The Tears of the Sun

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.

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.

And did I really swear God ’s wounds, like some kid brought up by Society retreads who took a nosedive into their personas at the Change and never came out again?

That was funny too; Sandra was a Society retread, and she had slipped into her Catherine-de-Medici-Eleanor-of-Aquitaine persona.. . or slipped out of her twentieth-century one, like a snake shedding its skin. Tiphaine paused to pant and controlled the impulse to laugh at the way her mind had used the oath. It was a warm day, but she was shivering, again, like a winter chill that got into your bones after riding all day through sleet and the campfire afterwards smoking and hissing.

I’m not going back to Montinore until I know I’m not dragging fecal matter along behind. Delia might be able to handle this, but I’m not risking her or the children. Whoever or Whatever is out there, give me a hand here!

She turned in at the gaping purple and teal sheet-metal doors of the “Plodding Pony” headquarters into a warm fug of smells with horse and mule the strongest. The huge warehouse was dark and spots danced before her eyes as they tried to adjust to a light level much less irritating than the clear high-altitude summer glare in Bend. She made her way back through the gloom, dodging packed cases on pallets, carts, straw bales and unidentified miscellaneous pieces sitting ready to trip her up. At the far back she could see some stairs, lit by a few dusty windows of ancient glass. Hopefully, the offices were up there.

“Can I help you?”

Tiphaine jumped and looked to her right. Someone snuck up on me without my noticing anything. I am sick. I am very sick.

“Oh!” said BD, coming out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a filthy rag. She was a weathered woman in her sixties, tough and thickset and moving as if she was still strong but creaked a bit. Tiphaine pushed up the visor and blinked in the non-light.

“Grand…”

She stopped at Tiphaine’s urgent gesture and said: “Well, well, well, what can I do for the nobility today?” BD’s voice was light but there was a bite in it. BD, Beatrize Dorothea, businesswoman, big wheel in the autonomous Kyklos villages, intelligence agent and enemy-become-ally of the Association. Witch.

“Little help with a problem shipping contaminated goods. Hoping you’ll be able to give me good advice. Someone in a kilt said you were the best for some sorts of problems.”

BD clicked her tongue and then waved Tiphaine to the side and ducked out a short door, down an alley, across a street and up some rickety stairs. The apartment was small and shabby, but comfortable and BD quickly drew the curtains over the window. The stairs left Tiphaine panting.

“What contamination?” she asked tersely. “It’s bad tradecraft for you to come and visit me like this.”

“I wouldn’t if it wasn’t urgent and I couldn’t make it seem ordinary. Because it isn’t ordinary. See…”

Tiphaine stripped off her right glove and hissed. The pus had soaked through the gauze pad and into the soft suede and dried. It tore as she pulled off the glove.

BD pushed her into a chair and pulled back a bit of the curtain. She took Tiphaine’s elbow and maneuvered the hand into the stream of sunlight. The long, weeping, inflamed welt stood out, gaping deep into the back of her hand. There were shiny white flashes peeking through the leaking sera, the pinpricks of blood and green and yellow pus. Tiphaine felt a dry gag at the back of her throat.

“I’ve seen… most things in the world,” she said. “I’ve had some wounds I considered extremely serious. But this makes me… ill. Why?”

BD looked up from the trauma at Tiphaine and frowned. She put a hand on the Grand Constable’s forehead and scowled.

“How long have you been running a fever?” she asked.

Tiphaine frowned right back. “A fever?” she asked. “How would I know? Or even notice, unless it was bad?”

“You’re an idiot, Lady d’Ath,” said BD. “I don’t know what you call bad-but it’s bad. Bide a wee. I’ll need some help, and you’re staying right here.”

“I can’t! I’ve got to be seen… I have business with that fool

…”

“Obregon? Good. He can stand to be kicked, and he can stand to wait. But you can come up with a story. I’ll send for Armand; that’s your squire, no? And Velin? Marks is in Campscapell, right? Is Velin here?”

“Armand is here, but not Velin. He’ll be in Upper Boring right about now, tracking down a red herring, I think. This has to be confidential. Things are hanging by threads. I can’t afford a panic. And Sandra would stick me in a hospital and I… suspect this involves things she wouldn’t believe. I wouldn’t either except I was there.”

BD frowned at her. “I need you out of that plate and into some light clothes. I’ll guess you don’t have anything like a chemise in your saddlebags.”

“You guess rightly, O mighty witch-woman. A pair of trews and a small shirt is my usual camp nightwear. Delia insists I wear a chemise at home, but it wouldn’t do on campaign.”

Gnarled old fingers pressed against her lips. “Lean back and rest, as best you can.”

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 Chatelaine 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 very 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 Dunedain 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 Dunedain 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.”

“Speaking of which, witch… it’s time for a talk about religion.”

“And you’d rather pull your toenails out with your teeth,” Delia observed, and then gurgled laughter at her start. “I’d be a very unobservant witch if I didn’t know you well after fifteen years, love. You don’t just let sleeping dogs lie, you prefer to bury them and plant a tree on the grave. For someone so brave you can be so chicken sometimes.”

Tiphaine knelt on the rug and extended her right hand, twitching back the fall of the houppelande. The overlong cuff on her shirt slid up, exposing the seamed pucker of white on the back of her right hand. Delia’s face went pale, throwing the spray of freckles across her cheeks into high relief. She gasped as she pulled it across her lap for a better look.

