Scared as hell and hoping this means they’re saved, Tiphaine thought behind her impassive face; de Aguirre waved back cheerfully. It may, people. Or it may mean you’re fucked. Time will tell.

Walla Walla had been low-built before the Change, most of the buildings one- or two-story brick and frame. Afterwards there had been a lot of infilling of vacant ground as was usual in walled towns and quite a few half-timber second stories, with workshops on the ground floor and families living over it. And far more churches and the little roadside shrines than you saw in most of the Association territories, and things like guild houses and public baths and so forth. Though they’d kept most of the tall shade trees and obviously the sewers and water supply were still working.

But the ambience would have warmed the cockles of Norman Arminger’s black heart, she thought. You have to hand it to him, his notions actually worked under modern conditions. Even he couldn’t have pulled it all off if they didn’t.

Every smithy and carpenter’s and leatherworker’s and tailor’s shop was spilling over with work as the city prepared to stand siege, masters and journeymen at their benches and anvils, apprentices dashing about playing fetch-and-carry knave; furnaces cast draughts of hotter air into the already warm streets; there was a sweet smell of cut wood and a musky one of glue and leather; seamstresses and tailors bent over their treadle-worked sewing machines amid a whining hum. Some workers paused to wave or bow, but she saw one man completely oblivious to the aristocrats’ passing as he tapped hobnails into the sole of a marching boot.

“Now, he’s got the right attitude,” she said, and the Count and Forest Grove laughed agreement.

It wasn’t all cheers for the banners of Ath and Stafford. Here and there a priest or layman scowled at Tiphaine; one friar actually turned his back. Tiphaine shrugged with a slight clatter of pauldron against breastplate.

Being universally loved was never my ambition, she thought. Which is a good thing because I’ve never had a prayer of getting it. Delia and the kids love me; a few people like me; and everyone else respects, which is to say, fears me.

Half the rooftops were spotted with cloths covered in turn with small objects, and small children sitting perched among them with switches to keep off birds and insects. There was a heavy sweetish smell she recognized, like a jam factory.

Drying fruit and preserves being put up inside, Tiphaine thought. And tomatoes and whatnot drying too. And everyone with an oven making double-baked service biscuit.

Though soldiers used unofficial names for the hardtack ration, dog biscuit was the least scatological. De Aguirre noted her glance as a child stood up and waved the switch he’d been using.