“We wanted to get as far from Norman Arminger as we could,” his mother said suddenly; she’d been looking a little abstracted. “Somewhere he’d never think of visiting. That was worth living in tents for a year, and dugouts for another, and the castle until this place was ready. Anything was worth getting out from under his eye. Court was a cesspit then. Dreadful man, absolutely dreadful. When I knew him in the Society I thought he was just an asshole, as we said then, but after the Change he blossomed into a monster.”

The other two nobles stiffened in alarm, looking around reflexively. Lady Roehis nibbled on a biscuit and smiled at them, irony and affection mixed.

“He’s dead,” the older woman said. “He’s long dead. Good riddance. And nothing would delight his evil heart more than knowing that fifteen years later he could still frighten people, ones who’d been children when he died. I think I’ll take a nap before we go up to the keep, dear.”

“Ah—” Ingolf said, as she nodded politely and left.

Mary spoke: “Lord Maugis, she’s perfectly right. I say it, and my husband and I are good friends of Princess . . . High Queen Mathilda. And here’s the others.”

Ingolf breathed a well-concealed sigh of relief; at least he thought it was, until he caught Mary’s sideways glance and smile.

“Captain Jaeger,” Maugis said.

Mark was with the other Richlander, but looking a bit shaken, almost certainly from memories of the fight surfacing. That happened after the insulating rage and fear burned out of your blood. It was worse when it happened at night when you were half asleep.

And the captured Boise commander. “And Captain Woburn . . . Rancher Woburn, I believe, too; your father is a Sheriff as well, isn’t he?” Maugis went on. “Please join me and my family for luncheon. As a Montivalan I say, let us put aside the war for a little; as a soldier, I say, welcome, comrade.”

Woburn looked as if he’d been having those night-thoughts too. It was worst of all when you’d lost, and were lying alone blaming yourself for it.

Jaeger filled half his plate with the potato salad and took a tankard of the beer; evidently Richland’s foodways bit deep. The Boisean ate as well, but kept silent; he was limping and had a couple of bandages and his left arm was in a sling, and no doubt he was hurting for his men. Ingolf sympathized, but he had business to do. Fortunately it was all stuff the Boisean already knew, or which he wouldn’t at all mind the enemy knowing if by some unlikely chance he got loose.

“I’m promoting you to Major, Jaeger.”

That got a blink and a smile, but not a big one; which said that Jaeger’s priorities were good.

Kohler thought he was sound, and Kohler was a good judge of men.