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Jones' eyebrows went up. "That's going to take some selling if you want Corvallis in on it," he said. "Extraterritoriality, didn't they call it? I can hear the lawyers now, screaming about how we've only just got the rule of law back and this would mean foreigners with the right of high justice on our own soil, and what if they decide some farmer out hunting is an outlaw and chop him? Hell, these days the goddamned shysters complain when we string a bandit up, out on patrol; I hoped they'd die out with the Change, but no luck, they're like cockroaches. And the Faculty Senate squeezes the pe
Signe leaned forward. "Some traders from here are already hiring the Dunedain," she said. "For escort work as far south as Reading, and east over the Cascades into the Bend country and as far as Boise, as escorts. They can be sure they won't get robbed by their own guards that way, and that the Rangers know their business, even if they keep name-dropping in Sindarin and striking poses like a Hildebrandt cover illustration. Being reliable means they get top dollar."
"Which merchants, exactly?" Jones asked.
She gave names; the Corvallan's eyebrows went higher still.
"Well," he said, "maybe we can do something along those lines. It might be a good idea to start with that. It's not likely to put backs up the way the railroad and Arminger will."
Havel rose and nodded. "Talk to you again later, then. Give our regards to Nancy and the kids."
One of the house staff they'd brought down from Larsdalen came in after the Corvallan had left. "Lua
"Thanks, Jolene," Signe said, and patted her mouth to hide a delicate yawn. "I'm bushed. Time to turn in."
"I'm sure," Lua
Mike Havel snaffled a three-quarters-full bottle of pinot gris and two glasses off the di
Riding and sword work do wonders for a woman's figure, he mused happily. Who'da thunk it?
"What's that in aid of?" Signe asked, looking over her shoulder.
"I was remembering the first time I really noticed your ass," he said. "When you were climbing into my Piper Chieftain, Change Day, remember? Those hip-hugger jeans you had on: man!"
She snorted in mock indignation, sky blue eyes alight. "I remember thinking you were a rude, crude jerk and were probably looking at my butt," she said. "And I was right, wasn't-hey!"
She yelped and jumped. Havel waggled eyebrows and fingers, leering. "I've got a license now, alskling. And the bedroom's that way."
"I was right!" she said, and put an arm around his waist as they came up to the landing. "On all three counts."
South Corvallis, Fi
January 11th, 2008/Change Year 9
"I miss Luther," Juniper Mackenzie said quietly as she walked with the farm's master, looking to where her wagon stood beneath an oak.
It was nearly sunset under a sky the color of wet concrete, with spatters of rain now and then, feeling cold-as if it wanted to be snow, but didn't quite have the nerve. She wore a hooded gray winter cloak of wool woven with the grease still in, and her host had a rain-slicker over a homemade parka. The damp chill made her tuck her hands under her plaid; the air held the earthy smell of wet soil from a field of winter wheat beyond the pasture, and woodsmoke from the houses. Drops spattered on the puddles the wind ruffled, and gravel crunched under their shoes.
"Seeing it there takes me back. Before the Change I'd come every year just before the County Fair started up Corvallis way, and pick up the wagon and horses, and they were always spotless and shining. I think he kept Cagney and Lacey more for the fun of it than for what I could afford to pay to board them."
Her wagon was the classic barrel-shaped Gypsy home on wheels with two small windows in the sides and a stovepipe chimney through the curved roof, meant to be drawn by a pair of draught-beasts. It was still very useful for traveling, although the bright orange-red triangle for "slow vehicle" on the back was no longer very relevant: Two big Percherons had hauled it here across the Valley from the Clan's territory to just south of Corvallis; they were the offspring of her old mares, and right now they were in one of the Fi
Edward Fi
And this was the first place De
"He was a friend," she replied simply, remembering the weathered smiling face, tough as an old root. She brushed at an eye with the back of her hand; that might have been a drop from the slow, light drizzle, or it might not.
The approach to the Fi
"I remember when I showed up on Luther's doorstep the night of the Change. I was still trying to get my mind around the concept-I knew what had happened, but my gut didn't want to believe it, you see-and I wondered if anyone would ever deliver mail to that again," she said.
Edward Fi
He was in his early fifties now, a middle-sized man with iron gray hair and weathered skin and hazel eyes, his build a compromise between his father's lean height and his mother's stocky body; he'd left the farm out of high school, spent twenty years in the Air Force, and never wanted to go back except for visits. Old Luther had thought he'd be the last farmer in the Fi
"The old man came in that very next day, wobbling along on some kid's bicycle, and got me and Gert and the kids, and Susan and her husband and her daughter, and herded us back out here, wouldn't take no for an answer and drove us until we nearly dropped. We'd all be dead if he hadn't."
Juniper nodded, shivering slightly. Salem had attracted refugees beyond count, certainly beyond the ability of the hapless state government to feed, and it was in those camps that unstoppable disease had broken out a few months after the Change-cholera, typhus and in the end plague, the Black Death itself. The swift oblivion brought by the pneumonic form had been a mercy for those doomed to starve, but then it had spread through all that remained of the Pacific Northwest, save for areas like hers where rigid quarantine, hoarded streptomycin and the Luck of the Lady had kept it out. Corvallis itself had suffered gruesomely despite its best efforts.
She shrugged. "I told him what I thought the Change was when we showed up that first night. He believed us, but he never said a word about me leaving with my wagon and horses, useful as they'd have been. Just gave me breakfast and Godspeed."
The avenue of big maples leading to the farmhouse was the same as well, though winter-bare now rather than budding into spring; Ted's great-great-great-grandfather had planted them in the 1850s, to remind him of New England, after coming in over the Oregon Trail. So was the big, rambling white-painted frame house that first pioneer Fi