Lord of Mountains: A Novel of the Change (32 page)

“Mom put us here because it makes you feel out of place and embarrasses me,” she said when they had surfaced, raising her arms to wring out her hair. “I love Mom, but her sense of humor…sometimes…”

Rudi watched the play of light on glistening skin and sweet curves for a moment with enjoyment, and the more so as a deep blush ran up from breasts to neck to face.

“Rudi!”

“I have permission from your God!” he said, grinning, letting his hands drift under the surface of the water. “Father Ignatius said so at the wedding!”

They’d been the closest of friends since they were ten; they’d sworn the
anamchara
oath then, despite their parents being at war, or possibly because of it. Her father had killed his, for that matter, and vice versa. Becoming lovers had made it even better, he found, but Mathilda was still a little shy of that.

Well,
he thought tolerantly, as she purred and wriggled a little.
Strange folk, Christians.

“Ummmmm…no. We’re due at dinner,” she said reluctantly. “Plus I’m
sore
. In strategic places.”

“Alas, we’re
both
sore, though if we’re
very careful…”

“Rudi!”

He laughed and swung out of the bath, extending a hand to help her do likewise, and they made use of the fluffy heated towels on each other instead, also carefully. The royal suite didn’t follow the rustic scheme of the rest of the Lodge; Sandra Arminger had had it redone to her specifications over two decades, and she regarded hunting as
wrestling in the dirt with animals
and skiing as
falling downhill at speed and on purpose
.

Her concept of healthy exercise was using a pre-Change instrument of torture known as a Steppercizer, which she subjected herself to doggedly but strictly in private and for a set number of hours every week. She tolerated and used the sports of the Protectorate’s nobility as part of her system of rule without pretending to like them or take them seriously.

And for fighting, she has people like me or d’Ath
, he thought ruefully.

Hence the cool beauty of glazed tile on the floor, pale mottled blue edged with flower patterns, the silvery marble sheathing on the walls and the incandescent-mantle gas lamps behind holders of silver fretwork. The windows showed a yellow glow from a few lanterns outside, and beyond that a steady drift of white flakes out of the dark sky.

“Brrr!” Rudi said. “I’m not sorry to have an honest excuse to be indoors this day, rather than trying to get a fire going in a winter bivouac.”

“It’s mud so far in the war-zone, not snow, mostly, but I know what you mean,” Mathilda said, coming up beside him and laying an arm around his waist. “I could even pity the Cutters. They’re a lot hungrier
than our men and we torched a lot of their baggage train here and there. Including the tents.”

“Threefold return, acushla. They stole a good deal and burned even more and now they’re in want. Let’s go eat, if the prospect of word-fencing with all those folk over the meal doesn’t put you off your feed.”

“No it doesn’t,” Mathilda said cheerfully, then winced a little as she smiled; she touched the left side of her face gingerly. “I was careless. He got me with the shield-boss; I should have had my visor down and my shield up. Thank St. Apollonia I didn’t lose any teeth, but I even have to
chew
carefully, dammit!”

“The fellow who did it is accounting for his own carelessness to the Guardians,” Rudi pointed out; she’d stabbed him up under the chin and into the brain before the blow fully landed.

He used one of the towels on her seal-brown locks, darker now with the water.

“There, that’s got your hair more-or-less dry.”

“The wimple will cover it,” she said, winding another around her mane. “There, that’ll help.”

The bedchamber was equally splendid, with a ceiling of fine plaster subtly carved in willow patterns and a cheerful fire crackling on the andirons in a hearth whose surround was of marble done in Venetian-Gothic fretwork. The pale décor was broken only by the vivid colors of the Portland rugs with their patterns like wildflower gardens in spring, and the air was subtly scented with sachets of dried lavender and roses and meadowsweet.

Not even a hair remained of the Regent’s cherished Persian long-haired cats, but the rooms somehow reminded him of them and made him feel a little rough-hewn and uncouth. His clothes had been laid out on the four-poster bed. He disliked attendance when he dressed, and fortunately Mackenzie formal gear could be donned without help beyond what Mathilda gave.