“Why haven’t you shown it to me?” demanded Delia, bending the hand and carefully tracing the length of the scar. “What happened! You were talking about idiots and then keeping this secret?”

“I was afraid it was a danger to you… and Heuradys,” Tiphaine said, which halted Delia’s tirade in midword. “And it was. Dangerous to you and her; which means I was entirely justified; plus reasons of state. Mary Liu did this.”

“ What? In person?”

“With her embroidery needle.”

Tiphaine winced again at her look; this time it was her professional vanity that twinged. It was rather like a wolf confessing to a rabbit bite on the buttocks.

“With a sewing needle?”

Delia’s callused finger tips stroked the length of the scar. Her strong fingers turned the sword-hand towards the light. Tiphaine nodded grimly.

Great. We could be running around the bed playing The Lustful Knight and the Innocent Country Maid and what are we doing? Discussing wounds and prisoners in Fen House.

“I don’t think it actually scratched the skin, just ran down it. .. but by the time I walked back down the stairs it was a welt and it was hurting. It got badly infected and I wouldn’t let anybody touch it. Mary said, Bad cess to you and yours, and I believe that she meant what she said and knew what would happen. That’s magic, Delia. Real magic!”

Delia didn’t look any calmer, and her grip on Tiphaine’s hand was hurting. “Damned right, that’s magic! Why didn’t you get help! What did you do? Why haven’t you…”

“I went to BD. You know, of the Kyklos.”

“Oh.” A hesitation. “I’m… well, she is a witch, I know that. I’ve met her, of course. And a good field-competent healer. I just wish…”

“I know. If it had been an ordinary wound, I would have come to you.”

Tiphaine gently put a forefinger over Delia’s parted lips. “Sweetheart, listen. This is very hard for me to talk about.”

Delia closed her mouth, let go of her hand and walked over to the crib in the corner. She picked up the sleeping Heuradys and held her close. “I’ll be quiet, but you’d better tell me everything!”

Tiphaine nodded. “Gods do live and walk among us and… I don’t believe in the Christian god, His son or His mother.”

“They’re real enough,” Delia observed-not enthusiastically, but readily; her arms cradled the infant and she stroked a cheek.

“Yes, they’re real. Oh, what my mother would have given to hear me say it! But I don’t…”

“I understand. Actually it’s probably your mother’s fault you don’t like them, after she tried to force-feed you. That’s just not how your heart inclines. But now you want someone you can believe in, a guardian and pillar. Of course that means They must want you.”

Delia kissed Heuradys and the baby stirred. She frowned as she put her back in the crib and turned to Tiphaine.

“I’m not going to yell… but there’s a very big yell in me. Why didn’t you go to Mount Angel or the main hospital in Portland, or Bethany? BD may be a witch, but she’s not a doctor. Good field-grade healer, but not a professional, at that.”

She went over to the sideboard and pulled out the stopper of the brandy, reaching for a glass.

Tiphaine sighed.

“Mostly because I just let the infection get worse and worse. I was doing stupid things to it, too. At Bethany they told me I nearly lost the hand. I think… what Mary Liu did to me may have made me act that way; pushed me to be… even more stubborn than I am naturally. Like a budo move, a come-with, using your opponent’s strength against them.”

“Lost the hand?”

Delia handed a brandy and soda to her and took a long pull on her own drink. Then she coughed and choked and coughed again.

“It looks a lot easier when you or Rigobert do it!”

Tiphaine had to laugh at Delia’s disgusted expression.

“We get hardened to it. You’ve never drunk much and that must have gone straight to your head.”

Delia peered at her glass and then set it carefully on the sideboard.

“It did,” she observed. “I don’t think I need any more, or I won’t be able to have this conversation with you… BD is Apollo’s priestess. But I think you’ d be better with a Goddess. There are many different pantheons-”

“Greek,” said Tiphaine. “I don’t know too much about them, but I think they’re the ones I could put up with. And vice versa!”

“Why?” Delia asked.

“Because of the Olympics. I dreamed about it so long… used to have actual dreams about Olympia.”

“There’s Artemis the Virgin Huntress.”

“No,” Tiphaine said thoughtfully.

I’m actually feeling better about this. If it has to be done, do it right. And remember those eyes looking at you at Fen House. I know when I need a friend who can operate in the same league! Poor Sandra again; she just couldn’t do this. Well, she’s got me.

Aloud, she went on: “No, I like hunting, but it’s not what I am and I’m definitely not a virgin. I’m… I’m a warrior. I’m fighting for my home, the people who depend on me. For you and the kids.”

“Athena,” Delia said firmly. “Though she is a virgin too, I’m afraid. But she’s a war Goddess.”

“I thought Ares was the Greek God of war?”

“Ares is a God of frenzy; he drives men to battle and reaps them like grain on a bloody field. Achilles was His, and died young and childless and alone, trading length of days for everlasting fame. Athena is the defender of the polis, of art and skill, including the art of war. Odysseus had Her for a patron; the man of cunning mind who wanted nothing to do with Troy, but who ended the Trojan war and spent ten years scheming and fighting to get home to his wife and son so that he could end his days among his own people, by Penelope’s side.”

“That sounds a lot better than Mr. Frenzy.”

