Emberverse 08: The Tears of the Sun

by S. M. Stirling

After a minute a glass was pressed into her left hand. “Drink, slow sips. You’re dehydrated. You need to be flushed out.”

  BD lifted off the heavy sallet. “Unconquered Sun, how does this thing around your neck come off?”

  “The bevoir?” Tiphaine mumbled. “Undo . . . the chain and hooks. Buckles underneath and open hinges. Lift it out. Shit! ”

  That as the older woman’s inexpert hands jerked her head back and forth. She fiddled with the vambraces, found the trick and slid them down and off her forearms.

  “Most of the rest is buckled . . . tied to the point strings on the doublet . . . the leather cords. Just cut ’em, woman!”

  Tiphaine sighed as BD picked up the bits and pieces of ironmongery and walked out. She sipped at the tart, cold herbal tea and slowly felt herself relax; her heart stopped beating so fast, though she hadn’t noticed it while it did. Her head throbbed and so did her arms and joints; aches she’d ignored in all the jangle of pain and strain that wearing armor every day for weeks on end caused. Even just having a helmet on every day gave you a savage headache more often than not.

  It crept up on me, dammit.

  A little of the office came clear. Before her was BD’s altar. The figurine of the God danced oddly before her eyes, reaching his hands out to her and beckoning. The huge round carving of a woman seemed to rock back and forth, winking at her with every swaying move. She closed her eyes and sipped again.

  When she opened her eyes, the sun had wandered off to another part of the sky; the quality of the light had changed.

  I’m not wearing my armor? When, how long? What?

  She blinked and focused on BD, standing in the door talking to a deepvoiced man. “Armand?” she asked.

  BD turned and nodded. “He came to get you out of that tin can you wear. Thierry Renfrew came into camp yesterday and I’ve told him you’re quite ill and that nobody is to know. Conrad introduced us a while back, so he’s in the know. He’s taking over the camp as your second for now. When you can use a pen, you can write up the necessary documents for him.”

  Tiphaine glared at the old woman, but it didn’t seem to work. BD gave her a small sour smile.

  “When you can muster a real, glacial, Lady Death glare, then I’ll know you’re better.”

  She took the aching hand in her own, a hand like a claw carved from horn, shaped by a generation of reins and tools.

  “How did this happen?”

  “As best I can make out, Mary Liu spit on her needle and touched me with it. And cursed me. While her eyes turned to something that looked like black tar.”

  She met BD’s skeptical eyes defiantly.

  “So, tell me the whole story,” said the woman. Tiphaine did, and BD went on: “You sure Fen House was clean? It is a prison in the middle of a lake.”

  Tiphaine shook her aching head. “How do you know that?” she demanded.

  “Don’t be an idiot, Grand Constable. I’m the spymaster for the Mackenzies, Bearkillers and Mount Angel. Of course I know what Fen House is. And where.”

  “Oh, of course. No,” said Tiphaine. “No, it’s usually fairly clean. They scrub down every second day. Disinfectant. No lice. Even Norman hated lice, no matter how period they were, and he was the original Period Nazi. Rats and lice.”

  “Everyone did, after the epidemics,” BD said grimly. “Nearly as many died of typhus as the Black Death.”

  “Yeah, I remember. They scared even him, he couldn’t intimidate germs . . . I checked back with Stratson three times, now. She’s not scratched anybody else and nobody else who has gotten a scratch or burn has an infection like this.”

  She hesitated and then gritted her teeth. “I’ve been very careful to touch nobody and burn all the dressings and anything it drips onto, but a dog snatched one of my gloves yesterday. I had a lance follow it. It died within an hour, bubbling green and yellow mucus out its nose and mouth. I made them use shovels to move it and burned it completely.”

  “Well, you remember enough germ theory from before the Change to be useful. Sounds like you’ve been doing a good job keeping it from spreading. What have you been doing to your hand, itself?”

  “Soaking it in hot water morning and night and then dripping pure alcohol on it. I’m afraid of what will happen if I take it home. Mary said . . . she said . . . ‘Bad cess to you and yours’.”