Linen drawers—it was a slander that clansmen went bare beneath the kilt—and long saffron-dyed linen shirt went on first; then the kilt, of course, in the green-brown-dull orange Mackenzie tartan; short, tight
green Montrose jacket with a double row of silver buttons; silver-buckled shoes and green knee-hose; brooch of curling silver-and-gold knotwork and turquoise at his shoulder pinning the tartan plaid wrapped across his torso and falling almost to his heel behind; more fancywork in wrought bone and precious metal on the hilt of his dirk on its tooled-leather belt and the little
sgian dhub
tucked into the left sock; badger-fur sporran…

“There,” she said, adjusting the flowing lace jabot at his throat and the cuffs of the same material. “You look splendid. In a barbaric backwoods way, of course.”

He grinned at her, took her head between his hands and kissed her between the eyebrows and on the tip of her nose and on her lips.

“And you will look splendid in your cotte-hardie,
mo chroi
. Though you’d look even better as you do now in nature’s garb, and a deal more comfortable.”

She stuck out her tongue again and donned her own underwear; then she rang a small bell. He sat in one of the spindly chairs—which took his solid somewhat-more-than-two-hundred-pounds without creaking—and crossed his arms. He wasn’t a bulky-built man, but he was two inches over six feet of long-limbed height, and not slender either. Except the way a leopard was.

“Welcome, mesdames,” Mathilda said to the three who came in answer. “What do you have ready, Yseult? You’ve got a very good eye.”

The young woman—she was just about seventeen—frowned and flushed a little.

“I think the pink, Your Majesty.”

“Pink?” Mathilda said dubiously.

“The deep wild-rose pink. Cotte-hardie and sideless surcotte both, the surcotte with your arms in silver and onyx. And that would go very well with the collar of plaques, the moonstones and white jade. The wimple…iron grey. Deep rose or maroon would do, but I would pick the grey, Your Majesty.

“Grey it is.”

“Jaine, why don’t you get started on Her Majesty’s hair, just a Dutch braid down the back I think, I showed you that. Finish it with the coral
bead snood, the bamboo coral, it’s that lovely pale gold color—and tourmalines for the headpiece, the watermelon tourmalines in electrum with the niello clasps.”

“That sounds lovely, Yseult. I put myself in your hands.”

His position let him watch while Jaine and Shawonda helped Yseult off with her towering double-horned headdress and they went to work; you
couldn’t
put on a cotte-hardie by yourself, any more than you could a suit of plate armor…to which it had other similarities. He was privately amused at the sight and at the rather odd Protectorate idea of rank. In most places where there were masters and servants, such would be servant’s work, albeit an upper servant’s. Among nobles, Associates pages and well-born girls such as these thought it an honor to serve so those of higher rank, for all that their families held estates and manors and castles themselves.

There’s a deal to be said for it, if you’re going to have a nobility at all,
he thought.

Mackenzies had no rank of that sort unless you counted the Chief, being in the main crofters and craftsfolk living in a rough equality.

The younger generation of lords up here are the better for learning to serve before they command, the Changelings, compared to their elders. Many of whom were not much more than bandits in fancy clothes, at seventh and last.

Aloud he said: “Your brother Huon won great honor for himself in the battle, Lady Yseult. And for House Liu.”

The girl blushed and curtsied without missing a beat as she arranged the complex forms of the silk wimple. Her father’s father’s heritage showed in the tilt of her eyes and the high cheekbones, but those eyes were a deep blue and the hair that fell beneath a maiden’s open wimple was thick and fine and corn-yellow. Three small scars on the left side of her face accentuated her comeliness rather than detracting from it.

“And the white suede leather belt and scabbard, I think
under
your sideless surcotte. The sword hangs more elegantly and drapes right along with the surcotte, Your Majesty,” Yseult said seriously.

Mathilda nodded soberly. It wasn’t a knight’s weapon; wearing one of those to a banquet would be a bit conspicuous. The eighteen-inch blade was quite functional, though, and probably just as effective at close quarters.
The Church Universal and Triumphant favored assassination of enemy leaders as a tactic, and they’d tried to kill both Rudi and Mathilda at banquets before. It was violently unlikely here…but not altogether impossible.

