The Tears of the Sun (72 page)

A squeak. That would be the diamond cutter on the windowpane, now that the bars were out of the way. Her new-minted knights had been precisely right so far on the way the enemy would come. It was a compliment to her training of them.

In the darkness she grinned like a wolf.

The sheets and pillows smelled of clean linen and lavender, and felt crisp and smooth under her fingers as she slowly pulled the coverings off. She was in working clothes, dark trews and shirt and jerkin, sock-shoes of glove-soft leather with doubled soles that gripped like fingers. Light mesh lined the jerkin, but for this sort of work you relied on speed.

It's actually more pleasant than being a general,
she thought.
Straightforward, in a sneaky sort of way. But to acknowledge the absolute truth, I'm sick of both. I have been for years.

She opened her eyes, keeping them down; she was facing away from the windows. Starlight and a little moonlight were perfectly adequate if you didn't try to close-focus on anything. They painted the room in shades of pale gray and sliver and blue. One leg moved out, and she caught her left heel on the edge of the mattress and bent the knee.

Of course, this could go wrong. You're never quite certain with knives, but we need them alive. You know, when I was in my twenties, I used to positively enjoy this sort of thing. Now I just worry about leaving Delia a widow . . . damn, she could be widowed
twice
in this war.

The thought was very distant. So was the knowledge that she rather liked the Count Palantine and his wife, and that if it had been peacetime she would have enjoyed visiting the Eastermark with Delia and Rigobert and the children. They had some astonishing falconry here, if you could call using great golden eagles to hunt pronghorn antelope that.

And the Count had mentioned a hunting and skiing lodge in the Blue Mountains that he'd be glad to lend her sometime, obviously one of his favorite haunts. Bear hunts, and sleigh rides, and cross-country skiing in cold that was dry and hard and bracing, not the damp bone-chill of the Willamette. Lioncel and Diomede would love that; they'd tire themselves out, shovel down big dinners and sleep like the dead, and she and Delia could make love on tigerskins before a great roaring fire.

I
am
going soft in my old age.

She smiled and slid the dagger a little closer under the pillow. There was something about the approach of a knife aimed at you that you could
feel
. And there was a shadow of a shadow on the wall away from the windows, a suggestion of movement. It would vanish if she tried to focus on it, but if you
didn't
try to do that it was clear as noon; and also the back of her right hand itched. That might be . . .

“Now,” she said conversationally.

And flipped herself out of the bed, pulling at her heel and twisting herself around in midair to land in a fighting crouch, knife out with the point low and left forearm across her body with the palm and fingers stiffened into another weapon.

The dagger in the assassin's hand was already streaking down towards the spot where her back had been an instant before. The man had his full weight behind it, flinging himself forward and down to drive the length of watered steel all of its twelve inches deep and hard enough that the flaring edges would slice apart the ribs.

Good professional stroke,
Tiphaine thought.
That would have done it nicely. You want to kill someone with a knife, don't waste time on fancy.

Two more Cutters in dark clothing were climbing in through the windows. Armand and Rodard dropped silently from where they'd been waiting, heels braced on the little ledges above. Both struck the men below feetfirst, and the crossbows the assassins had been carrying dropped; one went off, and the bolt struck the plaster and board of an interior wall with a crunching
whap.
The sworn killers of the Church Universal and Triumphant always operated in threes; it was one of the few things they had in common with the Mackenzies.

The knifeman ignored the flurry of blows and thudding sounds from behind him. He wrenched the knife free and came over the bed in a silent rush, the blade held low and reversed with his thumb on the pommel and the blade jutting out from the right side of the fist.

Somewhere in the Cutter lands there's a school not entirely unlike the one I attended,
she thought as she backed easily, moving with soft sure strides, the weight on the balls of her feet.

He didn't waste time; this wasn't a duel, not even the ghastly slashing frenzy of a knife fight, where the winner went to the healers for six months. The two knights would be on his back in instants. A feint high, a backhand slash to the face, and then a stab towards her thigh, aiming for the great vessel that ran up the inside towards the groin.

Fast,
she thought.
But he's relying on it and I've got a third of a second on him.

Her body sank and turned before the thought was complete, her hips swaying aside. Her own knife cut, upward, under the armpit, she couldn't chance whether he wore a mail vest. Cloth parted, and something else between; a spray of blood went up in the night, black drops in blackness. The arm went limp and the knife fell from it. The man hissed with a gobbling undertone and snatched at the weapon with his left, his fingertips touching the dimpled bone hilt before it struck the floor.

He never grasped it. She fell across him in a diving body check, and the breath wheezed out of him as his ribs hit the floor with her on his back. She drove her left elbow down into the base of his skull as they landed, the hard
thud
sending a shooting pain up her arm.

“Light,” she said, shaking her hand and working the fingers.

The man wasn't quite limp, but he was twitching and moving with the vague undersea slowness of someone who'd had his bell truly rung. The lamps flared. Both the other assassins were down and bound, ankles and wrists lashed together and good thick gags in their mouths; she wanted no more fanatics biting out their tongues and drowning in their own blood before they had every scrap of information wrung out of them.

“See to this one,” she said as she rose, kicking his knife aside and wiping hers on the man's hair. “Don't let him bleed out. Pity about the rug.”

