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"I'm afraid I have only a little of the old language," he said, and his wife gave a wry smile.
Eilir winked at him from behind the man's back. And we're not actually Nu-menoreans, she seemed to be saying. But it's fun, so why not?
Turning back, he caught a twinkle in Astrid's eye; you could never be quite sure: and he remembered King Charles and the smock frocks and Morris dancing. Perhaps it was a seeking after reassurance, given the terrible shock of the Change and its aftermath.
The younger Ms. Maldonado unfolded a map and a sheaf of notes. She looked the part; she might have stepped out of a tavern in Gibraltar, in fact, with that creamy olive skin and lush figure, the pouting lower lip Astrid elbowed him in the side, and he gri
"This is the layout of Ath castle; the barracks, the i
"Excellent," Astrid said. "You must have good sources inside the castle: no, don't tell me, I don't need to know."
Estella Maldonado shrugged interestingly, with something oddly wry in her smile. "Sources very close to the top," she said.
"Hmmm. We could come in from the west," Hordle said, tracing one thick finger over the paper. "Around this big lake-"
"Hag Lake," Estella supplied. "People seldom go there, particularly this early in the year. It's said to be haunted by a hag who cursed a band of Eaters after the Change-"
Castle of Ath/Hag Lake
Tualatin Valley, Oregon
April 15th, 2008/Change Year 10
"I just want you to find me charming and wise;
I just want you to find me somewhere inside-"
Tiphaine let the tune die, leaning back against the pillows with a calf over her knee, idly strumming the lute, watching Delia sew for a moment before she spoke: "You know, sweetie, your dress sense is a lot like Lady Sandra's. At least, you pick the same sort of stuff for me that she used to tell me to wear when I was in the Household. Black with white and gold accents for me, brown and russet and silver for Kat-Kat had dark hair and fair skin and blue eyes, like you."
Bright morning light streamed in through the narrow eastern window; sunrise and sunset were the best-lit times in the tower bedchamber. The air was cool and fresh, made more so by the sprays of cherry blossom in vases on tables and mantelpiece and the headboard of the bed.
Delia replied as her fingers moved deftly with needle and thread and fine cambric linen: "So, what's she really like? Lady Sandra, I mean?" she asked, holding the fabric up. "Besides having good taste in clothes. I brought her some hot rolls once, that my mother baked, when the consort was visiting Montinore Manor. I was really nervous, I was just fourteen then, and she said thank you very nicely. I thought she was wonderful."
Lucky you didn't meet her husband, then, Tiphaine thought, surprised at the surge of protective anger she felt. Hey, I guess I really do like her a lot.
The girl continued: "Is she really sinister and cruel and evil, the way the stories say?"
Tiphaine reached over and took a stem of raw asparagus from a bowl by the table that also held the first snowpeas of the season, and crunched on it, savoring the fresh, intense, nutty-green flavor, like eating springtime, or what she imagined fresh grass tasted like to a horse. She looked at the file of accounts tossed aside on the bedcover; they kept saying you're in the nobility now, tra-la, anyway; that didn't make them less boring but it did help.
"Sinister? Yup, in spades. But I wouldn't say cruel, exactly," Tiphaine said thoughtfully. "She's certainly pretty evil, though."
She tuned the lute and played a trickle of notes. Now, how to sum up Lady Sandra: slither of minor key, plangent, fading to something soft and wild: you couldn't really get fingering complex enough. A harpsichord might be better for it.
Delia considered the loose-sleeved linen shirt critically, bit off a thread and stuck her needle in the pincushion. "There!"
She rose from the chair beside the swept and empty hearth and handed the shirt to Tiphaine. The design around the neck and down the seam of the sleeves intertwined the letters PPA and the new arms of Ath, the black and gold and silver stitching neat and precise.
"Did she treat you and your friend badly?" the younger woman went on, turning to one of the cupboards as if to hide the flash in her eyes. "Is that how you know she's evil?"
Tiphaine smiled at the indignation in her tone as she set down the instrument and bunched the linen. "Nope!" she said through the fabric.
Then, as she pulled it down, laced up the three-quarter opening in front, buttoned the cuffs and tucked the tail into the new black doeskin riding breeches she was wearing: "She took me and Kat in, protected us from everyone, got us training and education that nobody else would have. Taught us plenty herself, too. Being around Lady Sandra sort of forces your wits along, like starting this asparagus early under glass frames."
Delia smiled over her shoulder as she sorted through the clothes with quick, skilled fingers. "Then she's really a nice person underneath, like you."
"Oh, I'm pretty evil too, sweetie. I'm just nice to you, which isn't the same thing at all."
Delia laughed; so did Tiphaine. Though she's laughing because she thinks I'm teasing, and I'm laughing because I'm not.
"If she's so evil, why did you work for her?" the seamstress said.
"Well, since I'm evil too, it sort of makes sense: "
Delia made a rude gesture with two fingers and stuck out her tongue. Tiphaine went on, more seriously: "It's my duty; she's my liege-lady, and I owe her, big-time, so honor requires it. Plus in this world we've got you're either on top of the heap or on the bottom, and I prefer to be the one on-"
She stopped: Delia was looking at her with an exaggerated i
"Stop that!" Tiphaine said, laughing in earnest now. "I am not that bossy in bed!"
She threw a stem of asparagus; the girl caught it and ate it, then tossed back the thigh-length sleeveless jerkin she'd picked out for the seigneur of Ath. It was black-dyed fawnskin, even slighter and more supple than doe-leather, finished like soft suede and lined with thin silk; the delta and V of her arms was done on the front in gold and silver thread, with a mandarin collar closed by a gold button. Tiphaine pulled it on and tugged it into place, swung her legs over the side of the bed to buckle on her boots, slung the lute over her back on its ribbon and walked over to the floor-length mirror.
"Ohhh, not bad," she said, and tossed back her shoulder-length hair, still slightly damp from the shower. "Not bad at all."
"You are one babelicious chick-magnet, Tiphaine d'Ath," Delia said, with a chuckle. "And that outfit looks very sinister and: andyrowgenerus?"
"Androgynous," she supplied, turning and preening slightly. "And no it doesn't. I never was boyish, even at fourteen, just athletic."
To herself: She's so smart I forget she can't read very well, sometimes. I must do something about that. Formal education for people below the Associate level wasn't illegal, just sort of seriously frowned on except for bright children picked for the Church. Nobody would really mind with a miller's daughter, though. It wasn't as if she was a peon; the family trade required literacy and arithmetic. So would supervising the domain's cloth-making enterprise.
The seamstress-weaver nodded critically, circling behind her, examining the clothes with professional skill and tugging down a hem, then went on with a thoughtful finger tapping at her jaw: "Well, it looks nice and sinister and evil, which I suppose is good, since you say you're evil and all. And it does so look andyer-iogenous to me. I mean, nobody could mistake that gorgeous ass for a guy's, but you could bounce a rose noble off it, and the way the jerkin sets off your shoulders and legs against the tuck of your waist and the bosom-"