The covey?s alarm suddenly turned panic-stricken as the incarnate shadow of deep ancestral fear fell across them; they scattered, spattering away like water popping on a hot griddle. Frenzied, the male pheasant tried to outrace the circling doom rather than going for cover, his long tail feathers streaming as he strove for height. ?Stop taking the air, you idiot,? the Count of Odell said sourly. ?She?s twice as fast as you are!?
Tiphaine watched the dance of life and death in the cloudless blue above with eyes the color of moonlit glaciers, and smiled with a very slight curve of the lips. It made everything seem more intense for a moment, from the feel of the great muscles moving between her thighs to the smells of equine sweat and oiled leather, sweet crushed clover and dry dusty earth. ?That?s a lovely falcon you?ve got there,? Conrad said, following the flight of the peregrine.?And she?s going to cost me some money, dammit. Alaskan??
She nodded.?Aleutian.? ?Must have cost you,? he said.
Trade was sparse from those remote islands, and had to run the gauntlet of Haida pirates in the Queen Charlottes and the Inland Passage. Only the most expensive luxury goods could bear the costs. ?Worth it,? she replied.?Northern birds always fly better, especially in yarak.?
The Association nobles reined in and watched the falcon climb; the bird sitting hooded on Conrad Renfrew?s wrist was a big dark brown mews-bred Harris Hawk with chestnut shoulders and white banding on the base and tip of its tail. It had already taken two rabbits and a duck today. Despite which…
It?s hardly falconry at all with a Harris, Tiphaine thought.
She privately considered that species to be like Irish setters with feathers and talons. Unlike pretty well all other birds of prey they were social hunters, coursing in flocks in the wild, and they were affectionate to their handlers in ways other breeds just weren?t. That and the ease with which they could be bred in captivity made them favorites.
They do everything but lick your hand and lift a leg to pee. ?You?ve got a good eye for a falcon,? he admitted. ?I always did identify with predators. Back before the Change? Conrad had been over thirty then; she?d been fourteen. They?d both survived the first Change Year when the vast majority of the human race had not, but the experience divided as much as it linked them. His generation were of the old world; those a few years younger than she were Changelings. She hung between?my bedroom was plastered with pictures of hawks and wolves and tigers and leopards.?
The Count of Odell?s hideously scarred face quirked in a smile. ?Isn?t it usually horses with girls that age?? ?Usually. I preferred things with fangs or claws or both.? ?Why am I not surprised, Lady Death?? he said, using the common pun on her title. ?Well, I had a Melissa Etheridge poster on the wall too.? ?Who… oh, she was a musician, right? I think I?ve heard you do some of her stuff now and then.? ?Right. Serious crush on her at the time.?
That had been an eventful spring. She?d turned fourteen in January, met Katrina Georges in February when the other girl transferred to Binnsmeade Middle School, won a medal at the Oakridge gymnastics meet at the beginning of March, and then on the seventeenth the world had ended, at 6:15 p.m. Pacific Time.
Birthday, first love, victory, then the laws of nature Change while you?re on a camping trip. Killed my first man five days later and couldn?t believe how easy it was. But I do miss CDs and my Walkman sometimes. Calling for the minstrel just isn?t the same.
The thought was odd; it had been a long time since she remembered the Change much, or thought of herself as Collette Rutherton rather than the name Sandra had chosen for her when she became an Associate of the PPA. Conrad?s generation always had one mental foot planted in the old world, however hard they tried to pull it out or deny it; hers remembered it, but as though seen faded through multiple panes of glass… except on the rare occasions when it came flooding back to make the now seem like a mad dream for an instant.
To those a few years younger, the Changelings, it was a fable.
And I envy them that. Envy them and fear it a little. Even Delia. .. I love her but I don?t understand her sometimes. The kids are even worse. They don?t just take this world we?ve made naturally. They think but they don?t think about thinking the way I do sometimes and Conrad and Sandra and the other oldsters do all the time. The Changelings… it?s like they?re in a dream. So am I, but I know it. They never wake up or know they?re dreaming. ?Ah,? Tiphaine said, pulling off her tinted glasses and shading her eyes with the hand that held them.
A second later Conrad pushed his mirrorshades up onto the bald dome of his head and muttered something under his breath-probably damn as the falcon selected the cock pheasant?s gaudy gold-and-green plumage for its target.
The peregrine stooped out of the sun, folding its wings and turning itself into a blurred streak of purpose. There was a faint thud from the air above, a puff of feathers against the bright afternoon sky. ?She binds!? Tiphaine said, and didn?t add: I win.
The two birds spun groundward locked together by the attacker?s talons. They struck with a thump on the wheat stubble not far away; the peregrine shrieked its triumph and its rage, mantling and darting its ripping beak downward with cruel precision. Everyone cantered over and pulled up; the falconer dismounted and whirled his feathered lure on the end of its cord with a rattling humm. The bird cocked an eye at it and jumped, then consented to be hooded again and fed from the hand. Varlets picked up the pheasant and added it to the basket, giving the neck a quick twist to make sure. ?That?s enough for verisimilitude,? Conrad said with a sigh.?Duty calls, and so does lunch.?
Tiphaine nodded and turned her horse. They heeled their mounts into a faster pace, towards the little unwalled pavilion where the others waited. Conrad looked around at the stubble field. ?Nice work,? he said.?You can hardly see where the individual strips are.?
Montinore manor operated on the usual PPA system; the peasant families each held scattered strips in all of the Five Fields, and the crops-winter wheat, spring oats and roots like turnips or potatoes, grass and clover for fodder-were rotated through the fields in turn. Back in the early days the semi-communal arrangement had let a few real farmers supervise hordes of refugee suburbanites who?d never before done anything more rural than curse the dandelions in their lawns. Nowadays it made it easy for the manor lord to exact his share of the crop and labor service on the demesne.
Tiphaine shrugged.?I?ve got good reeves on my estates and a first-rate seneschal,? she said.?And Delia keeps them from dipping into the till while I?m away, which is too often. I like living here, and to hell with Portland and Castle Todenangst. I?m sick of spending my days in armor; being Sandra?s assassin and duelist was fun, but Grand Constable is just work. Damn the Prophet, damn the United States of Boise, and damn this war too.? ?Now you know why I was so glad to unload the job on you.? Conrad shrugged in turn.?Be glad you?ve got a nice defensive war you can really get your teeth into. We?d likely be fighting about now even if Boise and Corwin hadn?t gotten big eyes. Sandra hasn?t had us spend the last decade and change building castles and saving up money and training troops for nothing.?
Tiphaine sighed.?You?re right, of course. She?s not any less ambitious than Norman was, just a hell of a lot more patient and sneaky. Oh, well, she?s the sovereign.? ?Until Mathilda comes of age,? Conrad said, and grinned like the ornament on a cathedral waterspout.? That?s going to be interesting.? ?Then it?ll be the Changelings? turn. I suspect by then a lot of things will be different.?
They drew rein near the pavilion, under the branches of the great garry oak that shaded it; Tiphaine returned the salute of the Guard captain with a curt nod and a lift of her riding crop. ?Sir Lothair.?