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thought
. Before the Quest returned with the High King and the Sword . . . very bad.
    “We won the decisive battle at the Horse Heaven Hills, and Rudi killed Martin Thurston
     to put the brandied cherry on the whipped cream,” Tiphaine said in a cool even voice,
     wine-cup between her long fingers. “That leads to . . . premature relaxation. Mistaking
are winning
for
having won
.”
    “Last year the enemy
were winning
, and look what happened to
them.
The Prophet isn’t dead yet! Are these people
stupid
?” Lioncel burst out. “My lady,” he added hastily.
    “Some of them are. The rest . . . just arrogant and shortsighted and obsessed with
     who’s getting precedence. And in love with their own supreme awesomeness, particularly
     since it was a classic chivalric bull-at-a-gate charge with the lance that finished
     off the battle, like something out of a
chanson
. They tend to forget the rest.”
    Lioncel looked down at his glass. He’d always loved the songs and still did, and the
     great charge
had
been like one of the
chansons
about Arthur or Charlemagne and their paladins come to life.
    When eight thousand lances crested the ridge in a blaze of steel and plumes and rearing
     destriers . . . and then the oliphants screamed the charge
à l’outrance . . .
    It would be a thing of pride for the rest of his life to have taken part, even in
     a junior squire’s place behind the line . . . but he’d seen enough of real war now
     to realize that the troubadours tended to dwell on a very narrow part of it.
    And to leave out things like what a man looks like after a conroi’s worth of barded
     destriers have galloped over him. Or maybe it was a man
and
a horse to start with, I couldn’t tell for sure in a single glance.
    Tiphaine raised one pale brow, as if she was following his thoughts.
    “When we were desperate, politics got damped down,” she said. “Now, not so much.”
    “Yes, my lady,” Lioncel said. He thought for a moment, then: “Still, it’s better to
     have the problems of victory than those of defeat.”
    She gave a thin small smile. “True. You’re learning, boy.”
    And high politics is a
lot
less boring than classes in feudal law,
he thought.
    Then she handed him the vellum folio that the Lord Chancellor had given her.
    “Your lady mother will be handling most of this, but give me your take.”
    He picked it up and read. The snowy material of split lambskin smoothed with pumice
     and lime was reserved for the most important documents, ones that went into the permanent
     record for reference and had lots of brightly illuminated capitals. The text was bilingual
     in English and Law French, which he could follow after a fashion, even done in the
     distinctive
littera parisiensis
Fraktur typeface of the Chancellery of the Association. It included a map and references
     to the cadastral land survey.
    The familiar forms leapt out at him; every nobleman took a keen interest in land grants.
     There was going to be a new entry in the next edition of
Fiefs of the Portland Protective Association: Tenants in Chief, Vassals, Vavasours
     and Fiefs-minor in Sergeantry.
    His eyebrows went up and he stopped himself from whistling softly with a conscious
     effort at the acreage listed.
    The signatures were
Conradius Odeliae Comes, Dominus Cancellarius Consociationis Defensivae Portlandensis
and
Mathilda, Dei Gratia Princeps Regina Montivalae et Domina Defensor Consociationis
     Defensivae Portlandensis
, complete with all three privy seals in red wax over ribbons.
    That translated as Conrad, Count of Odell, Lord Chancellor of the Portland Protective
     Association and Mathilda, by the Grace of God—
    And marriage to Rudi Mackenzie, Artos the First, of course.
    —High Queen of Montival and Lady Protector—
    That in her own hereditary right.
    —of the PPA.
    “That’s . . . that’s a
very generous
fief you’ve been granted, my lady. Much bigger than the Barony of Ath!