S. Stirling - The Tears of the Sun

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.