“Come.”
Her senior squire Armand Georges poked his head in.
“Urgent dispatch, my lady Grand Constable.”
“Another?”
She managed to keep most of the sound of resentment out of her voice; this sort of thing went with the job.
“What is it this time?”
“Sir Guelf Mortimer of Loiston… did a bunk.”
“Shit! A bunk?”
“Fled. Scarpered. Twinkle-toed into the wild blue distance. Absent without leave…”
“All right.”
Tiphaine snapped her mouth shut, and squeezed her eyes shut for an instant. She’d parked him out at Hermiston to keep him on ice while the Gervais problem was dealt with. On the other hand…
“Tell me how Guelf pulled it off.”
He shrugged. “From what we’ve managed to piece together, he conned each of the back-scouting parties into believing he was with the other one. Unfortunately for him, Sir Thierry Renfrew ran into a CUT probe down the Columbia. He fought and called for reinforcements. That’s the train that arrived at four this morning with the wounded. Chenoweth called up Mortimer’s picket. They had some trouble finding them. He finally tracked them down late yesterday. Guelf left early on the nineteenth.”
“Days! He could be anywhere by now.”
“But there’s not much doubt where he’s headed. Gervais.”
“Yes.” She frowned. “That getaway was a lot more subtle than Guelf’s usual level. But heading for Gervais is putting his head on the block and even he should have been able to see that. Uncharacteristically smart, then bone-stupid even beyond his usual.”
“Offhand, I’d say that means he’s being used as a puppet, and by someone who doesn’t care about the consequences for him.”
“Good analysis.”
She smiled then, and even Armand blinked, though he’d been one of her operatives for years.
“I was hoping to keep the Gervais problems on hold, but the operation’s ready to go. And Guelf has just delivered himself into my hand. Desertion in the face of the enemy!”
She held her right hand out, palm-up, and then slowly closed the long fingers into a fist. Then she reached out for Chenoweth’s dispatch.
“Go find Sir Garrick Betancourt. He’ll be down with the Marchwarden of the South in the situation room. Tell him drop the hammer. Verbal orders only, of course.”
Armand nodded and left at a brisk walk; running would attract the eye and arouse curiosity.
Tiphaine leaned back from the crowded desk and let her fingers trace the pommel of the misericord dagger at her belt.
Thirty miles, give or take, and the rail runs right through Gervais. Betancourt should be there by midafternoon if he pushes it.
Mistress Douglas came in with a new sheaf of papers and searched for the correct docket to file them in.
Tiphaine followed her out to talk to one of the typists.
“Mistress Romero, write and send a message to the Regent. It can go in the clear, as fast as possible. Guelf Mortimer of Loiston has drawn the dotted line.”
Puzzlement, and then she could see everyone assuming that it was some private code. It was; the rest of the phrase was on the back of his neck, which was where the headsman’s ax went-Guelf wouldn’t rate the two-handed sword, not being a tenant-in-chief.
CHARTERED CITY OF GOLDENDALE COUNTY OF AUREA PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY CENTRAL WASHINGTON) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) AUGUST 5, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Mathilda grimaced slightly as Tiphaine halted her narrative.
“There weren’t any palatable choices right there, were there, Tiph?”
“That’s war for you, Matti. Particularly this type; we just couldn’t take any chances on the politics of it. Fortunately I’m not at the ultimate policymaking level. I’m more like a crossbow. You point me and pull the trigger.”
“And I am doing the aiming now, and the only ones I can blame things on if it goes wrong are Rudi and God, which wouldn’t be a good idea. Well, the Liu siblings need to know some of that. That way of dealing with Mary Liu was so Mom, though. Just trying to follow her logic makes my brain hurt, sometimes. It’s always there but it’s… twisty.”
“At least you can follow it. Thousands couldn’t, and a lot of them came down with a case of the deads. Not least the late unlamented Dowager Baroness Liu, in the end.”
The man-at-arms came back up the stairs.
“His Reverence Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski, Your Majesty,” he said. “The Honorable Huon Liu, heir to Barony Gervais; the Honorable Yseult Liu.”
