The Tears of the Sun (34 page)

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 be paid. And of course all the allied contingents were trying to shift as much of
their
costs as possible onto the Portland treasury.

Lioncel brought her lunch. And his brother, two years younger and as dark as Lioncel was fair, but otherwise much like his brother. The three made their usual quick meal in the office on the pork-loin sandwiches and potato salad and fruit. Dame Lilianth scolded as Diomede tried to avoid getting a huge yellow mustard blot on his hose—and succeeded in getting it all over the floor. After he had cleaned it up, she sent him out with Dame Lilianth and Ysolde to work on organizing the kitchens to cope with the influx of temporary workers; that was good training in logistics.

She was deep into a plan submitted by the Count Palantine of Walla Walla to reinforce Castle Campscapell and wondering if it could, just possibly, be a scheme to get his own troops inside that Crown fortress when a quick tap on the door broke into her concentration.

“Come.”

Her senior squire Armand Georges poked his head in.

“Urgent dispatch, my lady Grand Constable.”

She managed to keep most of the sound of resentment out of her voice; this sort of thing went with the job.

“What is it
this
time?”

“Sir Guelf Mortimer of Loiston . . . did a bunk.”

“Shit! A bunk?”

“Fled. Scarpered. Twinkle-toed into the wild blue distance. Absent without leave . . .”

“All right.”

Tiphaine snapped her mouth shut, and squeezed her eyes shut for an instant. She'd parked him out at Hermiston to keep him on ice while the Gervais problem was dealt with. On the other hand . . .

“Tell me how Guelf pulled it off.”

He shrugged. “From what we've managed to piece together, he conned each of the back-scouting parties into believing he was with the other one. Unfortunately for him, Sir Thierry Renfrew ran into a CUT probe down the Columbia. He fought and called for reinforcements. That's the train that arrived at four this morning with the wounded. Chenoweth called up Mortimer's picket. They had some trouble finding them. He finally tracked them down late yesterday. Guelf left early on the nineteenth.”

“Days! He could be anywhere by now.”

“But there's not much doubt where he's headed. Gervais.”

“Yes.” She frowned. “That getaway was a lot more subtle than Guelf's usual level. But heading for Gervais is putting his head on the block and even he should have been able to see
that.
Uncharacteristically smart, then bone-stupid even beyond his usual.”

“Offhand, I'd say that means he's being used as a puppet, and by someone who doesn't care about the consequences for him.”

“Good analysis.”

She smiled then, and even Armand blinked, though he'd been one of her operatives for years.

“I was hoping to keep the Gervais problems on hold, but the operation's ready to go. And Guelf has just delivered himself into my hand. Desertion in the face of the enemy!”

She held her right hand out, palm-up, and then slowly closed the long fingers into a fist. Then she reached out for Chenoweth's dispatch.

“Go find Sir Garrick Betancourt. He'll be down with the Marchwarden of the South in the situation room. Tell him
drop the hammer
. Verbal orders only, of course.”

Armand nodded and left at a brisk walk; running would attract the eye and arouse curiosity.

Tiphaine leaned back from the crowded desk and let her fingers trace the pommel of the misericord dagger at her belt.

Mistress Douglas came in with a new sheaf of papers and searched for the correct docket to file them in.

Tiphaine followed her out to talk to one of the typists.

“Mistress Romero, write and send a message to the Regent. It can go in the clear, as fast as possible. Guelf Mortimer of Loiston has drawn the dotted line.”

Puzzlement, and then she could see everyone assuming that it was some private code. It was; the rest of the phrase was
on the back of his neck
, which was where the headsman's ax went—Guelf wouldn't rate the two-handed sword, not being a tenant-in-chief.

Mathilda grimaced slightly as Tiphaine halted her narrative.

“There weren't any palatable choices right there, were there, Tiph?”

“That's war for you, Matti. Particularly this type; we just couldn't take any chances on the politics of it. Fortunately I'm not at the ultimate policymaking level. I'm more like a crossbow. You point me and pull the trigger.”

“And I
am
doing the aiming now, and the only ones I can blame things on if it goes wrong are Rudi and God, which wouldn't be a good idea. Well, the Liu siblings need to know
some
of that. That way of dealing with Mary Liu was
so
Mom, though. Just trying to follow her logic makes my brain hurt, sometimes. It's always there but it's . . . twisty.”

“At least you
can
follow it. Thousands couldn't, and a lot of them came down with a case of the deads. Not least the late unlamented Dowager Baroness Liu, in the end.”

The man-at-arms came back up the stairs.

“His Reverence Abbot-Bishop Dmwoski, Your Majesty,” he said. “The Honorable Huon Liu, heir to Barony Gervais; the Honorable Yseult Liu.”

Tiphaine looked at her, and Mathilda nodded slightly. Then she smiled and rose as they entered and made their bow and curtsy; she advanced and kissed Dmwoski's ring respectfully, then extended her hands to the youngsters. She'd known them socially, of course—Odard had been a frequent companion of hers for years before the Quest. But they'd both been teenagers and then young adults, and at that age you tended to ignore younger siblings who were still children. Neither had been presented at court.

And their mother tended to keep them very close,
she thought.
Even before she went to the bad.

“Lord Huon, Lady Yseult,” she said gently. “I am so sorry about Odard. I miss him terribly, but you can be very proud of him. It was an honor to be his friend and liege.”

She liked the way Huon reacted, dignified but reserved; for a fifteenyear-old it was rather impressive. He moved well, too, and looked as if he'd have something of Odard's wiry strength. Yseult was more reserved still, and . . .

