The Tears of the Sun (16 page)

“Lord Akers the elder?”

“Yes, Sir Buzz is down on the southern border with the forces of the Three Tribes and his own
menie
. They're screening against the enemy concentrated in the Bend area.”

“Thank you,” Sandra said warmly.

She had most of the same facts at her fingertips, but it was nice to see that Lady Jehane had made such progress. She smiled again, a closed secret curve of her lips.

“My lady?”

“Just remembering how much raiding there was back and forth across that area during the Protector's War. Castle Parkdale was built to guard
against
the Three Tribes. Time, politics and war make strange bedfellows.”

A varlet leapt down from behind the carriage to open the door and fold down the step. Sandra gathered the pearl-gray silk skirts of her cote-hardie and let Tiphaine d'Ath hand her and Jehane down. The courtyard was bright, and she blinked for a moment amid the stamp and clatter of destriers and coursers and rouncys, the rattle and gleam of armor. The interior walls all glowed with color as well, climbing roses twined through light lath trellises, until they seemed to flame and shimmer in green and crimson and white and pale pink. There was another clank and thump as the soldiers present all brought their right fists to their chests and bowed, which was protocol for fighting-men under arms in a public venue.

The roses are Tina's work,
Sandra thought.
And she does it very well. She hasn't much head for politics but she's not stupid at all.

“Baron de Mosier,” she said to the dark-faced nobleman who saluted Tiphaine and bowed Sandra through into the gate of the keep.

He had a neatly trimmed black mustache and goatee.
Which makes him look like Evil Spock from the Mirror Universe. And nobody here but Conrad and possibly Tina would have the least idea of what I was talking about if I said that.

“How pleasant to see you again,” she went on. “I trust that Lady Gussalen is well, and young Lord Bertrand?”

“She is very well, God be praised, and thanks be to my patron St. James, to whom I have lit many candles,” the man said, trying to hide his flush of pleasure as he crossed himself. “My son is also well, my lady Regent.”

“The Grand Constable and I wish to see my lord Count Renfrew. We're expected, you needn't have us announced.”

“He and the Countess and their children are in the solar, my lady Regent,” the baron said, looking a little dubious at the informality but obedient nonetheless. “We were expecting them down momentarily. This way—”

“I'm sure you're extremely busy with getting the garrison ready to march, Lord Ramón,” she said with a smile.

“That is so, my lady,” he said as he took the hint.

“Though if you could show my lady-in-waiting Lady Jehane to the reception chamber?”

“I'll see to it at once, my lady Regent. God give you good day.”

The escort from the Protector's Guard fell back as well, when Tiphaine raised one pale brow at their commander.

“I think I can take care of the Lady Regent, Sir Tancred,” she said dryly at his hesitation.

The Baroness of d'Ath was like a slender silver statue in a full suit of plate, and her fingers rested on the pommel of her long sword. The grip had scales of dimpled black bone; they were cut with twelve small notches, and each had a tiny piece of silver wire hammered in for emphasis. Those represented only the noble Associates she'd killed in formal duels, of course. Mostly on Sandra's clandestine orders; a few had just been people she thought needed to be dead.

“Certainly, my lady Grand Constable,” he said, saluting stiffly.

Though you can feel their paranoia burning, convinced that Cutter assassins with curved knives are lurking behind the tapestries,
Sandra thought.
Or possibly that the Lord High Chancellor and his family will strangle me and the Grand Constable. Then again, you don't
want
much of a sense of humor or proportion in your bodyguards.

A solar was always on the higher levels of a keep's towers; that was the only place where it was safe to have larger windows. Castle Odell didn't run to elevators, either. She lifted her skirts slightly and toiled upward, reminded of the loathed but conscientious hours she put in on the Steppercizer back home. The floral motif continued in tile and wall-paintings as they climbed—a castle had to be strong, but that didn't necessarily mean bare concrete. Her soft shoes scuffed upward through the narrow bands of light cast by the arrow-slits, beneath the ring and clang of the Grand Constable's steel sabatons—Tiphaine could walk like a cat in anything else, and didn't apparently feel the fifty pounds of armor at all.