  “Delia would probably have been able to keep it from getting this bad,” BD grumbled. “People forget what it was like, before the Change. They think it was miracles, but it wasn’t. Most of what we could do then was asepsis; cleanliness. A lot was supportive care. And then there were antibiotics. And when they didn’t work people were betrayed and angry, because we’d beaten death, hadn’t we?”

  Tiphaine felt her eyes crossing. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m following you . . .”

  “You’re running a fever of a hundred and four degrees. Of course your brain isn’t following me! So, yes, I can do something and hopefully your body can do more. As for the rest . . . In all your years in the Association have you picked a special saint to protect you? The Virgin?”

  “No. I’m . . . not really religious,” Tiphaine said. “Haven’t been since I was a kid. My mother put me off it.”

  “Ummm,” said BD. “This is one thing Lady Sandra’s teaching isn’t going to help you with.”

  Tiphaine felt her eyes drooping. “She taught me to face things whether they were what I wanted to see or not.”

  “A point. First, let’s change what you are doing. Hot water and pure alcohol are keeping the inflammation high. Cool water right now. Later we’ll soak it in warm water with Epsom salts dissolved in it, three times a day . . . I’ll get you the Epsom salts and some gentian violet. We’ll continue to burn all the dressings. Don’t touch people until you aren’t producing scabs or pus. In fact until you see the welt going down.”

  “How long?”

  “If this were a normal infection, I’d say three days will do the trick. I think, however, that there is a magical component on it. So, I don’t know. Will you try a spell?”

  Tiphaine looked at her blankly. “Have somebody pray over me?” she asked, her voice rising.

  “Ummm, if that’s what you want to call it? I was going to ask you to dance your healing; I’m sure praying isn’t your cuppa tea.”

  Tiphaine swallowed. “I don’t believe . . . but something took over Mary Liu’s body and spoke to me. And it really wasn’t Mary Liu, though it was using her mind and memories and personality as some sort of . . . pattern. That wasn’t a psychological collywobbles. There was something there and it hated me. I think it hated everything.”

  BD nodded. “So you do believe; you’re just not up to admitting it yet. Back to the healing part. You are running a fever. You have a persistent infection and you have a generalized irritation of the skin because of the very harsh methods you’ve been using to fight the infection. There’s going to be scarring.”

  This time Tiphaine let the half-hysterical laughter out. “I’ve been getting cut and bashed and abraded for twenty-three years. Parts of me look like a mad seamstress used me for practice!”

  “Internal scarring could weaken your sword-hand.”

  That brought her up, though the buzzing was loud.

  “We need you to do things that will enhance your immune system. Good food, good rest, freedom from worry. So I’m thinking that you should dance. I wish you did have a saint or patron or Goddess, I’d feel better if you petitioned for healing. When you get home, maybe Delia can help with that.”

  “They all work?” Tiphaine said.

  “Oh, yes. But They play favorites. So, you need to petition to an aspect you can believe in. Which I suppose is why you didn’t go to Doctor Robsvert, who’s assigned to your camp. He’s seventy, the most pre-Change man I’ve ever met, and if a stick turned into a snake in his hands, he’d claim it was paralyzed and he just didn’t notice the scales while he was whittling on it. Then there’s Doctor Methlin, who fights with
Doctor Robsvert at the drop of a pin. He’s a faith healer; Church of God, Scientist, who thinks walking on water isn’t just possible but easy with a little positive thinking . . .”

  Tiphaine tried to shake her head, but it was aching too much. “Neither sounds like a winner.”

  “I’d send you into Portland, or Mount Angel, or down to the Mackenzies if I thought we had time, but I don’t think we do have time. When the infection’s brought down, go to Bethany Refuge outside Portland; by then things will be un-alarming enough for you to pass it off as an ordinary battlefield injury that needs treatment . . . like football players in the old days. The Sisters of Compassion will get you started on physiotherapy for the hand, get it back to strength. We’re going to need that strong right hand, Grand Constable. So now, rest.”

