The Given Sacrifice by S. M. Stirling Page B

Heaven Hills.
    “The knights pay war-tallage anyway,” Tiphaine said. “So it’s out of one pocket and
     into another. And the Crown owns a lot of the horse-breeding farms, plus we have insurance.
     The Counts aren’t complaining really seriously either, it’s just the usual moaning
     bitchery and mine-is-bigger bickering. Ah, the delights of feudalism.”
    “If you think this is bad, you should have seen what SCA politics were like before
     the Change. Truly murderous, at least as far as emotions went.”
    “Society politics? With so little at stake?” Tiphaine asked.
    “
Because
so little was at stake by modern standards. And notice that the Counts bitch to
me
,” Conrad said. “Not to you.”
    “They’re not as afraid you’ll kill them, my lord Chancellor. And you
are
a Count, of course.”
    “Nobody likes paying taxes . . . also of course. Wait until they see what Matti plans
     to levy on them for the reconstruction program,” Conrad said, using the familiar form
     of High Queen Mathilda’s name.
    Of course, he’s been around her since she was a baby,
Lioncel thought charitably.
And the older generation . . . well, you have to make allowances.
    The Count of Odell shuddered slightly for effect, then rubbed his hands together and
     grinned. “Sandra’s drawing up one of her little
lists
.”
    “You seem to be working well with Father Ignatius, by the way,” Tiphaine said.
    “He’s very capable,” Conrad Renfrew said, nodding and running a spade-shaped hand
     over his head, mostly naturally bald now rather than shaven as had been his custom
     for decades. “Even if he disapproves of me.”
    “Ignatius disapproves of me a lot more,” Tiphaine said. “I can’t say he’s my favorite
     person in all the world either, though he and Matti are close. And he’d
better
be able, with his job. He gives it everything he’s got, I grant him that.”
    The Knight-Brother was a Lord Chancellor too, but of the whole of the new High Kingdom
     of Montival. The warrior cleric had won great glory and ringing fame for himself and
     his Order of the Shield of St. Benedict at the High King’s side on the quest to Nantucket.
     He’d had a vision of the Virgin, too, which was awe-inspiring.
    But Their Majesties gave him high office for his talents,
Lioncel thought.
The Order are scholars as well as warriors.
    They’d also been leaders in the old wars . . . on the side
against
the Portland Protective Association, despite the Lord Protector’s championing of
     the Faith. Of course, technically the Protectorate had been in schism in those days;
     all contact with Rome had ceased on the day of the Change and for better than a decade
     after, and Norman Arminger had found a bishop willing to claim the Throne of St. Peter.
     Rome was a haunted ruin now, but a legitimately chosen Holy Father ruled the universal
     Church from the Umbrian city of Badia.
    Curiosity as to why the Lord Protector’s chosen antipope Leo had survived him by less
     than a month was
strongly discouraged
in the Association lands. Officially it was a heart attack, providentially easing
     the task of reunion.
    Unofficially, from things overheard at home, Lioncel knew Sandra Arminger had sent
     one Tiphaine d’Ath to untraceably turn him from a problem into a memory, though it
     had been before he was born. That sort of thing didn’t happen nearly as often nowadays. . . .
    Conrad laughed. “Though unlike me, Ignatius only has to bust his ass for the Crown
metaphorically
.”
    “That joke was funny the first seventeen times, Conrad,” she said in a coolly neutral
     voice. “And you started the minute the field medics told you what the problem was.”
    “Not until they got the morphine into me; before that I just screeched and swore.
     And I paid for that
joke
with months of my ass being
literally
in a sling and I’ll use it as often as I damned well please,” he said cheerfully.
     “Still, it’s all more fun than it was in the