The Tears of the Sun (78 page)

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.

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.

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.

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—”

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.

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.

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.”

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.

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.