  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

  Tiphaine moved her hand again, looking at the white scar. The Countess cleared her throat. Felipe was looking at his hand. He spoke first. “The dog died? With green and yellow foam coming out of its nostrils? From swallowing the bandage?”

  “Yes, my lord, it did. You can imagine how I felt about it. You’re getting help earlier; on the other hand, it’s an actual bite. Be cautious.”

  Ermentrude said thoughtfully, “You went to a pious wisewoman, and she sent you to Bethany to the Sisters . . . and then you sought a spiritual patron to protect you against the evils of the CUT?”

  Tiphaine smiled slightly. Evidently I’m keeping things general efficiently while also getting across the essentials they do need to know.

  “Yes. As I said, I’ve never been particularly pious. But I found a real expert to . . . guide my meditations. One I trusted implicitly. And I had quite a, ummm, change of heart.”

  MONTINORE MANOR, BARONY ATH

  TUALATIN COUNTY, PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION

  WILLAMETTE VALLEY

  (FORMERLY WESTERN OREGON)

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

  AUGUST 15, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD

  It was late by the time Tiphaine d’Ath and Delia de Stafford waved good-bye to their guests from the verandah of the manor house, a warm summer’s night with bright stars and a great near-full moon rising over the forested Coast Range a little to the west, full of the scents of cut grass and roses and honeysuckle and a faint tinge of woodsmoke and fir sap. The steel wheels of the black carriage crunched on the crushed rock of the driveway, and then the lanterns at its rear faded down the long road that glittered white beneath the moon, flickering as they passed behind the wayside oaks. The lance heads of the escort swayed after them, until it all faded into the night. Moths battered against the big silver-framed lights above, and the wind moved quietly in the trees.

  “My lady?” the house steward asked.

  “Leave us,” Tiphaine said.

  “That will be all, Terrin, for the night,” Lady Delia de Stafford added gently, with a smile. “And tell Goodwife Catrain that the Lord Chancellor Conrad said he’d weigh twice what he does if she ran the kitchens at Castle Odell, and the Lady Regent added that she had never eaten better slowcooked spring lamb, even in Todenangst or Portland.”

  Tiphaine added a slight sideways jerk of the head. Young Terrin—his uncle-predecessor had retired last year—bowed and motioned the other servants away with his white wand and followed them.

  And Delia managed to get all the ladies-in-waiting and pages and assorted highborn suchlike out of the house for the night, one way or another, without even offending them. A seldom-repeated miracle. Here I am, overlord of Ath in my own right, land and woods and water and villages and manors and a thousand families over whom I have the Low, Middle and High Justice, and I actually had more privacy when I was living in a two-bedroom apartment with my single-parent mom. Mind you, the wealth and power and land and so forth go a long way to compensate. Still.

  Montinore had been a mansion before the Change, built long ago on mining profits as a country retreat and then the headquarters of a vineyard in the days of the Pinot Noir boom, a neoclassical house with white walls and tall pillars in front. Not many modifications had been necessary to make it the manor of the home estate at the core of the barony; adding a Great Hall at the rear, and outbuildings. The village a little to the east on the flats adjacent to the Five Great Fields was nearly all new, though. You could see the bell tower of the church, and a little of its red-tile roof, which was near enough for the outdoor servants to live there. The house faced southeast, but if she had walked out onto the lawn she could have seen the watch lights on the grim square towers of Castle Ath, on its hill half a mile west.

  “Glad I finally talked you into moving down from the castle?” Delia said. “And it took a year.”

  “You’re always right, sweetie. Though I have fond memories of the place; we met there, after all. And it was wartime.”

  The gardens and rolling lawns were still here around the mansion; better, if anything, under Delia’s supervision. And the vineyards to the north that were the most valuable part of the manor’s demesne farm. Delia had always been good at keeping the reeves and bailiffs and castellans and stewards honest and up to the mark.

  “Always nice to see Conrad and Sandra in a setting that isn’t entirely business,” Tiphaine said, looking after the coach.

  Though they’d come out here with her partly precisely to occupy the traveling time with consultations.

