The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

  Another of those slight chilly smiles rewarded her, and a very small nod.

  At least if we’re killed, it will be after we’ve gotten a little respect!

  Sandra gestured, turning her hand palm-down and then palm-up. “It is my policy always to punish treachery, and likewise always to reward good service. Which leaves me with something of a dilemma with respect to you twain; I can scarcely reward Lord Odard and then wipe out his family. Accordingly I will take no hasty or irrevocable actions; but neither will I take unnecessary risks. Ultimately this matter may well have to be settled by the Princess when she returns. I am, after all, Regent for her.”

  Yseult swallowed against the sudden tears. “Yes?” she heard the Lady Regent ask.

  “Why are we a risk?” Huon said; it was the question she’d have asked again if she had dared.

  The Regent turned both hands up. “At the very least, minor children may grow up into dangerous adults who have been secretly resentful for a very long time. Love for a mother is strong, even if she’s an idiot. And there is more than politics at work here. Lord Betancourt, your report, please.”

  “My lady Regent.”

  The hard young captain she remembered in a suit of plate was dressed as a court dandy today, in shades of green and silver. His dark skin glowed against the silver rolled brim hat with the silver scarf trailing down. He came forward and made an elaborate leg to the Regent.

  He was pretty scary that day at Gervais. He scared me, anyway. But, thought Yseult, I don’t know if I like him looking so dandified. Odard dressed like that, but it distracted people from what he was really doing. Garrick is handsome, but, I think, too direct for the clothes to be a smoke screen. And his hair is wavy, but not as curly as Lord Chaka’s.

  Yseult focused on his words, hearing his side of the day of her arrest. “Sir Guelf came out of the stables just as we arrived. He clearly knew what was forward and charged me with drawn blade and made no attempt to parley. It was suicide; and he was dead, very quickly.”

  Yseult controlled a shudder, remembering the body and the pool of blood among the straw and cobbles and horse dung.

  “Around vespers, we finally ran the fox to his earth and Alex Vinton was arrested. He was sent to the Interlachen prison immediately.”

  “Thank you, Sir Garrick. How does the demesne under your stewardship?”

  “Quietly, Lady, quietly. The people were not happy to hear of the arrest of the children. It is my sorrow to inform you that Lady Layella did die two days ago. The coroner’s findings are attached to my written report.”

  Yseult gasped, a sad exhalation of woe escaping her. She fingered the beads on her rosary and promised to dedicate one hundred Hail Marys to her soul. Sir Garrick turned and bowed, a regretful expression on his face.

  “I had sent for a midwife doctor from the Sisters of the Angels in Mount Angel. She cared for the lady, but her fate was written in the stars. She had a massive stroke; I understand a known, if not so common, risk of a difficult childbirth with a prolonged laying in afterward. Her sister, Theresa, was taken to McKee house to be with her surviving brother, Odo, under the guardianship of Sir Czarnecki’s mother. She has been helping to nurse the man.”

  He turned to the dais again. “The people of Gervais have taken heart from hearing that their Lord Odard protects the princess. And enjoys your full confidence. May I at this point request that I be returned to field duty?”

  This time Sandra looked amused, though not in any way Yseult could have described. “No, my lord, you may not. Men combining competence and complete honesty in a situation where sticky fingers would be so easily deployed are not as common as one would like. Request denied.”

  Sandra looked at Yseult and Huon. “The ‘full confidence’ is in fact, very true. He was injured, quite seriously, when the prisoners were liberated, protecting Mathilda.”

  Yseult curtsied again, trying to control her relief. She wants us to be scared—and I am, at least!—but she’s really not going to kill us or attaint the land. I will dedicate a candle the length of my arm to St. Bernadette and Huon will do likewise!

  “Now, Sir Stratson, how does it go with my prisoners?”

  “My lady Regent,” said a grizzled man, standing.

  Yseult thought he looked like a tired old horse, with his long face and long yellow teeth and bulging dark eyes. His dark brown court clothes fostered the impression of an ancient, weary bay. He bounced slightly on his toes and chewed his drooping mustache, like a horse cribbing his bit.