Delia nodded soberly: “Athena gave Her people the olive and the high fortress that was their strength; she carries a spear and a shield and a tall crested helm. Her symbol is the owl, for wisdom and clever plans. And…”

Delia looked at her, blue eyes suddenly a little laughing as they met her glacier-colored ones.

“And?”

“And she was the Gray-Eyed One.”

Tiphaine found herself laughing. There weren’t many people she did that easily with, and only one when anything serious was happening.

“It’s a natural.”

“Then, let us go on a journey…”

Somehow they had reversed positions and Tiphaine was lying in Delia’s arms, not vice versa, and she was feeling lazy and floaty; much more pleasantly than when it had been fever induced.

Delia’s voice ran on, like a spring wind through the treetops, while you lay and looked up and made stories in the clouds.

“And Ouranos wed Gaia… Metis was swallowed by fearful Zeus and their daughter Athena who was born from the bloody head…”

Umbrella pines growing twisted on a rocky headland with asphodel blooming beneath them, a sea dark purple stretching to a horizon of islands. Sails, and a white froth where the oars stroked and the water curled back from a bronze ram. The smell of dry spicy dust and the taste of wine; a tower of rock and the gleam of marble atop it and the scent of incense. Water-broken light glittering on a great helmed form, ivory and gold, the shield leaned against her knee with the contorted Gorgon face and Victory poised in Her palm, up and up to the calmness like stars in her eyes. Chanted prayer and the music of the aulos. A bull with golden horns pacing to the altar before robed and flower-garlanded maidens who lifted a great embroidered cloth in their hands and sang…

Tiphaine came to herself with a start and looked up at Delia’s face hanging over her and blinked.

“You witched me!” she said.

“Not so much,” said Delia with a smile, and kissed her. “I relaxed you with the brandy. And then I put you in a hypnotic state; so you could hear and see the Gods as I spoke to you of them. And then She spoke.”

“I think you’re right.”

Delia wiggled away, checked the cradle, and then propped the door to the bedchamber open so that a baby’s cry would carry through.

“Ah, I wouldn’t know,” she said from the doorway and put the back of her hand theatrically to her forehead. “I am but an innocent country maid…”

Then she turned and darted inside.

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

Rigobert gave her a slight ironic look and tilt of brow. She didn’t think Count Felipe caught it, but Ermentrude did; though she wouldn’t know exactly what to make of it.

Right, Rigobert, so I gave them a heavily edited version. They’re both good Christians; no need to shock them.

Felipe was frowning and looking at his bandaged hand. “Did finding a spiritual patron help you with… with this sort of thing?” Then he snorted and laughed. “It’s really like something in a romaunt. Except that I just saw a dead man get up and fight.”

“One of the nastier romaunts,” the Countess agreed. “And did it, my lady d’Ath? Help, that is?”

She was afraid, but completely in control of it. Tiphaine inclined her head in respect; she knew from Delia’s pregnancies that they made emotional control more difficult.

“Oh, yes, my lady Countess. Shortly thereafter, I was back at Fen House, on the Lady Regent’s orders, just at the end of Winter Court this year. Then-”

INTERLACHEN PRISON THE NEW FOREST, CROWN DEMESNE (FORMERLY NORTHERN OREGON) PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) JANUARY 8, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD

Tiphaine shook herself violently, water splattering all over the plain concrete floor from her hooded cloak of greased wool. It stank of wet lanolin, and the peculiar smell of chilly mud. There was mud spattered up her legs as well, cold and gelid, and her suit of plate armor was performing its usual miracle of being as shivering-miserable in cold weather as it was sweatingmiserable in hot. At least she could afford stainless steel, not as likely to rust. All that was familiar enough; the Black Months were like this, except when they were honestly frigid and you got snow.

“Close behind me,” she said to her page.

It was as close to midnight as made no matter, but the prison was awake and humming. The guards milled around in the common areas and the prisoners called to one another from their cells overlooking the panopticon. The smells were fairly rank, much worse than the last time she’d been here, and the ordinary damp winter chill was even worse than in most places. Chill moisture seemed to be flowing up from the floor into her legs, as well as leaking down her collar.

The lamplight flickered, and somewhere a man was beating something metallic on the bars of his cell and shrieking, “It was Tom, not me! Tom! Tom did it! You’ve got to believe me! Why won’t you believe me!”

“Oh, shut up, you silly bastard, nobody gives a damn!” a guard shouted back.

I wish I’d had time to bring Armand or Rodard with me. Velin would have been even better! It’s not like Sandra to be hasty like this; she’s tight-stretched.

A few of the guards were finally noticing that a high-ranking agent of the Crown was there, which was fortunate.

For them, she thought.

None of them seemed to know what to do about it.

I am not a happy camper. I could be on my way back home with Delia, sitting with my feet by the fire watching Rigobert do that stupid macho trick he learned from Conrad where he cracks walnuts in his hand and then tapping one open with my dagger hilt. Instead I’m wading through a lunatic asylum in a swamp.

Then she drew a deep breath. Gray-Eyed One, give me patience and wit.

“Where’s Sir Stratson?” she demanded, grabbing a man by the collar.

“He’s over there in the other block.”

“That’s, The noble knight is over there in front of the other block, my lady Grand Constable.”

He repeated it as she twisted the collar, raising him on his toes. From the chevrons on his sleeve, he was supposed to be a sergeant.

“Get this place quieted down. Now.”

She released the man and turned to the page with her; he was thirteen, and looking cold and miserable but alert, his tow hair darkened with the half sleet, half rain and sticking to his face under the steel cap.

