me a drink-beer, cold if possible.”
He put it into her hand just as she threw the arming doublet behind her; that had been a safe bet for anyone who knew her. She walked into the bathing room through a bead curtain. The marble tub not only held steaming water but aromatically scented suds, and there was a pleasant cross-breeze from windows on two sides of the corner room. This was going to be a pleasant memory in a few weeks; she’d always been fastidiously clean when she could be, which in her line of work wasn’t all the time. The beer was icy-chilled and very good; some of the best hops in the…
Montival, she thought. Got to start thinking of it that way. Not just the Association territories anymore.
… High Kingdom were grown around here. That and the hot water managed to relax her enough to almost doze for a few minutes of soaking. At thirty-eight she could still do nearly everything she’d been able to do at twenty, but she found it took more and more effort plus recuperation was slower, and the last weeks had been hard. A sputtering jerk brought her head up as it slipped below the surface.
There was even a genuine sponge to go with the lavender-scented local soap, which was true luxury these days. Scrubbing briskly helped her back to alertness.
It beats washing with a cloth and a helmet full of water all to hell, she thought as she climbed out. Damn, but I wish this war was over and won.
The floor was some sort of slightly coarse-surfaced stone, easy under her feet and not slippery. She stood and looked at herself in the full-length mirror with a coldly objective eye, and at last nodded satisfaction. Naked she looked less slim than she did in clothes or armor, and the startling muscle definition was clearer. At just a hair under five-ten she weighed a solid hundred and fifty, and she’d never been more than a few pounds either side of that since she got her full growth. Of course, she’d spent a lot of that time doing very energetic things while wearing fifty pounds or more of steel strapped all over her body, besides conscientious training and recreations that included hunting boar, bear and tiger with spears.
“Conrad’s right,” she murmured; the conversation with Rigobert had reminded her of her youth, and so had the ceremonies that marked passages in the cycle of life. “I’m a big blond horse of a woman and I’d never, ever have made it to the Olympics as a gymnast. They were all little pixies and even at thirteen I was getting too tall. Pentathlon, maybe, if I’d switched to track and field in time. Still, I was good.”
She’d kept it up, too; on impulse she bent backward until her palms were on the floor behind her feet, brought one leg up and pointed the toe at the ceiling, then the other so that she was on both hands. Then a ninety-degree side-split, a scissors flip back upright onto the balls of her feet and a tucked back salto flip ending with her arms raised in that rather silly but obligatory ballerinalike posture you used to finish a floor routine-
That brought her face-to-face with the maid who’d just come through the doorway, with a pile of towels in her arms and a bulge-eyed expression at finding a naked and wetly glistening Grand Constable falling out of a midair somersault right in front of her. They were close enough that Tiphaine could feel the warmth of the heated fabric.
“Yes?” she said.
“MyladyIwassenttoattendyouasyouhavenomaid-” came out in a rush.
“Leave the towels,” she said calmly.
“Yyyyyes, m’lady.”
Tiphaine sighed inwardly as the girl set the heap of fluffy white fabric on a stone bench and knotted her fingers together.
I don’t know what’s more irritating, the usual goggling horror, or the occasional come-on.
“That will be all,” she said patiently. “You may go. My body-squire and pages will attend me.”
Hmmm. Bit of a pout along with the curtsy and swift withdrawal. Irritation Number Two, I think. Higamous hogamous, I am very monogamous.
Since she was alone, she allowed herself a very slight grin as she toweled down. Delia was fond of playing a game involving a lot of running and giggling she called “The Lustful Knight and the Innocent Country Maid” in honor of their first meeting at the feast when Tiphaine had taken seisin of Barony Ath during the Protector’s War. It was always fun, especially when Tiphaine returned from a long absence.
“Now granted, I was a newly made knight, and I was both lustful and fairly thoroughly drunk by that point, but it was definitely Delia who murmured an invitation to inspect the fine embroidery on her underwear into my ear. Not that I needed to be asked twice in that state,” she added to herself.
She tucked one of the towels around herself under the armpits as she walked out into the bedroom. Lioncel discreetly turned and looked out the window as she tossed it aside and pulled on the briefs, bias-cut linen sports bra and silver-gray silk shirt with a high mandarin collar and loose sleeves tied at the wrist. Then he whistled sharply for the pages over whom he now had authority-the general rule was that pages helped you put on clothes, and squires helped you don armor-and oversaw the younger boys as they helped her into semiformal dress. Assistance in dressing was something she’d finally gotten used to; it helped that this style really required it.
That started with the hose, also skintight and bias-cut; Sandra had told her once that it was amusing beyond words that the macho toughs of the warrior aristocracy had all ended up shaving their legs and wearing something quite close to pre-Change panty hose.
It is funny, if you think of it that way. I’d forgotten what panty hose were… and she didn’t say, but I think part of the gleam in her eye was that it means I shave my legs and wear panty hose too, of course, which also wouldn’t have happened without the end of the world.
Her hose were onyxine black, as was the sleeveless neck-to-thigh jerkin of butter-soft doeskin that went on next, fastened up the front with ties of braided black silk. Her shoes were black chamois as well, except for the gold buckles that secured them at each ankle, and the toes turned up-moderately, not the exaggerated length that high Court fashion decreed. The loose black knee-length houppelande overrobe had obsidian buttons and a collar open at the front and ear-high behind; the lower hem was dagged, and so were the turned-back sleeves that hung almost as low, showing the rich dark forest-green jacquard lining.
She put her arms out horizontally while the pages fastened the belt of tooled black leather around her waist. The purse on one side was largely ornamental, but the dagger on the other was ten inches long and fully functional, for all the tooling and silver cutwork on the sheath.
Lioncel insisted on getting on a stool and combing her hair, though strictly speaking that was no longer his duty, and carefully placed the chaperon hat of the nobility on her head. It was round and black, with a broad brim of rolled cloth and a long flat green tail called a liripipe down the back; he arranged the end over her right shoulder. Then he gave the livery badge above her brow a quick buff; it was Sandra’s arms quartered with her own.
Two pages brought a flat carrying case. Lioncel used a key to open it, and drew out the gold chain of office he placed around her neck; with similar reverence he pinned the knot of ribbons that was Delia’s favor on her upper sword-arm.
“You can carry the sword, Lioncel,” she said.
He started to grin and then composed his face gravely though his blue eyes sparkled with excitement; he’d managed to make himself quite presentable, too, in a dark brown outfit with a squire’s brimless flowerpot hat.
You didn’t wear a long sword to a formal meal; not these days, when Eaters or enemies were less likely to crawl down the chimney or burst through the door between the soup and the main course waving rusty kitchen knives and lusting for your flesh or at least your dinner and shoes. But a squire would carry hers behind her with the belt wound around the scabbard, sign of the High Justice and her jurisdiction throughout the Association by right of office. It was a more practical reminder than a gold chain with a heraldic medallion, since the hilt would be within reaching distance. And in the Association they didn’t bother to deny that Justice carried a sword.
“Sir Rodard,” she added as she signed the pages away and picked a rose out of a vase, trimming it and threading the stem through a buttonhole, leaving the great red bloom at her throat. “Did you send that girl in with the towels?”
“Yes, of course, my lady,” he said, coming through the door and looking her over critically. “Splendid, my lady. Just the right touch of the sinister amid the dark elegance.”
“Why did you do that, may I ask?”
“Modesty, my lady. It wouldn’t be fitting for a man to carry the towels into your bathing chamber.”
“Rodard, how many times have we ended up squatting over the same trench in the field?”
“This is the City Palace of the Counts of the Eastermark, my lady.”
“Bullshit. I think it was your perverse sense of humor.”
