they told me I nearly lost the hand. I think… what Mary Liu did to me may have made me act that way; pushed me to be… even more stubborn than I am naturally. Like a budo move, a come-with, using your opponent’s strength against them.”
“Lost the hand?”
Delia handed a brandy and soda to her and took a long pull on her own drink. Then she coughed and choked and coughed again.
“It looks a lot easier when you or Rigobert do it!”
Tiphaine had to laugh at Delia’s disgusted expression.
“We get hardened to it. You’ve never drunk much and that must have gone straight to your head.”
Delia peered at her glass and then set it carefully on the sideboard.
“It did,” she observed. “I don’t think I need any more, or I won’t be able to have this conversation with you… BD is Apollo’s priestess. But I think you’ d be better with a Goddess. There are many different pantheons-”
“Greek,” said Tiphaine. “I don’t know too much about them, but I think they’re the ones I could put up with. And vice versa!”
“Why?” Delia asked.
“Because of the Olympics. I dreamed about it so long… used to have actual dreams about Olympia.”
“There’s Artemis the Virgin Huntress.”
“No,” Tiphaine said thoughtfully.
I’m actually feeling better about this. If it has to be done, do it right. And remember those eyes looking at you at Fen House. I know when I need a friend who can operate in the same league! Poor Sandra again; she just couldn’t do this. Well, she’s got me.
Aloud, she went on: “No, I like hunting, but it’s not what I am and I’m definitely not a virgin. I’m… I’m a warrior. I’m fighting for my home, the people who depend on me. For you and the kids.”
“Athena,” Delia said firmly. “Though she is a virgin too, I’m afraid. But she’s a war Goddess.”
“I thought Ares was the Greek God of war?”
“Ares is a God of frenzy; he drives men to battle and reaps them like grain on a bloody field. Achilles was His, and died young and childless and alone, trading length of days for everlasting fame. Athena is the defender of the polis, of art and skill, including the art of war. Odysseus had Her for a patron; the man of cunning mind who wanted nothing to do with Troy, but who ended the Trojan war and spent ten years scheming and fighting to get home to his wife and son so that he could end his days among his own people, by Penelope’s side.”
“That sounds a lot better than Mr. Frenzy.”
Delia nodded soberly: “Athena gave Her people the olive and the high fortress that was their strength; she carries a spear and a shield and a tall crested helm. Her symbol is the owl, for wisdom and clever plans. And…”
Delia looked at her, blue eyes suddenly a little laughing as they met her glacier-colored ones.
“And?”
“And she was the Gray-Eyed One.”
Tiphaine found herself laughing. There weren’t many people she did that easily with, and only one when anything serious was happening.
“It’s a natural.”
“Then, let us go on a journey…”
Somehow they had reversed positions and Tiphaine was lying in Delia’s arms, not vice versa, and she was feeling lazy and floaty; much more pleasantly than when it had been fever induced.
Delia’s voice ran on, like a spring wind through the treetops, while you lay and looked up and made stories in the clouds.
“And Ouranos wed Gaia… Metis was swallowed by fearful Zeus and their daughter Athena who was born from the bloody head…”
Umbrella pines growing twisted on a rocky headland with asphodel blooming beneath them, a sea dark purple stretching to a horizon of islands. Sails, and a white froth where the oars stroked and the water curled back from a bronze ram. The smell of dry spicy dust and the taste of wine; a tower of rock and the gleam of marble atop it and the scent of incense. Water-broken light glittering on a great helmed form, ivory and gold, the shield leaned against her knee with the contorted Gorgon face and Victory poised in Her palm, up and up to the calmness like stars in her eyes. Chanted prayer and the music of the aulos. A bull with golden horns pacing to the altar before robed and flower-garlanded maidens who lifted a great embroidered cloth in their hands and sang…
Tiphaine came to herself with a start and looked up at Delia’s face hanging over her and blinked.
“You witched me!” she said.
“Not so much,” said Delia with a smile, and kissed her. “I relaxed you with the brandy. And then I put you in a hypnotic state; so you could hear and see the Gods as I spoke to you of them. And then She spoke.”
“I think you’re right.”
Delia wiggled away, checked the cradle, and then propped the door to the bedchamber open so that a baby’s cry would carry through.
“Ah, I wouldn’t know,” she said from the doorway and put the back of her hand theatrically to her forehead. “I am but an innocent country maid…”
Then she turned and darted inside.
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
Rigobert gave her a slight ironic look and tilt of brow. She didn’t think Count Felipe caught it, but Ermentrude did; though she wouldn’t know exactly what to make of it.
Right, Rigobert, so I gave them a heavily edited version. They’re both good Christians; no need to shock them.
Felipe was frowning and looking at his bandaged hand. “Did finding a spiritual patron help you with… with this sort of thing?” Then he snorted and laughed. “It’s really like something in a romaunt. Except that I just saw a dead man get up and fight.”
“One of the nastier romaunts,” the Countess agreed. “And did it, my lady d’Ath? Help, that is?”
She was afraid, but completely in control of it. Tiphaine inclined her head in respect; she knew from Delia’s pregnancies that they made emotional control more difficult.
“Oh, yes, my lady Countess. Shortly thereafter, I was back at Fen House, on the Lady Regent’s orders, just at the end of Winter Court this year. Then-”
INTERLACHEN PRISON THE NEW FOREST, CROWN DEMESNE (FORMERLY NORTHERN OREGON) PORTLAND PROTECTIVE ASSOCIATION HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA) JANUARY 8, CHANGE YEAR 25/2023 AD
Tiphaine shook herself violently, water splattering all over the plain concrete floor from her hooded cloak of greased wool. It stank of wet lanolin, and the peculiar smell of chilly mud. There was mud spattered up her legs as well, cold and gelid, and her suit of plate armor was performing its usual miracle of being as shivering-miserable in cold weather as it was sweatingmiserable in hot. At least she could afford stainless steel, not as likely to rust. All that was familiar enough; the Black Months were like this, except when they were honestly frigid and you got snow.
“Close behind me,” she said to her page.
It was as close to midnight as made no matter, but the prison was awake and humming. The guards milled around in the common areas and the prisoners called to one another from their cells overlooking the panopticon. The smells were fairly rank, much worse than the last time she’d been here, and the ordinary damp winter chill was even worse than in most places. Chill moisture seemed to be flowing up from the floor into her legs, as well as leaking down her collar.
The lamplight flickered, and somewhere a man was beating something metallic on the bars of his cell and shrieking, “It was Tom, not me! Tom! Tom did it! You’ve got to believe me! Why won’t you believe me!”
“Oh, shut up, you silly bastard, nobody gives a damn!” a guard shouted back.
