S. Stirling - The Tears of the Sun

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.