Tiphaine looked at her, and Mathilda nodded slightly. Then she smiled and rose as they entered and made their bow and curtsy; she advanced and kissed Dmwoski’s ring respectfully, then extended her hands to the youngsters. She’d known them socially, of course-Odard had been a frequent companion of hers for years before the Quest. But they’d both been teenagers and then young adults, and at that age you tended to ignore younger siblings who were still children. Neither had been presented at court.
And their mother tended to keep them very close, she thought. Even before she went to the bad.
“Lord Huon, Lady Yseult,” she said gently. “I am so sorry about Odard. I miss him terribly, but you can be very proud of him. It was an honor to be his friend and liege.”
She liked the way Huon reacted, dignified but reserved; for a fifteenyear-old it was rather impressive. He moved well, too, and looked as if he’d have something of Odard’s wiry strength. Yseult was more reserved still, and…
Tiphaine gives her the willies, though she hides it well. Of course, looked at objectively Tiph is scary as hell; she doesn’t scare me because I grew up around her. She did kill Yseult’s mother. So I don’t expect more than courtesy, but if the girl is going to be around Court, she just has to get used to it.
“And you all know Baroness d’Ath.”
Another round of polite bows. Mathilda could tell that Dmwoski was being a bit chilly, and Tiphaine was secretly amused by it; she respected Dmwoski despite his faith, not for it.
I don’t think the Lius noticed. They’re smart enough, but young yet.
The cleric and the Grand Constable were both far too self-controlled to make it obvious. Or to let personal dislikes interfere with the job, for that matter.
“Please sit, and help yourselves,” Mathilda said. “I understand you’ve been on the train all day, and it can’t have been much fun.”
“Crowded and slow, Your Majesty,” Dmwoski said. “But that’s only to be expected in wartime.”
Mathilda chatted a little to relax them; Huon grew enthusiastic about the gear and horses he’d picked up in Portland, and the prospect of going on his first real campaign after training to war all his life, and his swearing ceremony as a squire. That was natural enough, since it was big step and one that was overdue. After a few minutes he was also wolfing down the chicken empanadas. Yseult nibbled on one and agreed that she was up to transferring to a forward field hospital of the type the Sisters were setting up here in Goldendale.
“Ah… do you want to take my oath now, Your Majesty?” Huon said.
Mathilda shook her head. “Tomorrow, and publicly,” she said decisively. “That will be better, if you think about it.”
She watched them carefully; Yseult grasped the point first, but Huon was only a second behind. A public oath would be a public statement: I trust Huon Liu at my back, or more specifically I trust Huon Liu at my back with a dagger, twenty-four/seven. Neither was obvious about it either, which was good.
People might, would, still talk, but they’d do it in a whisper and not where he could hear. More important, they wouldn’t do it where the High Queen or anyone close to her could hear it either.
“I understand that you’ve been eager to hear the results of the Most Reverend Father’s investigations,” she said after a moment’s quiet contemplation. “Besides being most helpful.”
“A
h… not exactly eager, Your Majesty,” Huon said.
He and his sister exchanged a glance.
Those two are allies against the world, Mathilda thought. A little wistfully, since she’d been an only child. And necessarily a little isolated from others her own age by her birth, except for Rudi.
Though that only child thing may have been for the best. Still, I’m glad my children will have lots of brothers and sisters. Kinship is… not everything, but close.
“But we do want to know,” Yseult said. “It’s, ummm, hit us so often and so badly, but a lot of it was just bewildering, especially at the time. We only knew the bits that happened to us, Your Majesty, and then it was like… we had to realize that all this had been going on around us without our knowing.”
Mathilda nodded. “That’s part of growing up, but this is a pretty extreme case. You’ve earned the right to know,” she said. “I’m going to tell you what happened immediately after Pendleton. That was when my letter arrived back home, about how Alex Vinson betrayed us… betrayed me and Odard to the Cutters. Unfortunately, that was also when the CUT decided to activate your uncle Guelf. Whether he liked it or not. They probably knew the news would get back, after Odard and I were rescued.”
Dmwoski nodded. “As I’ve said before, there is no spoon long enough to sup safely with them. I heard a little of this from a Mackenzie who was involved.”
