“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 needl
e.
“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.”
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
B end 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 Cesar Obregon 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 Cesar Obregon 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.
&nbs
p; 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.
The Tears of the Sun tc-5 Page 55