  “Prisoner, I fear, my lady.”

  Sandra’s face hardened. “Not an escape, I presume.”

  “No, my lady. I’ll explain. Lady Mary had recovered from the laudanum by the time she arrived. The instructions were quite explicit. We escorted her to her cell in the maximum security block. I left the interrogation to the Baroness d’Ath who arrived a few days later.”

  Maximum security block? I thought Mama was under house arrest at Fen House!

  Huon pressed her shoulder and Yseult snapped her mouth shut before she could blurt anything; once again she caught that indefinable sense of amusement. It was said the Regent doted on her Persian cats. Apparently they had something in common with her besides wearing long silky white fur coats.

  Sir Stratson went on: “Vinton, however, I was instructed to break and given a series of questions to ask. This we did in the main block. We could not cross-check his answers later in the process. Vinton bit out his tongue about forty-five minutes into the questioning and aspirated his blood while his head was underwater, so that we didn’t detect it until too late. He was dead in less than twenty minutes; we couldn’t control the bleeding even with a cautery.”

  Yseult winced slightly, though the treatment was perfectly legal for a commoner in a treason investigation. Stratson bounced thoughtfully, and rocked a time or two on the balls of his feet in a gesture that was probably utterly unconscious.

  “According to my chirurgeon, actually biting one’s tongue out completely is an impossible deed.”

  “It is, unless the man is drugged,” Tiphaine d’Ath said, in an interested tone. “I’ve seen it tried several times, and it never succeeds. Marvelous are the works of God. My lady,” she concluded, bowing to the dais.

  Stratson cleared his throat and continued:

  “What answers Vinton gave us suggested that he was recruited by the Lady Mary or Lord Guelf sometime in the last two years and was their intermediary from the beginning of that recruitment. He gave us no information on who recruited them. However, his answers were not consistent with the evidence that was sent to me. Some of the letters were dated as much as five years ago and mentioned him as our well-loved and trusted Alex. We have the names of five Associate holders of fiefs-in-sergeantry in Gervais, Mollala, Hood River, Boring, and several farmers in Bend he claims constituted the chain of contacts. Rigobert Gironda de Stafford, Lord Forest Grove, is in charge of that part of the investigation. He told me that he felt nothing would turn up; that they were red herrings.”

  Sandra’s eyes went to the Grand Constable. She nodded thoughtfully.

  “Probably, my lady. A man determined enough to bite out his tongue would undoubtedly be coherent enough to lie under the water treatment, at least initially. You need to continue it for days or even weeks with these hard cases, and use very skillful interrogations to catch contradictions so that you can gradually break them down. I’m afraid much of what was gotten from this man will be worthless, and it will be very difficult to separate the pearls from the pig . . . dung quickly.”

  Sir Stratson rocked a few more times and then sat at the Regent’s nod.

  He must be a very stolid man, Yseult thought. He just confessed failure in an important case to the Lady Regent. She thought for a moment. Though trying to fudge would be even worse, I think. You’d have to be very stupid to do that and I don’t think she puts stupid men in important positions.

  D’Ath spoke from her spot by the window. Yseult frowned at the s
hiver that ran down her back. What is it I sense? She’s not an evil person; just odd and rare; but . . .

  “Lady d’Ath?” the Regent said.

  “I got very little information from Lady Mary. She was her usual irritating self; complained about the accommodations, the food, the constant watching.

  “She refused to say much about her work with the CUT. She did insist that she was only trying to improve the fortunes of House Liu. She was very clear that what she did was not, in her mind, treasonous.”

  “What passes for her mind,” Sandra Arminger said dryly. “A world of its own, where every action of Mary Liu is wise and righteous.”

  Tiphaine inclined her head and continued. “She named her initial recruiter as Guelf and stated that Alex Vinton had recruited . . . she used the word ‘converted’ them; Guelf first and then herself. Vinton, she claimed, came to the castle some two or three years after the death of the late Baron Liu, with passwords Lady Mary recognized. He’d been one of Eddie’s embedded spies in the lands where Eddie had tried to set up Duke Iron Rod for us, years ago. Out in northern Idaho.”