They were as alone as possible; in fact, she couldn't recall being more alone anytime recently, and spent a moment enjoying the unfamiliar sensation. Then she halted at a landing, as if for breath, and spoke quietly.

“What do you think of Operation Lúthien? From your own experience doing special operations for me back in the day.”

“I was your assassin, my lady.”

“Same thing, and answer the question.”

“It's insane, my lady,” d'Ath replied. Grudgingly: “That doesn't mean it won't
work
, necessarily. The Rangers are good at what they do, and they've pulled off stunts nearly as weird. It's just . . . I'd prefer fewer trappings out of myth and legend. Astrid Loring is always the starring lead in her own production of
Middle-Earth: the Fifth Age and the Rebirth of Glory
, playing on the inside of her eyelids.”

Sandra laughed, a gurgling sound. “Baroness d'Ath, where are we? At this moment, I mean.”

“Castle Odell . . . oh.”

Sandra saw a rare moment of confusion on the Grand Constable's impassive, regular-featured face. She was a borderline Changeling, old enough to remember the world before that March day in 1998, but young enough that she usually didn't unless reminded.

“Point taken, my lady. This . . . well, it's not what I expected as the rising gymnastics star of Binnsmeade Middle School, let's put it that way. But unlike the Third Age, the Middle Ages actually
did
exist, once.”

“Not like this, they didn't,” Sandra said.

“As they should have been,”
Tiphaine quoted sourly.

“Exactly. I
have
studied history, and believe me I know. And I made sure you did, too.”

“I wonder what a real fourteenth-century European would make of the Association?”

“Fascination and horror, I should imagine. He'd probably think he'd been carried off to Faerie or Avalon by Morgan le Fay.”

“Or gone to heaven, if it was a woman.”

“A good point. Now, Operation Lúthien might work?”

“Yes. With Astrid and her merry band doing it in person.”

“Could
you
pull it off?”

“Not now. I'm still better than she is with a sword—in my own opinion—but I've been playing general for years; I'm a little rusty at the ninjitsu. Of course, there are probably plenty of very able up-and-comers, but while they might be a hair better physically none of them would have had as much practice in planning and execution. Both of us are just about to reach the point where increased experience no longer fully compensates for the reflexes slowing down. And even back in the day I wouldn't have recommended anything so risky . . . though the upside if it does work is large?”

“Huge,” Sandra said flatly; that was a political question more than a military one.

“And if it fails”—Tiphaine said, and a slightly anticipatory note crept into her normally expressionless voice—“if it fails, all we've lost is one deranged fangirl and a few adults who are still obsessed with tree houses.”

“Tsk, tsk, I believe you're letting your personal dislikes influence your judgment, Tiph. Besides which, the Dúnedain Rangers may be very useful to the dynasty in the long run.”

“I can see that. A self-financing, independent clandestine operations unit that doesn't have to account to anyone for what it does . . . or for its budget.”

Sandra smiled and turned one hand palm up: “Useful, that could be. Convinced, I am.”

“My lady?”

“Classical reference. Sorry.”

Tiphaine blinked and went on: “But it doesn't need
her
running it.”

“It would be better if she did for a while yet. Her own obsessions will make her extremely loyal to the bearer of the
Sword
, you see. Which is to say, to the father of Mathilda's children, and therefore loyal to his heirs, who will be
Mathilda's
heirs and hence
my
heirs and
Norman's
heirs; and with a little luck she'll plant that deep in the Dúnedain cultural memory bank. And in her own children. After that it will be Mathilda's worry, or that of her descendants, but they won't be able to complain I didn't do
my
job.”

Tiphaine's lips curled upward very slightly. “As always you see farther than any of us, my lady.”

