“That,” Tiphaine said, “was a High Seeker out of Corwin. You don’t really need the red robe to recognize them once they get into action; and if you kill them . . . well, you kill the man that was. But the . . . whatever . . . lingers, even stronger, for a few moments. Be flattered, my lord; the enemy have paid you a great compliment.”
Her face was glacier-calm; inwardly she was cursing herself for overconfidence. Her little trap had worked perfectly . . . against normal assassins. It had been only marginally acceptable at what had shown up, and that only because the main effort had happened to hit here. If the Seeker had come after her—
“The High King had a similar experience on his quest,” she said. “And Lady Juniper a little east of here, though she was better prepared.”
Then she looked at the palm, stopping the chirurgeon for a second. “This was a bite?”
“He’d have had the thumb off in another moment, but someone hit him on the head with a war hammer.”
“That would be what popped out the eye. Well, my lord, if you’re going to be taking my advice from now on, after it’s dressed I’d send for the Mother Superior.”
The doctor gave her an offended stare. She glanced back at him and he opened his mouth, closed it, finished his work and left with a deep bow to join the others working on the casualties.
Felipe’s face changed as he followed her thought.
No, he’s not a genius as a field commander, but he’s not stupid.
“My lady, my lord,” he said. “I think we need to consult.”
Rigobert’s squires removed his armor as the Count’s did his, and then they walked after him as he went, limping slightly. Their path led farther into the family quarters; when they stopped at a door that looked as if it had a solid steel core so did the reinforced guard detail. When the door closed behind them the noiseless whuff and the abrupt silence confirmed her suspicions; she blessed his parents’ paranoia. The room within was probably his wife’s, from the decorations, which included a big oil painting of a snowbound landscape realistic enough to make Tiphaine shiver a little at the black pines shedding wisps of ice crystals. Certainly his wife was in the chamber, dressed in a thick night-robe trimmed with marten fur. The only windows were narrow and thickly barred, though open to the air. She started up, reached for his hand, and then stopped at the bandage.
“I’m fine,” he said.
They embraced a little cautiously, for his bruises and injuries and her pregnancy, and he kept the bandaged left hand well clear of her. Ermentrude followed the words with close attention as he spoke, then curtsied to Tiphaine, and again to Rigobert.
“Please, be seated, my lady, my lord,” she said, gracious but pale. “Refreshments?”
Felipe grinned at her, a tired expression. “I think we could all use a stiff brandy, my beloved,” he said.
“Not for me,” she said, and touched the slight swell of her stomach for a moment. “But how I wish I could.”
She did the honors, poured herself a cordial, and they all sat around a table that bore some sewing gear and a copy of Sense and Sensibility with a tooled leather cover and a silk ribbon marking a place. It rested on another with the title, Birds of North America.
You never knew everything another human being. Tiphaine sipped at the brandy, which was excellent, not quite as smooth as the pre-Change salvage Sandra preferred, but demonstrably on the same road. Though at present raw hooch distilled from potatoes by peasants would have been welcome.
“You said that I should send for the Mother Superior of the house of the Sisters of Charity here,” Felipe said, and raised his injured hand. “I presume not for their medical skills, excellent as those are?”
“No,” Tiphaine said. “We are contending with . . . I think the expression is principalities and powers, my lord. And I’m not a superstitious person by natural inclination, as you may have heard.”
He’d probably heard scandalized whispers that she was the next thing to an atheist, which, until fairly recently, would have been absolutely correct.
Not that I’m a good Catholic now either!
“Not the archbishop?” Ermentrude said curiously, but she sounded curious about Tiphaine’s reasons rather than disagreeing with the judgment, from the tone.
“No. I’m sure he’s a pious and learned man”—which took care of the formalities—“but what you need right now are certain . . . personal qualities. An archbishop is inevitably something of a politician and that is not what’s required.”
Felipe and his wife exchanged a glance, and he went on.