  “There’s nothing in the records, but there wouldn’t be, if he was running the operation personally,” Sandra said. “We were a little scattershot in those days, scrambling to seize fleeting opportunities while things were fluid. Go on, Lady d’Ath.”

  “Lady Mary said that gave him the position of valet to Odard who was just coming of an age to need a manservant. For his consequence, I suppose, and because this Vinton was a competent bodyguard. Odard would have been ten at the time.”

  Sandra’s eyes went to the young Lius. Yseult nodded and confirmed it:

  “I remember him first coming to Gervais. He became our dancing master, too.”

  Huon bowed. “I don’t remember it, I’m afraid, my lady Regent. I was very young, he was a fixture as far back as I can think.”

  “Dancing master? What an odd profession for a spy,” Lady Death said coolly. “Of particular interest to me was her stated ultimate reason for treachery. She blamed both the Lady Regent and myself personally for not rescuing her brother, Sir Jason, in Corvallis just before the Protector’s War, and for the shaming Theresa Reddings received being pregnant at the time and betrothed to Jason, who was assassinated by parties unknown.”

  Yseult cringed slightly as d’Ath turned to look at her, and then forced herself to stand firmly erect.

  “Is that true?” the Grand Constable asked.

  “Yes. They were betrothed, but Theresa was very young and Sir Richart had imposed a long betrothal. Theresa delivered of a son that May. He died less than a month later of jaundice. She was ruined and could never marry.”

  D’Ath shook her head. “The things one learns. Beyond that, I am fairly sure Mary was lying; but about what and how is harder to determine and, as per your instructions, my lady, I did not use rigorous methods. Much of her motivation appears to have been an effort to balance the books as she saw fit.”

  “Spite is a luxury,” the Regent said thoughtfully. “Like sweets, one should control one’s indulgence for the sake of health.”

  The Grand Constable nodded. “I wish that Alex Vinton had not died under interrogation. I suspect he is . . . was the key to our twined two conundrums. Is this a religious conversion or an opportunistic using of tools to hand, and did they seek the CUT or did the CUT seek them?”

  “It might well have started as opportunism and segued into something else,” Sandra said. “That often happens; we wear a mask, and the mask becomes our face.”

  The Grand Constable fell silent and relaxed against the wall.

  The Regent tapped her foot thoughtfully. A waiting silence fell over the chilly room. Yseult shifted her balance minutely and felt Huon’s hand come to hold hers, hidden by the voluminous folds of her wool sideless surcoat.

  “The problem,” the Regent said suddenly, “is, as the Grand Constable says, twofold. While we have nominal freedom of religion in the land of the Association . . . since the Protector’s War and the peace treaty . . . the Church is very much part of our identity and we tolerate the other religions not least because they remain inconspicuous and do not openly proselytize. What the CUT seems to have in mind here is invasion by conversion, followed by conversion after a successful invasion. It is possible. It has happened. Even if it fails of its main object, it is a formula for civil war, and that I will not tolerate.”

  She looked at Huon and Yseult. “Religion is as real as rocks, as a political factor. And yet . . . there is the little matter of the blown special operation last month in Pendleton. All the reports I’ve received suggest something more than simple logistics and superiority of forces were in play.”

  “Yes, my lady,” Tiphaine said; she’d been in command of the Protectorate’s contingent there. “And the Prophet Sethaz was personally present when the Dúnedain attacked the Bossman of Pendleton in his stronghold during that party. The reports indicate that the operation would have been completely successful except for his presence, and that he did some . . . quite remarkable things in his own person. We are still analyzing those aspects. I’d find them very difficult to believe except that Lord Alleyne Loring was the author of the report. And he’s extremely realistic, usually.”

  The as opposed to his spouse, who refers to her enemies as orcs and may very well see them that way went unspoken.

  The Regent tapped her fingers a few times on the desk; her equivalent of pacing and lashing a tail. When she spoke it was to Huon and Yseult:

  “Your mother told the Grand Constable that Alex Vinton ‘converted’ them, she and Guelf. Did your mother ever speak in a way that made you think of another religion? Names of saints you’d never heard before, blessing that sounded different, preachers that looked or acted in ways you’d never seen?”

