Tiphaine sighed; a disagreeable piece of work didn’t get any better for waiting herself. If things went quickly, she actually could do some hunting and get back to Portland in the evening, which would be good protective coloration.
“Open her door,” she said. “We need to have a chat.”
Mary looked up from her embroidery when the barred door opened and clanged to behind Tiphaine. She quickly looked down again.
“Good day, my lady.”
The Grand Constable studied the white-work; she’d lived with an expert needlewoman for fifteen years, and had an observant spectator’s grasp of it. She even appreciated it, though she’d rather eat toads than do it herself. There was no accounting for tastes; Delia actually liked being pregnant, for instance.
“That’s very neat work. Yseult mentioned it. Can I see it?”
Mary kept her gaze on the cloth for a few more seconds and then looked up.
“Yseult? How is she?”
Tiphaine nodded. “She’s in fosterage in a noble household, at a place where her status as your daughter won’t cause her trouble. Doing very well, from what I’ve heard, and well liked. Huon is still page to Lord Mollala. He was at the battle of Pendleton last year, running messages and so forth. Lord Chaka thinks well of him.”
“Last year! You mean last month!”
Tiphaine shook her head. “It’s been a long time. It’s almost June. You’ve been in some sort of a fugue state since your arrest for treason. Do you remember your brother coming to you in September, just after the battle? ”
Mary looked at her; there was something distinctly odd in her blue eyes, a desperation.
“You’re trying to drive me mad!”
“Drive you?” said Tiphaine dryly. “No, you were arrested when news came that Vinton failed to give the Princess to the CUT and your late brother did a bunk. As far as we know, Odard is still alive, still with the Princess and they are somewhere on the Great Plains. Take a look out the window and tell me if you see fall or late spring.”
Mary hesitated and then thrust the cloth into Tiphaine’s hands and walked to the window. She stood there for what seemed like a very long time, gripping the bars and pressing her face against them. When she turned her eyes were full of tears, and the marks of the iron were white on her skin.
“So long, so long. Where was I?”
“Well, here, in body, but your mind was wandering. That’s why Stratson had to cut your hair. It was getting badly snarled. I’d like to know where your mind wandered. According to the guards you kept saying something about hidden and eyes that couldn’t see.”
Mary shook her head and took back her embroidery and began to ply her needle.
“I couldn’t see Odard,” she said, in an almost conversational voice. “They promised I’d always be able to see him and I could and then he went away, and they couldn’t bring him back.”
“They?”
“He, the Priest. He said God would grant me this miracle and . . .”
Mary snapped her mouth shut. Tiphaine waited. Mary shot her a sly glance. “He said . . . that . . . he’d pray that Odard got his desire, to marry the Princess.”
Tiphaine frowned down at the woman. Something is off, she thought.
“And now you can see him?”
“Yes, he’s traveling with them, there was grass, so much grass, and buffalo, and fights. There’s a city, a great city, and a golden dome. I think he spent the winter hidden . . . But how? How did he escape the eye of the Sun?”
Tiphaine pondered the answer; the Cutters used a solar disk as one of their important symbols.
That’s data. Next dispatch we can compare the dates and see if they match. “Which priest told you this?”
“One from over the mountains. He was a true priest, not a schismatic like Pope Leo or the Mount Angel monks. He asked me to make a cloth for the altar of the Lord and promised me my prayers would be answered.”
Tiphaine looked at the cloth with its odd symbols. “Did he give you a pattern?”
“No. He put it in my head, as proof he could do miracles.”
Tiphaine nodded, taking a corner of the cloth and looking at it.
“You know,” she said in a conversational tone of voice, “that wasn’t a priest of Holy Mother Church. He was a Priest of the Church Universal and Triumphant out of Corwin.”
“What do I care, so long as I get my revenge for Eddie’s and Jason’s deaths? And my son will rule Oregon!”
Mary stuck the needle in her mouth and sucked it, a moment. She cast another of those sly looks upward and Tiphaine stared, frozen.