“I debriefed the Renfrews,” Tiphaine said. “And handled a lot of stuff later that revealed what had been going on at Hermiston. Chime in if I’m missing anything, Most Reverend Father. What apparently happened is that Guelf got desperate because-”
HERMISTON, COUNTY HERMISTON (FORMERLY UMATILLA COUNTY) PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION (FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL OREGON) SEPTEMBER 17, CHANGE YEAR 23/2021 AD
Sir Guelf Mortimer felt he was doing a good imitation of a brooding falcon as the pedal car rumbled into the Hermiston station and orderlies rushed forward to take the badly wounded away. The brooding was keeping his chatty squires away from him, at least. He hoped they were still smarting from his tongue-lashing.
“Off and down, off and down, clear the line!” someone shouted.
No word from the Ascended Masters, he thought. Was it because I was always with the Odell crowd, or that they don’t have any word for me?
Odo was clinging to him as they jumped off the pedal cab. The boy was shaking and had bruises under his eyes, emphasized by the light of the flaring torches that supplemented the alcohol lanterns; the sun was nearly down, though the western horizon was still eye-hurting crimson. As soon as the Gervais men were clear a party came running up with loaded stretchers.
On another siding, reinforcements were jumping down off a train of eastbound horse-drawn rail wagons and falling into ranks, their three-quarter armor incongruously clean and their eyes wide as they stared about at the filthy blood-splashed scarecrow figures, the limping walking wounded and the grisly shapes on the stretchers. Corvallans, from the Benny the Beaver image on their breastplates; their knockdown pikes or crossbows were still slung over their backs as they formed up and marched away.
“OK, Odo. Tonight you will camp with us. But tomorrow you and Father Stanyon are taking Terry home for burial. I don’t want you slipping out of that.”
And in this heat, we’ll have to get a well-sealed coffin.
His heart ached for the boy as he shook his head, dark greasy hair clinging to his skin, tear tracks down the dirty cheeks, mouth gapping as he yawned so wide Guelf wondered if he’d crack the jaw joint. And while disobedience couldn’t be tolerated, at least he’d done it from an excess of spirit.
“Let’s go find Father Stanyon,” he said firmly, suppressing his own wide yawn.
“Charlmain! You and Brandon get the men bivouacked and set up sentries. I don’t care how safe you feel; we’ve left a lot of angry enemies behind. They thought they were going to swallow us down and they didn’t and they’ll be feeling cheated.”
The squires knuckled their foreheads and went in search of Sir Thierry’s provosts and directions to the campgrounds. Guelf found Stanyon a block away, after pushing his way through streets that were a mass of troops and horses and vehicles almost to the edge of the castle moat; the little town was so insignificant it didn’t even have a wall, and the few locals were like chips on a torrent. One of the warehouses was being used as a field hospital. As he walked into its lantern-lit dimness there was a heavy smell of spoiled blood from the bandages heaped in corners, heat, sweat, pain and disinfectant. Healers from half a dozen of the allied powers were sorting and doing emergency surgery on a set of bloodstained tables. A line of volunteers stood ready to lie down next to the injured and provide transfusions.
Odo slitted his eyes to keep out as much as he could. Even Guelf gulped a little. He was well used to the butcher-shop horrors that happened when men hacked and stabbed with edged weapons, but there was something chilling about this in an entirely different way. Moans and shrieks sounded every now and then, not often enough to be disregarded, so that every new one hit you fresh.
The seven wounded from Gervais who’d survived and three bodies of those who’d died here were laid together. Father Stanyon and a Mackenzie medic were standing toe to toe over one unconscious figure. The kilted clanswoman was slight but bristling, her brown braid swinging as she shook her head emphatically.
“And what part of no is it that’s too complicated for you to be understanding the now, you cowan blockhead?” she shouted in a Mackenzie lilt, arms windmilling the way they did.
“Here’s my Lord, talk to him, pagan bitch!” the priest shouted back.
Guelf grunted; he felt as if his eyes had been taken out and the backs sanded, then the sockets dusted with hot ash before they were replaced. He glared, but neither quailed.
