The Tears of the Sun

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

COUNTY OF THE EASTERMARK CHARTERED CITY OF WALLA WALLA CITY PALACE OF THE COUNTS PALANTINE PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY SOUTHEASTERN WASHINGTON STATE) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 24, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

N ow this is like old times, Tiphaine thought, with a hint of grim amusement. Except that in the day it was usually me sneaking in through the window to kill someone.

She had to admit it was well done. There had been hardly any noise at all, nothing like as loud as the occasional call of all’s well from the watchmen in the town’s streets, or the challenge-and-response from the completely useless guards patrolling the outer perimeter of the palace. Being that quiet while you were hanging upside down from a silk rope and sawing through steel bars with a diamond-dusted flexible saw was not easy.

A flicker of light crossed her closed lids, some lantern reflecting upward. The bed was extremely comfortable and the day had been long, but she had no difficulty staying in a half trance, breathing deeply and completely relaxed but in a stable state halfway between waking and sleep. She’d learned the trick of that not long after the Change, when she and Kat had to keep watch and watch. An instructor of Sandra’s, a Korean so silent she’d never even learned his name, had taught her how to do it consciously at will later as one part of a training program designed to strengthen the strong and destroy the weak.

It was nearly as restful as real sleep, and had the advantage that your senses were if anything more acute than in the normal waking world.

A squeak. That would be the diamond cutter on the windowpane, now that the bars were out of the way. Her new-minted knights had been precisely right so far on the way the enemy would come. It was a compliment to her training of them.

In the darkness she grinned like a wolf.

Lady Sandra’s school has left a legacy that will travel down the generations.

The sheets and pillows smelled of clean linen and lavender, and felt crisp and smooth under her fingers as she slowly pulled the coverings off. She was in working clothes, dark trews and shirt and jerkin, sock-shoes of glove-soft leather with doubled soles that gripped like fingers. Light mesh lined the jerkin, but for this sort of work you relied on speed.

It’s actually more pleasant than being a general, she thought. Straightforward, in a sneaky sort of way. But to acknowledge the absolute truth, I’m sick of both. I have been for years.

She opened her eyes, keeping them down; she was facing away from the windows. Starlight and a little moonlight were perfectly adequate if you didn’t try to close-focus on anything. They painted the room in shades of pale gray and sliver and blue. One leg moved out, and she caught her left heel on the edge of the mattress and bent the knee.

Of course, this could go wrong. You’re never quite certain with knives, but we need them alive. You know, when I was in my twenties, I used to positively enjoy this sort of thing. Now I just worry about leaving Delia a widow… damn, she could be widowed twice in this war.

The thought was very distant. So was the knowledge that she rather liked the Count Palantine and his wife, and that if it had been peacetime she would have enjoyed visiting the Eastermark with Delia and Rigobert and the children. They had some astonishing falconry here, if you could call using great golden eagles to hunt pronghorn antelope that.

And the Count had mentioned a hunting and skiing lodge in the Blue Mountains that he’d be glad to lend her sometime, obviously one of his favorite haunts. Bear hunts, and sleigh rides, and cross-country skiing in cold that was dry and hard and bracing, not the damp bone-chill of the Willamette. Lioncel and Diomede would love that; they’d tire themselves out, shovel down big dinners and sleep like the dead, and she and Delia could make love on tigerskins before a great roaring fire.

I am going soft in my old age.

She smiled and slid the dagger a little closer under the pillow. There was something about the approach of a knife aimed at you that you could feel. And there was a shadow of a shadow on the wall away from the windows, a suggestion of movement. It would vanish if she tried to focus on it, but if you didn’t try to do that it was clear as noon; and also the back of her right hand itched. That might be…

What was the old word? Ah, psychosomatic. Or it might not.

“Now,” she said conversationally.

And flipped herself out of the bed, pulling at her heel and twisting herself around in midair to land in a fighting crouch, knife out with the point low and left forearm across her body with the palm and fingers stiffened into another weapon.

