranchers' Association was another organization that had a lot of trouble getting its members to do anything but defend themselves. Sometimes against one another, over stock or water rights or sheer cussedness. Each Rancher was the law on his own land, as long as he didn't make his cowboys want to pick up and leave.