running down stonelined troughs to a swimming pool not far away. The leaves of espaliered fruit trees shimmered green against the whitewashed surface of the perimeter walls, alternating with fragrant deep blue Chinese clematis twined through trellises.
The warm air was heavy with sweet scents, drowsy with humming bees; a flock of birds with light gray bodies and bright yellow bellies and underwings went by, swooping after insects. A terra-cotta fountain of descending bowls tinkled nearby, welcome in this arid heat. Baron Maugis was already at the table, along with an older woman in a dark green cote-hardie and white wimple and lace shoulder-veil who was probably his mother, and a younger one with pale tilted eyes and a slim build, dressed in a riding habit with a divided skirt, who was certainly his wife. She was just handing an infant to a nanny and setting aside a broad hat. Her hair tumbled like a black torrent down her back through a light wimple, hardly more elaborate than a kerchief but bound with silk cords. Two other children were there, a boy of about six guiltily wiping his face with a napkin and a girl half that age sitting on her father’s lap.
Mary sighed, and Ingolf nodded. “You know, I could get used to having a place like this,” he murmured to her. “They do look all-’round comfy, don’t they?”
His wife gave a slight rueful chuckle. “I think you could get the land out of brother Rudi after the war, lover, but I doubt he’d hand you a few thousand people to develop it with, the way the Lord Protector did our host’s father. For that matter, there aren’t big bunches of people around… loose… anymore. Arminger just culled them out of the ones running from the cities and they were glad to get the chance.”
“Well, we can have the kids on our own, when we finally get the time and quiet, and our own homeplace somewhere. Anywhere but a city, eh?”
She nodded agreement with a shudder; both of them had seen the great cities of the world, Portland and Boise and even distant, mammoth Des Moines. They were country folk to the core and the thought of living all their lives in one of those ant-heaps-Des Moines had over a hundred thousand people-was loathsome.
The baron and his lady looked up and rose to make them welcome as the servants led the children away. Mary put hand to heart and bowed.
“Mae govannen,” she said. “Well-met, my lord, my ladies.”
“Uh… hi,” Ingolf added. “My lord, my ladies.”
“My wife, Lady Helissent de Grimmond, my lord, Your Highness,” Maugis said.
Ingolf knew enough to bow and kiss the ladies’ hands when they were extended to him palm-down, taking them gently in his. They both started to curtsy to Mary; as the new High King’s half sister her status had to be stratospheric, not to mention that her father and mother had been and were respectively the sovereigns of the Bearkillers and her aunt led the Dunedain.
“Please,” Mary said, with a graceful gesture. “I’m just a commander of Dunedain Rangers for now.”
Maugis nodded acknowledgment of the courtesy as she exchanged kisses on the cheek with the women of his family, and bowed over her hand.
“And my lady mother, the dowager Baroness, Lady Roehis de Grimmond.”
“Originally Jenny Fassbinder,” the older woman said; she was in her sixties but looking very healthy for it, with a worn gentle-looking face but an ironic quirk to her mouth. “A long long time ago.”
Helissent gave her a look of fond exasperation and gestured towards a buffet laid out on the side table. “We’re not keeping any state today, Lord Vogeler, Lady Mary. The staff are far too busy, I’m sure you understand.”
“Uff da, of course! There’s a war on, no need to apologize, my lady.”
“Do help yourself. The others will be here soon.”
He did, feeling sharp-set as he lifted the anti-fly gauze over the various dishes; he’d done hard work all day yesterday and as far as he could recall dinner had made lunch out of his helmet look like a banquet. There was a ham, and what they called a mutton-ham here, which was a leg of mutton pickled and cured the same way as ordinary ham and surprisingly good; cold fried chicken; some salads; half a dozen types of bread and rolls. And all the fixings, rather like a very good picnic. Mary constructed herself several large sandwiches and filled a plate with the green salad; she had a passion for those.
