square feet of office space that didn’t absolutely depend on powered ventilation to remain habitable. She flung up a hand to halt a rush of paper-waving bureaucrats trying to get her attention as she came through the doors and into the marble splendors of the lobby, grunting thankfully when a pair of her military secretaries showed up and started running interference.
The situation room on the left occupied one of the flanking tower chambers with an overhead skylight; it was in purposeful movement when she stuck her head in, under the management of Lord Rigobert, Baron Forest Grove, Marchwarden of the South and currently her number two.
He gave her a quick nod that said: under control. Tiphaine could see several Bearkillers and some Corvallans with him, all gesturing at the same great square map table. Aides moved unit markers with rods like pool cues, and the technical conversation stopped now and then for quick lessons in various groups’ military terminology.
We’re trying to keep a lid on the news of the Great Pendleton Cluster-Fuck; a panic would be a bad thing. But it’ll break soon. News still moves.
She’d never been able to really understand the impulse to run in circles and squeal when faced with a problem; she knew it existed and had to be dealt with, but she couldn’t imagine how it felt. Even as a child she’d always been able to put danger out of mind with a simple effort of will and go on with what needed doing. Otherwise she couldn’t have been a gymnast and spent hours every day stressing her body to ten-tenths of capacity.
Fortunately the heliograph net is the fastest way to move information and we control it, so we can get ahead of the curve, if we’re sharp, and Sandra most certainly is. She’ll have a version that’s spun our way and have it out so widely and thoroughly that it’ll be the one most people accept, the more so as it’ll be true enough that the actual news reinforces our subsidized troubadours and newsletters and Sunday sermons.
Up through arched doorways, marble-clad piers, beams with classical plaster moldings, murals and groined vaults, a grand cast-iron stairway extended from the center of the first floor to the fourth floor, with marble treads, double balusters with spiral and acanthus ornamentation. Tiphaine took the stairs three at a time, dodging the steady stream of pages who charged up and down with a sublime disregard for any obstacles and packets of messages in their hands.
It’s a minor miracle this didn’t end up as the Lord Protector’s City Palace, she thought. Though the Central Library’s about as good.
She strode through her outer office, where what she privately dubbed the widow brigade was busily keeping up with the constant flow of paper reports; male nobles dodged this sort of job when they could, and the clerics who swarmed over the ordinary civil administration of the PPA weren’t considered suitable. Typewriters clacked, adding machines clattered and rang their bells; abacuses made rattling sounds and pages ran back and forth on soft-soled shoes, yelping:
“Excuse me-”
“My lady!”
“Not there, you nit!”
While carrying completed reports, paper and ink supplies, food, and drinks…
Maps flapped back and forth on swinging panel poster display racks as the clerks pushed in pins updating troop positions, enemy sightings and resource allocation.
Color-coded file bins crowded the aisle to her office; more hung around inside, packed with information, sorted in any order she might need. Carefully stacked piles of dockets, folders and accordion files covered the long tables that ran around the outer wall of the antechamber. As she entered her own office and racked her sword she could see a neat pile of dispatch wallets on the desk sorted into levels of urgency as indicated by the knot codes, right beside the Seal and the tray of red wax disks.
Rigobert brought six packets in, according to Lioncel; that’s nine there. They breed the way coat hangers used to do in closets. I’d better process them.
A map table, much smaller than Rigobert’s downstairs, tried to make sense of troop dispositions and the strategic situation.
What a cluster-fuck, she repeated to herself after a quick look to check for major developments.
“They have humbugged me, by God” as Wellington put it. At least we had contingency plans in place. And thank heavens for Sandra’s habit of collecting valuable people!
Meticulous notes on her desk flagged the most urgent files in order of priority. Which important task was done by…
“Dame Lilianth, if you would,” Tiphaine called, raising her voice slightly.
Dame Lilianth of Kalama did not look like a spy as she came in and firmly closed the glass door behind her; she hardly even looked like an office manager. Five foot four, plump going on fat, rosy cheeks, her silvering hair hidden under a light blue wimple that picked up the lighter color on her brocaded cote-hardie. She looked like a happy matronly woman whose primary concern was spoiling her grandchildren and perhaps puttering around her garden bossing the workmen.
Tiphaine suddenly grinned sardonically at her and Dame Lilianth matched her expression with an equal savagery.
I look pretty much like what I am. She doesn’t. Both useful, Tiphaine thought.
Lilianth Oppenhier had been an Office Administrator in the days when light traveled along wires rather than coming from oil-soaked wicks, and a member of the Society. Sandra had taken her and her three daughters into the household when her husband was killed in the opening moves of the Protector’s War and her lack of a male heir lost her a land claim in a legal mud-wrestling match with House Gutierrez. Since then she’d been extremely useful and had prospered accordingly. Sandra Arminger knew how to reward good service, and in more ways than simple largesse.
“There’s a little nuisance to get out of the way first, my lady Grand Constable,” Lilianth said. “Herluin Smith’s widow is asking for a page placement for their son, Henriot. This is the third letter in three months, she’s using the squeaky-wheel principle, but she does have a claim.”
“That’s Mary Smith we’re talking about… why is every other woman in the Association named Mary?”
Lilianth grinned at her. “Including me. Mary Oppenhier. Sandra was very firm that I needed to use my Society name forevermore… for the reason you just stated.”
“She renamed me out of a book, when I made Associate, and I never even liked the character-a pathetic little dweeb. I should have gotten Yolande or Heuradys.”
“Oh, those books. What were you called, my lady? I’ve never heard.”
“Collette. Collette Rutherston; strange, I haven’t thought of that in years. At Binnsmeade Middle School they used to call me Collie and go woof-woof at me in the corridors.”
Back before we reinstated the Code Duello. Nothing like the prospect of dying with six inches of steel through the brisket to keep people polite.
“The mind boggles. Do you want me to hint that Mary Smith should remember that squeaky wheels make good firewood?” Lilianth said.
“No, no. We’re feudalists.”
Which means you can’t separate the personal and the political and everything is family and patronage.
“Have a polite letter sent to her saying that after the crisis is past, meaning if we’re still alive, say between Michaelmas and Christmas, I will find a place for the boy. By the way, how’s Ysolde? I see that she’s going to pop, probably a month after Delia?”
Lilianth turned her head towards the door for a moment. Her eldest daughter was outside, updating some of the graphs posted on the far wall. She’d made an extremely advantageous marriage with the Betancourt family’s eldest, not least because Sandra worked the network behind the scenes. As a bonus the two young people liked each other.
“That’s all working out very well, my lady,” she said, with satisfaction in her voice.
Tiphaine nodded and looked at her desk. “Where shall I begin, Mistress Lilianth?”
“The Lady Regent sent a very urgent and confidential dispatch box yesterday, quite late. I have it under lock and key.”
Right, Sandra doesn’t joggle my elbow for trivia, Tiphaine thought.
One of the nicer things about working for the Spider of the Silver Tower was that she gave you a job and the resources and information you needed and then left you to get on with it.
