“It would be better if she did for a while yet. Her own obsessions will make her extremely loyal to the bearer of the Sword, you see. Which is to say, to the father of Mathilda’s children, and therefore loyal to his heirs, who will be Mathilda’s heirs and hence my heirs and Norman’s heirs; and with a little luck she’ll plant that deep in the Dúnedain cultural memory bank. And in her own children. After that it will be Mathilda’s worry, or that of her descendants, but they won’t be able to complain I didn’t do my job.”

Tiphaine’s lips curled upward very slightly. “As always you see farther than any of us, my lady.”

“It’s a moot point if we don’t win the next campaign, which Operation Lúthien might help with. And now let’s try to talk some sense into Conrad about strapping on a sword again at his age.”

“Not much chance, my lady.”

“Around five percent, if that, but one has to try.” A frown. “It’s annoying. I need Conrad as Chancellor. There’s nobody else who has the same precise combination of abilities and contacts and reputation, and who’s also absolutely reliable. His sons are too young to fill his shoes yet.”

And besides that, I would actually miss him, she thought but did not say.

The solar’s inner room opened off the stairwell, and it had a lived-in look of scattered books and pictures, a big embroidery frame for tapestries, a spinet and harp and lute, comfortable sofas and armchairs, a bowl of nuts on a table before the empty swept hearth with its bouquets of roses and dahlias. And it was full of the younger Renfrews. The Count of Odell’s elder sons were both in their twenties and blue-eyed like their father, one with lightstreaked brown hair and one with dark. They were taller than their father’s middling inches, but both were taking after his solid muscular build, which their suits of plate emphasized; the armor clattered as they took one knee before her on the glowing rug. Their younger brother Ogier was taller and lanky and just on the dark side of blond, green-eyed, and seventeen, with an unfortunate spray of acne across his cheeks. The age meant he still probably had a few years of squirehood to go, and also that he was growing restive with it.

He knelt gracefully in his half armor and thigh boots, sweeping off a roll-circled hat with a dangling liripipe tail. That involved transferring the two visored sallets he was carrying to the crook of his left arm. Sandra Arminger extended her hand for the kiss of homage, and to touch the proffered sword-hilts. She had to suppress a smile as Ogier provided a moment of unintended comedy, juggling the helmets and the blade to free a hand and blushing at the noise.