drew the curtains over the window. The stairs left Tiphaine panting.
“What contamination?” she asked tersely. “It’s bad tradecraft for you to come and visit me like this.”
“I wouldn’t if it wasn’t urgent and I couldn’t make it seem ordinary. Because it isn’t ordinary. See…”
Tiphaine stripped off her right glove and hissed. The pus had soaked through the gauze pad and into the soft suede and dried. It tore as she pulled off the glove.
BD pushed her into a chair and pulled back a bit of the curtain. She took Tiphaine’s elbow and maneuvered the hand into the stream of sunlight. The long, weeping, inflamed welt stood out, gaping deep into the back of her hand. There were shiny white flashes peeking through the leaking sera, the pinpricks of blood and green and yellow pus. Tiphaine felt a dry gag at the back of her throat.
“I’ve seen… most things in the world,” she said. “I’ve had some wounds I considered extremely serious. But this makes me… ill. Why?”
BD looked up from the trauma at Tiphaine and frowned. She put a hand on the Grand Constable’s forehead and scowled.
“How long have you been running a fever?” she asked.
Tiphaine frowned right back. “A fever?” she asked. “How would I know? Or even notice, unless it was bad?”
“You’re an idiot, Lady d’Ath,” said BD. “I don’t know what you call bad-but it’s bad. Bide a wee. I’ll need some help, and you’re staying right here.”
“I can’t! I’ve got to be seen… I have business with that fool
…”
“Obregon? Good. He can stand to be kicked, and he can stand to wait. But you can come up with a story. I’ll send for Armand; that’s your squire, no? And Velin? Marks is in Campscapell, right? Is Velin here?”
“Armand is here, but not Velin. He’ll be in Upper Boring right about now, tracking down a red herring, I think. This has to be confidential. Things are hanging by threads. I can’t afford a panic. And Sandra would stick me in a hospital and I… suspect this involves things she wouldn’t believe. I wouldn’t either except I was there.”
BD frowned at her. “I need you out of that plate and into some light clothes. I’ll guess you don’t have anything like a chemise in your saddlebags.”
“You guess rightly, O mighty witch-woman. A pair of trews and a small shirt is my usual camp nightwear. Delia insists I wear a chemise at home, but it wouldn’t do on campaign.”
Gnarled old fingers pressed against her lips. “Lean back and rest, as best you can.”
After a minute a glass was pressed into her left hand. “Drink, slow sips. You’re dehydrated. You need to be flushed out.”
BD lifted off the heavy sallet. “Unconquered Sun, how does this thing around your neck come off?”
“The bevoir?” Tiphaine mumbled. “Undo… the chain and hooks. Buckles underneath and open hinges. Lift it out. Shit! ”
That as the older woman’s inexpert hands jerked her head back and forth. She fiddled with the vambraces, found the trick and slid them down and off her forearms.
“Most of the rest is buckled… tied to the point strings on the doublet… the leather cords. Just cut ’em, woman!”
Tiphaine sighed as BD picked up the bits and pieces of ironmongery and walked out. She sipped at the tart, cold herbal tea and slowly felt herself relax; her heart stopped beating so fast, though she hadn’t noticed it while it did. Her head throbbed and so did her arms and joints; aches she’d ignored in all the jangle of pain and strain that wearing armor every day for weeks on end caused. Even just having a helmet on every day gave you a savage headache more often than not.
It crept up on me, dammit.
A little of the office came clear. Before her was BD’s altar. The figurine of the God danced oddly before her eyes, reaching his hands out to her and beckoning. The huge round carving of a woman seemed to rock back and forth, winking at her with every swaying move. She closed her eyes and sipped again.
When she opened her eyes, the sun had wandered off to another part of the sky; the quality of the light had changed.
I’m not wearing my armor? When, how long? What?
She blinked and focused on BD, standing in the door talking to a deepvoiced man. “Armand?” she asked.
BD turned and nodded. “He came to get you out of that tin can you wear. Thierry Renfrew came into camp yesterday and I’ve told him you’re quite ill and that nobody is to know. Conrad introduced us a while back, so he’s in the know. He’s taking over the camp as your second for now. When you can use a pen, you can write up the necessary documents for him.”
Tiphaine glared at the old woman, but it didn’t seem to work. BD gave her a small sour smile.
“When you can muster a real, glacial, Lady Death glare, then I’ll know you’re better.”
She took the aching hand in her own, a hand like a claw carved from horn, shaped by a generation of reins and tools.
“How did this happen?”
“As best I can make out, Mary Liu spit on her needle and touched me with it. And cursed me. While her eyes turned to something that looked like black tar.”
She met BD’s skeptical eyes defiantly.
“So, tell me the whole story,” said the woman. Tiphaine did, and BD went on: “You sure Fen House was clean? It is a prison in the middle of a lake.”
Tiphaine shook her aching head. “How do you know that?” she demanded.
“Don’t be an idiot, Grand Constable. I’m the spymaster for the Mackenzies, Bearkillers and Mount Angel. Of course I know what Fen House is. And where.”
“Oh, of course. No,” said Tiphaine. “No, it’s usually fairly clean. They scrub down every second day. Disinfectant. No lice. Even Norman hated lice, no matter how period they were, and he was the original Period Nazi. Rats and lice.”
“Everyone did, after the epidemics,” BD said grimly. “Nearly as many died of typhus as the Black Death.”
“Yeah, I remember. They scared even him, he couldn’t intimidate germs… I checked back with Stratson three times, now. She’s not scratched anybody else and nobody else who has gotten a scratch or burn has an infection like this.”
She hesitated and then gritted her teeth. “I’ve been very careful to touch nobody and burn all the dressings and anything it drips onto, but a dog snatched one of my gloves yesterday. I had a lance follow it. It died within an hour, bubbling green and yellow mucus out its nose and mouth. I made them use shovels to move it and burned it completely.”
“Well, you remember enough germ theory from before the Change to be useful. Sounds like you’ve been doing a good job keeping it from spreading. What have you been doing to your hand, itself?”
“Soaking it in hot water morning and night and then dripping pure alcohol on it. I’m afraid of what will happen if I take it home. Mary said… she said… ‘Bad cess to you and yours’. ”
“Delia would probably have been able to keep it from getting this bad,” BD grumbled. “People forget what it was like, before the Change. They think it was miracles, but it wasn’t. Most of what we could do then was asepsis; cleanliness. A lot was supportive care. And then there were antibiotics. And when they didn’t work people were betrayed and angry, because we’d beaten death, hadn’t we?”
Tiphaine felt her eyes crossing. “I don’t know. I don’t think I’m following you…”
“You’re running a fever of a hundred and four degrees. Of course your brain isn’t following me! So, yes, I can do something and hopefully your body can do more. As for the rest… In all your years in the Association have you picked a special saint to protect you? The Virgin?”
“No. I’m… not really religious,” Tiphaine said. “Haven’t been since I was a kid. My mother put me off it.”
“Ummm,” said BD. “This is one thing Lady Sandra’s teaching isn’t going to help you with.”
Tiphaine felt her eyes drooping. “She taught me to face things whether they were what I wanted to see or not.”
“A point. First, let’s change what you are doing. Hot water and pure alcohol are keeping the inflammation high. Cool water right now. Later we’ll soak it in warm water with Epsom salts dissolved in it, three times a day…