Tiphaine gives her the willies, though she hides it well. Of course, looked at objectively Tiph is scary as hell; she doesn't scare
me
because I grew up around her. She
did
kill Yseult's mother. So I don't expect more than courtesy, but if the girl is going to be around Court, she just has to get used to it.

“And you all know Baroness d'Ath.”

Another round of polite bows. Mathilda could tell that Dmwoski was being a bit chilly, and Tiphaine was secretly amused by it; she respected Dmwoski despite his faith, not for it.

The cleric and the Grand Constable were both far too self-controlled to make it obvious. Or to let personal dislikes interfere with the job, for that matter.

“Please sit, and help yourselves,” Mathilda said. “I understand you've been on the train all day, and it can't have been much fun.”

“Crowded and slow, Your Majesty,” Dmwoski said. “But that's only to be expected in wartime.”

Mathilda chatted a little to relax them; Huon grew enthusiastic about the gear and horses he'd picked up in Portland, and the prospect of going on his first real campaign after training to war all his life, and his swearing ceremony as a squire. That was natural enough, since it was big step and one that was overdue. After a few minutes he was also wolfing down the chicken empanadas. Yseult nibbled on one and agreed that she was up to transferring to a forward field hospital of the type the Sisters were setting up here in Goldendale.

“Ah . . . do you want to take my oath now, Your Majesty?” Huon said.

Mathilda shook her head. “Tomorrow, and publicly,” she said decisively. “That will be better, if you think about it.”

She watched them carefully; Yseult grasped the point first, but Huon was only a second behind. A public oath would be a public statement:
I trust Huon Liu at my back
, or more specifically
I trust Huon Liu at my back with a dagger, twenty-four/seven.
Neither was obvious about it either, which was good.

People might,
would
, still talk, but they'd do it in a whisper and not where he could hear. More important, they wouldn't do it where the High Queen or anyone close to her could hear it either.

“I understand that you've been eager to hear the results of the Most Reverend Father's investigations,” she said after a moment's quiet contemplation. “Besides being most helpful.”

“Ah . . . not exactly
eager
, Your Majesty,” Huon said.

He and his sister exchanged a glance.

Those two are allies against the world,
Mathilda thought. A little wistfully, since she'd been an only child. And necessarily a little isolated from others her own age by her birth, except for Rudi.

Though that only child thing may have been for the best. Still, I'm glad
my
children will have lots of brothers and sisters. Kinship is . . . not everything, but close.

“But we do want to know,” Yseult said. “It's, ummm, hit us so often and so badly, but a lot of it was just bewildering, especially at the time. We only knew the bits that happened
to
us, Your Majesty, and then it was like . . . we had to realize that all this had been going on around us without our knowing.”

Mathilda nodded. “That's part of growing up, but this is a pretty extreme case. You've earned the right to know,” she said. “I'm going to tell you what happened immediately after Pendleton. That was when my letter arrived back home, about how Alex Vinson betrayed us . . . betrayed me
and
Odard to the Cutters. Unfortunately, that was also when the CUT decided to activate your uncle Guelf. Whether he liked it or not. They probably knew the news would get back, after Odard and I were rescued.”

Dmwoski nodded. “As I've said before, there is no spoon long enough to sup safely with them. I heard a little of this from a Mackenzie who was involved.”

“I debriefed the Renfrews,” Tiphaine said. “And handled a lot of stuff later that revealed what had been going on at Hermiston. Chime in if I'm missing anything, Most Reverend Father. What apparently happened is that Guelf got desperate because—”

Sir Guelf Mortimer felt he was doing a good imitation of a brooding falcon as the pedal car rumbled into the Hermiston station and orderlies rushed forward to take the badly wounded away. The brooding was keeping his chatty squires away from him, at least. He hoped they were still smarting from his tongue-lashing.

“Off and down, off and down, clear the line!” someone shouted.

No word from the Ascended Masters,
he thought
. Was it because I was always with the Odell crowd, or that they don't have any word for me?

Odo was clinging to him as they jumped off the pedal cab. The boy was shaking and had bruises under his eyes, emphasized by the light of the flaring torches that supplemented the alcohol lanterns; the sun was nearly down, though the western horizon was still eye-hurting crimson. As soon as the Gervais men were clear a party came running up with loaded stretchers.

On another siding, reinforcements were jumping down off a train of eastbound horse-drawn rail wagons and falling into ranks, their three-quarter armor incongruously clean and their eyes wide as they stared about at the filthy blood-splashed scarecrow figures, the limping walking wounded and the grisly shapes on the stretchers. Corvallans, from the Benny the Beaver image on their breastplates; their knockdown pikes or crossbows were still slung over their backs as they formed up and marched away.

“OK, Odo. Tonight you will camp with us. But tomorrow you and Father Stanyon are taking Terry home for burial. I don't want you slipping out of that.”

His heart ached for the boy as he shook his head, dark greasy hair clinging to his skin, tear tracks down the dirty cheeks, mouth gapping as he yawned so wide Guelf wondered if he'd crack the jaw joint. And while disobedience couldn't be tolerated, at least he'd done it from an excess of spirit.

“Let's go find Father Stanyon,” he said firmly, suppressing his own wide yawn.

“Charlmain! You and Brandon get the men bivouacked and set up sentries. I don't care how safe you feel; we've left a lot of angry enemies behind. They thought they were going to swallow us down and they didn't and they'll be feeling cheated.”