The dagger in the assassin’s hand was already streaking down towards the spot where her back had been an instant before. The man had his full weight behind it, flinging himself forward and down to drive the length of watered steel all of its twelve inches deep and hard enough that the flaring edges would slice apart the ribs.

Good professional stroke, Tiphaine thought. That would have done it nicely. You want to kill someone with a knife, don’t waste time on fancy.

Two more Cutters in dark clothing were climbing in through the windows. Armand and Rodard dropped silently from where they’d been waiting, heels braced on the little ledges above. Both struck the men below feetfirst, and the crossbows the assassins had been carrying dropped; one went off, and the bolt struck the plaster and board of an interior wall with a crunching whap. The sworn killers of the Church Universal and Triumphant always operated in threes; it was one of the few things they had in common with the Mackenzies.

The knifeman ignored the flurry of blows and thudding sounds from behind him. He wrenched the knife free and came over the bed in a silent rush, the blade held low and reversed with his thumb on the pommel and the blade jutting out from the right side of the fist.

Somewhere in the Cutter lands there’s a school not entirely unlike the one I attended, she thought as she backed easily, moving with soft sure strides, the weight on the balls of her feet.

He didn’t waste time; this wasn’t a duel, not even the ghastly slashing frenzy of a knife fight, where the winner went to the healers for six months. The two knights would be on his back in instants. A feint high, a backhand slash to the face, and then a stab towards her thigh, aiming for the great vessel that ran up the inside towards the groin.

Fast, she thought. But he’s relying on it and I’ve got a third of a second on him.

Her body sank and turned before the thought was complete, her hips swaying aside. Her own knife cut, upward, under the armpit, she couldn’t chance whether he wore a mail vest. Cloth parted, and something else between; a spray of blood went up in the night, black drops in blackness. The arm went limp and the knife fell from it. The man hissed with a gobbling undertone and snatched at the weapon with his left, his fingertips touching the dimpled bone hilt before it struck the floor.

He never grasped it. She fell across him in a diving body check, and the breath wheezed out of him as his ribs hit the floor with her on his back. She drove her left elbow down into the base of his skull as they landed, the hard thud sending a shooting pain up her arm.

“Light,” she said, shaking her hand and working the fingers.

The man wasn’t quite limp, but he was twitching and moving with the vague undersea slowness of someone who’d had his bell truly rung. The lamps flared. Both the other assassins were down and bound, ankles and wrists lashed together and good thick gags in their mouths; she wanted no more fanatics biting out their tongues and drowning in their own blood before they had every scrap of information wrung out of them.

“See to this one,” she said as she rose, kicking his knife aside and wiping hers on the man’s hair. “Don’t let him bleed out. Pity about the rug.”

She slipped her blade into the sheath along the inside of her left forearm as she walked through the doors into the other room. That one looked considerably messier; there was a triad of assassins lying just inside the windows. Two had been struck as they climbed over the sills-one had a leg still on his, with that spilled awkwardness that only the suddenly and violently dead could show. Both those two were riddled with crossbow bolts. At this range the armor-smashers buried themselves to the fletching, and one of the men had been pitched back and pinned upright to the wall like a butterfly in a display case. His body, limp and leaking on the tiles, slid off the shaft and struck the floor with a thump as she came in.

The third was three paces into the room, lying on his side with the killdagger just beyond his twitching fingertips, and, unfortunately from his point of view, still alive. The human body was astonishingly resilient sometimes. A single bolt had struck him, and his face was like a contorted carving of hardwood with blood seeping past his clenched teeth and out his nostrils in bubbles. Sound trickled out as well.

The sergeant of the crossbowmen saluted. “That one was clever, my lady,” he said admiringly. “He backflipped into the room, must’ve dropped straight down and caught the sill and bounced in like a rubber ball. We missed him clean, everyone except young master… except Squire Lioncel de Stafford, I mean, my lady. He nailed him good, right in the brisket, which ain’t easy when things go south and it’s all noisy and confusing, like.”

“No, it isn’t,” she said; it was astonishing how many bolts were used per hit in a combat situation. “Thank you, Sergeant. A very creditable job. A week’s pay bonus to your and your squad for losing a night’s sleep.”

