S. Stirling: Lord of Mountains

Mathilda moved back into the open, circulating among the younger noblemen and ladies. A lady-in-waiting and a squire-

Yseult Liu, Demoiselle de Gervais, he reminded himself.

Seventeen, with tilted blue eyes and a maiden’s loose hair streaming in a yellow mane down from under a pale blue headdress, just on the verge of turning from pretty and fresh to spectacular.

And her brother Huon, three years younger. By Brigid’s cauldron and Lugh’s spear, he looks more and more like Odard every day, save that his eyes are dark!

— moved among the revelers, collecting little folded pamphlets they’d been studying; those would have the steps and music.

He closed his eyes for a moment in remembered grief, remembering also the look of almost mocking affection in Odard’s own as he lay dying so far away in Kalksthorpe on the shores of the cold Atlantic. It had been a long way for a knight of the Association to go to die; and it hadn’t been until he died that Rudi had fully realized how real a friend he’d become after years of not-quite-trust. Odard had been a very complex man, but the steel had been there at the core, when the Keeper-of-Laws came to reveal what he really was.

No man outlives his fate, he thought. He died as well as a man can when it’s far from home amid angry strangers; ah, but Odard, I miss you at my back this day!

Sandra Arminger raised her glass to him as his glance passed her again; she was talking to a barrel-built nobleman with a shaven head and rich dark clothing with a silver-and-gold linked chain of office around his bull neck, marking him as Conrad Renfrew, Count of Odell and Chancellor of the Portland Protective Association. Rudi snorted slightly, taking up the snifter to return the toast and then sipping at the smooth fire within the balloon shape. The man beside Portland’s Lady Regent inclined his massive head, one corner of his mouth turning up in an ironic smile that twisted the hideous white keloid scars that covered much of his face.

“Your Majesty?” Tiphaine asked.

“I was just thinking that the Count of Odell, over there, led the army that tried to conquer the Mackenzie dùthchas back in the War of the Eye and nearly did burn Sutterdown to the ground. Some of the roundshot from his catapults are in the wall still. Yet here we are, allies and more or less friends. Forbye his sons most definitely are my friends, if not my closest.”

Tiphaine turned her snifter between her hands, the long slender wire-strong fingers flexing about the glass. She’d been fourteen or so on that day in 1998 in whose shadow the whole world lived, which made her one of the bridge generation between folk such as Sandra or Conrad, who’d been adults then, and his own generation, the Changelings.

“For that matter, I kidnapped you a bit before that, when I did that clandestine op to get Matti back,” she pointed out. “And killed your bodyguards.”

“I mourned them,” Rudi said sincerely.

For I liked Aoife and Liath well, and keened them as sincerely as a ten-year-old could, he thought. I make a sacrifice beneath the tree where their ashes lie mingled every year. But…

He tactfully didn’t mention the earlier attempt, when the first Baron Gervais, Eddie Liu, and Katrina Georges had tried to get Matti back and failed and both died in the process. Katrina had been Tiphaine’s first lover, and he knew she still mourned her even though she’d been happily settled with Delia de Stafford for a decade and a half-Rudi had been a hostage at Castle Ath when the newly ennobled Tiphaine met Delia, who’d been a mere miller’s daughter on the estate then.

People in general thought Tiphaine d’Ath’s most notable characteristic was a ruthlessness as complete and hard as the honed steel on the edge of a knife, but if Rudi had had to sum up her mind and character it would have been constancy he’d have put first.

Though she’s ruthless enough, too, and no dispute.

She was also an intensely private person, and he went on instead:

“But that was honest war. We’d raided the Association territories and took Matti, after all, and killed quite a few of her entourage in the process. And then you saved my life, you and Sandra between you. The Lord Protector would have killed me sure, in the end, if I’d stayed in Todenangst like a bit of grit under his eye. You taking me off to your new fief…”

“That was Lady Sandra’s orders; she got me the title and the grant for rescuing Matti and snatching you, after all,” Tiphaine said judiciously. “Mind you, I agreed on taking you out of sight and mind, and even then it only delayed matters. Norman was like that. God, how I hated that man. I used to daydream about killing him.”

He turned his head sharply for a moment; it was unusual for her to express that much emotion. Her long handsome-regular face was as calm as ever, and her pale gray eyes calmly considering as they flicked over the crowd looking for threats and weaknesses. That appraisal was probably so automatic that she would require an act of will to stop it.

And it’s a fair bit I’ve learned from her, in all the years since. Much of the art of the sword, just for a beginning.

Rigobert snorted. “You weren’t the only one, my lady d’Ath. Even in the Protectorate. Lady Sandra actually loved him, though.”

“Aphrodite is a powerful Goddess,” Rudi said seriously.

That was both literally and metaphorically true, if there was a difference in the Changed world. He drew the Invoking sign and went on:

“And sea-born Cyprian has Her own purposes when She bestows Her gifts. For that matter, Norman loved Sandra and Mathilda…in his way. I think it was his desire to look well in Mathilda’s eyes that preserved me when I first fell into his power. We were already close friends, from her time at Dun Juniper.”

The two Associate nobles nodded; they were both nominal Catholics, of course, but he knew Tiphaine wasn’t one in practice-that owl he’d glimpsed once on a chain under her shirt was a hint at exactly how not-and he strongly suspected Rigobert wasn’t either in his heart, though he didn’t know what Powers the man did follow. Sandra was that modern rarity, a complete atheist, or had been until recently. Not that she’d ever given any public indication of disbelief, but he suspected that the sheer overwhelming evidence of late had made her slide from joyfully hypocritical and political lip-service to the Protectorate’s established Church to something more sincere; she had the unusual sort of mind that used logic and evidence to produce conclusions, rather than the other way around.

Mathilda finished her task and came back to him, curtsying. He bowed in turn, making a leg in the Clan’s fashion, his shoulder-length red-gold hair flowing forward. His garb was his own people’s festival style; fine pleated tartan kilt to just above the knee with silver-buckled shoes and a little bone-and-silver hilted sgian dubh tucked into his right sock-hose, tight green Montrose jacket with a double row of silver buttons, lace at throat and cuffs, badger-skin sporran and tooled-leather belt and dirk, Scots bonnet with a spray of black feathers in the clasp that marked his sept totem as Raven, and a great broach of silver and jet graven in curling knotwork to hold the plaid pinned across his torso. There was a slight sigh from a clump of ladies nearby; his six-two of broad-shouldered, narrow-waisted, long-limbed height took full advantage of clothing designed to show a man off.

“Every woman here is envying me,” Mathilda said softly as she laid the tips of her fingers on the back of his left hand to let him lead her out on the dancing floor.

“Except our friend the Grand Constable and a few others,” he whispered back. “Some of them envying me , perhaps? And then my lord de Stafford might well be envying you, you know…”