“Henriot, you stay here. I may send messages back to you, or you may see things… go very wrong. If they do, your mission is to get back to Portland. This is the code word you’d use.”

She leaned close and made him repeat it.

“Good. You’ll be taken immediately to the Lady Regent with that. Tell her: Nuclear meltdown. Interdict and burn. Answer any other questions she has, but that first.”

The youngster hesitated, took a deep breath and said, “Code, then nuclear meltdown. Interdict and burn.” He walked over to a barred window and nodded. “I can see the courtyard, Grand Constable. They’ve got a lot of torches out there. I’ll wait.”

Old for a page, but a much better choice for this mission than Mollala’s cousin.

She’d left young Brendan Carey with the horses. Because he was very good with horses, but inclined to be reckless. A natural impulse to run towards trouble rather than away from it was good in itself, but learning to control it was hard for a pubescent boy. Henriot was serious and more naturally disciplined.

This page-squire system has its good points and its bad. The good one is it starts them young. The bad one is that you’re pretty well stuck with them once you’ve taken them on unless you want to expend political capital offending the little rat’s kinfolk.

The courtyard was worse than the main block. Guards jostled each other, and torches flared: pine knot torches, gas torches, lanthorns swung and the wind blew and the rain gusted past, and shadows passed gigantic and distorted on the dim rain-wet walls. Crossbowmen stood, sheltered by minimum-security prisoners holding tarps and umbrellas. Stratson was striding back and forth, issuing orders.

Those she could catch mostly seemed to contradict each other. The rest would cause a good many deaths if anything set a light to this soggy tinder; the crossbowmen were all in each other’s fields of fire, for example, and by their uneasy glances some of them had realized it, despite the darkness and chaos and rain.

He caught sight of Tiphaine and strode over. “My lady Grand Constable. Glad to see you. What should we do? I’m ready to fire the building.”

Tiphaine took a deep breath. “ What exactly has happened since your last dispatch, Sir Stratson?”

He drew back and hesitated. Tiphaine looked closely at the face lit by the flickering gaslight. He was more than ever like a spooked horse as the whites of his eyes showed, rising and sinking on the balls of his feet. His head was jerking up and down slightly, too. She didn’t remember that.

Mary Liu, she knew. This is worse than I thought. What did Delia tell me? “You have to make them do something nice, or at least dutiful. It breaks the hold on their minds.”

Tiphaine nodded to herself.

“Wonderful job, Stratson, wonderful!” she said.

She turned to the men, pitching her voice to cut through the burr of noise and the hiss of the rain.

“Men of the guard detail! I am impressed by how well Sir Stratson has coped, and all of you. Thank you. I’m sure Sir Stratson will express his gratitude in ways that you will very much appreciate. Stay alert and maintain your present positions. Help each other stay awake. Buddy up, partner up and stay alert.”

To Sir Stratson: “Good man!”

She smacked him on the shoulder, gauntlet to the overlapping lames of a backplate, a genial gesture… and much more tactful than a slap on the face but just as likely to jar a mind out of a rut.

“The Lady Regent and old Norman certainly knew how to pick the right man for a job that might turn deadly. Let’s go to the maximum security wing and assess the situation.”

The horse-faced man hesitated, his shoulders slowly straightening up. He closed his toothy grimace and blinked. Tiphaine relaxed the least little bit, and Sir Stratson never knew how her hand had ghosted towards the hilt of her long sword.

I’m no witch, but I can see this man’s come back from whatever corner of the void he was sitting in.

The guards were quieting down too, watching their commander and the Grand Constable approach Fen House. A few of them looked around, and began shouting or pushing the others into ranks.

Tiphaine spoke in a quiet voice, easily drowned by the hiss of the rain at a few paces:. “Something happened to you, Stratson. You had your men set up in positions that were an invitation to friendly fire, and I saw some of the guard talking with your more dangerous prisoners. Do you remember anything?”

He shook his head dolefully. “Not a thing, Grand Constable. I was talking with Mary Liu, and then suddenly I was outside trying to make sure that the men were… it sounds bad, doesn’t it? And then you.”

“Talking?” asked Tiphaine. “You wrote me you drugged her with laudanum. Did she wake up?” She shook the arm a little. “Focus, focus

… I need you all here. We’re going to be in trouble pretty soon.”

Stratson turned his face from the door and said, “Scared; I’m right scared of that place. Never liked it. Now it scares me.”

Tiphaine thought hard for a moment. You can’t muscle this, you have to finesse it.

“Stratson, listen, what did your mother call you?”

The wandering, watery brown eyes suddenly stilled. He looked at her intently. “Stanley. It’s been a long time since somebody called me Stanley.”

Tiphaine frowned. “No wife? No kids? No friends?”

“I’m the warden. Just never seemed right for me.” He shook his head for a few minutes. “Was going to marry. Nice girl. Had the date all set, planned everything, hotel, judge, invitations… all set up for May 10th, 1998. And then the Change happened. I never did find my Mary. And I figured I’d never get that kind of a chance again.”

He did go crazy after the Change, just in an inconspicuous, relatively functional way like a lot of other people. But it left him vulnerable.

“Once we’ve got this situation under control, you’re going to take a long vacation and come east with us. POW guard duty is one of the hardest to do well. See some new landscapes. And then I think the Lady Regent might have something long-term for you, a nice little manor not too far from town. You’ve served long and faithfully and it won’t be forgotten.”

