swordswoman’s.
“There was… a problem with the hand, after that scratch?” Countess Ermentrude de Aguirre said carefully.
“Problem?” Tiphaine said. “Well, yes, your grace. The first problem was that I didn’t take it seriously enough at first.”
Rigobert poured himself another brandy. “You always were stubborn, my lady,” he said.
“If I weren’t stubborn, I’d have been dead before my fourteenth birthday,” Tiphaine said. “But in this case… yes, there was a downside. Fortunately I’m not stupid. I… went to see someone, you might say. In Bend.”
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CITY OF BEND OFFICES OF THE PLODDING PONY EXPRESS COMPANY CENTRAL OREGON RANCHERS ASSOCIATION TERRITORY (FORMERLY CENTRAL OREGON) HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) JUNE 3, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD
B end is hot in the summer.
Tiphaine kept the spurt of laughter behind a bland facade. The fact that she nearly didn’t was a bad sign.
Bend is hot. I could just say, water is wet, she thought.
Her head buzzed. The joints of her body all ached as well. She’d felt a little like this with the flu once, when she was ten. Her mother had made her go to bed, and she’d missed school and hadn’t even been able to read, just lying there hurting.
“My lady?”
Armand ’s face. So like Kat’s. She shook her head. “Armand, get the horses taken care of. Set up camp with the rest of the Association forces. Have my tent placed next to whoever is in charge.”
“Sir Cesar Obregon de Lafayette,” Armand said, alarm in his tone. “You’re here to-”
“Ream him out, yes. Later.”
That, she thought as things cleared, really wasn’t fair of me. But I have a little grudge to work off on the very puissant Sir Cesar Obregon de Lafayette.
She lifted her helm a bit to feel fresher air on her sweat-sopped hair; it helped her aching head, too, for an instant, but she put it back on. In spite of the heat, she was wearing full plate; if you didn’t have your arms on it, that was about the best disguise anyone had ever invented. You couldn’t even really tell someone’s gender easily. She’d left off the sabatons and gauntlets, but wore dark suede gloves; and was sweating copiously into them.
“My lady, you’re not well!” Armand said.
She started to laugh, and then stopped herself. That would really convince him that she was off her head.
I am, she thought, which threatened more laughter. I am definitely not well. The will commanded the body; she’d learned that early, and Sandra’s schools had ground it home.
The strong grow stronger. The weak die.
“I know I’m not well, Armand,” she said, her voice lucid. “I’m going to get something done about it. This has to be confidential. Believe me, it has to be. Now cover for me. I’ll be in contact later.”
He nodded unwillingly, and stepped back. She slid the visor down and made her legs move; the bright sunlight dimmed to a slit, which helped a little, but it made the smell of sickness-sweat worse. She focused into the town past the grossly slack gate-guards, down the block, on the next street sign.
Walk a careful path.
It was a little like being drunk, but without the fun part. People tended to avoid her, perhaps because of the blank menace of the visor overlapping the bevoir. There were plenty of hostile looks, and occasionally a swaggering cowboy would spit on her shadow after she’d passed.
Present alliances or no, plenty of festering grudges remained. Raiding parties from Castle Odell had reached nearly this far, in the old wars. She’d been on a few of those herself.
I’m alone, she thought. And it hurts too much to enjoy it.
Pages, squires, tirewomen, men-at-arms, retainers and servants, there was no escaping them once you were a noble; doubly so as Grand Constable. Walking alone down a busy street wasn’t on her agenda very often.
Armand really wanted to stop me. I wonder if he thought about knocking me over the head? In his position, I certainly would have. I didn’t train him to blind obedience.
Her destination was north on Colorado Avenue, in the old industrial section. The bright summer sunlight made her squint, trying to read the street signs, lancing into her head. She’d visited the offices of the Plodding Pony Express several times before; always discreetly. She was fairly confident of finding it again. Given the burden of bad news from all fronts, she wanted to make sure that she wasn’t followed or have rumors spark along her back- trail.
I’m pretty sure she’s still here. And she’s probably at the warehouse. I hope she manages to think fast on her feet. Though, when has BD ever been less than quick on the uptake?
Tiphaine found her steps wandering a bit along the sidewalk. A cowboy reached out to shove her away, met her eyes through the slit of the visor, clearly rethought his actions, and swerved around her.
Blowing the cover of the Meeting’s spymistress would be a bad thing. A rumor that the Grand Constable has a magical wound! God’s wounds! But she got out of that infiltration mission in Pendleton back during the Great Cluster-Fuck. That took real ability. And she’s supposed to be good at… the sort of thing I’m dealing with. Christ, off to a witch doctor, literally.
And did I really swear God ’s wounds, like some kid brought up by Society retreads who took a nosedive into their personas at the Change and never came out again?
That was funny too; Sandra was a Society retread, and she had slipped into her Catherine-de-Medici- Eleanor-of-Aquitaine persona.. . or slipped out of her twentieth-century one, like a snake shedding its skin. Tiphaine paused to pant and controlled the impulse to laugh at the way her mind had used the oath. It was a warm day, but she was shivering, again, like a winter chill that got into your bones after riding all day through sleet and the campfire afterwards smoking and hissing.
I’m not going back to Montinore until I know I’m not dragging fecal matter along behind. Delia might be able to handle this, but I’m not risking her or the children. Whoever or Whatever is out there, give me a hand here!
She turned in at the gaping purple and teal sheet-metal doors of the “Plodding Pony” headquarters into a warm fug of smells with horse and mule the strongest. The huge warehouse was dark and spots danced before her eyes as they tried to adjust to a light level much less irritating than the clear high-altitude summer glare in Bend. She made her way back through the gloom, dodging packed cases on pallets, carts, straw bales and unidentified miscellaneous pieces sitting ready to trip her up. At the far back she could see some stairs, lit by a few dusty windows of ancient glass. Hopefully, the offices were up there.
“Can I help you?”
Tiphaine jumped and looked to her right. Someone snuck up on me without my noticing anything. I am sick. I am very sick.
“Oh!” said BD, coming out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a filthy rag. She was a weathered woman in her sixties, tough and thickset and moving as if she was still strong but creaked a bit. Tiphaine pushed up the visor and blinked in the non-light.
“Grand…”
She stopped at Tiphaine’s urgent gesture and said: “Well, well, well, what can I do for the nobility today?” BD’s voice was light but there was a bite in it. BD, Beatrize Dorothea, businesswoman, big wheel in the autonomous Kyklos villages, intelligence agent and enemy-become-ally of the Association. Witch.
“Little help with a problem shipping contaminated goods. Hoping you’ll be able to give me good advice. Someone in a kilt said you were the best for some sorts of problems.”
BD clicked her tongue and then waved Tiphaine to the side and ducked out a short door, down an alley, across a street and up some rickety stairs. The apartment was small and shabby, but comfortable and BD quickly
