with Norman to step on Sandra’s toes. Norman had always backed Sandra in the end, against anyone.
“Hopefully her children will turn out better,” Tiphaine said.
Stratson shook his head and sighed. “She’s never asked, never mentioned either of the younger ones, Yseult and Huon. Once in a while she’d say something about Odard, but it was just snippets. Nothing concrete.”
Tiphaine sighed; a disagreeable piece of work didn’t get any better for waiting herself. If things went quickly, she actually could do some hunting and get back to Portland in the evening, which would be good protective coloration.
“Open her door,” she said. “We need to have a chat.”
Mary looked up from her embroidery when the barred door opened and clanged to behind Tiphaine. She quickly looked down again.
“Good day, my lady.”
The Grand Constable studied the white-work; she’d lived with an expert needlewoman for fifteen years, and had an observant spectator’s grasp of it. She even appreciated it, though she’d rather eat toads than do it herself. There was no accounting for tastes; Delia actually liked being pregnant, for instance.
“That’s very neat work. Yseult mentioned it. Can I see it?”
Mary kept her gaze on the cloth for a few more seconds and then looked up.
“Yseult? How is she?”
Tiphaine nodded. “She’s in fosterage in a noble household, at a place where her status as your daughter won’t cause her trouble. Doing very well, from what I’ve heard, and well liked. Huon is still page to Lord Mollala. He was at the battle of Pendleton last year, running messages and so forth. Lord Chaka thinks well of him.”
“Last year! You mean last month!”
Tiphaine shook her head. “It’s been a long time. It’s almost June. You’ve been in some sort of a fugue state since your arrest for treason. Do you remember your brother coming to you in September, just after the battle? ”
Mary looked at her; there was something distinctly odd in her blue eyes, a desperation.
“You’re trying to drive me mad!”
“ Drive you?” said Tiphaine dryly. “No, you were arrested when news came that Vinton failed to give the Princess to the CUT and your late brother did a bunk. As far as we know, Odard is still alive, still with the Princess and they are somewhere on the Great Plains. Take a look out the window and tell me if you see fall or late spring.”
Mary hesitated and then thrust the cloth into Tiphaine’s hands and walked to the window. She stood there for what seemed like a very long time, gripping the bars and pressing her face against them. When she turned her eyes were full of tears, and the marks of the iron were white on her skin.
“So long, so long. Where was I?”
“Well, here, in body, but your mind was wandering. That’s why Stratson had to cut your hair. It was getting badly snarled. I’d like to know where your mind wandered. According to the guards you kept saying something about hidden and eyes that couldn’t see.”
Mary shook her head and took back her embroidery and began to ply her needle.
“I couldn’t see Odard,” she said, in an almost conversational voice. “They promised I’d always be able to see him and I could and then he went away, and they couldn’t bring him back.”
“They?”
“He, the Priest. He said God would grant me this miracle and.. .”
Mary snapped her mouth shut. Tiphaine waited. Mary shot her a sly glance. “He said… that… he’d pray that Odard got his desire, to marry the Princess.”
Tiphaine frowned down at the woman. Something is off, she thought.
“And now you can see him?”
“Yes, he’s traveling with them, there was grass, so much grass, and buffalo, and fights. There’s a city, a great city, and a golden dome. I think he spent the winter hidden… But how? How did he escape the eye of the Sun?”
Tiphaine pondered the answer; the Cutters used a solar disk as one of their important symbols.
That’s data. Next dispatch we can compare the dates and see if they match. “Which priest told you this?”
“One from over the mountains. He was a true priest, not a schismatic like Pope Leo or the Mount Angel monks. He asked me to make a cloth for the altar of the Lord and promised me my prayers would be answered.”
Tiphaine looked at the cloth with its odd symbols. “Did he give you a pattern?”
“No. He put it in my head, as proof he could do miracles.”
Tiphaine nodded, taking a corner of the cloth and looking at it.
“You know,” she said in a conversational tone of voice, “that wasn’t a priest of Holy Mother Church. He was a Priest of the Church Universal and Triumphant out of Corwin.”
“What do I care, so long as I get my revenge for Eddie’s and Jason’s deaths? And my son will rule Oregon!”
Mary stuck the needle in her mouth and sucked it, a moment. She cast another of those sly looks upward and Tiphaine stared, frozen.
Her eyes were black, like windows into… not even emptiness. Tiphaine clenched her stomach muscles against a sudden wave of nausea. She blinked. Mary Liu was there, but somehow it wasn’t her. She tossed the cloth aside, and Mary’s hand darted out, jabbing the needle point at Tiphaine. Tiphaine jerked back and the point slid down the back of her right hand, brushing along it ever so gently.
“Hee, hee, hee,” giggled the thing that had been Mary Liu. “Bad cess to you and yours!”
Tiphaine walked over to the door and signaled it open. She turned back.
“Bad cess, bad cess, bad cess… You didn’t help Jason out of that cell before the Rangers killed him.”
As a matter of fact, they didn’t kill him. I did. Sandra wanted his mouth shut and the blame put elsewhere. But that was just damage control after he screwed the pooch with your little scheme to use the bandits to attack the Dunedain. Despite specific orders not to do anything until we were ready to start the Protector’s War. Did you think you wanted Astrid Loring’s head more than I did, you stupid bitch? We weren’t ready. That screwup of yours may well be why Corvallis came in at the worst possible moment, why the Association lost and Norman died.
Tiphaine waited and watched the sitting woman with her idle needle. Slowly the eyes leached out and became blue again and she took up her needle and began the careful, neat, quick stitches of an expert. Tiphaine turned and went downstairs.
Did I actually just see that? Would it be more logical to assume I’m going crazy… no. I did just see that.
Then she looked at the sunlight; it was easy to see precisely how far the beams from the windows had moved across the bare floor.
“How long did I stand by the gate?” she asked.
Sir Stratson shook his head. “I didn’t time it, but at least seven or eight minutes. Thought you were thinking deeply, m’lady.”
Tiphaine scratched the back of her hand and looked down and cursed. A painful red welt ran from her wrist to the first knuckle.
How could that happen and I not feel it? And how could Mary Liu move faster than I could withdraw my hand? Something very odd is going on here.
“I think,” said Tiphaine, with elaborate calm. “That you’d better not go into the cell again, unless you put her out with laudanum in wine.”
“She did that?”
“Sucked a needle and tried to jab me with it. I didn’t think she’d managed to scratch me. I really, really, suggest that any physical contact be kept to a minimum. In fact, I order it.”
She met Stratson’s eyes. He looked…
Spooked, scared as hell, thought Tiphaine. Good, so am I.
A year and a little more peeled away. Tiphaine looked at her right hand, holding it up and moving the fingers, marveling at the precise articulation of it, the exquisite symmetry and action. Then she bunched it. The forearm ran smoothly into the lower part of the hand without much indentation at the wrist; a gymnast’s hand, or a