She looked at the man, his jaw hanging slightly. “We on?” she asked, in the vernacular of her childhood.

He closed his mouth firmly and his eyes gleamed and he nodded. “We’re on, Grand Constable. Let’s take care of this situation.”

Tiphaine was cat-quiet as they entered, but everything seemed ordinary enough. The tall windows were dark holes, reflections bouncing off them as the rain streaked across them. The wind made the glass bulge and flex unpredictably. Gaslights hissed all around the lower level, their flames more or less steady. Tiphaine grimaced at the smell. Human and cattle feces produced the biogas. Most of the odor burned away, but unless the gas was expensively scrubbed before use enough escaped to make the building unpleasantly smelly. Fen House didn’t rate scrubbers.

“She didn’t stay drugged, my lady. She came out of the drug trance twice and I forbore to give her more. Medic told me it would kill her. So I strapped her to the bed.”

Stratson hesitated. “Then she started to talk. Her eyes turned black again. That’s when I…” The man turned to her, confusion spreading over his face.

“Stanley,” she said softly. He blinked and nodded.

“Dangerous woman. Well, not a woman, I don’t think. But she didn’t stay drugged; and she’s got those black eyes again. I evacuated most of the men. Who could I trust?”

Tiphaine looked up at the prison tier. “Good question, Stanley.”

She remembered a long dispatch from Princess Mathilda, detailing a night of chaos in Des Moines, and the Bossman’s most trusted guards turning on him. Of a man ramming his head through a door, and grinning through mutilated ruin. Of another dying when a High Seeker of the CUT told him his belt was a rattlesnake.

“We’ll just have to trust each other to get through this together,” she said.

She reached down to tug off her right gauntlet and stopped. The owl talisman…

Am I imagining that? No. No, I’m not.

She pulled back the gauntlet back on.

Stay armed and armored, then, girl. You Know Who says so. Yes, my lady!

“Right. Stanley, you’re my backup. I’m going in there and dealing with this. If my eyes turn black, you fill me with arrows and burn the body until there isn’t even ash… and do the same to that creature of the Ascended Masters, too. Got it?”

The man gave her the kind of look sergeants reserved for recruits and Tiphaine grinned in a way that showed fangs.

“Let’s get this over with!”

She snatched the key ring from Stratson and ran lightly up the narrow stairs. The middle cell felt like a looming cave, with two gas flambeaux waving wildly.

Where’s the draft coming from? she wondered.

She stuck the key in the lock and turned. The gate opened with a grating shriek.

Tiphaine laid a bet with herself. “Lady Mary,” she said, striding over to the cot, shoving the barred door shut. The eyes opened-blue, and filled with anger.

“Slut! Dyke! He’s dead! You killed him!”

“How would I have done that?” asked Tiphaine, testing the straps that bound the slight figure to the bed. Thick double-ply cowhide. John Hordle would have trouble breaking them, with no more leverage than that; Tiphaine herself would have been completely helpless.

“You taught that Princess to hate him!”

“Nobody ever taught Mathilda good judgment, she was born with it. I always thought her friendship with Odard was stupid, but I certainly never talked with her about it. Who actually killed Odard? Or didn’t you see?”

“A man. A Saracen.” Mary turned her face away. “He had a club and

… he was so big and… my son killed him but he hit him going down… Odard never had a chance.”

Tears fell out of the blue eyes and ran down the faded checks and ran into her ears. She shook her head, trying to dislodge them. Tiphaine didn’t step closer.

“A club! Not even a duel with a sword! Or a joust! Just a stupid street melee with pirates in Kalksthorpe. The ravens, the ravens are laughing on the back of the chair! The old man is laughing!”

Tiphaine tensed. The light wasn’t all that good, but she was pretty sure the eyes were getting darker. As if something bubbled up from within. Like road tar, BD had said. And it stinks even worse, if you know how to smell it.

“Mathilda kissed him good-bye and said she loved him like a brother. Odard smiled at her and said he was content.”

Mary’s voice was rising. “Content!” she shrieked. “She was supposed to marry him! And that awful priest from Mount Angel gave him last confession and absolution! He was sealed to the Ascended Masters! I promised them he would be theirs if he wed Mathilda! He did not belong to the Sacrificed God!”

The eyes…

Tiphaine backed away from the bed, and heard the thick doubled-ply leather straps creaking. She couldn’t have broken those, not from that position. Mary Liu hadn’t lifted anything heavier than a needle or a wineglass for most of her life, but they were creaking, standing harder than iron against the steel buckles.

Mathilda’s alive, then, and the fellowship intact enough. They must have won that fight, wherever the hell Kalksthorpe is… never heard of it… Sandra would know. She’ll be so relieved. They could tend to Odard rather than leave him fallen on the field. And it sounds like the little bastard died well. I never trusted him…

“Do you know where this happened?” she asked; the Lady Regent would want to know.

“Kalksthorpe, if that means anything to you!” The voice coming out of Lady Mary’s throat was thicker and darker, deeper. “On the ocean, the ocean, so cold and gray… ships with the heads of dragons.. .”

The Atlantic. They got that far! Ships with the heads of dragons? What the fuck?