“Very well, my lady Grand Constable, I will do as you recommend, and light candles and pray to St. James, the patron of my House. Could you tell me exactly what we’re facing? I know in general terms that the Church has denounced the CUT as diabolists and done everything but proclaim a Crusade . . . they’d need His Holiness for that, of course, and Badia is so far away . . . but could you give me some details? It would be very much appreciated.”
Tiphaine hesitated; she was operating at the limits of her discretion here, and Sandra had always preferred need-to-know. On the other hand . . .
I’ll edit things as I go along, just give him the gist. Certainly I’ll take out the personal bits! And I’ll be vague on exactly who helped me out. But he does need to know; the war effort requires that he be brought up to speed. Plus I think Ermentrude is his closest adviser. And unlike their men-at-arms, I think they can keep secrets.
“I was in charge of the Mary Liu matter,” she said.
“Dowager Baroness Liu? Lord Odard de Gervais’ mother?” Felipe said. “She was arrested for treason, wasn’t she? I’d heard she was under house arrest at Fen House. But there was a rumor she died . . .”
“Yes. That wasn’t simply a case of treason. What happened after her arrest has a bearing on your wound and what needs to be done to make sure it heals. The King had such a hurt on his quest from an arrow, and I did last spring, and now you. That May I rode to Fen House—”
INTERLACHEN PRISON
THE NEW FOREST, CROWN DEMESNE
(FORMERLY NORTHERN OREGON)
PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
MAY 28, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD
It was the dawn of a fine spring day when Tiphaine d’Ath rode out of the East Gate of Portland, taking the carefully maintained Banfield north to the I-205 interchange, towards the Columbia.
If anyone had been ill-advised enough to ask where she was going or why, she would have jerked her head back towards her squires and the mounted varlets carrying nets and boar spears and the half a dozen shaggy slothounds panting and padding in their wake. The dark green tunic and trews and shirt she wore, and the peaked Montero hat with a partridge feather in the livery badge would bear that out. It was well known that the Baroness of Ath had the rare and valued privilege of hunting in the Crown Preserves of New Forest and Government Island.
New Forest had once been Forest Park and Metro Portland’s outer suburbs, before the firestorms and the plagues and then the Lord Protector’s spearmen had emptied them.
Government Island to the east was still Government Island; the government had changed . . . but not the restricted status. They passed through the new agricultural zone quickly. Truck gardens and specialty orchards had been planted where once houses had crowded cheek by jowl.
Once off the old highways, Tiphaine relaxed a bit. Trees arched over Airport Way for a while. Then they opened out to reveal shaggy, intensely green meadow thick with blooming thickets of purple lilac and wild roses gone feral into impenetrable tangles and making the air heavy with sweetness. Then a stand of young garry oaks and black walnuts planted by the Crown’s foresters, thirty or forty feet high, with here and there the snag of a scorched brick wall, or a reedy pond where a basement had been, and then self-sown woods ranging from the tall poplar trees and copper beeches of some park or suburb to tangled saplings po
king their way through the monstrous barbed chevaux-de-frise of blackberry vines around a chimney. A generation’s rapid growth in this moist mild climate had drawn a haze across the past, as if it were trying to turn the Change into something in a story or a song or a picture in an illuminated book.
Now and then a taller building poked through, a green mound overrun with vines, but most of those had been torn down for their materials in the program that had rebuilt Portland and sown the land with castles. It had been policy to clear these areas first. Now they helped feed and fuel the Crown city of Portland and provided hunting for its lords.
Practical, and I think Norman wanted to wipe out the remains of a world he hated. Maybe one man in a hundred thousand welcomed the Change, knowing full well what it was and what it would do. And they were the ones who did best.
The sounds of life were thick—the air full of northbound wings, murmurous with bees, squirrels chattering and scolding, now and then the slap of a beaver’s tail, or a glimpse of a raccoon. Once an elk bounded across the roadway, and she saw the tracks of mule deer, whitetails, antelope and feral cattle and bison and the churned patches where wild boar had fed, besides smaller game innumerable. There were wolf and bear and cougar here too, and sometimes tiger wandered in for a while from the mountains or the river swamps, though the predators were fewer and wary.