The man grinned, and she nodded again. She’d meant it. Missing number three hadn’t been serious. A man with a knife wasn’t going to do much against eight with swords and bucklers and wearing three-quarter armor, no matter how good he was with a blade. Assassination and straight-up fighting were quite different things. And one thing she’d learned from Sandra was never to stint praise or reward where they were really due. Being a cheapskate that way always left you with the bill coming due at the worst possible time.

Norman was a bit of a niggard now and then. Sandra, I note, is still alive and still in power long after he’s dead.

Lioncel was staring at the dying Cutter, his crossbow still in his hands, motionless.

“Lioncel!” she said, and he started and seemed to come to himself.

Well, it is his first, I think… yes, definitely. About the same age I was, at that. Of course, these Cutters didn’t intend to rape him before they killed him and eat his flesh afterwards. Still, it’s traumatic.

“We… caught them by surprise, my lady,” he said. “It all happened just like you said it would.”

“Good. And Lioncel?”

He looked at her, his blue eyes a little wild.

“They came to kill us in our sleep. If your mother or little sister were here, they’d have killed them. We were defending them. Fight knights like knights, and stamp on a weasel.”

He took a deep breath. “Yes, my lady.”

“And he’s too far gone for questioning. Finish it quickly. That’s your responsibility, whether it’s a beast or a man.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The boy was pale but steady as he drew his knife and did what was needful, and followed her back into the bedroom. The two knights had the Cutter she’d disabled in a chair, finishing up a field dressing and binding his arm before tying him up.

“Good,” she said; the Cutter was reviving, a vicious clarity in his eyes. “We’ll need this one for questioning. I think he’s one of the leaders on this mission, and we’ll have a nice little talk.”

The Cutter laughed, and then opened his mouth at her. Lioncel crossed himself, Armand swore, and even Tiphaine blinked. Only the stub of a tongue remained in the man’s mouth, and he laughed again, a thick odd sound. The wound was healed, but recent; this had been done deliberately by a surgeon and by the man’s own choice, to keep him from talking if he was taken.

Then Tiphaine smiled. At first because she was trying to imagine torturing a man into writing out his answers. And then because of another thought.

“Keep him very safe,” she said coolly. “Keep him for the High King. I think the Sword of the Lady can get secrets even from a tongueless man.”

The mad glee dropped off the assassin’s face, and he began to struggle and scream wordlessly. They were equipped for that; Rodard twisted open a metal canister, and held the damp pad of cloth within over the man’s face. The struggles died away as his eyes rolled up in his head.

Lioncel was looking revolted, but he had her sword belt ready. She buckled it on as they walked out into the hallway, twice around her unarmored waist; the corridor was dim, with only a few lanterns gleaming on the armor and weapons. Rigobert had just arrived, with blood on his naked sword and a scratch down the front of the breastplate lames of his full suit.

“We didn’t take any alive, and I lost a man, dammit,” he said, handing his blade to a squire for cleaning without looking around. “You, my lady ninjette?”

“Killed three, took three prisoners, no losses. You are so depressingly straightforward sometimes, de Stafford.”

Though my methods had substantially more downside risk. You roll the dice…

The nobleman made a disgusted sound as he took the blade again and sheathed it, before replying, “The ones who attacked us all had their tongues cut out. Which would render them useless for interrogation, and even more so on dates. I doubt even the Lady Regent’s experts could do much with interrogation via sign language. Or in epistolary form.”

“Ours had oral circumcision too. But remember who we work for now, Rigobert. Matti’s guy? The one with the magic sword?”

“Ah!” A slow smile, and one which echoed hers. “Yes, there is a point to that observation. A point with an edge to it.”

“I mentioned it to him, and he seemed rather upset.”

“Good. I’m not looking forward to telling Jurian’s family how he died.”

“Dead’s dead, Rigobert, tonight or next week from an arrow or a lance head. And”-she poked a finger at the scratch on his armor-“I don’t think you were leading from behind.”