Then the words turned into a howl. The sound was pain rammed into her ears; it was like barbed hooks thrust through and turning in her head, tearing at her brain. She stumbled back and jammed her hands up under the flare of her sallet to cover her ears. The visor fell down, and her vision suddenly became a narrow slit, like a glowing window on a dark night.

She wasn’t prepared for the sudden heave and snap as something within forced the small body past its limits. It came up and off the cot, directly at her like a cast-iron round shot from a catapult. The impact staggered her, even a small person was still a hundred-pound weight and Mary Liu or the thing that wore her was moving fast.

The lames of the breastplate spread the impact, and she went back into a crouch, grunting as if she’d been hit with a war hammer. Black beat at her vision, a black place where cindered suns collapsed inward upon themselves.

“Don’t come in!” she shouted, and the sound echoed through the cavern that was Fen House. “Don’t come in! If she wins, shoot her dead and fire the prison!”

She fought for breath. The chill was gone; hot, heavy darkness crested over her. Then a flash of light, a spear of light, and she was back in the cell. Teeth were reaching for her eyes, wet and yellow. Tiphaine ducked her head and reared back, then butted the brow of her sallet into them. Something cracked, something howled. Arms gripped her with astonishing strength and broken teeth grated on the steel of the bevoir over the throat, squealing and catching on the metal as they chewed at the steel.

Don’t try to respond conventionally, something within prompted her. You’re not fighting little Mary Liu. Use your head, and not just as a battering ram.

She didn’t try to break the hold; instead she turned and rammed herself three steps into the iron bars. Tiphaine weighed a hundred and fifty pounds. Her armor was a third again more; and she could throw that weight into the saddle with a flex of her legs. The impact rattled her head but the arms dropped away. Mary leapt across the cell and grabbed at the mesh of welded rebar across the outer window, legs braced with monkey agility. Tendons stood out in her pale soft forearms, and one ripped loose. The steel did too, and she turned and hit the Grand Constable with it.

Tiphaine could feel the alloy steel of her armor flex under the blow and tasted her own blood. She stepped into the next strike, grabbed the bar on the downswing. The grinning meat-puppet gripped it in both hands and twisted. Tiphaine held on grimly, counter-twisting, pain shooting through her right hand.

This thing is stronger than a human being has any right to be. But it still only weighs as much as Mary Liu.

And suddenly the thing was aloft, hoisted by its own grip on the thick iron, over and about… and the warrior moved, putting her back, shoulder and arms into the swing. Tiphaine could hear a molten voice roar. Each time it did the world shook and blackness came over her sight. And then a cool soprano would sing out a great bell-like note and she could see again.

“Glaukopis! Nikephore!” she heard herself shout, and she knew no Greek, and yet knew the meaning of the words: “Gray-Eyed! Victory-Bearer!”

Swing and momentum and precision. The creature struck dead center in the glass and it shattered behind her, hands still reaching for Tiphaine’s throat. The slender body folded and flew back, into the lintel, and over and out through the shattered window, receding as if she were watching it through the wrong end of a telescope, vanishing down a spiral into infinity.

Tiphaine turned frantically to the cell’s gate. “Don’t go out, don’t go out, nobody go out or come in here. Let me handle it!”

She raced down the stairs, jumping sideways off that last ten steps, landing bent-knee and rolling in a clash of plates and using her moving weight to push herself back onto her feet. Stratson opened the rear door by the kitchen and she raced out into the dark waste yard behind Fen House, splashing through puddles ankle deep, fighting for her balance on the soaking sagging marshy growths. Light came from some of the windows.

Before she could call, more lights came on; Stratson doing just the right thing. She could see a little figure covered in soaking white rags trying to heave itself up on its arms through the downpour. The legs didn’t seem to be moving.

All right Rudi, you sent us the story on how to deal with this.. .

The warden staggered out. She turned to him: “There’s a wall around this piece of bog, right?”

“Yes.” Stratson craned to look at the struggling figure. “What next?”

She swallowed and answered, her voice as hard as diamonds, the bell chiming in her head and the black held at bay, but heaving and twisting with dreadful strength. Her long sword came out, a fugitive gleam in the rain and darkness.

“I’m going to dismember the thing. Then we’re going to clean everything. With fire.”

“Aye, Lady. Whatever the Crown gives you, it isn’t enough and I don’t envy you.”

Tiphaine could see the figure’s legs begin to move.

Odd, almost like each is under the control of a different nervous system. Like she’s being puppeted by a swarm of… things… crawling around inside her.

She let the thought go and filled her mind with a simple mantra she’d composed over the past few months with Delia’s help.

Her sword went up. “Io, Io, paean!”

The creature moved, rolling in the mud. Cut. You know how. Two-handed grip, turn, pivot, loose grip and then hard when it hits!

Striking at shoulders, elbows, wrists, like butchery in a nightmare abattoir where the flesh under the steel wouldn’t die.

Then the head lay looking up, dangling from a flap of muscle and skin. The eyes were open and looking at her; Mary’s spiteful, angry, blue eyes.

Cut.

The head rolled free. Tiphaine knocked up her visor, went to one knee and set the sword point down, bracing herself on the hilt and dragging in one raw cold breath after another. It was a bad thing to do to a good sword, but it would have to go too. Her body was streaming sweat under the armor, but shivering with chill at the same time. Bits of hair and matter and skin spattered her armor and gauntlets, but the rain was still coming down. She turned her face up to its cleanness, let the water flow into her mouth, spat, did it again.