Her eyes were black, like windows into . . . not even emptiness. Tiphaine clenched her stomach muscles against a sudden wave of nausea. She blinked. Mary Liu was there, but somehow it wasn’t her. She tossed the cloth aside, and Mary’s hand darted out, jabbing the needle point at Tiphaine. Tiphaine jerked back and the point slid down the back of her right hand, brushing along it ever so gently.
“Hee, hee, hee,” giggled the thing that had been Mary Liu. “Bad cess to you and yours!”
Tiphaine walked over to the door and signaled it open. She turned back.
“Bad cess, bad cess, bad cess . . . You didn’t help Jason out of that cell before the Rangers killed him.”
As a matter of fact, they didn’t kill him. I did. Sandra wanted his mouth shut and the blame put elsewhere. But that was just damage control after he screwed the pooch with your little scheme to use the bandits to attack the Dúnedain. Despite specific orders not to do anything until we were ready to start the Protector’s War. Did you think you wanted Astrid Loring’s head more than I did, you stupid bitch? We weren’t ready. That screwup of yours may well be why Corvallis came in at the worst possible moment, why the Association lost and Norman died.
Tiphaine waited and watched the sitting woman with her idle needle. Slowly the eyes leached out and became blue again and she took up her needle and began the careful, neat, quick stitches of an expert. Tiphaine turned and went downstairs.
Did I actually just see that? Would it be more logical to assume I’m going crazy . . . no. I did just see that.
Then she looked at the sunlight; it was easy to see precisely how far the beams from the windows had moved across the bare floor.
“How long did I stand by the gate?” she asked.
Sir Stratson shook his head. “I didn’t time it, but at least seven or eight minutes. Thought you were thinking deeply, m’lady.”
Tiphaine scratched the back of her hand and looked down and cursed. A painful red welt ran from her wrist to the first knuckle.
How could that happen and I not feel it? And how could Mary Liu move faster than I could withdraw my hand? Something very odd is going on here.
“I think,” said Tiphaine, with elaborate calm. “That you’d better not go into the cell again, unless you put her out with laudanum in wine.”
“She did that?”
“Sucked a needle and tried to jab me with it. I didn’t think she’d managed to scratch me. I really, really, suggest that any physical contact be kept to a minimum. In fact, I order it.”
She met Stratson’s eyes. He looked . . .
Spooked, scared as hell, thought Tiphaine. Good, so am I.
A year and a little more peeled away. Tiphaine looked at her right hand, holding it up and moving the fingers, marveling at the precise articulation of it, the exquisite symmetry and action. Then she bunched it. The forearm ran smoothly into the lower part of the hand without much indentation at the wrist; a gymnast’s hand, or a swordswoman’s.
“There was . . . a problem with the hand, after that scratch?” Countess Ermentrude de Aguirre said carefully.
“Problem?” Tiphaine said. “Well, yes, your grace. The first problem was that I didn’t take it seriously enough at first.”
Rigobert poured himself another brandy. “You always were stubborn, my lady,” he said.
“If I weren’t stubborn, I’d have been dead before my four
teenth birthday,” Tiphaine said. “But in this case . . . yes, there was a downside. Fortunately I’m not stupid. I . . . went to see someone, you might say. In Bend.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CITY OF BEND
OFFICES OF THE PLODDING PONY EXPRESS COMPANY
CENTRAL OREGON RANCHERS ASSOCIATION TERRITORY
(FORMERLY CENTRAL OREGON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JUNE 3, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD
Bend is hot in the summer.
Tiphaine kept the spurt of laughter behind a bland facade. The fact that she nearly didn’t was a bad sign.
Bend is hot. I could just say, water is wet, she thought.
Her head buzzed. The joints of her body all ached as well. She’d felt a little like this with the flu once, when she was ten. Her mother had made her go to bed, and she’d missed school and hadn’t even been able to read, just lying there hurting.
“My lady?”
Armand ’s face. So like Kat’s. She shook her head. “Armand, get the horses taken care of. Set up camp with the rest of the Association forces. Have my tent placed next to whoever is in charge.”
