Prince of Outcasts (16 page)

And a noble's staff saw far less of the hard grind of labor that went with a peasant or craftsman's life. Positions in a great household were sought-after, as long as the master and his kin didn't have a reputation for bad temper.

Karl and Mathun could have made a good case for seats at the high
table, since their father was Bow-Captain of the High King's Archers, the premier guard regiment. Like the other Mackenzies, they looked perfectly content where they were, talking and chaffing with the manor staff and retainers and sampling the beer with the air of experts. Some other parts of Montival found the Protectorate's system of ranks childish—she inclined to that view herself sometimes—and some considered it intensely annoying, while a few held to the view that it was active wickedness.

Which in our grandparents' day it sometimes was,
she thought.
More to the point it often was when my mother's father was Lord Protector. But those were harder times, very hard indeed.

In their own more modern day most Mackenzies treated it as an amusing game, with which they would play along indulgently if it wasn't too much trouble. The more touchy-proud Associates found that provoking in a way that hatred wasn't. When someone hated you they were at least taking you seriously.

The food above the golden cellar wasn't the formal dishes you found at a High Court function either, for which she was thankful. Her father had said he'd had more success beating hostile armies than getting the palace cooks in Portland and Todenangst to stop putting so much of their efforts into making their dishes look like anything but what the makings actually were, from whipped-cream swans with goldenberry eyes to forcemeat pastries like oceangoing ships.

And the pity of it is that the Protectorate sets fashions in food; though it's good when they don't go berserk.

She knew that apart from a passion for asparagus in season Baroness d'Ath liked simple hearty fare, and would have been perfectly content with what the commons were getting here, but also didn't care enough about the matter to spend much thought on it. Countess Delia had always seen to the kitchen appointments, and
her
tastes tended to an elegant simplicity largely copied from Sandra Arminger, her original political patron.

They started with little half-moon-shaped fried dumplings of translucent dough filled with a mixture of scallions and minced lamb spiced with
garlic and rosemary, and a sauce of hot chilies spooned over it to taste. The soup was a clear beef broth with noodles, several varieties of mushrooms and small veal meatballs made with ricotta, and followed by a green salad garnished with walnuts and dressed with local oil and fruit vinegar. After that came Hungarian pheasant—they thrived on the rangelands and stubblefields around here—done in the Norman style with gently cooked apples, sweet onions, cider and cream until it was tender enough to come off the bone on the point of a fork. Their fried potatoes were elegantly cut in long shoestrings rather than chunks, and there were baked tomatoes stuffed with sweet peppers, mint, dill, and a little sharp sheep's-milk cheese, along with tender steamed brussels sprouts in a tart lemony butter sauce.

“Is this a local vintage?” Alan asked as the butler poured for the pheasant course and set out the tall gracefully-shaped decanters.

“By Dionysus Oeneus, no!” Heuradys said, sniffing and sipping. “Our vineyard here's still experimental. We donate most of it to the Church for communion wine, or for the lord's portion in village festivals on the estate. This is from Montinore Manor back on Barony Ath in the Tualatin. Most of our demesne there is vineyards.”

Órlaith took the scent: freshly-caramelized pear and a pleasant overtone of herbs, like walking through a spring hillside. She ate a forkful of the pheasant, then drank some of the wine. It had a hint of green apple and butterscotch and lime, which went well with the rich sweet savor of the bird, but there was a dry mineral quality that left the palate clear after a moment and ready for more.

“That's your 'forty-three Pinot Gris Reserve, isn't it?” she said; she recognized it well enough without a label.

“Yup, my liege. This one can stand quite a bit of aging. Well, quite a bit for a white, and it's a little tight right out of the bottle. Better decanted.”

Droyn poured himself another glass. “My lord my father is rather bitter about the Montinore vineyards, Rancher Thurston. They were famous before the Change, and are now. Even abroad.”

“They like our wines in Hawaii,” Heuradys agreed. “We have a contract
with Feldman and Sons for three thousand cases a year for that market. Though the Goat Killer alone knows what they do with it at blood temperature among the palm-trees and pineapples and breadfruit on Maui. Some of our reds would go well with pit-roasted pig, I suppose.”

