The Tears of the Sun (17 page)

The young viscount hesitated, then asked, presuming a little on long friendship: “Your Grace, is it true that the High King and the Princess Mathilda have returned and are wed, with a great army at their back?”

The Prophet and President-General Thurston undoubtedly know the strength of the League of Des Moines to the last man and pike,
she thought.
There's no harm in encouraging people here by telling them the same things. Don't make things secret just for secrecy's sake, Sandra! That way lies madness.

She paused for a second, then decided and spoke: “It's true that the High King is in Montival once more; and the former Princess Mathilda is now Her Highness, Mathilda, High Queen of Montival. Though of course we haven't had the coronation yet, that will have to wait a little.”

That brought exclamations of delight, and she went on: “They're hurrying south with a substantial force of troops, from our allies to the east and from the Okanogan baronies. And their diplomacy has secured a very much larger army to attack the enemy on their eastern border; over eighty thousand men are marching on Corwin, according to our latest news.”

We can fight wars across continents again instead of merely with our immediate neighbors,
Sandra thought.
Oh, hurrah for the light of returning civilization!

“And the Sword?” Deonisia asked breathlessly. “My lady?”

“The Sword of the Lady is . . .”

Terrifying,
she thought.
Like a myth, something out of the Chansons de Geste or Wagner, but actually
there
to be seen and touched. Putting me at serious risk of terminal worldview collapse.

Aloud she completed the sentence: “. . . all that rumor spoke of, and more. Forged in Heaven for the hand of our High King Artos, like Durendal and Curtana and Joyeuse.”

The siblings all smiled and glanced at each other. “That's very good hearing, Your Grace,” Érard said. “God be praised, and Holy Mary who watches over the Association . . . I mean, Montival . . . and the Princess . . . High Queen . . . Mathilda!”

“God be praised indeed. And His mother and all the bright company of the saints,” she said, and joined in crossing herself.

With perhaps a sliver less sheer pleasure at her own hypocrisy than the gesture usually gave her, since it turned out from all the evidence that there really
was
something to it. It was hard, to be stripped of the cold comforts of her simple atheistic faith in middle-age. The more so as the evidence seemed to lead to the conclusion that
all
the religions were true, including the ones that flatly contradicted each other.

My head hurts when I try to reconcile
that
with . . . with anything! It's one thing to be an atheist, and another to be a
flat earth
atheist. But whatever else is true, it's also true that human beings can no more live without politics than they can without air. Politics I can handle.

“Now if you'll excuse me . . .”

She walked through the vestibule; there were no ushers or ladies-in-waiting or other such vermin around at present. This would be a family matter; she and Tiphaine counted more-or-less in that category. As she paused under the open pointed-arch doorway of the solar's light-filled outer room she heard two voices singing; Conrad's growling bass, and Valentinne's light wavering soprano under the tinkling of a lute. Sandra recognized the music and words instantly: it was an old minstrel's tune from the Society days before the Change, but seldom sung as wholeheartedly back then as she heard it now.

It's
The Old Duke
,
she thought.
Well, I knew this was a forlorn hope.

She paused for an instant, looking through and seeing Conrad's shaven dome beside Valentinne's silver-streaked light brown:

Sandra felt a slight pang at the sight. There had been no one for her, not since Norman died . . . the politics were impossible . . . and they'd never had quite
that
sort of relationship anyway. The pair went on:

They started a little as she came into the room. She inclined her head, then gestured Valentinne to continue playing. She did, and Sandra sang the next verse by herself, with a few modifications: she was a contralto, and her voice was larger than you'd expect from someone several inches below average height:

Conrad grinned at her, the hideous old white scars knotting on his face, and all three finished together:

“It's good to see you again, old friend,” she said to Conrad, taking both his hands for an instant.

“And you too, Tina,” she went on, exchanging a kiss on both cheeks.

Valentinne was in her early forties, twelve years younger than Conrad. The Countess of Odell was of average height, with the beginnings of a double chin and warm green-flecked brown eyes that were usually happy and a little distracted; there were faint paint-stains on her fingers, from the art whose results hung on walls and stood on the big easel beneath the eastern window of the solar: it was a redoing of her classic
Raoul of Ger and the Easterlings.

“You haven't been able to talk him out of this folly, and convince him he'd be more useful here?” Sandra said. “He's my Chancellor, after all!”

Valentinne looked as if she'd been crying last night, and she was in the formal cote-hardie that she usually managed to avoid, a pale blue-and-gold affair.

“No, Sandra,” she said, a determined smile on her face. “I knew it wouldn't work, anyway.”

“Didn't keep you from trying,” her husband observed.

“And good to see you, Lady d'Ath,” the Countess said; though in fact Tiphaine's cold coiled violence had always made her a little nervous. “How's Lady Delia? She's six months along now, isn't she?”

Tiphaine smiled slightly; the Countess of Odell and the Châtelaine of Barony Ath were good friends.

“Delia's well, but growing huge, and sends her regards. And she'd like you to be there for the accouchement, Lady Odell, particularly since neither I nor Lord Rigobert are likely to be able to take the time.”

“Of course, if . . .”

If we're not all under siege in our castles by then,
Sandra filled in.
Or dead.

“. . . if circumstances allow,” Valentinne finished.