“Out,” he snarled, and turned on his heel. “Now!”
Outside, Father Stanyon spoke in an angry, even tone. “She dosed that man we picked up with laudanum. Dosed him heavily, forced it suddenly down his throat.”
Guelf frowned. “So?” he asked.
Even he knew that was standard if you didn’t want to inject a wounded man with morphine, which was expensive even for military use and had to be saved for the most urgent cases. Ones who were unconscious or who couldn’t keep an oral medication down.
The Mackenzie medic nodded at him. “Not going to apologize, my Lord. Both the Father and I agree, the spalpeen isn’t actually one of your Gervais men.”
Baffled, Guelf’s stubbled face swung back and forth. “He isn’t?”
“No.” Father Stanyon hesitated. “He’s dressed in the bloodstained clothing of one of ours, however. Blood all over the right kidney.”
Guelf growled. That was the mark of an assassin; a knife in the kidney was the fastest and quietest way to kill quickly. There was a whole knot of big blood vessels there, and if you stuck the blade deep, in just the right place, and twisted sharply, unconsciousness followed almost instantly. It was a lot easier and less obviously messy than slitting a throat too, if you left the knife in for a moment.
“Killed one of ours to sneak in one of their spies?” he grated.
The Mackenzie nodded briskly, removing the surgical mask that had fallen around her neck over the thin golden torc.
“Yes. ’Twould be my guess, do you see, that he threw himself down looking all wounded and hurt to be carried in, planning to get up when nobody was looking in the hurry and chaos. Blood on clothing is not the most uncommon of things about here, I’m observing. It’s the Mother’s own luck that I happened to do a quick triage check; and there the spalpeen’s back was, not sliced or cut or stabbed at all. So I grabbed the creature’s nose and poured the dose down his throat.”
Now what?
Guelf felt like a parrot lived in his brain; or that an ax had cut it in half. One side of it was reacting with an instinctive rage. The other…
Was he sent to contact me? I can’t tell. And the man is unconscious and going to stay that way… da
mned officious Mackenzie. Better send him on to the Grand Constable. The Witch-Queen might easily learn too much. I can’t kill him or keep him, that would make people suspicious right away!
“Right. Father Stanyon, my thanks for defending our interests and referring this decision to me. I’ll take the advice of our ally. Who should take charge of the prisoner, witch?”
The Mackenzie gestured to the men standing by. Both of them were notably hard-faced, and the clothes under their armor were a uniform brown. Scratches and dings and a spray of something reddish-brown dried across one didn’t disguise the snarling face-on bear’s head.
“Those are a couple of Larsdalen men; they came with us. They’ll get the prisoner to the Grand Constable or Lady Juniper, if I ask. Lady d ’Ath is with Odell west of here, at Biggs Junction; our Chief is at Dun Juniper. Mac an donais! Just get the creature out of here, and fast would be best. He smells, and in more ways than one.”
Guelf bowed, a short gesture. “He’s all yours, gentlemen; take him to the Grand Constable and report all you’ve heard. Just give me back the clothes; I hope to identify the man he killed. One more notch on the blade.”
“Come, Odo, we need to say good-bye to Terry and check on Chezzy.”
Guelf sighed gently as he turned away. If the man had been his contact, it was a good thing the Mackenzie had intervened. Good in the short term, at least. A bubble of fear was starting to burn down under his breastbone; fear worse than a spear point coming for his face.
The Mackenzie nodded. “I want him out and harmless. We’ve been warned that the Cutters sometimes possess powers dangerous to ordinary folk, so.”
Father Stanyon crossed himself and murmured a prayer.
The Mackenzie gave him a sardonic look. “We’ll hog-tie him and send him on to the Grand Constable… but he goes drugged. I know more about magic than you do. By definition. And the first and the last and the heart of it is paying attention.”
Guelf looked at Father Stanyon.
He was one of Pope Leo’s men. Very strict, but very brave, and honest… Well, so am I! I just know more Now what? I want to say good-bye to Terry, check up on Chezzy and go to sleep. God, I must sleep!
The Tears of the Sun tc-5 Page 25