Stratson came to her. “My lady?” he asked.

He looked more like a horse than ever, his long yellow teeth bared by a grimace that pulled back his lips, his eyes wide opened and staring.

He looks like he expects the pieces of her to come back together. I’m not surprised.

“Listen, she gets cremated tonight and everything with her.”

He nodded, the whites of his eyes showing. “I thought you might, m’lady. Got things going while you were busy.”

He signaled, and men came forward with barrels of the wood-alcohol mix used for lanterns; others dragged out a hose connected to the biogas plant, and still others made a chain to bring wood from the sheds that kept it more-or-less dry.

“Should I also… burn the room?”

“Probably. Spit, blood, hair, anything. Don’t touch anything with your bare hands. I’m going to strip when I’m done and we’ll burn even my armor and sword. It’s a good thing my Associate’s dagger is in my saddlebags. I’d burn that too if I’d been wearing it, and it’s a gift from the Lady Regent.”

The rain came down, but the wind was easing off. The prison guards rigged tarps to cover the soggy yard that sloped down to the swamp. One of them came forward with a torch and looked at her. She nodded curtly.

Whump! The alcohol caught, and then the wood below it as the heat drove out moisture and the gas played across it like a dragon’s breath. More wood, more barrels of alcohol, blue and red flames soaring up. Men came bearing the contents of the cell, handling them with gingerly reluctance and heavy gloves.

“What about this?” asked Stratson, showing her the white altar cloth. He grasped one corner and cursed.

“What!”

“This!” A needle dangled from the leather gauntlet he wore. Tiphaine pulled the alcohol lamp closer. “Did it touch you?”

“No; but the whole cloth is run through and through with needles!”

She frowned down at it. “Put it down on the bed, strip the glove, make sure not to drop the needle and put it on top. The mattress is a bag of cornhusks, right? Over a rope webbing?”

“Yes.” Stratson did as he was told and eased back as Tiphaine carefully studied the length of cloth draped over the little bed. Needles twinkled in the waving flames.

“That sewing box of hers, too,” he said. “It was set just so on the little table and it fell over. We caught it in time, but the boxes of pins opened up. Fortunately they all fell in not out, but still.. . When did she have time to set this up?”

Tiphaine shook her head. “Shovels, oil… it’s going to be a long night.”

Then she looked at the spread of cloth and studied the designs; the odd symbology seemed to make her eyes slide along faster and faster…

She wrenched her gaze away. No, I don’t think I’ll take this along for study.

“Throw it on. All of it.”

“Got some priests,” Stratson said. “There’s a hermitage in the woods. They come over and hear confessions and say Mass. Your page had someone run for them, smart kid.”

Tiphaine realized he had an entourage, standing at a slight distance. Five of them were wearing habits, brown Dominican robes. The one who came forward wore the bright red cincture of the Hounds of God, which she hadn’t seen in many years. Tiphaine bared her teeth, but the man raised a hand, palm-out to her. It was impossible to tell his age, but she thought the lines in his face were those of suffering as much as age.

“Peace, sister. Peace. After Pope Leo died, we were disbanded by orders of the Lady Regent. Bishop Maxwell tracked us down several years ago. All of us have had training in detecting the enemy’s works. We have stayed disbanded; but at the orders and service of the secular authorities. Thus we do penance.”

Tiphaine growled. That’s unexpected! Did Sandra know? But, if they are now on the side of the Angels… we need a few doughty warriors in the spiritual realm.

“You’ve got me at a disadvantage, Father…”

“Lucien Blat. I am at your orders. What can we do?”

Stratson interrupted. “Tell me what will make this safe!” he demanded.

And Tiphaine found herself sharing a sympathetic glance with a Hound of God. The irony bit.

“What is… who is… what can you tell me?”

Tiphaine looked around and realized the priest hadn’t overheard her conversation. Tersely she explained, and was reassured and oddly disturbed when the priest simply nodded acknowledgement.

Oh, damn. This sort of story is credible now. It’s good that he believes the truth but the truth is so Not Good.

“I think that we need to hallow and sanctify this land,” the cleric said thoughtfully. “And not bringing anybody vulnerable here sounds like a very good idea. In the future; I’m afraid I agree, this entire place should be destroyed and interdicted. Possibly burned over in the late summer when it dries out enough, for several years running.”

He turned and went to the other priests standing in the wind, as motionless as they might have been standing in the shade of an oak on a hot day, their hands tucked into the broad sleeves of their robes.

Disciplined, Tiphaine thought with approval.

As Father Lucien turned back to her the three paced the precincts, waving censers and sprinkling water, praying and chanting. One stood and sang the “Kyrie Eleison.” His powerful baritone fought the wind and rain. The other four picked up the descant and response.

Father Lucien signed the cross before her.

Did I just feel something from my amulet? Damn, but I’m not used to this. I don’t like it.

“Shall we pray for her soul?” he asked, between verses. “Christ died for us all. Even her.”

“I don’t know. She was born in the Church. She turned apostate and traitor for personal power. Probably about ten years ago. I could say her soul was stolen from her. With her permission, I think, but still.”

“It’s going to take a long time to reduce this to ashes,” observed Father Lucien. “I and my fellow priests will stay here, watch and make sure that all is consumed. And we will pray.”

Stratson cleared his throat. “Did you say you wanted to strip and bathe, Grand Constable?”