To his pleasure there was also a decent potato salad, creamy with well-made mayonnaise and with flecks of peppers and onion, something which he’d had trouble getting on this side of the continent. Few people outside Richland and its neighbors really seemed to understand what could be done with potatoes.
“Delicious,” he said sincerely, when he was back at the table.
There was also a crock of beer; only moderately cold, but quite good, well hopped and nutty. He didn’t like the prospect of wine in this heat even if he was sitting in pleasant shade, or this early in the day for that matter. Mary and the Association nobles sipped very slowly at small glasses of it, between draughts of fruit juices.
“Dang, but this is good!” he said. “You’ve got a good cook!”
“He was chef in a restaurant in Seattle and my husband Lord Amauri found him in a group of refugees,” Lady Roehis said. “Quite able, but given to temperaments. And he drinks, sometimes. His children are just as good and they don’t, not that way.”
Maugis rolled his eyes slightly in an agreement that hinted at crises over the years.
His wife went on: “Aleaume-our eldest son-was complaining about there being no French fries. For the last month, they are all he wants to eat.”
Mary laughed. “My aunt Astrid’s daughters Hinluin and Fimalen are five, and they were like that for a while, only with them it was noodles. Nothing would do but noodles. And nothing on the noodles but butter. I love them but they drove me and my sister crazy while we were living in Stardell Hall.”
“You have to be crazy to be a parent,” Lady Roehis said confidently. “But it’s a rewarding insanity, in its way.”
Everyone chuckled, but Ingolf thought after an instant that it was a rather odd way to talk about it, though it was funny. But strange, as if having kids were a hobby you could choose not to have. As far as he knew it was just something you did, like growing up. Unless you couldn’t, which would be like being born with a clubfoot, a terrible and pitiful calamity.
He searched for something to say, not wanting to leave the whole burden to Mary; he’d left home at nineteen, and at that age you ignored younger kids just as hard as you could, being falsely convinced you were a man now. His life afterwards hadn’t been very domestic. But he did like flowers.
“Ah, these are lovely gardens, Lady Helissent.”
Helissent nodded towards her mother-in-law. “Lady Roehis did those, starting from nothing. This was bare pasture when she arrived in the second Change Year, and thin pasture at that! I wouldn’t have believed it possible until I saw it, and you’re right, it’s lovely. I’m from Barony Skagit originally, myself-my elder brother, Sir Adhemar de Sego, is a knight there, and holds Sego Manor as vassal of House Delby as my father did while he lived. Flowers are easy in Skagit. I was used to things being green naturally.”
“Including the people,” Maugis said with a smile. “Skagit’s on Puget Sound, my lord Vogeler. Where they think it’s a drought if the moss on their north side dies.”
“As opposed to places where the rabbits starve to death if they don’t run between blades of grass,” she said tartly, and they both laughed.
Mary’s hand stole into his beneath the table and squeezed. It’s true, when you’re in love you see it everywhere, he thought.
“My father picked this land when this county was shared out among the conquerors, and his comrades in arms thought he was crazy,” Maugis said. “My lady wife is quite right; there was no settlement here; we have photographs. Nothing for miles but a few farmhouses, and thirty miles north to the nearest rail spur. But he saw the possibilities, and so did my lady mother.”
“We wanted to get as far from Norman Arminger as we could,” his mother said suddenly; she’d been looking a little abstracted. “Somewhere he’d never think of visiting. That was worth living in tents for a year, and dugouts for another, and the castle until this place was ready. Anything was worth getting out from under his eye. Court was a cesspit then. Dreadful man, absolutely dreadful. When I knew him in the Society I thought he was just an asshole, as we said then, but after the Change he blossomed into a monster.”
The other two nobles stiffened in alarm, looking around reflexively. Lady Roehis nibbled on a biscuit and smiled at them, irony and affection mixed.
“He’s dead,” the older woman said. “He’s long dead. Good riddance. And nothing would delight his evil heart
