Mathilda’s feeling out what I can do and how well I can do it. Which is exactly what she’s supposed to do. And maybe Shawonda and Janie will be ladies-in-waiting with me . . . which would be fun, I think.

A whistle sounded. “Shift change!” the guildmistress of the weavers who was overseeing the whole affair called.

Everyone rose and filed out; Shawonda blew out her cheeks in relief as they went into the courtyard. The walls on either side gave shade, along with tall cottonwoods, and there was a garden—at least, a fountain in the center and several banks of flowers in raised beds between gravel walkway. The building was new since the Change; there hadn’t been anything in the little town suitable for meetings of craft and merchant guilds and the Lord Mayor and Council of Aldermen and the Confraternities.

The Crown had subsidized it, as part of the Regent’s Compassionate Feudalization program. She’d heard the High Queen sigh over that term; then she’d acknowledged that it was perfectly sensible to give people positive incentives to act the way you wanted them to. Hence the three stories of stuccoed ferroconcrete gothic tracery around them, with the arched gateway that gave out onto the main square. They all drank from the cool water that sprang down in streams from the central spindle of the fountain and shook out their hands, laughing.

Yseult exchanged curtsies with others of those streaming out of the workroom; going first and sinking deeper to ladies of higher rank, returning those of her inferiors, and nodding and smiling instead when it was a non-Associate woman. The Thurstons looked on, a little puzzled at the ritual of precedence; she thought that Shawonda at least sensed that she was seeing the steps of a dance she didn’t know.

Janie spoke as they walked back towards the castle; that took them along the town square, which was nearly packed, slowing their walk as they dodged around clumps of soldiers and clerks and clerics, craftsmen and peasants and laborers.

“You look a little like your brother,” the younger Thurston girl said. “I liked him a lot. He made me laugh and he was so . . . so elegant.”

The children’s trousers attracted some eyes, but there were enough folk from outside the Association present that it would pass even in this little backland quasi-city—she could see three Mackenzie kilts and a couple of Bearkiller outfits at a glance, plus someone who was probably from Corvallis. There were political reasons for them not to wholly adopt Association ways.

Her oblate’s robe was plain, but it got more deference and effort to let them through than an escort of crossbowmen might have, though she still had to navigate carefully around porters and the preoccupied. It took her a moment before she realized that Janie meant Odard, not Huon; time dulled grief, and it had been months now since she learned of his death.