  “My mother is a good daughter of the church! She was Catholic long before the Association existed!” Huon said, not shouting but very firmly.

  Yseult was silent, remembering a missing rosary, a locket of the Annunciation that wasn’t around Mary’s neck and a gleaming white cloth with white on white counted cross-stitch embroidery. She raised her right hand to touch the medal that Odard had given her. It felt warm, and comforting to the touch.

  “Daughter of Gervais?” Sandra said, the voice of implacable power.

  “I, I . . . I was embroidering an altar cloth for Mama. The day we were arrested, she was very angry with me because I was sloppy and said she wouldn’t have poor work placed on the . . . I can’t remember just how she said it, but it sounded to me like the altar in Castle Gervais.”

  “So, you think your brother is right?”

  “It’s, it’s . . . the design. There were symbols I’ve never seen on it. It was very complicated and all counted cross-stitch. Mother would tell me the pattern to embroider and I’d do that piece; but she never gave me the whole thing, or explained. Mother should still have it. Goodwife Romarec, the housekeeper packed it in with Mother’s stuff.”

  “Ah. That is information of some value, which must be looked into. But she didn’t teach you anything, bless you, present you for baptism in an unorthodox cult?”

  Yseult shook her head. “Nothing like that.” She hesitated. “But that day . . . that day I noticed she didn’t have her rosary hanging from her belt. I’d, I’ve spent hours trying to remember when was the last time I saw it . . . and it was the day my brother left. She took it off after leaving chapel and . . . sort of spilled it from one hand to the other before tucking it into her pocket. And I can’t remember seeing it ever again. Or her locket of the Annunciation that Papa gave her, years and years ago.”

  Huon turned to Yseult. “Really?” he asked, his voice cracking, “Really? She wasn’t a good daughter of Mother Church? She was so proud of being a true . . .”

  His voice fell to a half sob. Yseult squeezed his hand, but shook her head sadly.

  “And so,” said the Regent. “I still do not know who sought out who. This is crucial. If CUT agents are ac
tively recruiting, we must seek them out and take them in custody; and we may have a very serious problem with opportunistic treason. And winning battles will not win us the war. If, however, Mary sought them out, we probably have many fewer disaffected people to worry about. You children, then, are a problem. Are you hidden agents? What were called ‘sleepers’ in the language of my youth, or are you innocent children? Could Mary have placed some hold on you that will erupt through you at some point, will you—nill you? My decision on your destiny today rests on that question.”

  Yseult sighed and rubbed one hand over her forehead. It gave her a headache just trying to think like that.

  Huon let go of her hand and stepped forward. “Madame, I am your loyal subject, and through you, that of the Princess my brother honors above all women. What oath would you require of me? I will swear whatever you wish with as many priests and witnesses as you feel necessary.”

  Yseult felt her heart swell with pride and love for her brother. “Yes, Madame, yes. What do you require of us?”

  The Regent’s face was smooth, bland; only her eyes, those dark chocolate eyes, held emotion. It was something cold and bitter and distant.

  “The problem with that,” she said dryly, “is that a traitor will, by definition, swear false oaths. A capable traitor will do so convincingly.”

  Yseult felt her mouth drop open slightly. But . . . but if oaths have no power, the world would fall apart! she thought, appalled. What was lordship and vassalage if not a network of oaths?

  “I believe you are sincere now,” Sandra said. “I flatter myself that I am something of a judge of people, and you two are vastly less experienced than I in the ways of the world. But should your mother come and beg of you to hide a ring, pass on a message or put powder in my soup or tea . . . what would you do then?”

  Yseult opened her mouth and paused, hesitated and looked at her brother.

  “Instruct us, my lady. Whatever you require of us, I will swear to do. Do you require us to forswear our mother?”

  Huon’s voice was firm, but he paled. She trembled, reaching for Huon’s hand. Bitter tears rose and pooled under her lids.