“Sir César Obregón de Lafayette,” Armand said, alarm in his tone. “You’re here to—”
“Ream him out, yes. Later.”
That, she thought as things cleared, really wasn’t fair of me. But I have a little grudge to work off on the very puissant Sir César Obregón de Lafayette.
She lifted her helm a bit to feel fresher air on her sweat-sopped hair; it helped her aching head, too, for an instant, but she put it back on. In spite of the heat, she was wearing full plate; if you didn’t have your arms on it, that was about the best disguise anyone had ever invented. You couldn’t even really tell someone’s gender easily. She’d left off the sabatons and gauntlets, but wore dark suede gloves; and was sweating copiously into them.
“My lady, you’re not well!” Armand said.
She started to laugh, and then stopped herself. That would really convince him that she was off her head.
I am, she thought, which threatened more laughter. I am definitely not well. The will commanded the body; she’d learned that early, and Sandra’s schools had ground it home.
The strong grow stronger. The weak die.
“I know I’m not well, Armand,” she said, her voice lucid. “I’m going to get something done about it. This has to be confidential. Believe me, it has to be. Now cover for me. I’ll be in contact later.”
He nodded unwillingly, and stepped back. She slid the visor down and made her legs move; the bright sunlight dimmed to a slit, which helped a little, but it made the smell of sickness-sweat worse. She focused into the town past the grossly slack gate-guards, down the block, on the next street sign.
Walk a careful path.
It was a little like being drunk, but without the fun part. People tended to avoid her, perhaps because of the blank menace of the visor overlapping the bevoir. There were plenty of hostile looks, and occasionally a swaggering cowboy would spit on her shadow after she’d passed.
Present alliances or no, plenty of festering grudges remained. Raiding parties from Castle Odell had reached nearly this far, in the old wars. She’d been on a few of those herself.
I’m alone, she thought. And it hurts too much to enjoy it.
Pages, squires, tirewomen, men-at-arms, retainers and servants, there was no escaping them once you were a noble; doubly so as Grand Constable. Walking alone down a busy street wasn’t on her agenda very often.
Armand really wanted to stop me. I wonder if he thought about knocking me over the head? In his position, I certainly would have. I didn’t train him to blind obedience.
Her destination was north on Colorado Avenue, in the old industrial section. The bright summer sunlight made her squint, trying to read the street signs, lancing into her head. She’d visited the offices of the Plodding Pony Express several times before; always discreetly. She was fairly confident of finding it again. Given the burden of bad news from all fronts, she wanted to make sure that she wasn’t followed or have rumors spark along her back-trail.
I’m pretty sure she’s still here. And she’s probably at the warehouse. I hope she manages to think fast on her feet. Though, when has BD ever been less than quick on the uptake?
Tiphaine found her steps wandering a bit along the sidewalk. A cowboy reached out to shove her away, met her eyes through the slit of the visor, clearly rethought his actions, and swerved around her.
Blowing the cover of the Meeting’s spymistress would be a bad thing. A rumor that the Grand Constable has a magical wound! God’s wounds! But she got out of that infiltration mission in Pendleton back during the Great Cluster-Fuck. That took real ability. And she’s supposed to be good at . . . the sort of thing I’m dealing with. Christ, off to a witch doctor, literally.
And did I really swear God ’s wounds, like some kid brought up by Society retreads who took a nosedive into their personas at the Change and never came out again?
That was funny too; Sandra was a Society retread, and she had slipped into her Catherine-de-Medici-Eleanor-of-Aquitaine persona . . . or slipped out of her twentieth-century one, like a snake shedding its skin. Tiphaine paused to pant and controlled the impulse to laugh at the way her mind had used the oath. It was a warm day, but she was shivering, again, like a winter chill that got into your bones after riding all day through sleet and the campfire afterwards smoking and hissing.
I’m not going back to Montinore until I know I’m not dragging fecal matter along behind. Delia might be able to handle this, but I’m not risking her or the children. Whoever or Whatever is out there, give me a hand here!
