dispositions and probable intentions. Lord Rigobert, the floor is yours. And I believe Lord Maugis has some thoughts on how we can act against the enemy’s rear elements and transport.”
She sat and waited out the discussion that followed, which lasted until everyone was yawning despite the rare, nerve-jolting treat of unlimited coffee. It was focused on details in any case; nobody was trying to talk her into a monumental last stand in defense of their favorite vineyards. At the last the meeting broke up, most of the men looking reasonably satisfied, or at least knowing what they were supposed to do and understanding the reasons for it, which would do. She stopped the Count on his way out.
“Your lordship, there’s something else that my lord de Stafford and I must speak with you about. Something more immediate.”
“Yes, my lady?” de Aguirre said.
His eyes were haunted with the knowledge of what was about to come crushing through his people’s lands, regardless of how the ultimate strategy worked. He’d probably be glad to have something more immediate to worry about.
“My lord Count, the entire military leadership of the Eastermark, plus myself and Lord Forest Grove, are here in your palace tonight. It’s a very tempting target. Or I would think so, if I was on the other side, and I got my start in clandestine operations. Walls keep out armies, not black-operations teams.”
His face changed, and de Stafford set a hand on his shoulder. “Here’s our plan, my lord,” he began.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
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
N ow this is like old times, Tiphaine thought, with a hint of grim amusement. Except that in the day it was usually me sneaking in through the window to kill someone.
She had to admit it was well done. There had been hardly any noise at all, nothing like as loud as the occasional call of all’s well from the watchmen in the town’s streets, or the challenge-and-response from the completely useless guards patrolling the outer perimeter of the palace. Being that quiet while you were hanging upside down from a silk rope and sawing through steel bars with a diamond-dusted flexible saw was not easy.
A flicker of light crossed her closed lids, some lantern reflecting upward. The bed was extremely comfortable and the day had been long, but she had no difficulty staying in a half trance, breathing deeply and completely relaxed but in a stable state halfway between waking and sleep. She’d learned the trick of that not long after the Change, when she and Kat had to keep watch and watch. An instructor of Sandra’s, a Korean so silent she’d never even learned his name, had taught her how to do it consciously at will later as one part of a training program designed to strengthen the strong and destroy the weak.
It was nearly as restful as real sleep, and had the advantage that your senses were if anything more acute than in the normal waking world.
A squeak. That would be the diamond cutter on the windowpane, now that the bars were out of the way. Her new-minted knights had been precisely right so far on the way the enemy would come. It was a compliment to her training of them.
In the darkness she grinned like a wolf.
Lady Sandra’s school has left a legacy that will travel down the generations.
The sheets and pillows smelled of clean linen and lavender, and felt crisp and smooth under her fingers as she slowly pulled the coverings off. She was in working clothes, dark trews and shirt and jerkin, sock-shoes of glove-soft leather with doubled soles that gripped like fingers. Light mesh lined the jerkin, but for this sort of work you relied on speed.
It’s actually more pleasant than being a general, she thought. Straightforward, in a sneaky sort of way. But to acknowledge the absolute truth, I’m sick of both. I have been for years.
She opened her eyes, keeping them down; she was facing away from the windows. Starlight and a little moonlight were perfectly adequate if you didn’t try to close-focus on anything. They painted the room in shades of pale gray and sliver and blue. One leg moved out, and she caught her left heel on the edge of the mattress and bent the knee.
Of course, this could go wrong. You’re never quite certain with knives, but we need them alive. You know, when I was in my twenties, I used to positively enjoy this sort of thing. Now I just worry about leaving Delia a widow… damn, she could be widowed twice in this war.
The thought was very distant. So was the knowledge that she rather liked the Count Palantine and his wife, and that if it had been peacetime she would have enjoyed visiting the Eastermark with Delia and Rigobert and the children. They had some astonishing falconry here, if you could call using great golden eagles to hunt pronghorn antelope that.
And the Count had mentioned a hunting and skiing lodge in the Blue Mountains that he’d be glad to lend her sometime, obviously one of his favorite haunts. Bear hunts, and sleigh rides, and cross-country skiing in cold that was dry and hard and bracing, not the damp bone-chill of the Willamette. Lioncel and Diomede would love that; they’d tire themselves out, shovel down big dinners and sleep like the dead, and she and Delia could make love on tigerskins before a great roaring fire.
I am going soft in my old age.
She smiled and slid the dagger a little closer under the pillow. There was something about the approach of a knife aimed at you that you could feel. And there was a shadow of a shadow on the wall away from the windows, a suggestion of movement. It would vanish if she tried to focus on it, but if you didn’t try to do that it was clear as noon; and also the back of her right hand itched. That might be…
What was the old word? Ah, psychosomatic. Or it might not.
“Now,” she said conversationally.
And flipped herself out of the bed, pulling at her heel and twisting herself around in midair to land in a fighting crouch, knife out with the point low and left forearm across her body with the palm and fingers stiffened into another weapon.
The dagger in the assassin’s hand was already streaking down towards the spot where her back had been an instant before. The man had his full weight behind it, flinging himself forward and down to drive the length of watered steel all of its twelve inches deep and hard enough that the flaring edges would slice apart the ribs.
Good professional stroke, Tiphaine thought. That would have done it nicely. You want to kill someone with a knife, don’t waste time on fancy.
Two more Cutters in dark clothing were climbing in through the windows. Armand and Rodard dropped silently from where they’d been waiting, heels braced on the little ledges above. Both struck the men below feetfirst, and the crossbows the assassins had been carrying dropped; one went off, and the bolt struck the plaster and board of an interior wall with a crunching whap. The sworn killers of the Church Universal and Triumphant always operated in threes; it was one of the few things they had in common with the Mackenzies.
The knifeman ignored the flurry of blows and thudding sounds from behind him. He wrenched the knife free and came over the bed in a silent rush, the blade held low and reversed with his thumb on the pommel and the blade jutting out from the right side of the fist.
Somewhere in the Cutter lands there’s a school not entirely unlike the one I attended, she thought as she backed easily, moving with soft sure strides, the weight on the balls of her feet.
He didn’t waste time; this wasn’t a duel, not even the ghastly slashing frenzy of a knife fight, where the winner went to the healers for six months. The two knights would be on his back in instants. A feint high, a backhand slash to the face, and then a stab towards her thigh, aiming for the great vessel that ran up the inside towards the groin.
Fast, she thought. But he’s relying on it and I’ve got a third of a second on him.
Her body sank and turned before the thought was complete, her hips swaying aside. Her own knife cut, upward, under the armpit, she couldn’t chance whether he wore a mail vest. Cloth parted, and something else
