Tremane arrived or the delegation was allowed to enter. The members of Tremane's staff were quite used to seeing a 'horse' wandering about the halls now, and let her go her own way when they saw her. Waiting with her were all of the dignitaries that could be hurried into formal clothing or uniforms on short notice, though there was always a chance that not all of them were what they were dressed up to be. Once, after most of Tremane's staff had gone to a meeting with the town council, Darkwind recalled, someone had actually borrowed an Imperial officer's tunic and a handful of medals and coerced the cook into it for one of these ceremonies! Since the folk coming to pledge their loyalty were likely never to set eyes on Shonar again, it did no harm to anyone to have impersonators fill in the ranks of Tremane's Court if it was necessary, to give the impression that every petty lordling with a handful of men was being given the highest of honors.
This time the reverse was true, for not only were all the real Officials present, but the mayor of Shonar, Sandar Giles, had been on his way for a meeting with one of Tremane's underlings when he saw the procession of armed men heading for Tremane's manor. He'd sent a now-exhausted runner hastily back to the town for his mayoral finery, and now stood waiting with the rest while the servants did what they could to make the Great Hall bearable.
'One of Tremane's mages is in there, warming the place up,' Sandar was saying to Tremane's aide, who was looking distinctly uncomfortable in his nonregulation, heavily embroidered tabard. It looked like—and probably was —something that had been found in an attic and been pressed into service as the 'official' clothing of His Majesty's Seneschal. A great deal of the Court garments had been made out of salvaged material or dredged out of attics. For that matter, Sandar Giles' outfit showed a touch of the moth's tooth around the squirrel-fur trim and the woolen hood, as if he had gone to storage for his grandfather's mayoral outfit.
But none of the various delegations that had come riding or walking in to Shonar had looked any better, and most had looked much worse. By the current standards of the country, Tremane's Court probably looked remarkably prosperous.
Well, there was nothing to be gained by dwelling on that now. Under Tremane's direction, people were readying themselves for worse to come, and Hardornens, unlike Valdemarans, were perfectly willing to believe in 'worse to come.' Once the ceremony was over, but just before the delegation left for home, Tremane would give this new lot their directions on surviving the final Storm, as he had every other delegation so far. That those directions were mainly guesses hardly mattered; they would have direction and confidence that he had the situation on the way to being under control.
The door opened, and a thin, gawky man came through it, a fellow with thinning hair, who squinted at them from behind a pair of glass lenses set in a lead frame that rested on his nose. 'It's warm in there now, and it should last through your ceremony,' the mage said, and made shooing motions as if they were a bunch of hens he wanted to drive before him. 'In with you now! The sooner you get the ceremony over with, less likely that the spell will wear off before it's over!'
None of them needed a second invitation; the hallway was freezing, and the promise of warmth was all the encouragement they required to move quickly.
Elspeth and Gwena hung back until the others were inside, and Darkwind remained with them. Gwena was quite careful whenever she came inside the manor, and despite the complaints from Tremane's household staff, she left very little sign of her presence after these ceremonies. Some of the Hardornen warriors, who forgot to remove spurs or came striding in wearing heavy, hobnailed boots, did worse damage than Gwena, who picked up each hoof neatly and set it down again with the greatest of care.
Gwena was arrayed in the 'riderless' version of Companion full dress; no saddle, but with a blue and silver blanket cut like her barding, decorated at all the points with silver bells, a blue-dyed leather hackamore with silver tassels at the cheekpieces, and reins bedecked with more silver bells. Had there been more time to ready her, the decorations included even bells and blue ribbons to braid into her mane and tail, but she had to be content with her mane and tail flowing freely.
'You look lovely, as always,' Darkwind told her.
'At least we are making our support unmistakable,' he pointed out, as they took their appointed places among the rest.
There was some shuffling as the dignitaries of Tremane's Court sorted themselves out, then the young Seneschal nodded his head and the main doors were flung open to admit the latest delegation.
At the head of the procession was a youngster—no boy, but young, too young to need a razor—of about fourteen. Under his scarlet cloak and tabard, he wore full armor that had seen hard use, and his eyes were far too old to belong to that young face. The dented and slightly tarnished baronial circlet about his brow did not detract from the painful dignity with which he carried himself, and by his build and the muscles beneath the armor, he was clearly no stranger to real fighting. Behind him, more men in full armor followed in pairs, ranging in age from powerful graybeards to men only a little older than the boy-baron. One of the two immediately behind the boy carried a small wooden box. They paraded in slowly, surveying every person there with suspicion, and Darkwind smothered a smile as the boy's eyes lit on the Alliance envoys, widened, and flitted from Elspeth to Darkwind and back, finally remaining on Darkwind.