  Strictly speaking I should be going back with them. Damned if I’ll cut the flying visit that short, though. I’m going to spend at least forty-eight hours with my sweetie, after all this time in the field!

  “I wish they could have stayed longer,” Delia said. “And that Conrad could have brought Valentinne and the children.”

  “We’re all a little busy, right now,” Tiphaine said as they turned to go back in; she offered her arm, and Delia slid hers through it.

  I’d have made the same call. The situation is just too volatile right now. I’ll be leaving soon and leaving Delia alone again. Rehab in Bethany took a lot longer than I thought it would. And it’s going to cost something fierce, the Sisters put the screws to the nobility so they can heal the poor for free. Delia will have a cow if I don’t warn her before the bill gets here. She manages the place well and that means she cares about the details.

  The ceremonial keys tinkled gently at Delia’s silver chain belt, the mark of her status as Châtelaine across from the equally ceremonial dagger that marked her as an Associate. She was in noblewoman’s at home dress, what could be worn when dining en famille, a short over-tunic of cream silk, elaborately tucked and embroidered with a royal blue ankle-length under-tunic. It suited her, which it should, since she’d invented and spread the fashion.

  Most things did suit her; she had a curling mane of night-black hair that torrented down from her light wimple, huge eyes of a blue like the sky on a spring morning, and a tip-tilted nose, and a scent that was like flowers. Just now her figure was a little riper from the birth of her daughter.

  And I still haven’t talked to Delia about Bend and BD. It’s time and past time, even if I’d rather pull out my toenails with my teeth. What a tangled web I’ve found; tangling up my life.

  “Odd thing, that,” she said to Delia as they came into their sitting room.

  “What?” asked Delia, turning away from Heuradys’ crib and putting a finger to her lips.

  Tiphaine grinned. “It’d take a bell ringing over her head to wake her up. You know that. This love seat is big enough for two, if they’re friendly.”

  Musing, she went on: “The odd thing was learning that Jason Mortimer was betrothed to the older Reddings girl. Things got ve
ry rough for her, being pregnant and her prospective groom subtracted.”

  “Oh, yes. What brought that to your mind?”

  “I’ve been thinking about the ramifications of things. I killed Jason, on orders from Sandra; that’s why the Reddings chit ended up in the family way with no family.”

  “Why should that eat at you? You’ve killed enough men and even a few women. Every one of them probably had relatives and obligations. What’s special about Jason?”

  Tiphaine winced slightly; Delia had come to terms with her profession, but never really liked it. Though to be fair she didn’t make any distinction between her black-ops beginnings and her current status. As she said, dead was dead.

  “It’s mostly just how miserable the entire Mortimer family seems to have been. And then I learn something good about them . . . and something bad. Did you know Jason offered to marry me? If I got him out of that place in Corvallis the Dúnedain had him stashed. Practically begged.”

  Delia turned in her arms and looked up at her from her shoulder. “Were you tempted?” she said, with a wicked grin. “You were a landless minor Associate then, after all, and he was a knight.”

  “Hardly. He didn’t realize I’d been sent to kill him, but I’d have been tempted to off him anyway after that; he thought he was offering to do me a favor. But the odd thing is that Guelf and Mary Liu blamed me anyway, even though they think the Dúnedain did it . . . which they were intended to do, of course. Idiots. They screwed the entire timing of the Protector’s War with their little scheme for vengeance and then their not-even-idiotic brother got caught. I increased the average intelligence of the human race by getting him before he could successfully breed. Still, it’s a pity about the girl.”

  She sighed and took a deep breath. Before she could speak, Delia murmured: “You know, darling, that’s a familiar look. It sort of reminds me of the time we were at Forest Grove and Diomede and Lioncel walked in on us and their eyes bugged out and you had to tell them about the birds and the bees . . . and the birds and the birds and the bees and the bees, and then Rigobert came in looking for them and he heard and he started laughing and I thought you were going to strangle him, standing there in your bathrobe. Or the time Lioncel was all indignant about the song accusing me of being a witch and we had to tell him I am a witch and explain about real witches.”