Like me, she thought. I’m rare and wary, all right. And I still don’t like this area. It’s even better hunting ground than Barony Ath’s share of the Coast Range forests, but . . .
In her lands in the Tualatin Valley you could pretend the Change had happened centuries ago, that it was a legend. Most people preferred that, and she did too. She had been young then, after all, still flexible, able to get on with her life. Well over half of it had been lived since then.
But Portland was where she’d been born, and lived all her life until the Change. That was long ago, but every so often something around here would jog her memory—the precise silhouette of Mt. Hood’s white cone over some trees—and the ghosts of buildings and cars and people would return in her mind’s eye.
Though it is good hunting ground. Most animals like the edge of a forest better than the depths, and this is all edge. When Heuradys is an old lady dandling her grandchildren, it’ll be like Sherwood and the roots will have ground most of the ruins into the dirt.
Sandra Arminger did a little genteel hawking now and then for form’s sake, or rode to hounds in the sense that she sat on a small gentle horse for an hour or so while other people chased the game, and then she went home. She’d also been known to remark that most hunting was far too much like wallowing in the mud with wild animals for her taste. The New Forest had other uses, though. Interlachen Prison was one, another of Norman Arminger’s mad whims.
He was an evil bastard, but not a stupid one, Tiphaine thought. And there was a touch of demented brilliance to him at times. Well, fairly often, in fact.
She’d always hated the man with excellent reason and she’d inwardly rejoiced when he was killed, along with the better part of a million other people, for all her loyal service to House Arminger. The only sorrow in it for her had been the grief Sandra had had to suffer through. But there were occasions when she thought she understood a little of what Sandra had seen in him—which was a disturbing thing in itself.
The forest thinned out a little as she approached the Columbia. The narrow spit of land known as Interlachen lay between Blue Lake and Fairview Lake, each sixty acres or better of shallow water. Wide channels had been dug at either end of the ridge to turn it into an island in the middle of a shallow marshy swale of water and reed beds and trees.
Guard towers loomed on both sides of the eastern channel; the western channel had two courses of walls. Tiphaine approved as her bona fides were scrupulously checked before the spear points and crossbows went up, and she was rowed across, with the horses and her party stashed in a barn on the shore. The Grand Constable leapt out of the boat onto the narrow bench and waited for the postern beside the main gates to be opened; it was all rather like a castle, but focused mainly inward rather than outward. The medium security prisoners were all in the main building closest to her, which had a conventional enough layout for a jail, plus the quarters of the Seneschal and the guards and their families. A large bare cobbled yard separated it from the maximum security block, known as Fen House. Norman had said the best place to hide a prison was inside a prison.
And laughed. It was a joke after his own heart.
Sir Stratson came to meet her and escorted her through the next few doors to the exercise yard and across it. He looked as mournful as ever. She couldn’t imagine living here and not going insane, though the garrison seemed contented enough. They had boating and fishing, and poaching she supposed, and their families cultivated gardens nearby. Otherwise . . .
“So, have there been any changes since you sent that dispatch, Sir Stratson?”
There was no need to specify which prisoner she was inquiring after.
“No, about the same since she came out of her fugue. She works on that white-work embroidery . . . there’s more than enough light in there most of the day. Eats, takes care of herself. She’s a boring prisoner, to be sure. Whines and frets, demands and puts on airs. Nothing out of the ordinary for one of the upper-upper caught out in their peculations.”
“And what does she remember of the missing months?”
“Nothing. She was truly annoyed about my cutting her hair. She doesn’t remember anything. And she doesn’t believe it, either. Thinks I drugged her like they did at Castle Gervais, won’t believe what month it really is even with the weather and all.”