Fortunately dirk and
sgian dubh
are
expected
to be part of my formal dress,
Rudi thought. Aloud he went on:

“And you two and Fred together did still more, Jaine, Shawonda,” he said to the two younger maidens; they were sisters, dark-skinned and curly-haired, one a teenager and one just on the verge of it, looking a little unaccustomed to Associate dress. “There are thousands of your people alive today, walking upon the ridge of the world, who the Red Hag would have reaped upon the bloody field, if your brother had not been. And if you had not risked your lives to aid him.”

He tactfully didn’t mention their
other
brother Martin, for most of this war General-President of the United States of Boise, parricide, tyrant, and until his recent death at Rudi’s hands, a puppet of the Prophet Sethaz.

They nodded shyly, busy about their task but darting him glances now and then. Both had adapted to exile with the flexibility of youth; he thought they also found their stay in the PPA romantic, exotic and colorful, a welcome distraction from the civil war within their family that was rapidly spreading to their country as a whole.

They’d probably have adapted just as well in Sutterdown or Dun Juniper. Nor was he blind to the fact that he was tall, handsome, dashing and a great warrior with a charming smile…and for that matter, a good singing voice. Those were some of the assets that luck or the Powers had gifted to him. Schoolgirl crushes were among the results, sometimes amusing, sometimes annoying, sometimes both; and the Thurston sisters were basically too sensible to be annoying.

Though when we liberate Boise and get them back home, they’ll probably be glad to shed the cotte-hardie and wear pants or a housedress again! Hmmm. Nor would it do to make them appear too much like Associates in front of their own folk before then. Castles and fiefs don’t appeal, there…which is natural enough. They seem better from the tower looking down than the ground looking up, to most.

When they’d finished, the three young ladies-in-waiting stepped back, admiring their handiwork; Yseult took an extra moment to apply a very slight touch of a yellow-based face-cream, with rice powder over that, which disguised the color of the bruises a little. Then she looked at Mathilda and sighed with her hands clasped beneath her chin.

“Lovely, Your Majesty!”

Mathilda smiled at her, and for a moment her strong-boned, slightly irregular features were beautiful indeed.

“You’re far prettier than I’ll ever be, Yseult, no matter what the milliners and jewelers do, or even skilled ladies-in-waiting.”

“I respectfully disagree,” Rudi said, coming to his feet and waving off their curtsies as he swept back his plaid and settled it with a shrug of the shoulder.

“And now you might as well be off to visit your brother, Lady Yseult, and you two to see Fred before he’s locked up in the debate disguised as a meal we face; we’ll be up late, I think. Forbye I apologize that the State dinner is for principals only, but the food will be the same and the merriment better among the rest of the household.”

Jaine and Shawonda helped Yseult back on with her own headdress, and she sailed ahead of them—a metaphor the more fitting for the height and trailing gauze, a daring fashion statement that would make going through some doors awkward—and opened the double slab of worked teak starred with silver rosettes and birchwood inlay that closed the royal suite. Rudi picked up the sheathed Sword in his right hand; sometimes that still felt more natural, despite all the practice he’d put in since the wound made his right just a trifle slower and weaker. That let him extend his left arm, though, which was the courtesy side in the Protectorate. Mathilda tucked her hand through it.

In the corridor outside they were back in the ruder splendor of the Lodge proper, lit by alcohol lanterns that flickered slightly in the occasional draught, casting restless shadows on the high beams of the ceiling and fluttering the hangings; the score of archers standing along the walls with their longbows grounded before them seemed entirely in place, for all that the most of them were in Mackenzie gear. There were a trio of
dogs as well, the huge mastiff-wolf breed that the Clan often took to war for scouting and guard work, as silent and alert as the bowmen.

Rudi stopped for a moment before their commander. “And how’s your brother?” he said.

“Young Dickie will be fine, Chief,” Edain Aylward Mackenzie said.

He tapped his helmet with his bowstave. “The mace rang his bell good and proper and sprang a few ribs through his brigandine on the backstroke. For the rest, just a straight crack in the shinbone where the horse stepped on him. The healers say he’ll be ready to be shipped back to Dun Fairfax in a week or two. And then he can be fussed at by the mother and Tamar while he bangs about on crutches and swears as the little ones crawl over to chew his plaster cast and he listens to the father’s tales of
his
old wounds and lies right back at him. The which will be a pleasure to them both,” Edain finished with a smile.