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"Gravy, young sir?" she asked.
"Yes, please," he said; that went well with potatoes roasted in the dripping. He especially liked the scrunchy bit from the outside of the roast, and they'd used some sort of tingly hot sauce on the young pig.
Delia poured gravy from a ladle: and as she did, she drizzled it in a pattern he recognized, then poured more to hide it.
Rudi's eyes went wide with shock. "Thank you," he said, and cleared his throat, reaching for the salt shaker to cover his start.
The girl moved on. Matti looked around, still gri
"Oh, it's so good to be back with my own people, Rudi!" she said; then put a hand to her mouth. "Oh, I'm sorry.'"
"Nah, don't worry, Matti. You could handle it, so I guess I can."
Dessert was ice cream, and little round pastries baked with sliced brandied pears in their centers, the glazed flaky crusts around that drizzled with chopped hazelnuts. Rudi ate two and was thinking wistfully about another one-there was something in it that was really good and brought out the taste of the fruit, probably some sort of spice that wasn't available outside the Protectorate any more.
The rest of the company hadn't switched to water, except for the priest, and things were getting a bit more uproarious than they would at most Mackenzie gatherings, except on special occasions. Which this was, of course, but:
Occasional snatches of song came from the lower tables, and roaring choruses from outside in the courtyard. Tiphaine was moving with her usual feline grace, but it looked as if she had to think about it a little, and occasionally a feral grin broke through her calm front as she looked around.
Yeah, she's realizing it's really real, Rudi thought judiciously.
The priest asked a question. Tiphaine shrugged. "God knows," she said. "We got a good swift punch in the nose from the kilties and they killed the March-warden, and the damned Corvallans showed up to help the Bearkillers, I'll tell you that much. Whether we'll come back for a second round and try-"
Then she frowned and stopped and went on more carefully. "-is of course up to the Lord Protector, however his servants may have failed him."
To cover the remark she signed for more wine. Delia bent over her shoulder with the decanter, and whispered something in her ear as she did; the seigneur of Ath gave another startled snort of laughter and then smiled down into her glass before she replied, equally quiet-voiced, nodding as she did so.
Just then Mathilda's nurse waddled forward and bent to touch Tiphaine's shoulder. The blond woman with the pale eyes started, then stopped her hand moving towards her dagger.
"Oh, yes, you're right. Time for the children to get to bed. Party's getting a bit rough for the kiddies."
She stood, leaning one hand on the table. It took a minute and then a shout to produce a drop in the roar of noise, a valkyr call that might have cut through the noise on a battlefield; Ruffin's girlfriend was sitting on his lap now, feeding him bits of pastry between her lips, and things were less decorous elsewhere.
"To the Princess Mathilda, our Protector's heir!" she called, and a blast of cheers answered until the great concrete room rang with the echoes.
Mathilda rose and everyone bowed. That was the signal for all the youngsters to withdraw, some carried asleep by their mothers, and the priest left as well. Rudi rose and brushed himself with his napkin; the tunic he was wearing was some sort of silk stuff, and it caught crumbs something fierce. Bending that way let him catch what Tiphaine muttered to herself after the toast; he had very good ears.
"And I hope when it's her turn the snippy little bitch does a better job than her Daddy's doing right now."
Ooooh, he thought, as they turned past the guards and up the darkness of the spiral staircase. I bet she'll wish she hadn't said that, if she remembers it.
The two floors above the hall were the lord's private quarters; Mathilda was yawning and her nurse puffing and wheezing by the time they reached the fourth level just below the tower top, which held the guest suites. She waved good-bye to him as they went into their rooms; he heard a muffled squeal from hers that sounded like: a kitten!
His own chambers had tile over the concrete floor, wallpaper with a floral pattern, a nice-looking rug and a small fireplace currently banked but sending out comfortable warmth. There was also a little bathroom with a toilet and sink and a shower that had hot water if you asked an hour ahead of time; it struck him as a bit superfluous. The castle had a perfectly good bathhouse of the type Dun Juniper used, with shower and hot and cold plunges-two, in fact, one with fancy fixtures for the lord and his family and another in plain concrete for the commons.
The bedchamber also had a table of some shiny, carved wood with writing gear and a good lamp-lit right now-and cupboards and bookshelves, with stuff he and Matti had picked out before leaving Castle Todenangst. That included a lot of his favorites and a couple by Donan Coyle he'd never read himself- Sir Guilliame, and The West-Country Rising, which Sir Nigel had told him about. Someone had put a glass of milk and a plate of raisin-oatmeal cookies beside the big four-poster bed; he stretched and yawned and reminded himself to thank whoever did it.
People around here don't say thanks enough when someone does something nice for them, he thought. The Threefold Law is going to smack some of them good and hard, if they don't watch out. And over by the window:
His breath caught, and he walked over, stepping up on the footstool beneath it. The opening was narrow, too narrow for a grown man to get through even if the wall hadn't been four feet thick, and shaped like a V with its broad side in the room and the narrow part looking out-there was a hinged glass window, but it was an arrow-slit and nothing else. He could have gotten through it, with a little squeeze, but there was no point-it was nearly forty feet down onto sharpened steel, where the i
But in the brackets beside the window was a bow; his bow, neatly strapped in its leather carrying case, with his quiver and dirk, just the way they'd been when he was taken prisoner, when Aoife died.
He put his face against it, drawing in the familiar scent. Tears rolled down his face and onto the soft breyed leather. After a while they stopped, and he went into the bathroom to splash water on his face, and then to brush his teeth and undress. Then he took the candle and holder from beside the bed, lit the wick at the lamp, turned that out and carried the candlestick over to a bookshelf on the north face of the room.
He made a space for it after sketching the sign of Invocation, then knelt and watched the candle, making himself breathe until he really felt things-how tired and full he was, how the carpet was prickly under his feet, how people outside were singing as they danced around the bonfires; something like "Life is a lemon/And I want my money back," whatever that meant. His mind went quiet as he imagined ripples spreading in a pond, smoothing themselves out until there was only the glassy water, still and silent but with shapes moving in the depths.
After a while he began to chant himself, softly:
"Your Sun is gone and Your Moon will follow;
Mother-of-All, my thanks for the day given me to weave;
Father and Lord, for the strength to follow Your path-"
When he blew out the candle and got into the bed, he was asleep before he'd finished arranging the pillow.