She turned in at the gaping purple and teal sheet-metal doors of the “Plodding Pony” headquarters into a warm fug of smells with horse and mule the strongest. The huge warehouse was dark and spots danced before her eyes as they tried to adjust to a light level much less irritating than the clear high-altitude summer glare in Bend. She made her way back through the gloom, dodging packed cases on pallets, carts, straw bales and unidentified miscellaneous pieces sitting ready to trip her up. At the far back she could see some stairs, lit by a few dusty windows of ancient glass. Hopefully, the offices were up there.
“Can I help you?”
Tiphaine jumped and looked to her right. Someone snuck up on me without my noticing anything. I am sick. I am very sick.
“Oh!” said BD, coming out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a filthy rag. She was a weathered woman in her sixties, tough and thickset and moving as if she was still strong but creaked a bit. Tiphaine pushed up the visor and blinked in the non-light.
“Grand . . .”
She stopped at Tiphaine’s urgent gesture and said: “Well, well, well, what can I do for the nobility today?” BD’s voice was light but there was a bite in it. BD, Beatrize Dorothea, businesswoman, big wheel in the autonomous Kyklos villages, intelligence agent and enemy-become-ally of the Association. Witch.
“Little help with a problem shipping contaminated goods. Hoping you’ll be able to give me good advice. Someone in a kilt said you were the best for some sorts of problems.”
BD clicked her tongue and then waved Tiphaine to the side and ducked out a short door, down an alley, across a street and up some rickety stairs. The apartment was small and shabby, but comfortable and BD quickly drew the curtains over the window. The stairs left Tiphaine panting.
“What contamination?” she asked tersely. “It’s bad tradecraft for you to come and visit me like this.”
“I wouldn’t if it wasn’t urgent and I couldn’t make it seem ordinary. Because it isn’t ordinary. See . . .”
Tiphaine stripped off her right glove and hissed. The pus had soaked through the gauze pad and into the soft suede and dried. It tore as she pulled off the glove.
BD pushed her into a chair and pulled back a bit of the curtain. She took Tiphaine’s elbow and maneuvered the h
and into the stream of sunlight. The long, weeping, inflamed welt stood out, gaping deep into the back of her hand. There were shiny white flashes peeking through the leaking sera, the pinpricks of blood and green and yellow pus. Tiphaine felt a dry gag at the back of her throat.
“I’ve seen . . . most things in the world,” she said. “I’ve had some wounds I considered extremely serious. But this makes me . . . ill. Why?”
BD looked up from the trauma at Tiphaine and frowned. She put a hand on the Grand Constable’s forehead and scowled.
“How long have you been running a fever?” she asked.
Tiphaine frowned right back. “A fever?” she asked. “How would I know? Or even notice, unless it was bad?”
“You’re an idiot, Lady d’Ath,” said BD. “I don’t know what you call bad—but it’s bad. Bide a wee. I’ll need some help, and you’re staying right here.”
“I can’t! I’ve got to be seen . . . I have business with that fool . . .”
“Obregón? Good. He can stand to be kicked, and he can stand to wait. But you can come up with a story. I’ll send for Armand; that’s your squire, no? And Velin? Marks is in Campscapell, right? Is Velin here?”
“Armand is here, but not Velin. He’ll be in Upper Boring right about now, tracking down a red herring, I think. This has to be confidential. Things are hanging by threads. I can’t afford a panic. And Sandra would stick me in a hospital and I . . . suspect this involves things she wouldn’t believe. I wouldn’t either except I was there.”
BD frowned at her. “I need you out of that plate and into some light clothes. I’ll guess you don’t have anything like a chemise in your saddlebags.”
“You guess rightly, O mighty witch-woman. A pair of trews and a small shirt is my usual camp nightwear. Delia insists I wear a chemise at home, but it wouldn’t do on campaign.”
Gnarled old fingers pressed against her lips. “Lean back and rest, as best you can.”
Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun Page 56