“Well, even minions have to have lunch, and not all of them can go to their own hearths,” Juniper said. “And technically, this is the Silver Tower. The pizza is fine, but I have my suspicions about the hamburgers, that I do; they taste far too breadcrumbish for honesty sometimes.”
“OK, OK,” he said. “What floor is she on?”
“The seventh, usually, a bit more than halfway up, which is quite a climb, but-ah, here we are. The VIP treatment.”
At the rear wall, the one facing the interior of the donjon, was what looked like a small room lined with an openwork trellis of bronze wrought into vine leaves; Sir Joscelin bowed them into it, stepped back, closed a door of the same construction and pulled on a tasseled rope.
“Godspeed and good fortune, my lords, Lady Juniper.”
Somewhere far below a bell chimed faintly. Young Three Bears did start in alarm when the elevator lurched into motion beneath them, and a slow chiming music sounded from above. His father grinned-he undoubtedly hadn’t ridden in an elevator since March 17, 1998-and swore admiringly.
“All the comforts. How does this work?”
“Convicts on treadmills down in the dungeons turning the drums with the cables,” Juniper said, holding out one hand with the index finger pointing downward.
Then she rotated it towards the roof, where the icy music sounded over and over, like the chiming of Elven bridles on a midnight heath:
“Rigged to a carillon as well.”
“Well, fuck me, elevator music isn’t dead after all.”
The elevator didn’t travel very quickly, but it was much faster than trotting up ten flights of stairs. They went from one story to the next and the light outside brightened as narrow arrow-slits turned to real arched windows with glass panes in their stone traceries, albeit with steel shutters that could be barred and bolted.
A young woman was waiting to greet them at the seventh stop, dressed in a long embroidered cotehardie and a wimple of yellow silk bound with jeweled wire. The bright cloth complemented skin the color of chocolate truffles; she had an Associate’s jewel-hilted dagger at her woven gold belt as well as the usual rosary and embroidered pouch. Her narrow black eyes were somewhere between elaborately guileless and extremely shrewd, her delicately full features expressionless save for a bland smile of welcome.
“God give you good day, my lords from the east, my Lady Juniper,” she said, holding her skirts and sinking in a curtsy that let her trailing oversleeves touch the birch-and-maple parquet. “I shall bring you to the Lady Regent.”
“Wait, demoiselle,” Juniper said. “You’re. . Lady Jehane Jones, aren’t you? Lord Jabar’s youngest.”
“Yes, I have the honor to be the Count of Molalla’s daughter, my lady,” she said. “You and I have met only once, though. And also I have the honor to be amanuensis to the Lady Regent.”
Which meant she was something between confidential secretary and general gofer, a post of considerable importance if your principal was high on the totem pole. Juniper stopped herself from raising an eyebrow; it was the first time Sandra had allowed that job to go to one of the greater nobility. There must be a story there. The Regent liked using people she had some strong hold on, ones whose fortunes were linked to hers, not those with independent power bases and blood-links to the ruling houses of the Association.
The young noblewoman went on: “If you’ll follow me, my lords, my lady?”
She led them down a long corridor walled in pale marble streaked with darker gray. Arched windows to their left overlooked a roof-top garden surrounded by high walls grown with blossoming roses, and the interior wall held paintings-mostly Impressionists and Post-Impressionists along with some of the obligatory Pre-Raphaelites-or objets d’art in niches; a thirteenth-century Persian bowl showing warriors battling around a tower, an ancient savage-looking Shang Chinese mask in jade and gold, and more.
Sandra still has her salvage teams at work, I see, Juniper thought; they’d gotten as far as museums and galleries in San Diego.
“Bet the economic pyramid comes to a mighty sharp point here,” Red Leaf murmured in her ear; she nodded silently.
Knights of the Protector’s Guard crashed gauntleted fist to breastplate outside the last door, burnished cocobolo, teak and maple carved with scenes from Tennyson’s Idylls of the King. A tinkle and buzz of music from lute and rebec and hautboy from within died away as it swung noiselessly open.
