Well, you could call the Dúnedain a police force in peacetime, I suppose, but nobody has to use us and we don’t patrol streets and look for petty thieves, we chase real bandits and things like that. And Ian’s people, the Force, the redcoats, got their start about the same way. This National Police thing with one of them in every village still seems unnatural and I don’t like it.

“Your papers, miss, sir?” the policeman said courteously. “Just in?”

“Just in this morning,” Ritva said; it was around noon. “My brother can’t talk. Never could, nobody can tell why.”

She handed over the passportlike folders. The trooper checked through them rapidly, looking up to confirm the photographs; duplicating those quickly without attracting attention had been the most difficult part of the help Woburn and St. Hilda’s had given them. Luckily Woburn was a district magistrate, and the monastery had a photographic section as part of its high school. There was a central record, and . . .

We’re fucked if he goes to the trouble of checking it, but that would take a while anyway, she thought, as she smiled sweetly at the man.

He read them conscientiously. They stated that Jane and Jacob Conway had been adopted by a couple of Woburn’s retainers after being found wandering emaciated and alone in the winter of the second Change Year. That was towards the tail end of the utter chaos, when such things were still common even in areas of high survival like Iowa. It would account for Ian’s muteness too. People scarred by their experiences in the terrible years were common enough, and would be for another generation.

“This is all in order. Please remember that the rules have to be tighter in a city with so many people living together.”

“See you, Charlie,” he added to the innkeeper.

“See you, Johnny,” the man replied.

Ian and Ritva dismounted, and Charlie casually went on: “Impressive, those bones, aren’t they?”

“Mammoth, Mr. Gleam,” Ritva said.

That was the primitive sign-countersign they’d arranged; besides being a business partner of Woburn’s, Charlie Gleam had a sister who was a member of St. Hilda’s, and Woburn had foreseen the need for a quiet channel into the capital years ago.

Gleam bustled them into the courtyard, with just enough care for the retainers of an important man but not enough to make anyone wonder why two nondescript—

Well, unusually and strikingly good-looking but otherwise nondescript.