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"What the fuck were you thinking of, Sandra?" Arminger barked, striding back and forth. "Now I'm publicly committed!"
"For the present, my love, for the present," Sandra said soothingly. "Have some wine."
"It's a bit early," he snarled again. "And don't try to distract me, Sandra. You know I don't like to be upstaged like that without warning. I am the Lord Protector, by God!"
"Some coffee, then?"
They were in one of the small presence rooms of his own chambers, high in the Tower of the Eye that rose from the southern face of the keep's wall; this was the last chamber the elevator reached, and the stairs above led to one more and then the rooftop. With the shape of the hill and the rise of the tower, that put them three hundred and fifty feet above the floor of the valley, looking down on the tree-bordered blue of the Willamette and the meadows between. That made the tall window and small balcony outside possible without compromising the castle's defenses; it was open, and impatiens fluttered in the boxes around the balcony, gold and purple and blue, adding their mite to the scents of spring and the river and the incense that burned in a holder in a wall niche.
Within, the chamber was floored in hardwood parquet, graced with Persian rugs; the walls held tapestries and bookshelves, and pictures-a Rubens and a Monet. The table at which Sandra sat was genuine Renaissance work, Venetian, with inlays in exotic woods and lapis; it had belonged to Bill Gates once, and Arminger's salvage team had found what were probably the computer magnate's bones not far away from it when they were combing likely locations in Seattle. His agents had plundered mansions and museums from San Simeon to Vancouver for treasures, and as far east as Denver; the best for him, the rest for gifts to his new baronage and the Church.
Usually that gave him a glow of satisfaction. Not today:
"Do stop pacing, darling. You're making me think of those panthers in the menagerie."
He turned and planted his hands on the table. "What happened? Did your better nature get the best of you, or what?"
Sandra laughed, a relaxed trill. "My love, you know me better than that. I don't have a better nature. And in the unlikely event that I ever did, it certainly didn't survive the Change. Remember who told you to: and I quote: go for it exactly ten years ago, minus fourteen days?"
He relaxed and threw himself into a chair, ru
"Then why?" he said, in a tone that wasn't mild, but lacked the rasp of a minute before. "What did you have in mind? And why the hell didn't you ask me first?"
"Darling, I don't have a better nature, but I do have a lively sense of our own interests. And of how you can forget them in the heat of the moment sometimes."
One brow went up. "I want that witch-bitch to suffer. She's been a pain in our arse since a couple of months after the Change. I want her to suffer, then I want to watch her die by inches."
"Oh, granted. Remember how you felt when Mathilda was kidnapped? She's feeling all that now, and more. As to dying, that can always be arranged."
Grudgingly, he nodded. "OK, and your people pulled it off-that was initiative. But I had something more in mind for Rudi; involving an iron cage and some cosmetic surgery."
She held up a finger to forestall him. "You're a brilliant man, my love, but you tend to forget something-you can only kill someone once. Likewise with cutting off their nose. And as for revenge, it's a dish better eaten cold. I think knowing she's been defeated and lost everything and we have her son and then killing her would be sufficient for the Witch Queen. And then young Rudi could be very useful to us. Do we really want to have our men potshotted by Mackenzies behind trees for the next twenty years, after we've taken the rest of the Valley?"
His eyes narrowed. "I can soon put a stop to that sort of thing. Guerilla wars don't happen if you don't care how many you kill."
"Yes, Norman, I realize that," she said, and her voice hardened slightly. "And then we'd have more empty fields, wouldn't we? Instead of farms that can pay us taxes: not to mention furnish very useful fighting men when the time comes to put the so-called Free Cities League of the Yakima in their place. Or even the United States of Boise and New Deseret."
"Ah," he said, taken aback. "You think that's possible? A tributary enclave? Perhaps along the lines of the Highlands and the Scots kings in the times of Wallace and Bruce: But young Rudi might not cooperate: on short acquaintance he strikes me as a stubborn sort. Giving his mommy-bitch the chop would likely put him off."
"Children forget-that was why I decided to risk everything to get Mathilda back now. We can do a great deal with Rudi if we play things carefully, and with the Mackenzies," Sandra said. "After all, there's the example of their little golden-haired prince to follow, isn't there? Into the arms of Mother Church, into loyalty to the Lord Protector, into pointing those distressingly effective bows the right way: "
Arminger felt the anger leave him. "Now that is something to consider." He felt thought replace the rage. "He does seem to be a charismatic little bastard, doesn't he? He had Ruffin and Ivo eating out of his hand, if you noticed-"
"I did."
"-and I think he even got your Tiphaine warmed up a bit, which is a miracle His Holiness Leo ought to canonize him for. He's got nerve, too, I'll grant him that."
"Very charismatic. Very intelligent too, from what the reports say. And a very good friend of Mathilda's."
Arminger's hand halted as he lifted the coffeepot from the spirit-stove on the tray. "You're not serious?"
"Well, you might give it a thought. That's rather speculative, but : "
"But any noble family Mathilda married into would be uncomfortably powerful, yes," he said. "Two sugar?"
He added the lumps and slid the coffee over the table, smiling as she sipped delicately. He'd always thought of himself as something of a wolf, or perhaps a tiger. By way of contrast his wife reminded him of something small and deadly and precise; a viper, for instance, or a stiletto, or some exotic highly evolved wasp.
"Ah, where would I be without you, my love?" he said affectionately.
"In very much the same place, but with only half the taxpayers," she said, smiling at him. "Once more we play bad cop-"
"-and worse cop," Arminger said, and laughed. "By God, now I'm looking forward to di
"And in the meantime: " She gri
He smiled and unbuckled his sword belt, moving forward. Just then a bell by the door to the suite rang; it was controlled by a cable from the guardroom two stories below. The rulers looked at each other; only a real emergency would make the officer of the day interrupt a private conference.
"What now?" Norman Arminger said, striding over to the speaking tube. "This had better be important, and not just more excuses from Alexi."