“No reason they shouldn't,” Conrad said. “You could take the girls. This campaign's going to start a long way east of here.”

The Count of Odell was already in full armor except for the helmet, which showed his fireplug build; he'd put on some flesh since he resigned as Grand Constable to be Chancellor full-time a decade ago. Now he snorted and rose with a slight grunt and clank, tucking his helmet upside down under his left arm with the gauntlets thrown in the bowl; the bevoir hid his chin and neck, giving his cannonball head an oddly detached look.

“I'm still stronger than a lot of the men I'll meet,” he said, slapping the hilt of his rather old-fashioned, Norman-style chopping broadsword. “And age and treachery beat youth and gallantry most times.”

Tiphaine d'Ath raised both eyebrows. “Still stronger, yes, Conrad,” she said. “Also stiffer, fatter and slower these days. I'd hate to lose the man who helped shape me into the murderous, evil bitch I am.”

“Blame Sandra for that,” he laughed.

And he's looking positively carefree,
Sandra thought.
Men and their games!

“Besides, I'm planning on directing the levy of County Odell, not fighting with my own hands,” he pointed out. “Not unless I have to. Worry about Érard and Thierry more, they'll be at the head of their men-at-arms. And Ogier is at the reckless age.”

From the haunted look in her eyes, Lady Valentinne had been thinking along the same lines. Conrad paused to glance out the west-facing windows in their Gothic tracery; he'd be looking down on the rolling orchards and fields of the Hood River Valley, off to Mt. Hood's snow peak, towering dreamlike and huge and distant.

What's he thinking?
Sandra mused.
Of how we fought and worked to build this new world? Of what we were, and are, and what we might have been if the Change hadn't come? Or just that it's a beautiful day?

Then he bowed them out into the other room, and extended a hand; his wife rested her fingers on the back of his, and they followed. He smiled at his children, as they gravely bowed or curtsied.

“Kiss your sisters and make your devoir to your lady mother, boys,” he said, thumping their shoulders as they straightened and grinned back at him. “We have a war to fight. And you girls give me a kiss as well, eh?”

They did, and then the whole assemblage trooped down to the courtyard. The Castellan was there, with an older nobleman—

Lord Akers, Baron de Parkdale,
Sandra's mind supplied.
Lamed in the Count's service back when we were doing the first salvage run on Seattle. Son down with the Three Tribes, helping patrol against the enemy occupation forces in the CORA territories. I should mention that.

There was some ceremony; Lord Ramón passed over the white baton of his office to Lord Akers, who would command the skeleton garrison of oldsters, the halt, the lame and those
really
too young to take the field; the castle chaplain blessed everyone, though doubtless they'd already had morning Mass; and Lady Valentinne bound a favor on her husband's arm, a ribbon she'd woven from flax grown in her herb garden, prepared with her own hands. Her daughters did the same, and for their brothers as well, except for young Melisant, who shyly showed them a book-sized triptych of St. Michael she'd painted in a stiff, glowingly sincere style. She'd dedicate that for them in the Cathedral and burn candles before it until they returned.

At last Conrad stood pulling on his gauntlets, ready to hand her up into the carriage and swing into the saddle of his own traveling rouncy. He chuckled as he slapped fist into opposite hand on each side to settle the leather-palmed metal gloves.

“What's the joke?” she asked.

“That even if . . . that
whatever
happens now, I'm a lucky man. Lucky in my wife, my children . . . lucky in my whole life. Thanks, Sandra.”

“Thank
you
, old friend, and take care of yourself. I need you still, your loyalty and your wits and the fact that you were never afraid to tell us when we'd made a mistake. Mathilda will need you, too.”

“I'll do my best. I haven't seen my grandchildren yet, though Érard's little Alaiz is expecting! To tell you the truth, I don't know how much the kids need any of us fogies anymore, Sandra. It's their world now, and they're more at home in it than we can ever be. Let's give it to them in good condition.”

SUTTERDOWN
DÙTHCHAS OF THE CLAN MACKENZIE
(FORMERLY THE EAST-CENTRAL WILLAMETTE VALLEY, OREGON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
AUGUST 1, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

 

 

 

F
rederick Thurston was the second son of the founding General-President of the new United States—the country everyone else called the United States of Boise. He wasn't in its green uniform, though. He'd insisted on that, wearing a nondescript outfit of coarse-cloth shirt and trousers and brown boots instead, and he was unarmed except for the beltknife that virtually everyone carried as an all-purpose tool. He took a deep breath, and drew calmness on himself like a cloak; this wasn't going to be any easier if he waited.

I've made my decision. Now I've got to
do
it.

“You should be fancied up a bit,” his wife said. “Your uniform, or somethin' to show you're someone.”

There was a Powder River rasp in her voice; Virginia Thurston (née Kane) had been born and raised there in the grassland country of what had once been eastern Wyoming, until the Church Universal and Triumphant and its local allies killed her father and seized her family's Sweetwater Ranch and she'd stumbled into Rudi Mackenzie's camp on the edge of the Sioux country on a blown horse. The two of them were nearly of an age, not quite twenty-one, but their looks were very different. Virginia was middling-tall for a woman, slender but whipcord-tough and tanned, with long brown hair worn in a braid, a narrow straight-nosed face and blue eyes.