because the main effort had happened to hit here. If the Seeker had come after her-
“The High King had a similar experience on his quest,” she said. “And Lady Juniper a little east of here, though she was better prepared.”
Then she looked at the palm, stopping the chirurgeon for a second. “This was a bite?”
“He’d have had the thumb off in another moment, but someone hit him on the head with a war hammer.”
“That would be what popped out the eye. Well, my lord, if you’re going to be taking my advice from now on, after it’s dressed I’d send for the Mother Superior.”
The doctor gave her an offended stare. She glanced back at him and he opened his mouth, closed it, finished his work and left with a deep bow to join the others working on the casualties.
Felipe’s face changed as he followed her thought.
No, he’s not a genius as a field commander, but he’s not stupid.
“My lady, my lord,” he said. “I think we need to consult.”
Rigobert’s squires removed his armor as the Count’s did his, and then they walked after him as he went, limping slightly. Their path led farther into the family quarters; when they stopped at a door that looked as if it had a solid steel core so did the reinforced guard detail. When the door closed behind them the noiseless whuff and the abrupt silence confirmed her suspicions; she blessed his parents’ paranoia. The room within was probably his wife’s, from the decorations, which included a big oil painting of a snowbound landscape realistic enough to make Tiphaine shiver a little at the black pines shedding wisps of ice crystals. Certainly his wife was in the chamber, dressed in a thick night-robe trimmed with marten fur. The only windows were narrow and thickly barred, though open to the air. She started up, reached for his hand, and then stopped at the bandage.
“I’m fine,” he said.
They embraced a little cautiously, for his bruises and injuries and her pregnancy, and he kept the bandaged left hand well clear of her. Ermentrude followed the words with close attention as he spoke, then curtsied to Tiphaine, and again to Rigobert.
“Please, be seated, my lady, my lord,” she said, gracious but pale. “Refreshments?”
Felipe grinned at her, a tired expression. “I think we could all use a stiff brandy, my beloved,” he said.
“Not for me,” she said, and touched the slight swell of her stomach for a moment. “But how I wish I could.”
She did the honors, poured herself a cordial, and they all sat around a table that bore some sewing gear and a copy of Sense and Sensibility with a tooled leather cover and a silk ribbon marking a place. It rested on another with the title, Birds of North America.
You never knew everything another human being. Tiphaine sipped at the brandy, which was excellent, not quite as smooth as the pre-Change salvage Sandra preferred, but demonstrably on the same road. Though at present raw hooch distilled from potatoes by peasants would have been welcome.
“You said that I should send for the Mother Superior of the house of the Sisters of Charity here,” Felipe said, and raised his injured hand. “I presume not for their medical skills, excellent as those are?”
“No,” Tiphaine said. “We are contending with… I think the expression is principalities and powers, my lord. And I’m not a superstitious person by natural inclination, as you may have heard.”
He’d probably heard scandalized whispers that she was the next thing to an atheist, which, until fairly recently, would have been absolutely correct.
Not that I’m a good Catholic now either!
“Not the archbishop?” Ermentrude said curiously, but she sounded curious about Tiphaine’s reasons rather than disagreeing with the judgment, from the tone.
“No. I’m sure he’s a pious and learned man”-which took care of the formalities-“but what you need right now are certain… personal qualities. An archbishop is inevitably something of a politician and that is not what’s required.”
Felipe and his wife exchanged a glance, and he went on.
“Very well, my lady Grand Constable, I will do as you recommend, and light candles and pray to St. James, the patron of my House. Could you tell me exactly what we’re facing? I know in general terms that the Church has denounced the CUT as diabolists and done everything but proclaim a Crusade… they’d need His Holiness for that, of course, and Badia is so far away… but could you give me some details? It would be very much appreciated.”
Tiphaine hesitated; she was operating at the limits of her discretion here, and Sandra had always preferred need-to-know. On the other hand…
I’ll edit things as I go along, just give him the gist. Certainly I’ll take out the personal bits! And I’ll be vague on exactly who helped me out. But he does need to know; the war effort requires that he be brought up to speed. Plus I think Ermentrude is his closest adviser. And unlike their men-at-arms, I think they can keep secrets.
“I was in charge of the Mary Liu matter,” she said.
“Dowager Baroness Liu? Lord Odard de Gervais’ mother?” Felipe said. “She was arrested for treason, wasn’t she? I’d heard she was under house arrest at Fen House. But there was a rumor she died…”
“Yes. That wasn’t simply a case of treason. What happened after her arrest has a bearing on your wound and what needs to be done to make sure it heals. The King had such a hurt on his quest from an arrow, and I did last spring, and now you. That May I rode to Fen House-”
INTERLACHEN PRISON THE NEW FOREST, CROWN DEMESNE (FORMERLY NORTHERN OREGON) PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) MAY 28, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD
It was the dawn of a fine spring day when Tiphaine d’Ath rode out of the East Gate of Portland, taking the carefully maintained Banfield north to the I-205 interchange, towards the Columbia.
If anyone had been ill-advised enough to ask where she was going or why, she would have jerked her head back towards her squires and the mounted varlets carrying nets and boar spears and the half a dozen shaggy slothounds panting and padding in their wake. The dark green tunic and trews and shirt she wore, and the peaked Montero hat with a partridge feather in the livery badge would bear that out. It was well known that the Baroness of Ath had the rare and valued privilege of hunting in the Crown Preserves of New Forest and Government Island.
New Forest had once been Forest Park and Metro Portland’s outer suburbs, before the firestorms and the plagues and then the Lord Protector’s spearmen had emptied them.
Government Island to the east was still Government Island; the government had changed… but not the restricted status. They passed through the new agricultural zone quickly. Truck gardens and specialty orchards had been planted where once houses had crowded cheek by jowl.
Once off the old highways, Tiphaine relaxed a bit. Trees arched over Airport Way for a while. Then they opened out to reveal shaggy, intensely green meadow thick with blooming thickets of purple lilac and wild roses gone feral into impenetrable tangles and making the air heavy with sweetness. Then a stand of young garry oaks and black walnuts planted by the Crown’s foresters, thirty or forty feet high, with here and there the snag of a scorched brick wall, or a reedy pond where a basement had been, and then self-sown woods ranging from the tall poplar trees and copper beeches of some park or suburb to tangled saplings poking their way through the monstrous barbed chevaux-de-frise of blackberry vines around a chimney. A generation’s rapid growth in this moist mild climate had drawn a haze across the past, as if it were trying to turn the Change into something in a story or a song or a picture in an illuminated book.
Now and then a taller building poked through, a green mound overrun with vines, but most of those had been torn down for their materials in the program that had rebuilt Portland and sown the land with castles. It had been policy to clear these areas first. Now they helped feed and fuel the Crown city of Portland and provided hunting for its lords.
Practical, and I think Norman wanted to wipe out the remains of a world he hated. Maybe one man in a hundred thousand welcomed the Change, knowing full well what it was and what it would do. And they were the ones who did best.
The sounds of life were thick-the air full of northbound wings, murmurous with bees, squirrels chattering and scolding, now and then the slap of a beaver’s tail, or a glimpse of a raccoon. Once an elk bounded across the