“Yes,” she said, and closed her eyes for an instant with a crushing weariness that made her bones ache. “Everything I have on goes on the fire. The bathwater to be poured out by the marsh; the towels on the fire.”

Father Lucien smiled at her. It was a small smile, and a bit tight. “Not taking any chances, I see, my lady Grand Constable.”

Tiphaine looked at her sword and sighed. She pitched it carefully into the center of the flames. It stood, quivering. Then she pulled off her helm and tossed it carefully to land at the foot of the blade, wincing as she thought of the cost of a new suit of plate armor. Stratson gave her reasonably knowledgeable assistance with the parts you simply couldn’t handle yourself. She turned to Lucien as she pulled off her right gauntlet. The scar stood out, inflamed, with a white rope of scar tissue down the center.

“She did that to me in May. It nearly cost me my hand. All it took was her sucking one of her needles and running it down my hand. She didn’t even scratch the flesh; just touched it.”

He looked carefully, but forbore to touch her. Then he nodded and strode forward, to stand by the cantor at the fire. By the time she had all the plate and mail off and was stripping the gambeson, tunic and trews, Stratson had all the men facing outwards.

I feel stupid doing this Lady Godiva with gooseflesh thing. But I was the one grappling with… that… and splattering its gore all over. If I inhaled her blood, or spit got through the armor and gambeson… I might wake up tomorrow loosing my guts or showing pustules or carbuncles. Better get really clean.

The amulet was warm and comforting between her breasts. This is probably a good thing to do.

“My lady.”

Father Lucien bowed before her and kept his eyes firmly over her left shoulder.

“Your page is inside with Father Manuel. They’ve prepared three baths for you. The boy has towels all warmed up and we really can’t have our Grand Constable sick. And I assure you, we are taking extreme care. We will hold the vigil and not let even a spark or scrap get loose.”

He frowned up at the security block. “I’m going to insist, as hard as I can, that the whole building be burned. Burned, exorcised, then let nature cleanse it for generations.”

Tiphaine looked at him. I am finding myself thinking good thoughts about a former Inquisitor. The world is a very strange place.

“You are probably right. I’ll speak to the Lady Regent and strongly recommend that we do so. God knows we’re broke, with the war, and we will be for years to come. But this… needs doing.”

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

Countess Ermentrude looked at her husband. When he nodded confirmation, she pulled the night-robe around her more closely and shivered.

“ That was what you fought?” she asked him. “Or something even worse? Merciful mother of God, Felipe!”

Tiphaine held out her glass. “Rigobert, do the honors, would you? That isn’t my favorite memory and I have some… doozies.”

He poured from the decanter he’d moved to within arm’s reach. She drank again, ignoring the quiet speech in the background while she let the smooth fire of the brandy relax the knot in her gut.

But Delia was able to help with the nightmares. Reason to love, number seven thousand one hundred forty-two: doesn’t freak out when I wake up sweating and shaking and grinding my teeth.

Felipe set down his own snifter, rose and bowed, the full formal gesture.

“My lady d’Ath, House Arminger and the Protectorate are very well served in their Grand Constable. House Artos and the High Kingdom of Montival will be as well.”

“It needed doing, your grace,” she said with a shrug. “I was there, and I did it.”

He exchanged another glance with his wife.

“My lady Grand Constable, I cannot repay your aid with gifts, but I would give you one, if I might, as a symbol of our regard and a pledge of future friendship between our Houses. We spoke of my hunting lodge of High Halleck, in the mountains-my mother had it built and named it.”

Tiphaine inclined her head. “I was thinking just a little earlier of asking for the loan of it,” she said. “When the war is over.”

He shook his head. “Not a loan. I… we would gift it to you, my lady, lodge and land and forest right. In free socage, not asking vassalage, of course.”

Tiphaine put down the brandy snifter and made her mouth not drop open. House de Aguirre didn’t do things by halves!

Sandra would be pleased. And Rudi and Mathilda would, too. I’ve certainly nailed down the Eastermark politically, the way they wanted. But I don’t think… I’m Grand Constable, accepting a princely gift like that might…

She stood and bowed in return. “My lord, my lady, my office forbids that I accept such a gift in my own person.”

Felipe began to frown slightly, but Ermentrude touched his sleeve and spoke, “But you have an heir, I believe, Lady d’Ath?”

“Yes. My adopted son, Diomede. Born to Lord Rigobert and his wife Lady Delia.”

“Second son,” Rigobert said helpfully.

Which gave a perfectly reasonable excuse for his welcoming a son taking the name of another House; it solved the inheritance problem rather neatly. Arrangements of that sort weren’t at all uncommon, where a fief-holder had no heir of the body.

Count Felipe’s face cleared, and he beamed. “Which enables me to express my gratitude to you both,” he said. “I must insist.”

Gisarme-butts stamped in the corridor outside. Rigobert opened the door, and the Mother Superior of the Walla Walla abbey swept in. She made a curtsy: “My lord Count?” she said. “I came as quickly as possible.”

Tiphaine stood. “I leave you in very capable hands, your Grace,” she said.

She and de Stafford shook the nobleman’s hand and bowed over Ermentrude’s.

“And that is that,” she murmured, as they walked back through the family quarters.

Bewildered work crews were already tearing up the bloodstained parquetry. The Baron of Forest Grove nodded approval.

“Except for winning the war, of course,” he said. “And now we have to manage a fighting retreat for the High King.”