“My dear Juniper,” Sandra Arminger said, rising to greet them.
She was small and neat and elegant and smooth in her white-and-gray cotehardie, and a pearl-and-platinum headdress that wasn’t quite a crown over an elaborately folded white silk wimple. It framed a round slightly plump middle-aged face, entirely ordinary. . until you looked into the brown eyes.
“And John Red Leaf and Rick Mat’o Yamni,” she said. “Hau Kola!”
The Presence Room in the Silver Tower emptied at the Regent’s gesture, with even her Persian cats being carried out protesting in baskets. Of the entourage there remained only Jehane and a tall blond woman in black surcoat, jerkin, hose and turned-down thigh-boots. The surcoat bore Sandra’s arms quartered with her own, sable, a delta or over a V argent. She stood behind Sandra’s chair with her left hand on the plain hilt of her longsword and her right turning a rose beneath her chin, watching with eyes the color of moonlit glaciers.
The room was uncluttered and elegantly spare, pale stone and tile, with the color mainly in the glowing rugs where tigers wound through thickets beside the Columbia Gorge and lords and ladies rode out with hawks on their wrists through fields of asphodel. Before she left one last lady-in-waiting set out a coffee service on the blond wood of the table, along with petits fours and nuts and dried fruits; the rich dark scent of the Kona Gold mixed with the lavender sachets and the floral scents from arched Venetian-gothic windows open on a little patio garden. They all sat silent for a moment, considering each other.
One thing clashed violently with the room’s decor. A long carved ceremonial pipe with a spray of eagle feathers along its underside rested in a wooden holder, along with bowls of sage, sweetgrass and tobacco and a brass censer of glowing coals.
Red Leaf’s brows went up as he saw it. “Why do I get the feeling that’s a sure-enough chanunpa, ah, Lady Sandra?”
“Why, it’s best to be prepared,” Sandra said with a slight smile. “In case we come to. . serious matters.”
Red Leaf returned the smile. “You know, Rudi struck me as a really smart guy. And he’s sure-enough death on two legs in a fight. But I got the impression your girl Mathilda was more subtle. Twisty.”
Sandra’s smile grew to reveal a dimple and she spread her hands palms up.
“Why, my lord Red Leaf, you say the nicest things!”
“And that’s real coffee, isn’t it? God, it’s been over twenty years!”
“By all means,” Sandra said.
Jehane put her shorthand pad aside for an instant and poured for all of them; Rick Three Bears gave her a shy smile and then struggled manfully to hide it; Juniper judged he was fascinated by her alien looks, as well as the fact that she was simply a very comely woman of a bit less than his own age. Black people apparently weren’t common on the High Plains. They weren’t all that common here in Montival either, but the twists and turns of post-Change politics had made them very well represented among the PPA’s nobility.
Red Leaf sipped the coffee and sighed; his son followed suit, winced, and poured in more cream and sugar. The elder Sioux rubbed his palms together.
“Let’s get to business, then.”
Sandra held up a hand. “Before we do, let’s make our own positions plain. I am the Lady Regent of the Portland Protective Association; I make the Association’s foreign policy in peace and war. Jehane is my personal amanuensis and has my full confidence; you may speak as if we were alone. This”-she indicated the tall woman behind her-“is my Grand Constable. . supreme commander. . Baroness Tiphaine d’Ath; she also enjoys my full confidence, and is here to give me any military advice I need. Lady Juniper you know. I represent the Association, which is about half of Montival. Lady Juniper is the Mackenzie, the Chief of the Clan and Name, and sufficiently influential that she can more or less commit the remaining powers as long as we don’t do anything too outrageous. Signe. . the Lady of the Bearkillers. . couldn’t be here, and Corvallis can’t get anything done without six days of debate. There are over a dozen minor states. . cities. . leagues. . tribes. . autonomous villages. . kibbutzim. . but as a matter of practical politics they’ll fall in with whatever the big four decide. Correct?”