“How long did I stand by the gate?” she asked.

Sir Stratson shook his head. “I didn’t time it, but at least seven or eight minutes. Thought you were thinking deeply, m’lady.”

Tiphaine scratched the back of her hand and looked down and cursed. A painful red welt ran from her wrist to the first knuckle.

How could that happen and I not feel it? And how could Mary Liu move faster than I could withdraw my hand? Something very odd is going on here.

“I think,” said Tiphaine, with elaborate calm. “That you’d better not go into the cell again, unless you put her out with laudanum in wine.”

“She did that?”

“Sucked a needle and tried to jab me with it. I didn’t think she’d managed to scratch me. I really, really, suggest that any physical contact be kept to a minimum. In fact, I order it.”

She met Stratson’s eyes. He looked . . .

Spooked, scared as hell, thought Tiphaine. Good, so am I.

A year and a little more peeled away. Tiphaine looked at her right hand, holding it up and moving the fingers, marveling at the precise articulation of it, the exquisite symmetry and action. Then she bunched it. The forearm ran smoothly into the lower part of the hand without much indentation at the wrist; a gymnast’s hand, or a swordswoman’s.

“There was . . . a problem with the hand, after that scratch?” Countess Ermentrude de Aguirre said carefully.

“Problem?” Tiphaine said. “Well, yes, your grace. The first problem was that I didn’t take it seriously enough at first.”

Rigobert poured himself another brandy. “You always were stubborn, my lady,” he said.

“If I weren’t stubborn, I’d have been dead before my fourteenth birthday,” Tiphaine said. “But in this case . . . yes, there was a downside. Fortunately I’m not stupid. I . . . went to see someone, you might say. In Bend.”

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CITY OF BEND
OFFICES OF THE PLODDING PONY EXPRESS COMPANY
CENTRAL OREGON RANCHERS ASSOCIATION TERRITORY
(FORMERLY CENTRAL OREGON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JUNE 3, CHANGE YEAR 24/2022 AD

Bend is hot in the summer.

Tiphaine kept the spurt of laughter behind a bland facade. The fact that she nearly didn’t was a bad sign.

Bend is hot. I could just say, water is wet, she thought.

Her head buzzed. The joints of her body all ached as well. She’d felt a little like this with the flu once, when she was ten. Her mother had made her go to bed, and she’d missed school and hadn’t even been able to read, just lying there hurting.

“My lady?”

Armand ’s face. So like Kat’s. She shook her head. “Armand, get the horses taken care of. Set up camp with the rest of the Association forces. Have my tent placed next to whoever is in charge.”