She slipped her blade into the sheath along the inside of her left forearm as she walked through the doors into the other room. That one looked considerably messier; there was a triad of assassins lying just inside the windows. Two had been struck as they climbed over the sills—one had a leg still on his, with that spilled awkwardness that only the suddenly and violently dead could show. Both those two were riddled with crossbow bolts. At this range the armor-smashers buried themselves to the fletching, and one of the men had been pitched back and pinned upright to the wall like a butterfly in a display case. His body, limp and leaking on the tiles, slid off the shaft and struck the floor with a
thump
as she came in.

The third was three paces into the room, lying on his side with the killdagger just beyond his twitching fingertips, and, unfortunately from his point of view, still alive. The human body was astonishingly resilient sometimes. A single bolt had struck him, and his face was like a contorted carving of hardwood with blood seeping past his clenched teeth and out his nostrils in bubbles. Sound trickled out as well.

The sergeant of the crossbowmen saluted. “That one was clever, my lady,” he said admiringly. “He backflipped into the room, must've dropped straight down and caught the sill and bounced in like a rubber ball. We missed him clean, everyone except young master . . . except Squire Lioncel de Stafford, I mean, my lady. He nailed him good, right in the brisket, which ain't easy when things go south and it's all noisy and confusing, like.”

“No, it isn't,” she said; it was astonishing how many bolts were used per hit in a combat situation. “Thank you, Sergeant. A very creditable job. A week's pay bonus to your and your squad for losing a night's sleep.”

The man grinned, and she nodded again. She'd meant it. Missing number three hadn't been serious. A man with a knife wasn't going to do much against eight with swords and bucklers and wearing three-quarter armor, no matter how good he was with a blade. Assassination and straight-up fighting were quite different things. And one thing she'd learned from Sandra was never to stint praise or reward where they were really due. Being a cheapskate that way always left you with the bill coming due at the worst possible time.

Lioncel was staring at the dying Cutter, his crossbow still in his hands, motionless.

“Lioncel!” she said, and he started and seemed to come to himself.

“We . . . caught them by surprise, my lady,” he said. “It all happened just like you said it would.”

“Good. And Lioncel?”

He looked at her, his blue eyes a little wild.

“They came to kill us in our sleep. If your mother or little sister were here, they'd have killed
them.
We were defending them. Fight knights like knights, and stamp on a weasel.”

He took a deep breath. “Yes, my lady.”

“And he's too far gone for questioning. Finish it quickly. That's your responsibility, whether it's a beast or a man.”

“Yes, my lady.”

The boy was pale but steady as he drew his knife and did what was needful, and followed her back into the bedroom. The two knights had the Cutter she'd disabled in a chair, finishing up a field dressing and binding his arm before tying him up.

“Good,” she said; the Cutter was reviving, a vicious clarity in his eyes. “We'll need this one for questioning. I think he's one of the leaders on this mission, and we'll have a nice little talk.”

The Cutter laughed, and then opened his mouth at her. Lioncel crossed himself, Armand swore, and even Tiphaine blinked. Only the stub of a tongue remained in the man's mouth, and he laughed again, a thick odd sound. The wound was healed, but recent; this had been done deliberately by a surgeon and by the man's own choice, to keep him from talking if he was taken.

Then Tiphaine smiled. At first because she was trying to imagine torturing a man into
writing
out his answers. And then because of another thought.

“Keep him very safe,” she said coolly. “Keep him for the High King. I think the Sword of the Lady can get secrets even from a tongueless man.”

The mad glee dropped off the assassin's face, and he began to struggle and scream wordlessly. They were equipped for that; Rodard twisted open a metal canister, and held the damp pad of cloth within over the man's face. The struggles died away as his eyes rolled up in his head.

Lioncel was looking revolted, but he had her sword belt ready. She buckled it on as they walked out into the hallway, twice around her unarmored waist; the corridor was dim, with only a few lanterns gleaming on the armor and weapons. Rigobert had just arrived, with blood on his naked sword and a scratch down the front of the breastplate lames of his full suit.

“We didn't take any alive, and I lost a man, dammit,” he said, handing his blade to a squire for cleaning without looking around. “You, my lady ninjette?”

“Killed three, took three prisoners, no losses. You are so depressingly straightforward sometimes, de Stafford.”

The nobleman made a disgusted sound as he took the blade again and sheathed it, before replying, “The ones who attacked us all had their tongues cut out. Which would render them useless for interrogation, and even more so on dates. I doubt even the Lady Regent's experts could do much with interrogation via sign language. Or in epistolary form.”

“Ours had oral circumcision too. But remember who we work for now, Rigobert. Matti's guy? The one with the
magic sword
?”

“Ah!” A slow smile, and one which echoed hers. “Yes, there
is
a point to that observation. A point with an edge to it.”

“I mentioned it to him, and he seemed rather upset.”

“Good. I'm not looking forward to telling Jurian's family how he died.”

“Dead's dead, Rigobert, tonight or next week from an arrow or a lance head. And”—she poked a finger at the scratch on his armor—“I don't think you were leading from behind.”

He shook his head. “I still don't like it, we shouldn't have had losses when we were expecting them. Let's go call on our host.”

They clattered down the staircase towards the family quarters—though in fact the Countess was now in a hidden safe room, not the chamber she usually shared with her husband. Apparently the Count's father had been a firm believer in having a secret passage out, of which Tiphaine heartily approved; Todenangst was riddled with them. A household knight met them before they reached the landing, panting and looking a little wild-eyed.

The freckle-faced young man stopped and started to salute with fist to breastplate, then realized he was holding a red-running long sword in that hand and brought the hilt up before his face instead.

“My lady Grand Constable, my lord de Stafford.”

“Is the Count your master unharmed?” she snapped.