He shook his head. “I still don’t like it, we shouldn’t have had losses when we were expecting them. Let’s go call on our host.”

They clattered down the staircase towards the family quarters-though in fact the Countess was now in a hidden safe room, not the chamber she usually shared with her husband. Apparently the Count’s father had been a firm believer in having a secret passage out, of which Tiphaine heartily approved; Todenangst was riddled with them. A household knight met them before they reached the landing, panting and looking a little wild-eyed.

The freckle-faced young man stopped and started to salute with fist to breastplate, then realized he was holding a red-running long sword in that hand and brought the hilt up before his face instead.

“My lady Grand Constable, my lord de Stafford.”

“Is the Count your master unharmed?” she snapped.

“Yes. That is… this way, please!”

She exchanged a glance with her second-in-command. Their own swords came out, and sped up to a trot; silent with her party, and a ramming clank from de Stafford’s, there was no way to move fast and quietly in armor. They went past the guard detail, who, she was pleased to see, were keeping their eyes front, and not turning around to look behind them except for a designated cover man-there were any number of classic misdirection ploys which relied on the natural impulse to focus on the place the noise was coming from.

The family quarters of the Counts were splendid but not ostentatious by the upper nobility’s standards. Subtle signs showed recent modifications, including more locally made post-Change work, including several small elegant bronzes of wildlife, probably to mark the switch from the first count to his son-or to his son’s wife, which was often the case. A library-study full of wood paneling and leather furniture and glass-fronted bookcases showed the first signs of the attack; bodies being carried away, blood, furniture overturned and scorch marks where fires started by overset lanterns had been hastily stamped out. The broad windows needed for light were probably why the enemy had picked this room for entry.

Tiphaine pursed her lips. “I’m glad I advised him to go overboard on numbers,” she said, absently rubbing the back of her right hand.

Rigobert jerked his blond head in agreement. “I can think of a lot of operations which failed because not enough force was used,” he said. “But other things being equal-timing mainly, and concealment-I can’t think of a single damned one that failed because too much force was used. Subtle buys no bread.”

Tiphaine nodded. A pair of crossbowmen were being given emergency care near the big doors from the library into the rest of the suite, and another lying on his back looked as if someone had grabbed his helmeted head and twisted until he was looking out over his shoulder blades. She bared her teeth.

Heard about that before, she thought.

Through a corridor, with two dead Cutters in it; these ones had shetes, the broad-tipped slashing swords favored in the far interior, and they were wearing cloth masks that covered everything but the eyes. Next was a door with firing loopholes that had been hit so hard that it sagged on one hinge; she bent slightly to check as she went by. The pattern of splintering around the lock confirmed what she’d thought; someone had slammed their hand into it.

“They thought they could pin them in this corridor and shoot them down,” Rigobert said thoughtfully. “Didn’t work, for some reason.”

“Their point man broke the trap open from the inside,” Tiphaine said.

Rigobert’s fair brows went up. The chamber beyond was some sort of social space. Probably mainly a ballroom, judging from the superb parquet floor and the mirrors and spindly tables around the edge and the brilliantly lit crystal gas-chandeliers above. This was where the killing had mainly been, pitilessly illuminated by the lights designed to bring out jewels and bright cloth; her nostrils flared at the familiar scents, and the floors were never going to be the same. The local dead had been dragged out and laid in a row with their arms folded, and she saw stretchers disappearing out the other side of the big chamber as she entered.

Count Felipe was sitting on one of the chairs near the three-deep pile of enemy fallen. The spindly seat creaked dangerously under his armored weight. Two men with bolt cutters were working on the bevoir of his suit of plate, which had been bent so badly beneath his chin that the usual hinges and clasps were all irredeemably stuck; it came free with a clang, and another got the equally damaged gauntlet off his left hand.

Felipe swore again, his handsome swarthy young face showing as much chagrin and anger as pain. A chirurgeon began to work on the hand. By then the two western nobles were close enough to see that the fleshy pad at the base of the thumb there was mangled, besides the bruising where the little overlapping plates had been bent; the doctor was examining it carefully, and then got to work with tweezers and a small very sharp pair of scissors, and a spray of disinfectant.

