And took the girl under an elegant, batlike wing. Better to be Sandra's girl ninja and hatchetwoman than starving or being eaten by cannibals or dying of plague in those camps around Salem, I suppose.

Together she and Conrad were the Regent's right hand, and a portion of the left.

Both sides exchanged equally courteous murmurs in a protocol that sounded ancient and was no older than the Change, cobbled together out of novels and remembered stories and playful Society anachronisms turned deadly serious. She knew Nigel found it all hilarious, despite his poker face; his family had come to England in the train of William the Conqueror.

Sandra clapped her hands twice. The minstrel fell silent with a final stroke of his fingers across the strings, and the buzz of conversation died.

"Thank you all for your company, my lords and ladies," she said. "And now, if you will forgive us…"

The heads-of-state and their closest advisers went through into an inner room with a table clad in white damask; servants set out a cold collation. Juniper took a chair near Sandra's and waited politely while Abbot Dmwoski of Mt. Angel spoke:

"Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive from Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen."

Half the people around the table joined in as he signed himself with the Cross; Eric Larsson the Bearkiller war-chief did, for example. His sister Signe Havel made the sign of the Hammer over her plate as Juniper spoke:

"Harvest Lord who dies for the ripened grain Corn Mother who births the fertile field Blessed be those who share this bounty;

And blessed the mortals who toiled with You

Their hands helping Earth to bring forth life."

"I'm Church of England, myself," Nigel Loring added dryly, and there was a general chuckle. "All this sincerity gives me hives, rather."

Dmwoski shook his finger at him. "And the Anglicans have returned to Holy Mother Church," he said in mock reproof.

"Taken it over, in fact, from all I've heard, Padre," the Englishman said. "After Alleyne and John and I left, of course."

Juniper bit into a sandwich, shaved ham and a sharp Tillamook cheese on a crusty roll. The bread was made from hard Eastern wheat, and fresh-almost warm-which meant the Regent had managed to drag a portable bake-oven along with her…

John Brown of Seffridge Ranch and the Central Oregon Ranchers' Association spoke first. "I suppose Juney's told you all, her son Rudi and the, ah, Princess Mathilda-"

He sounded a little uncomfortable using the title; terminology was different over east of the Cascades, away from the influence of the PPA and the Society for Creative Anachronism. They used the old-time words there, even if Sheriff and Rancher meant pretty much the same as Count and Baron these days.

"-and the others were at my place back around the beginnin' of May. Went East with my son Bob and some hands and a big herd of remounts I was selling to the Mormons, and got into a scrap with some Rovers. Haven't heard much of them since they headed East with the Deseret folk."

Tiphaine d'Ath cleared her throat and went straight to the reports of the Battle of Wendell, flashed westward by the chain of heliograph stations in the PPA that ran from castle tower to mountain outpost down the Columbia and over the whole of the Association's territories.

"And there are rumors that one or more of the late General Thurston's sons have been intriguing with the Church Universal and Triumphant."

"Place might as well be one of our baronies," Renfrew said with a gargoyle grin at the tale of treachery and sudden death.

"And the Princess Mathilda, Rudi, Mary and Ritva Havel, Baron Odard Liu and the others were definitely there-guests of General Thurston before then, for about a week, and with him during the battle," she continued, leaning back with a nod to the Regent.

" And a certain knight-brother of the Order of the Shield of St. Benedict was there with my daughter," Sandra added, giving Dmwoski a slow look. "A Father Ignatius, I believe."

The head of the Order's warrior-monks spread strong battered hands a little gnarled with the beginnings of arthritis.

"My lady, he did not conspire with Princess Mathilda when she planned to… ah… abscond."

Sandra snorted. "Plausible deniability, Your Eminence? Casuistry? Jesuitical casuistry?"

The prelate winced; the Benedictines and their militant post-Change offshoot had never been all that fond of the Society of Jesus. And Mt. Angel was independent, but tiny next to the PPA…

Sandra raised a that point to me finger and went on: "He certainly seems to have strongly suspected she and Odard were going to run off and join Rudi on his… his quest. And he just happened to turn up and join her when she absconded from Castle Odell."

The Count of Odell looked abashed. Dmwoski replied calmly:

"Yes, and now he is with her, with sword and counsel. Would you rather he was not there to help?"

"I do so hope his help doesn't include the last rites," Sandra said pleasantly. "And I would rather Mathilda was safely in Castle Todenangst or in the palace in Portland."

Her voice was calm; you needed to really know her to hear the deadly seriousness beneath.

"It was fated, probably," Astrid said.

Faces turned towards the Dunedain leaders. There were four; Astrid Larsson and her husband, Alleyne, Nigel's son by his long-dead English wife, Juniper's own eldest daughter, Eilir, and her man, John Hordle-universally known as Little John, from his massive size. The same ship had brought the two younger Englishmen and Sir Nigel himself to Oregon, back during the War…

Astrid was the senior, the one who'd founded the Rangers with her anamchara Eilir, when they were both teenagers. She was as tall as Tiphaine, and as lithe and slender-strong with a face framed in a long fall of white-blond hair; her great turquoise eyes were rimmed and veined with silver as well.

"Why fated?" someone asked.

"That brought the number up to nine," she said. "Nine is the… canonical… number for a Quest."

There was a moment of silence, as everyone wondered whether she was serious or not; you could hear the capital letters in her voice. Juniper didn't doubt it for a moment, and wouldn't have even without that momentary exalted look, as if she was being carried beyond the world of every day to the realm of legend and hero-tale.

I love Astrid like a daughter, and her children are a delight, but Nigel is right. She is, quite definitely, barking mad.

"And nine is a very practical number," Astrid went on. "Just enough to keep a good watch and be able to fight off a band of bandits or win a skirmish with a patrol, but not so many they stand out like an army to anyone looking."

But she's also quite functional, Juniper told herself. Though it's a good thing she's had Eilir around all these years. And Alleyne, to be sure, and John has enough common sense for three, as well as enough bulk.

"We know that Rudi and the others survived the battle," Juniper said. Thank You! she added silently, not for the first time.

Half the people around the table nodded. Dmowski looked troubled at participating in augury, even secondhand… and Sandra a little angry.

" Pardon me if I don't find hints seen in a pool of water too reassuring," she said dryly.

"My lady," Tiphaine said, and then whispered in her ear.

Sandra looked grudging, then nodded. Juniper met the Grand Constable's cool gray eyes for a moment, and then the younger woman looked away. Tiphaine had been there twelve years ago when Raven came to her son in the light of common day, and Juniper thought it had shaken the cynicism she'd learned from her mentor a little. Not Sandra's of course; that would take more than the Change itself.

"And the Prophet certainly seems to take the whole business of the Sword seriously," the Regent said thoughtfully. "Of course, he's likely as insane as his stepfather."