Barony Dawson, up on our border with the Dominion of Drumheller. Not to mention our border with trackless wilderness stretching to the Arctic Circle. Yes, she met Felipe while she was a lady-in-waiting at court just before the war started. Her parents were locals who’d taken over Dawson before we arrived and decided getting a title and giving Norman a smooch on the hand were a better bargain than trying to fight us. They did well in that war with the Drumhellers.

Sandra had always encouraged marriages between distant fiefs and lordly families of different backgrounds, to keep the PPA’s elite united. In fact, it was one reason why noble houses were strongly encouraged—required, practically speaking—to send some of their scions to Portland and Todenangst and the university at Forest Grove for a few years to mingle with their peers of the same ages.

The abbess spoke, unexpectedly; she’d been silent except when something relevant to her Order’s area of operation had come up, and she and her attendant had been dining sparely on the salad and the excellent local bread, drinking water rather than the equally excellent local wines.

“The Lady Countess fails to note that most of those cattle were donated to our clinics and the public soup kitchens we and the regular clergy have established for the displaced,” she said.

I don’t think that’s brown-nosing, she really likes her, Tiphaine decided. Evidently Ermentrude takes her duties seriously.

A lord’s wife was supposed to be the one who organized welfare measures in the lord’s fief; it was a real and demanding job, if done properly. Unofficially she was also supposed to be the voice whispering in his ear that tempered justice with mercy. Delia certainly worked hard at both in Ath and Forest Grove.

The plates were cleared, and then the servants set out platters of pastries and pots of monstrously expensive real coffee, moderately expensive sugar made from locally grown beets, and thick cream and decanters of brandy and discreetly retired. Tiphaine approved as she bit into an apricot tart. Far too many people assumed that servants didn’t have ears, though Sandra had never made that mistake, and had any number of them on her clandestine payroll. Everyone looked up as she rapped a knife against a wineglass.

“All right, my lords and ladies, goodmen and goodwomen.”

Public speaking had always been something that she loathed, but she was fairly good at it by now.

“I’m going to say a few words for all of you, and then I’m afraid there will be a private consultation with your lord and his barons and war-captains. I’m absolutely sure that all of you are loyal, but it’s a simple fact that the more widely information is spread the more likely it is to leak.”