The Tears of the Sun (76 page)

She turned in at the gaping purple and teal sheet-metal doors of the “Plodding Pony” headquarters into a warm fug of smells with horse and mule the strongest. The huge warehouse was dark and spots danced before her eyes as they tried to adjust to a light level much less irritating than the clear high-altitude summer glare in Bend. She made her way back through the gloom, dodging packed cases on pallets, carts, straw bales and unidentified miscellaneous pieces sitting ready to trip her up. At the far back she could see some stairs, lit by a few dusty windows of ancient glass. Hopefully, the offices were up there.

“Can I help you?”

Tiphaine jumped and looked to her right.
Someone snuck up on me without my
noticing
anything. I am sick. I am
very
sick.

“Oh!” said BD, coming out of the gloom, wiping her hands on a filthy rag. She was a weathered woman in her sixties, tough and thickset and moving as if she was still strong but creaked a bit. Tiphaine pushed up the visor and blinked in the non-light.

“Grand . . .”

She stopped at Tiphaine's urgent gesture and said: “Well, well, well, what can I do for the nobility today?” BD's voice was light but there was a bite in it. BD, Beatrize Dorothea, businesswoman, big wheel in the autonomous Kyklos villages, intelligence agent and enemy-become-ally of the Association. Witch.

“Little help with a problem shipping contaminated goods. Hoping you'll be able to give me good advice. Someone in a kilt said you were the best for some sorts of problems.”

BD clicked her tongue and then waved Tiphaine to the side and ducked out a short door, down an alley, across a street and up some rickety stairs. The apartment was small and shabby, but comfortable and BD quickly 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 . . .”

“Obregón? 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.

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.

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 . . . I'll get you the Epsom salts and some gentian violet. We'll continue to burn all the dressings. Don't touch people until you aren't producing scabs or pus. In fact until you see the welt going down.”

“How long?”

“If this were a normal infection, I'd say three days will do the trick. I think, however, that there is a magical component on it. So, I don't know. Will you try a spell?”

Tiphaine looked at her blankly. “Have somebody
pray
over me?” she asked, her voice rising.

“Ummm, if that's what you want to call it? I was going to ask you to dance your healing; I'm sure praying isn't your cuppa tea.”

Tiphaine swallowed. “I don't believe . . . but something took over Mary Liu's body and spoke to me. And it really wasn't Mary Liu, though it was using her mind and memories and personality as some sort of . . .
pattern
. That wasn't a psychological collywobbles. There was something there and it hated me. I think it hated
everything
.”

BD nodded. “So you do believe; you're just not up to admitting it yet. Back to the healing part. You are running a fever. You have a persistent infection and you have a generalized irritation of the skin because of the very harsh methods you've been using to fight the infection. There's going to be scarring.”

This time Tiphaine let the half-hysterical laughter out. “I've been getting cut and bashed and abraded for twenty-three years. Parts of me look like a mad seamstress used me for practice!”

“Internal scarring could weaken your sword-hand.”

That brought her up, though the buzzing was loud.

“We need you to do things that will enhance your immune system. Good food, good rest, freedom from worry. So I'm thinking that you should dance. I wish you did have a saint or patron or Goddess, I'd feel better if you petitioned for healing. When you get home, maybe Delia can help with that.”

“They all work?” Tiphaine said.

“Oh, yes. But They play favorites. So, you need to petition to an aspect you can believe in. Which I suppose is why you didn't go to Doctor Robsvert, who's assigned to your camp. He's seventy, the most pre-Change man I've ever met, and if a stick turned into a snake in his hands, he'd claim it was paralyzed and he just didn't notice the scales while he was whittling on it. Then there's Doctor Methlin, who fights with Doctor Robsvert at the drop of a pin. He's a faith healer; Church of God, Scientist, who thinks walking on water isn't just possible but
easy
with a little positive thinking . . .”

Tiphaine tried to shake her head, but it was aching too much. “Neither sounds like a winner.”

“I'd send you into Portland, or Mount Angel, or down to the Mackenzies if I thought we had time, but I don't think we do have time. When the infection's brought down, go to Bethany Refuge outside Portland; by then things will be un-alarming enough for you to pass it off as an ordinary battlefield injury that needs treatment . . . like football players in the old days. The Sisters of Compassion will get you started on physiotherapy for the hand, get it back to strength. We're going to need that strong right hand, Grand Constable. So now,
rest
.”