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The because I used up a lifetime's luck right there didn't have to be spoken. Juniper went on: "I hope you can come to the handfasting. It's open-house."
After a moment's wait while a woman bought two broilers and half a large, round cheese, Bob replied, "If we're not all dead by then, of course. I'll be voting, though: what was all that about a murder?"
"Knife work in the dark by the Protector's people," Juniper said grimly. "To shut their own man's mouth, whatever else you may have heard."
"About what I figured," Bob said. "Bastards. Good luck! I'll be voting for you, no doubt about that!"
Eilir stopped to order a dozen of the hams sent to the Mackenzie guesthouse for the Dunedain to take with them when they left town; Bob's knowledge of Sign was rudimentary, but enough for bargaining, which she did with cheerful ruthlessness. Then they bought mugs of mutton soup rich with barley and dried mushrooms at a stand by the road; Juniper looked up in surprise at a deep, accented voice ordering another.
"Not 'alf bad," Sam Aylward said, raising the steaming mug to his lips. He winked at her. "Congratulations, Lady, Sir Nigel."
Juniper touched her torc, then threw her arms around the stocky Englishman and hugged him hard-more symbolic than anything else, since he was wearing his brigandine.
"Thank you, my old friend!" she said. "Thank you, thank you for helping! It's the loveliest surprise present I've ever had."
A flush went up the thick, corded neck and square face. "Well, I hope I can do more than a little carpenter's work for you two," he said gruffly.
A bell rang, a slow, steady tolling. The crowds around the booths began to thin as people streamed westward, across Twenty-sixth Street and up the stairs to Gill Coliseum, where Corvallis held its public assemblies; many of the stallholders closed up and headed that way themselves. Juniper felt her stomach tighten, then forced it to relax as she drew a deep breath down to her diaphragm. There was no hurry; foreign dignitaries didn't have to hustle in, or elbow for a seat in the bleachers, either, though she remembered doing just that at basketball games before the Change. Instead she made herself drain the mug, and then use the spoon to hunt down the last barley around its bottom.
"Let's go," she said at last, after she set it down on the counter.
She looked across the street, where two lines of armored troops with glaives waited, making a line up the stairs and under the columned entrance.
It's just another entrance and just another stage, she told herself, taking another deep breath. And it's a performer you've always been.
Mike Havel sat. "Here we go," he muttered, the sound lost under the shuffle and rustle and whisper of the crowd seating itself likewise.
The interior of the coliseum was huge-it had been proudly hailed as the biggest basketball stadium west of the Rockies at its opening in 1949; when the seats were full they held over nine thousand, half of the adults in the whole territory of the city-state. Today there were less than half that, but the delegates voting proxies represented everyone. The western wall was mostly glass, letting in pale, cold light tinged with gray; concrete arches spa
He looked over at the Rangers and nodded in friendly fashion. Eilir gri
But I think I catch a hit of a glint in his eye. He likes people to underestimate him, that one.
A herald-or whatever they called them here-came out on the dais. Silence fell, and then she shouted: "All rise for the noble Faculty Senate!"
They all filed in, wearing their mortarboard hats and academic robes-the latter were fur-trimmed, and probably fairly comfortable in the vast unheated space that smelled of chill concrete and, very faintly, of locker room and disinfectant. Everyone did stand, including the foreign delegations. Havel looked casually over to the Portland Protective Association's envoys before they all sat down again. A couple of clerical nonentities in robes and tonsures with their pens and briefcases, plus the consul-Lord Carl Wythman, Baron Kramer, a dangerously smooth hard case whom he hoped to have the pleasure of hanging someday. And Sandra Arminger, looking as I-picked-your-pocket-and-you-never-knew-it satisfied with herself as she had when he saw her in April of the first Change Year, with her bodyguard Tiphaine Rutherton standing behind her.
And preparing a nasty surprise.
Signe opened her folder and smiled, very slightly, a closed curve of the lips. She was looking forward to this, and had a nasty surprise of her own in store. Calm-faced, Havel made a tsk sound within. His wife was an excellent fencer, but if she had a fault with the sword, it was relying too much on outsmarting her opponent. That worked: sometimes. Sometimes you had to remind her that the object was to ram a yard of sharpened leaf spring through someone, not leaving them blinking and rubbing their heads in amazement as you turned a double somersault in midair with a fiendish laugh and came down on both sides of them simultaneously.
I've got great confidence in her, he thought. The problem is, I've also got great confidence in Sandra over there: and she's years older and miles more experienced than my beloved better half. I'd never try to match wits with her. Smash her skull like a pumpkin, yes: get all subtle and wheels-within-wheels, no.
The President stood. "We are met to consider troubling matters relating to our relationships with our neighbors," he said. "Therefore-"
Havel let the words flow over him; mostly politician's chatter. His mouth quirked: his sister-in-law Astrid hadn't talked to him for a week when he'd told her why he stopped reading The Fellowship of the Ring.
She just hadn't wanted to hear that the Council of Elrond was a classic committee meeting, and a badly managed one at that.
Signe was taking in every word. When she tensed he stopped thinking about modifications he'd like to make in the Outfit's logistics train in the event of a full mobilization and focused once more.
The President of the Faculty Senate was looking at him; as far as appearances went Thomas Franks was a pleasant, balding old buffer in late middle age, and plump in a way you rarely saw anymore, but his eyes were extremely shrewd. Nobody who'd brought so many people alive through the Change and its aftermath could be stupid, to begin with, and he'd been uncomfortably sharp in any number of negotiations since.
"-and lay the foundations for a lasting peace," Franks finished. "Lady Sandra, you may speak."
"Let it please the noble Faculty Senate," she said. "The Portland Protective Association wishes for nothing but peace."
"Yeah," someone shouted from the audience. "A piece of this, a piece of that-"
"Silence there!" the Senate's presiding officer shouted. "Silence, or I'll have the Provost clear the room! We have free speech here!"
"Thank you, Mr. President. We've been beset by lawless attacks and raids from the so-called Clan Mackenzie and the groups in the Eola Hills known as the Bearkillers. They've even kidnapped my daughter, and held her a prisoner-yes, even here, in your city, a city ruled by law. And they've done murder here, taken a distinguished Associate of Portland and murdered him on your own soil!"