“Yes, my lord, it did. You can imagine how I felt about it. You’re getting help earlier; on the other hand, it’s an actual bite. Be cautious.”

Ermentrude said thoughtfully, “You went to a pious wisewoman, and she sent you to Bethany to the Sisters . . . and then you sought a spiritual patron to protect you against the evils of the CUT?”

Tiphaine smiled slightly. Evidently I’m keeping things general efficiently while also getting across the essentials they do need to know.

“Yes. As I said, I’ve never been particularly pious. But I found a real expert to . . . guide my meditations. One I trusted implicitly. And I had quite a, ummm, change of heart.”

MONTINORE MANOR, BARONY ATH
TUALATIN COUNTY, PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
WILLAMETTE VALLEY
(FORMERLY WESTERN OREGON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
AUGUST 15, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD

It was late by the time Tiphaine d’Ath and Delia de Stafford waved good-bye to their guests from the verandah of the manor house, a warm summer’s night with bright stars and a great near-full moon rising over the forested Coast Range a little to the west, full of the scents of cut grass and roses and honeysuckle and a faint tinge of woodsmoke and fir sap. The steel wheels of the black carriage crunched on the crushed rock of the driveway, and then the lanterns at its rear faded down the long road that glittered white beneath the moon, flickering as they passed behind the wayside oaks. The lance heads of the escort swayed after them, until it all faded into the night. Moths battered against the big silver-framed lights above, and the wind moved quietly in the trees.

“My lady?” the house steward asked.

“Leave us,” Tiphaine said.

“That will be all, Terrin, for the night,” Lady Delia de Stafford added gently, with a smile. “And tell Goodwife Catrain that the Lord Chancellor Conrad said he’d weigh twice what he does if she ran the kitchens at Castle Odell, and the Lady Regent added that she had never eaten better slowcooked spring lamb, even in Todenangst or Portland.”

Tiphaine added a slight sideways jerk of the head. Young Terrin—his uncle-predecessor had retired last year—bowed and motioned the other servants away with his white wand and followed them.

And Delia managed to get all the ladies-in-waiting and pages and assorted highborn suchlike out of the house for the night, one way or another, without even offending them. A seldom-repeated miracle. Here I am, overlord of Ath in my own right, land and woods and water and villages and manors and a thousand families over whom I have the Low, Middle and High Justice, and I actually had more privacy when I was living in a two-bedroom apartment with my single-parent mom. Mind you, the wealth and power and land and so forth go a long way to compensate. Still.