Droyn finished his glass. “We've good vineyards in Molalla now, but it's a slow business.”

Heuradys winked at him. “Unless you poach a master-vintner from our winery with showers of gold,” she said.

“No, even then,” Droyn replied, and everyone laughed.

Alan broke one of the dinner rolls—fine crusty white manchet bread here—took a bite to clear his palate and sipped again.

“Very nice,” he said. “But truly, at Hali Lake we were mostly a beer-cider-and-whiskey ranch. Wine was for Sunday dinner, and from the co-ops around the capital . . . Boise City . . . at that.”

Heuradys laughed. “You haven't lived until you've drunken wine made by Mormons,” she said.

The Latter-day Saints didn't drink anything with alcohol, and there were a lot of them in Boise. For that matter they didn't drink coffee or tea, either, though that mattered much less in the modern world where both were exotic luxuries.

“Oh, that's not quite fair,” Órlaith said; not coming from a family with vineyards, she had no dog in that fight. “A lot of the Boisean wines are quite drinkable, whoever makes it.”

Suzie leaned forward from between her two taller companions. “Yeah, I hear you, Alan. Out on the
makol
we really didn't see wine very often at all. And that was from Iowa as often as not. I can taste that this is a lot better, but that's about it.”

Heuradys shuddered with deliberate theatricality. Órlaith laughed; that was a little bit of Montivallan chauvinism. True, Iowa was never going to rival the West Coast of the continent for wine. Their fat black earth was better for grain and livestock, which it produced in quantities both amazing and needful, given Iowa's enormous population and vast teeming cities. Des Moines alone had a hundred and fifty thousand
people, twice the size of the largest urban center in Montival and far and away bigger than any other in the stretch between Panama and Hudson's Bay. Iowa as a whole had as many people as it had before the Change or possibly even a little more, something very rare in the modern world.

She'd been there herself, as part of a Royal diplomatic visit a few years ago. And her mother and the Dowager Bosswoman there were friends from the time of the Quest.

“Mind you, back home a lot of the older big shots don't like anyone drinking firewater at all, not that that stops people, you know?” Suzie went on. “Sour old killjoys with their mouths pursed up like a cat's asshole, the way they talk you'd think White Buffalo Woman was whispering in their ears every damn day. Yeah, I hear it was a bad problem for our people before the Change, but that was then and most nowadays can handle it OK. Though what we drink for day-to-day is
airag
. I miss that, you just can't get it anywhere else.”

Faramir and Morfind looked interested. Órlaith and Heuradys kept their faces politely blank as they nodded. Órlaith had enjoyed her long stay with the Lakota in her seventeenth year immensely, for its own sake and because it had been one of the first where her parents had left her on her own.

Not that I didn't miss them, but it was . . . like growing up. Which back then I was wild to do.

Fermented mare's milk had
not
been one of the high points, though, even when served with superb grilled buffalo-hump steak after a hard day's ride; and it wasn't even a local tradition. A young Mongol had been studying range management at South Dakota State University when the Change struck, and had already been a close friend of Suzie's grandfather John Red Leaf. Red Leaf became one of the leaders of the renascent Lakota
tunwan
, and his friend Ulagan Chinua had become his right-hand man, married into the family and introduced quite a few of
his
native customs, which had worked well because they were so suited to tent-dwelling herders on a high cold steppe.
Airag
had been one of them, giving a nourishing and very mildly alcoholic drink to nomads many of
whom couldn't digest ordinary raw milk anyway. Órlaith had gotten used to it, more or less. Heuradys had simply refused to try it more than once.

“I envy you all,” Alan said. “I've always wanted to travel. Hali is beautiful, but . . .”

There was a slight silence; the reasons he and his mother and brother had been planted in the backlands and encouraged to stay there were political, and at a level that was still sensitive a full generation after his father's treason. Órlaith thought she detected a fair degree of sympathy for Alan among her friends, precisely because he'd been born after his father died. They'd all found themselves unwillingly entangled in their parents' feuds now and then.