At mere pain the Count’s face went impassive, though a film of sweat covered it. He started to speak, and then something gripped Tiphaine’s left ankle with crushing force and jerked.

Reflex saved her; she had the sword coming down before she hit the ground, curling up and using the grip that anchored her leg as a brace to strike. The edge of the long sword hit and bit, and the fingers started to relax as tendons cut. Another slash and she was free, rising in a flickering shoulder roll. Half-free at least; it took a stamp and the use of her point to get the hand off her ankle. Blades were rising and falling, amid half-hysterical shouts of loathing. She tested the ankle and found it only a little sore.

She looked up. A man had risen from the pile of bodies, half-risen at least. Six crossbow bolts studded his torso, and one eye was dangling down his cheek, and an arm ended in an oozing stump. The sole remaining eye looked at her.

“I… see… you… forever…”

The voice was a rasping guttural, and air wheezed out of the chest from the other openings as well. If cinders could speak, they would use that tone. For a moment it was as if she were locked in endless hot stone, and then there was a dry wind and a rustle that might have been broad wings hunting in the night or the wind in narrow olive leaves of silver-gray, and the world returned.

Rigobert’s long sword was up in the two-handed grip with the hilt beside his face. He stepped and struck, pivoting his torso in a beautiful suihei horizontal cut and follow-through. The head toppled away from the body, and the torso fell back with a thud.

Thank you, Lady of the Owl! Tiphaine thought.

Men were crossing themselves all around her, touching their crucifixes or saint’s amulets. Her own hand had gone to her throat, for the owl medallion hidden there, and she grinned for an instant at the tinge of scorn she’d have felt for the others only a few years ago.

I’m finally a full-fledged Changeling, not caught betwixt and between, she thought. Poor Sandra! She got the world of her dreams and she’ll never really be at home here.

Aloud she went on: “You men! Get that head and body, wrap them in mats and blankets, and take them away. Wear gauntlets. Burn the body and everything that’s touched it, somewhere where you’re upwind of the smoke. Don’t touch it if you can help it. Wash afterwards. Wash thoroughly and discard your clothes and gloves. Have the floor here ripped up, cautiously. Scrub everything with lye and bleach, burn the wood. And get a priest to do an exorcism. Do it all now.”

The Walla Walla men hesitated, looking at their lord. He flushed and snapped, “She’s the Grand Constable, you fools, do what you’re told! Do it all, do it right! Sir Budic, take charge and see that the Grand Constable’s instructions are followed to the letter. Now! And get the rest of this carrion out of the palace.”

A little more gently: “You’ve all done well and bravely, and I will not forget who stood with me this night. Now show good vassalage once more, and keep your mouths shut about this until I give out what’s happened. We don’t want a panic.”

The men scattered about their tasks, though Tiphaine doubted any secrecy would last more than about fifteen minutes. When they had some small degree of privacy Felipe looked at her and ducked his head.

“I am in your debt, my lady. I and my House. But for you, I and my wife and our unborn child might have been caught by surprise by that. .. that thing and its minions. Even as it was-”

He looked around.

“I thought you were being overcautious when you recommended so many men waiting. Remind me not to doubt you again.”

Lioncel silently returned her sword, clean once more, dropped a cloth into the pile that the Count’s men were getting ready to burn, and then stripped off his gloves and added them as well.

She nodded, sheathed the weapon and went on to her host. “I don’t claim to be infallible, but I’ve had some experience with this. With those creatures in particular, and I’ve made it my business to investigate. And the High King told me more.”

“What was it? I… I had my sword through its belly, I swear I did, and then it put its hands around the bevoir of my suit and started to squeeze as if it were trying to throttle me through the metal, and I could feel the steel begin to buckle! I was holding it off with one hand against its face and stabbing it, and it chewed through the bison hide on the palm of my gauntlet!”

“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 poking 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 frowned; 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.”

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 Dunedain. 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 fourteenth 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.”