Though God have mercy if you screw the pooch, for she won’t.
“I’d suggest that you start your day with that. You can continue with the dispatches from the hospital and the death letters.”
She plucked two wallets out of the pile. Tiphaine took them and waited for Lilianth to bring Sandra’s dispatch.
No need to guess what it’s about. Mathilda’s letter is quite clear; Alex Vinton finked her out to the Cutters off there in the wilds of Idaho, and did it with Mary Liu’s knowledge and approbation. The only upside is that Odard Liu wasn’t involved; he got screwed over too, and saved Matti’s life. And he’s Baron Gervais now, so since the head of the family is loyal and can be shown to be loyal we needn’t proscribe the lot of them and attaint the estates. That would drop the horse apple in the bobbing bucket right along with the Golden Delicious just now, the way the nobility are antsy about things in general.
But Mary Liu would have to go, one way or another. Which probably meant her brother Guelf Mortimer had to go, too, he was a notorious grudge bearer and was almost certainly involved in anything she was. Her other brother Sir Jason had been a serious loose cannon, and Tiphaine had had to deal with him back fifteen years ago. There wouldn’t be any need to cook a trial for Mary, the evidence was right there, but Guelf might be awkward if he didn’t fuck up in dramatic fashion or show what a skank he was politically.
The problem was that so far he’d been performing far better than she’d expected. Killing a competent leader just because had a serious potential for blowback down the road these days. It wasn’t like Norman’s time, when nobody knew in the morning if their head would be attached to a spike over the gate at sundown.
Will the Lady Regent prefer a large public trial for the Dowager Baroness Liu or a nice private referral to the Court of Star-Chamber, which is to say, herself? A large, very emotionally charged trial, against a woman who has proclaimed her ill-usage since before the Field of the Cloth of Gold will not go over well with the Associates with this war getting going and so far not going well at all. On the other hand, just having her mysteriously drop dead… we’ve been trying to cut back on stuff that raw, getting ready for the transition when Mathilda turns twenty-six and becomes Lady Protector. On the third hand, Mathilda ran away with Rudi and they’re off looking for a magic sword in the Death Zones of the east, and along the way she just handed us this can of worms. Damn it, I love the girl like a kid sister but smart as she is she’s a pain in the ass sometimes.
She was still thinking hard when Lilianth came back with a small steel box. It had the Lady Regent’s personal sigil on it, an etching of the Virgin subduing the Dragon of Sin, which was one of Sandra’s private jokes. The same was stamped onto a paper-and-wax seal over the lock.
“I witness that the seal is unbroken,” Tiphaine said, then flicked it off with the point of her dagger.
“I witness that you have broken the seal and unlocked the dispatch box,” Lilianth said as Tiphaine turned the key.
The Grand Constable gestured to the door. Lilianth closed it as she left. The carrick bend knot wound with copper wire was one used only by Sandra Arminger and only to Tiphaine or Conrad Renfrew. She drummed her fingers on the disk, still turning over the implications of Mary’s treason and the way the Associates would react to any public news of her complicity. Then she neatly snipped the copper coils and undid the knot and unfolded her instructions.
Hmmm, she wrote this with her own hand; and she was upset. Unusual for Sandra, but then Mathilda is the focus of everything for her. Her latest amanuensis… Lady Jehane, of House Jones… is what, seventeen? Why didn’t she entrust it to her? She’s old enough and she’ll have to deal with the grittier aspects of life, soon enough.
Tiphaine read the directions again.
Oh! Tricky, very tricky. How are we going to do this? Glad I stuck Guelf with Viscount Chenoweth at Hermiston, he’s nicely out of the way for now and young Renfrew can keep an eye on him.
Tiphaine closed her eyes, used a mnemonic trick to make sure she’d memorized the Regent’s missive and then set it alight in the room’s empty fireplace. A few strokes of the poker made sure that nobody could reconstruct anything from the ashes as well. She sat for a moment in silence, then looked up as the door opened.
“The condolence letters, my lady,” Lilianth said.
An unpleasantly long casualty list was attached, and the allies had suffered badly while breaking loose too. Tiphaine took the letters and began to sign them carefully; it was her job to take care of the noblemen, just as each lord would do the same by letter or in person for his subordinates. No dashing off her signature in the pre-Change fashion. Each one was a work of art, and much treasured by many of the recipients.
They gave their lives for the Association, the least the Association can give them back is a duly formal letter of thanks. And for once it’s not the most unpleasant duty in prospect.
She shook her hand out when she’d finished and plunged into the data in the rest of the files and reports. It was even soothing, in a way; when you were in the thick of things any battle felt like a defeat and an actual defeat felt like unmitigated disaster.
But according to this it’s more of a mitigated disaster.
Meanwhile she could feel her subconscious chewing over Sandra’s orders and the information she had and coming up with a way to reach the desired outcome. A page came in with a list of provisional unit movement orders from Rigobert de Stafford; she glanced at it, went over to the map, thought for a moment and scribbled approved, d’Ath on the bottom and set him running back to the situation room. The door opened at ten, just as she was about to call for a stenographer, and Lioncel came in with a cup of hot coffee. She gave a slight jerk of her head towards the desk.
“Good, I’ll have an errand for you soon. Put it there. Did you get Delia home?”
“Yes, my lady, at your orders, my lady. Lady Phillipa had to help me, but we sent her home an hour ago. Lady Phillipa asked me to help with the records and said she’d make it good with you.”
Tiphaine nodded. “I’m fine with that. Does she need any more help? I can probably send over a few of the widow brigade.”
Lioncel grinned. “She says no. I say yes, my lady. She doesn’t want to interfere with the war ministry’s needs.”
Tiphaine scribbled some names on a scrap of paper and waved her hand in dismissal. “Notify these that they’re seconded. And send Dame Lilianth in on your way,” she said as she took a quick swallow of the acrid brew.
Better watch it or I’ll be peeing all afternoon, she thought. And remember what the headaches were like the last time you had to cold-turkey, the stuff’s too expensive and the supply’s too unreliable to get really dependent on it.
“Sit, Dame Lilianth. I am going to make you the possessor of a secret and part of a conspiracy. I have instructions from the Lady Regent and wide latitude on how to carry them out.”
The older woman sat, her plain brown eyes deliberately and annoyingly bland. “By your word,” she said, an ironic twist to her voice. “What can I do for my lady the Spider?”
Tiphaine leaned back in her swivel chair and put her hands behind her head, staring thoughtfully at the coffered ceiling.
“It’s complicated and it will need us to be very quiet and sneaky. As a start, I want you to have a fainting fit-people actually believe in those again, so useful-and call for your son-in-law’s brother’s help. He’s on garrison duty with the city castellan, isn’t he?”
“Garrick? Certainly… what next?”
“It’s enough like my special-ops days to make me feel nostalgic. We-”
As the door closed on Dame Lilianth, Tiphaine broke open the next dispatch. My head hurts again… but not as much as Astrid’s does!
Alone, she let a sudden sharp grin split her face. She relished the second of pure, unadulterated joy contemplating Astrid Loring’s concussion gave her. The thought of how the fact that Tiphaine had rescued her from the wreck of her covert ops mission gave a more subtle pleasure; it would be grit under the Hiril Dunedain’s eyelids for the rest of her life.
Or it would be for me, in her position, and I can hope we’re enough alike for that to be so for her as well.
She worked her way through the day’s stack of wallets and made a good start on the stack of allocation files. The Association’s military system was largely self-financing, but only as long as you didn’t need to use it for anything but routine. Once vassals had done more than their regulation forty days of service in the field, they had to