“Oh, we've just started traveling too,” Faramir said. “Morfind and I were born in the Willamette, but we moved south when we were small, when our parents founded Stath Ingolf, and stayed there. It's beautiful and there's plenty to do, but it is the same old round of place and people.”

Which was how most people lived all their lives; without ever going more than a day or two's journey from their birthplace. Unless war or disaster struck, of course. But the well-born and warriors, often the same thing, moved around a good deal more in ordinary times.

“I've heard from Rangers—some pass through Hali—”

“Yes, there's a Stath in the Bitterroot country in Nakamtu these days,” Faramir said. “And we have an exchange program with the Scouts in the Mountains of Golden Stone. We've learned from them, and they from us.”

Alan nodded. “The ones I met say that it's customary for young Dúnedain to move around between Staths.”

“Oh, yes. The
Mincolasira
, we call it. The . . . time between, time of the gap, in the Common Tongue; the gap between being old enough to travel and fight, and settling down. You move around between Staths, and help with whatever they do and hone your skills, especially at places like Tawar-in-Mithril . . . Mithrilwood, where our rulers live. And you join expeditions—salvagers, caravan guards, explorers—or reinforce Staths that have fighting to do or need help getting established. We, Morfind and I, ah, we weren't quite ready.”

Morfind was usually more taciturn than her cousin, and blunter when she did speak: “Our parents didn't think we were old enough yet.”

“Our mothers weren't much older when they went on the Quest of the Lady's Sword,” Faramir said.

“And my father—Hîr Ingolf the Wanderer—left home when he was younger than us,” Morfind added. “He crossed the whole continent
three times
.”

That seemed to be a sore point, and she finished her wine at a gulp. Faramir was more philosophical, and smiled as he said:

“Uncle Ingolf's always saying he wants to imitate a barnacle on a rock, and that travel is overrated, mostly being uncomfortable and bored when you're not being chased by people trying to kill you, but he's
done
it.”

“Same here,” Suzie said. “Always wanted to travel, never got the chance until I, ah, sorta had to leave.”

Everyone knew her folk were nomads; she went on at their look of surprise:

“Yeah, we live in tents . . .
ger
, actually, some people call 'em yurts. Tipis are sorta for official stuff. And we move camp every couple of weeks in summer. But we move to the
same places
, mostly. Spring pasture, summer pasture, fall pasture, winter quarters . . . There's the buffalo hunts, and that's when the
guys
get to hunt and
we
butcher and scrape hides and make pemmican.”

“I thought you hunted?” Faramir said.

“Yeah, but I had to kick up a fuss and everyone looks at you funny. The festivals when everyone gets together for the ceremonies and meetings and dances are fun but it's the
same
everyone you met last time, except for some traders trying to sell you stuff. A lot of the time it's almost as boring as farming. Except for horse-stealing,
that's
fucking exciting but mostly girls don't get to do that either, which sucks, frankly. When the High King got me into the Crown Courier Corps I was happy as a colt in clover. Couriers get to go everywhere and see
everything
.”

She gave an elbow to the Dúnedain on each side of her. “And you meet people!”

The dessert was a tribute to Lady Delia's sweet tooth; layers of dense chocolate cake soaked in a clear light cherry brandy that had a faint overtaste of almonds, separated by layers of sweetened whipped cream and brandied cherries, frosted on the sides with chocolate and topped with more of the cherries and cream and chocolate shavings. Heuradys took a substantial wedge of it and began to chuckle again. When Droyn looked at her:

“My lady mother Mom One absolutely loves this stuff. Because, well,
Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte
.”

Órlaith forced herself not to choke on her piece. Heuradys had once told her that when they were both in their cups her birth mother had confessed with a giggle that she'd had her first experience of this cake when Tiphaine gave her one as a present on her nineteenth birthday. The cake had been presented when they were in bed, and ever since she'd associated it with piling one pleasure on another.