Tiphaine studied the Warden as they waited for the guards to open the inner gates. He was a very fair-skinned man and only slightly taller than she, ruddy faced with a grizzled ring around the bald dome of his head, merging into a whiskers and a floppy mustache. His dark eyes were alert enough, but the long lines on his horsey face told of a weariness that wasn’t really physical.
He’s what, late forties, early fifties. He’d have been younger than I am now at the Change, she thought clinically. Younger than Delia is now, in fact, though a man grown. He didn’t go mad back when like so many, but my guess is he’s never forgotten or completely adapted and he’s been perfectly content to rusticate here, keeping watch and doing the occasional session of questioning and watching the grass grow and the birdies fly. Norman did know how to find the right man for the right job. It’s not just politics now, though. There’s a . . . call it religious aspect. I don’t know how he’ll react to that.
They entered the high security wing of the prison. Tiphaine grimaced.
Fen House. Norman’s joke.
Everyone assumed that Fen House was a house, as in house arrest. It helped keep the families quiet.
Not least by soothing their consciences. Most of them don’t like the ones who end up here, if only because they put their kin at risk by lethally pissing off the Crown. They can think they’re in comfortable detention and forget about them. No, Norman was not stupid.
She stood in a broad room, three stories tall. The south wall behind her was mostly seven clerestory windows each stretching up two of the three. Directly in front of her was a large clear space. Two half-levels were above. Each contained three cells. Bare bars left them completely open to sight. The men walking a measured beat on the archers’ walkways around the empty space at the second- and third-story levels could see every detail of each cell, and reach them with their crossbows at need. The place smelled of damp and lye soap; the spring light came in, but it didn’t seem to really rest on the cheerless brick and concrete.
Here on the ground floor under the cells was a kitchen with a batteredlooking woodstove and bunk beds slung for the guards. Once again, the line of sight was completely open. There were toilets and a urinal, tucked under the stairs that climbed the east and west walls. A quiet woman sat in the middle cell; a large sheet of white over her lap. Tiphaine frowne
d; Mary looked so ordinary.
Well, not every mad evil bitch has mad evil bitch written on her face.
“Has she said anything of a religious nature?”
Stratson looked uneasy. “I’m not much for religion, never was . . .”
Which is probably one reason he likes to be alone out here, Tiphaine thought. I can sympathize to a certain extent. This High Medieval Holy Church thing always grated on me, not to mention Delia, even after I got to pay antiPope Leo a visit.
“Is it relevant?” he continued. Then he sighed. “This Church Universal and Triumphant thing, right?”
“Right. Either she chose treason as a way to keep her family on what she thought was the winning side, or she actually converted. You have to understand people’s motives to predict what they’ll do.”
“England had considerable troubles that way, under the Tudors and Stuarts,” Stratson said, surprising her a little. “But, well, no. Nothing religious. She’s just a rather stupid woman . . . How old was she at the time of the Change?”
Tiphaine reflected. “Young. I think, maybe fourteen, not that much older than I was. I remember that the Regent was quite angry when Eddie Liu proposed. But the Protector insisted that it was a good match and a different time, so her age wasn’t so much an issue. It turned out to be a match made in heaven.”
Stratson surprised her again, this time by laughing. “Or in hell, if those two suited each other,” he said. At her look: “I met Eddie Liu . . . Eddie Scar-face . . . a few times, m’lady. He was here a fair bit in the Lord Protector’s day.”
Tiphaine nodded; even by the standards of the early years of the Protectorate Eddie had been ripe. And not as smart as he thought he was, though he’d had the elemental good sense not to presume on his close relationship with Norman to step on Sandra’s toes. Norman had always backed Sandra in the end, against anyone.
“Hopefully her children will turn out better,” Tiphaine said.
Stratson shook his head and sighed. “She’s never asked, never mentioned either of the younger ones, Yseult and Huon. Once in a while she’d say something about Odard, but it was just snippets. Nothing concrete.”
Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun Page 55