“It's a moot point if we don't win the next campaign, which Operation Lúthien might help with. And now let's try to talk some sense into Conrad about strapping on a sword again at his age.”

“Not much chance, my lady.”

“Around five percent, if that, but one has to try.” A frown. “It's annoying. I
need
Conrad as Chancellor. There's nobody else who has the same precise combination of abilities and contacts and reputation, and who's also absolutely reliable. His sons are too young to fill his shoes yet.”

And besides that, I would actually miss him,
she thought but did not say.

The solar's inner room opened off the stairwell, and it had a lived-in look of scattered books and pictures, a big embroidery frame for tapestries, a spinet and harp and lute, comfortable sofas and armchairs, a bowl of nuts on a table before the empty swept hearth with its bouquets of roses and dahlias. And it was full of the younger Renfrews. The Count of Odell's elder sons were both in their twenties and blue-eyed like their father, one with lightstreaked brown hair and one with dark. They were taller than their father's middling inches, but both were taking after his solid muscular build, which their suits of plate emphasized; the armor clattered as they took one knee before her on the glowing rug. Their younger brother Ogier was taller and lanky and just on the dark side of blond, green-eyed, and seventeen, with an unfortunate spray of acne across his cheeks. The age meant he still probably had a few years of squirehood to go, and also that he was growing restive with it.

He knelt gracefully in his half armor and thigh boots, sweeping off a roll-circled hat with a dangling liripipe tail. That involved transferring the two visored sallets he was carrying to the crook of his left arm. Sandra Arminger extended her hand for the kiss of homage, and to touch the proffered sword-hilts. She had to suppress a smile as Ogier provided a moment of unintended comedy, juggling the helmets and the blade to free a hand and blushing at the noise.

“My lord viscount Érard, Sir Thierry,” she said to the older boys.

They're
men
now,
she thought.
Do keep up with the times, Sandra! But it does seem only yesterday they were playing hide-and-seek with Mathilda.

“And young Ogier, ready to win your spurs, I see.”

That was more than a metaphor, these days; the older sons had the golden rowels of knighthood on their heels and he didn't. He perked up at the thought, since wars were the fastest way to do so, though he was rather young for it.

The girls were in a cluster of their own; Deonisia, raven-haired, pale and striking at nineteen, with a twin-peak headdress; Genovifa, sixteen, with red-brown hair flowing out of her maiden's plain wimple and freckles and a figure already lush, which even under modern conditions would grow plump before thirty if she didn't watch it, and Melisant who was black-haired like her elder sister and just eight though destined to be tall judging from her hands and feet, solemn in a young girl's long tunics, and already with a reputation for being scholarly.

I must keep my eye on her. The others are loyal and no fools, but she has real potential. She's
clever.
It would be a shame to waste her on the Church. I'll suggest that she be enrolled as a lady-in-waiting when Mathilda sets up her own household.

“And my ladies of House Renfrew,” she said to them, repeating the gesture.

They sank into deep curtsies and then kissed her hand and murmured: “My lady Regent!”

More bows and curtsies for Tiphaine d'Ath, part of the complicated dance of precedence; she was their superior by official rank, and a tenant-in-chief, but not their overlord in the chain of vassalage and of lower title than their parents.

How solemn the younger generation are about it all! They
live
it. Tiph and I have known these children since they were crawling and dribbling, but the ritual is part of being grown-up to them.

“Is your father still determined to take the field himself?” Sandra asked.

“Of course, my lady Regent,” Érard said, looking slightly astonished. “Where else would the Count of Odell be at this hour of peril, unless it was sword in hand at the head of his men, foremost in your host?”

“He has always been House Arminger's greatest support, my strong right arm,” Sandra said with a sigh. “Where else indeed?”

Because at seventh and last, he's a male idiot, after all,
she thought, as the whole family fairly beamed with pride.
They never
really
grow up, even the smartest ones. Even poor Norman could be led around by his pride. Led to his death, at the last.