“Besides, I’m planning on directing the levy of County Odell, not fighting with my own hands,” he pointed out. “Not unless I have to. Worry about Érard and Thierry more, they’ll be at the head of their men-at-arms. And Ogier is at the reckless age.”

From the haunted look in her eyes, Lady Valentinne had been thinking along the same lines. Conrad paused to glance out the west-facing windows in their Gothic tracery; he’d be looking down on the rolling orchards and fields of the Hood River Valley, off to Mt. Hood’s snow peak, towering dreamlike and huge and distant.

What’s he thinking? Sandra mused. Of how we fought and worked to build this new world? Of what we were, and are, and what we might have been if the Change hadn’t come? Or just that it’s a beautiful day?

Then he bowed them out into the other room, and extended a hand; his wife rested her fingers on the back of his, and they followed. He smiled at his children, as they gravely bowed or curtsied.

“Kiss your sisters and make your devoir to your lady mother, boys,” he said, thumping their shoulders as they straightened and grinned back at him. “We have a war to fight. And you girls give me a kiss as well, eh?”

They did, and then the whole assemblage trooped down to the courtyard. The Castellan was there, with an older nobleman—

Lord Akers, Baron de Parkdale, Sandra’s mind supplied. Lamed in the Count’s service back when we were doing the first salvage run on Seattle. Son down with the Three Tribes, helping patrol against the enemy occupation forces in the CORA territories. I should mention that.

There was some ceremony; Lord Ramón passed over the white baton of his office to Lord Akers, who would command the skeleton garrison of oldsters, the halt, the lame and those really too young to take the field; the castle chaplain blessed everyone, though doubtless they’d already had morning Mass; and Lady Valentinne bound a favor on her husband’s arm, a ribbon she’d woven from flax grown in her herb garden, prepared with her own hands. Her daughters did the same, and for their brothers as well, except for young Melisant, who shyly showed them a book-sized triptych of St. Michael she’d painted in a stiff, glowingly sincere style. She’d dedicate that for them in the Cathedral and burn candles before it until they returned.

At last Conrad stood pulling on his gauntlets, ready to hand her up into the carriage and swing into the saddle of his own traveling rouncy. He chuckled as he slapped fist into opposite hand on each side to settle the leather-palmed metal gloves.

“What’s the joke?” she asked.

“That even if . . . that whatever happens now, I’m a lucky man. Lucky in my wife, my children . . . lucky in my whole life. Thanks, Sandra.”