Dave Woburn gave an alarmed glance to either side by pure involuntary reflex, which said something about the United States of Boise under Martin Thurston. Mary raised a brow as he became conscious of what he’d done, and his jaw tightened as he saw it and took the implication.
“Fred’s also the one who didn’t sell his soul to demons,” Ritva added helpfully. “Well, pretty much demons. We’ve met them, too and it’s close enough.”
“Fred’s actually sort of a nice guy,” Mary put in. “He was on the Quest with us and we got to know him.”
“Pretty cute, too,” Ritva said. “This lovely cinnamon skin and a nice tight butt…Hey, Ian, I’m just recognizing it in a sort of abstract way! I’m at least serially monogamous. Plus Virginia would kill me.”
“Literally,” Mary said judiciously.
She liked Fred’s wife, Virginia, nee Kane, who was a Rancher’s daughter from the Powder River country in what had been Wyoming.
She’d joined the Quest as a refugee from the CUT’s seizure of her family’s ranch as they passed through to the Seven Council Fires territory, and she and Fred had fallen for each other. She was smart and loyal and brave, a superb horsewoman and a pretty good fighter, if not up to Ranger standards, and even well-educated for someone from the back of beyond; she’d read the Histories, though just as stories. You could forgive her habit of scalping people who really pissed her off as a local foible; after all, there were people who were all censorious and judgmental about Dúnedain customs too. And she always killed them before she scalped them, which showed a certain basic moral goodness. But…
“Virginia is sort of possessive about Fred,” she concluded. “And anything connected with Fred. And anything she thinks Fred should have.”
Like being General-President of Boise, she added mentally; that was another thing that would be tactless to say right now.
“She’s sort of…carnivorous,” Ritva said. “But in a good way.”
Dave Woburn shook his head as if trying to clear it and get his thoughts back on track, then winced.
“You want some willow-bark?” Mary said sympathetically. “I’ve been choked unconscious before…have you? No? It gives you a terrible headache every time, just really ugly. And a rumal totally puts your neck out of alignment.”
Even when it doesn’t kill you, she added to herself; it would be tactless to say that aloud, too. And even when you have to kill someone, it doesn’t cost anything to be polite.
“Ah…yes. Thanks. But did you have to drug me too?”
“The chloroform was safer than thumping your head-”
Knocking someone out meant a concussion, which was not like going to sleep, whatever some people thought or some stories said. She’d been knocked out several times herself, and once the headaches had lasted for weeks. You could just suddenly die from it, too, or end up a drooling idiot. If it happened too often you did end up as a drooling idiot.
“-and we couldn’t risk you yelling at the wrong moment if we ran into your friends.”
She passed him a paper twist of the powdered extract from her field-kit pouch. He threw the bitter stuff into his mouth, washed it down with a grimace and a drink of water, then doggedly started in on his honey-and-nut cake and sandwich. He probably wasn’t feeling very hungry, but she approved. If you weren’t actually nauseous, it was better to eat something after an experience like the one he’d gone through. The body burned up its reserves when it sensed approaching death and got ready to fight or run, and if you didn’t eat you risked a sort of shivering feeling and lethargy and weakness.
“So Jack went over to the enemy?” the Boisean said quietly.
He probably believed them; there wasn’t much point in a lie that he’d be able to check on so soon.
“Depends on who you think of as the enemy,” Ian put in. “I’m from the Dominion of Drumheller myself.”
The man nodded warily. “The Canucks, right. I’d heard you’d gotten into the war.”
“My parents were Canadians. There’s really no Canada now, any more than there is a United States. That’s why they chose the new names. Our Premier…Premier Mah…said it was because, mmmm, Nostalgia isn’t a politically productive emotion.”
“That’s…debatable.”
“But either way I don’t have a dog in this fight, except that we’re at war with the CUT. And hell, I’m from the Peace River part of Drumheller, north of that it’s trees and Indians all the way to the tundra and then it’s Eskimo and polar bears all the way to the Beaufort Sea. The only people my district have really fought since the Change are the PPA, when they took over the old British Columbia part of the district and split it up into fiefs and built castles on it. Would have taken the rest too, if we hadn’t punched them out of the idea.”
“Why are you here, then?”
“They’re part of Montival now, and we believe the new management when they say they don’t have big eyes. We’ve got no problem with Rudi…with High King Artos…as a neighbor.”
“You’re a monarchy too,” Woburn said a bit sourly.
“Theoretically. Very theoretically. We have contact with Greater Britain maybe once every three or four years. Thing is, we didn’t have any problem with you people in Boise as a neighbor, when Fred’s father was running things; he left us alone and we returned the favor. But we sure as shit have a problem with the Church Universal and Triumphant as a neighbor. Or anyone who carries water for them.”
“We don’t want a King,” the prisoner said tightly.
“You’d rather have a Prophet?” Ian said dryly. “A deranged one with evil incarnate tattooed on his forehead? Hey, mister, I was in Boise when we took your guy Martin’s wife out, and she said Martin is the Prophet’s puppet and that he killed his dad. In fact, when she started shouting that, he tried to kill her-personally shot a crossbow at her while she was holding his son in her arms.”
“That’s true?” Woburn whispered, with the gut-punched look of a man who’d been trying to avoid believing something he knew was so.
“Damn right it’s true; I was there; I saw it.”
“The…government release…said she’d been kidnapped.”
“She was begging us to get her out. And I was with her all the way back west and she said-”
Mary touched her sister on the shoulder and dropped back into Sindarin:
“I think we should leave him and Ian to talk, Sis. You were there too, but I think he’ll listen more to your fellah. Seeing as we’re Rudi’s sisters and all and might be biased.”
“Only my identical could be right as often as you are,” Ritva grumbled; neither of them were naturally the keep-quiet-and-wait types.
Woburn gave them a glance.
“Iston peded i phith i aníron, a nin ú-cheniathog,” Ritva said sweetly.
I can say what I want, and you can’t understand me, Mary thought/translated, and hid her grin again.
Damn, it’s good to be back with Sis for a while, she thought happily. When she settles down and the war’s over, we’ll really have to set up somewhere close to each other. We can babysit each other’s kids and swap cookies and stuff. Maybe we could found a new Ranger station somewhere…somewhere warm. Somewhere warm with good vineyards.