S. Stirling - The Tears of the Sun

They both nodded; the Lord Chancellor had been opening a new file even as they left, gnawing absently on a heel of bread as he did.

The office building that he’d picked was a little out of the way and had been vacant since the Change, a low nondescript brick structure convenient because of its location, its position on the preventative maintenance list, and the fact that the pipes could be turned back on for city water. Huon was glad to be out of the slightly musty scent of a building unoccupied for twenty-five years. Most of the time his generation was thoroughly indifferent to the world before the Change, but settings like that could give you a slight subliminal knowledge that the present was built on the bones of six billion dead.

And. .

Told everything! That’s a change from being treated like a mushroom, he thought, with a sudden eagerness. It’s going to be fun being the High Queen’s squire, but I’m still sort of burning a bit over the way we were kept in the dark about things. I suppose it was necessary, but that doesn’t mean I have to like it. The Spider. . the Lady Regent. . is tighter with information than she is with money, and that’s saying something.

He felt a slight guilty spurt of pleasure when he thought of the letter of credit in his belt-pouch, after years on a close allowance while Barony Gervais was under Crown wardship. He could run amok through the quality armorers that catered to the nobility, even with the war. No need to accept good-enough Armory standard gear. It was even justified , since he was going to be a royal squire. He had to show well to do his patron credit!

And horses, he thought. A pair of rouncies and a good courser. . maybe even a destrier-

Destriers were the ultimate luxury; they cost many times what a suit of plate armor did, and wore out much faster.

If I bought a young one, just out of a training farm, he would still be in his prime when I’m old enough to fight as a man-at-arms; that’s only three years or so from now. . and he’d be really well-used to me by then.

Yseult gave him a sharp elbow in the ribs and he glared back; they knew each other too well to hide much, even of their thoughts. Then he smoothed his expression. He had a feeling that the elderly cleric didn’t miss much either.

Most of the gathering troops were passing directly east, or were being held in tented camps outside the city walls, but there were armed men in plenty-noblemen and officers clutching papers as often as swords, afoot or on horseback or in pedicabs, with sergeants on bicycles or trotting doggedly with a rasp of hobnails on asphalt and cement. Most of the traffic was freight, though; endless wagons of grain, barreled hardtack, racked armor, crossbows, and the salvage metal and timber and leather that the city’s craft guilds and factories would transform into the sinews of war.

The noise was a continuous grumbling roar, voices and steel-shod hooves clattering hollowly on pavement, and steel wheels grinding on the steel rails of the city’s horsecar network. The inn was not far away and had been a hotel before the Change, called the Benson after some lord of old. It occupied most of a block, three stories of pale terra-cotta and many more of brick above, graded by ease of access. The reception rooms and dining chambers and kitchens were on the first two, the guests of rank on the next pair, those of more humble background on the three above that, and the rest fading up through servants and attendants to the hotel staff themselves.

Right now more than a dozen miniature heraldic shields were hung beside the main doors, showing that guests of armigerous family were staying-knights and lesser nobles who had no town houses of their own and rented suites here instead for themselves and their families and retinues when duty or pleasure called them in from their estates. Huon read them as casually and automatically as he would have so many printed signs. They flanked a larger fixed shield bearing a Madonna and Child; the Virgin was Portland’s patron.

The staff were dashing around looked harried themselves, but one man with a towel over his shoulder showed the bishop and his party to a corner booth of the big common room with its cut-glass wall at one end. The good odors of cooking overrode the city-smells of smoke and horses and sweat and wool; they were not far from the riverside docks where barges and the craft that plied the Columbia above its joining with the Willamette unloaded. Even oceangoing ships came upstream from Astoria sometimes, and they added their tang of bulk produce and salt fish and exotics like sugar and coffee and indigo and tea to the symphony of scents.

It was all exciting, and would be even in peacetime compared to the quiet routine of a castle or manor, though he didn’t think he’d like it for more than a visit. The great walls and towers that surrounded Portland made it immensely strong, but they also gave an uncomfortable sense of confinement. You could get out of a castle quickly, at least, and most of them had green fields right up to the moat.

A swift look at the menu chalked on a blackboard made him dither a bit, but Yseult had been teasing him about always getting the same thing; he forewent the double-bacon cheeseburger and had the souvlaki and pita with fries and a Portland Crown Ale. Yseult chose the batter-fried sturgeon with a salad and a glass of white wine, and Dmwoski settled for bread and a piece of grilled fish.

“It’s not a fast-day, is it, Most Reverend Father?” Huon asked, with a prickle of stricken embarrassment.

He wasn’t as devout as his sister, but he tried to do the right thing. Yseult shook her head doubtfully, then pulled out a little bound Book of Hours and checked the reference table at the back as the platters arrived to be sure. Dmwoski chuckled.

“Just Father will do, my children. No, it’s simply that at my age the fire needs less fuel. Fat monks are figures of fun for good reason.”

He pronounced a short brisk grace and they fell to; Huon was feeling hungrier than usual, since he’d been too nervous to do breakfast any justice. Dmwoski nodded at his appetite.

“You, on the other hand, are building bone and muscle yet, my son. Give me your hand for a moment.”

He did, and they squeezed. The soldier-monk’s grip was astonishingly strong for a man his age, and felt as if it had been carved from an ancient dry-cured ham.

“Good,” the cleric said. “Lord Chaka’s report did say that you were shaping well. What is the first thing you wish to know?”

Huon opened his mouth, closed it again, and thought. He was warmed and irritated both when Yseult gave him an approving look, and though Dmwoski’s face was calm he thought there was something similar in the monk’s blue eyes.

“I’d like to know what really happened with our-with Barony Gervais-contingent at the Battle of Pendleton. With my uncle.”

“Sir Guelf Mortimer, your mother’s brother.”

“Yes. I know something went badly wrong, Father, at the battle or just after, and there are all sorts of rumors. But our men are not cowards!”

“No, they are not,” Dmwoski said. He frowned, tapping his fingers together. “In fact, they did rather well.”

When he went on his tone was dry, the voice he would have used to speak to an adult: “What happened was this: the allied powers of the Corvallis Meeting-we were not yet Montival then, Rudi Mackenzie and the Princess and the other questers were still struggling through eastern Idaho-tried to steal a march on the CUT and Boise and seize Pendleton. That was just a little under two years ago now. We meant to strike before its Bossman could make a pact with them and they could send troops to secure the city and its territories. Unfortunately, it turned out that they had stolen a march on us . As nearly as we can tell, from reports and interrogations later, what happened is. .”