A Meeting at Corvallis (24 page)

Light flared as the wick in the lantern was turned up. It didn't move, though, which meant that the excellent Dave wasn't bringing it with him to the stairs. Stringers and plywood creaked over her head as he came to the head of the stairs, looking down.

“Harry? What the fuck's taking you so long? Are you taking a piss, or a vacation? Harry?” He paused at the sight of the limp body sprawled below. “Harry? You all right, man?”

There was a very slight sound, one she recognized without effort. Steel on leather, a knife coming out of a sheath. It went back in when the booted feet and shapeless wool trousers were halfway down the stairs.

“Have you been
drinking
? And on the
job,
you stupid bastard? The boss will have your
balls
for this!”

Another deep breath. The man bent to examine his friend, grunting in puzzlement as he saw the stopper was still in the neck of the liquor bottle, and presenting her with a perfect target. She opened another case on her belt, took the pad of damp cloth in her hand.

Be quick, now. He'll smell it, otherwise.

She leapt. Dave was bigger than she, and strong as an ox, but she had surprise on her side…and the pad clamped tight over his mouth and nose. He staggered and thrashed, fell to the earth, tried to crawl. For a moment she thought she would have to resort to an old-fashioned thump on the head, and then Dave sprawled beside his friend. A second hypodermic made sure he wouldn't wake up prematurely; the cocktail contained scopolamine for amnesia, and something else that produced a splitting steel-band-around-the-brow headache. The overall effect was very much like going on a bender and being very, very sorry that you had when you woke up.

Then she moved, and quickly, dragging them both back into the darkness beneath the stairs one after the other. She opened the Vat 69 again, sniffed with a wince—wine was her drink of choice, and she had a weakness for cherry brandy, but couldn't stomach even the better brands of whiskey. And this stuff was vile even by whiskey standards. She poured a little onto their clothes and, taking care to raise his head so he wouldn't choke, into Dave's mouth. That and the empties she left scattered around would make it
very
hard for them to deny in the morning that they'd drunk themselves into insensibility.

She looked at the label, then giggled silently and spent a few extra seconds rearranging the unconscious bodies and removing clothing. Let them try to explain
that
to whoever found them! A few empty but still-fragrant bottles scattered around added detail.

Maybe this way is better after all. Never a dull moment in Lady Sandra's service!

Then she took the keys and Dave's belt-knife and headed up the stairs, automatically placing her weight to one side to minimize creaking. The floor above was mostly open storage areas as well, holding bundles of redolent tanned hides, but across one end of the building was a set of three small, heavily timbered rooms with metal doors, used for light, high-value goods. There were two stools and a basket that had held a meal near the one farthest from the stairs; the lamp stood on a barrel. A grille was set in the door. She looked through; Sir Jason was on a cot, the room otherwise bare.

“Hissst!”

The sleeping man was snoring slightly, flat on his back; that was doubtless because of the wounded shoulder. Pain had grooved lines in the young knight's face as well, and there was a thick, fair stubble on it.

“Hissst!”

This time he woke, rubbing at his face with his good hand.
Good. He has to see and recognize me, or this could get awkward.
She knew him fairly well, and while his impulse control was poor, his reflexes and muscles weren't. Amateurs also tended to underestimate the difficulties of a resisting subject…

“Quiet, Sir Jason! It's me, Tiphaine Rutherton, of Lady Sandra's Household.”

She pitched her voice to a low, conversational tone, less likely to carry or be noticed than a whisper. Sleep struggled with comprehension on the knight's face. His notorious bad temper won out as he came to the grille and she pulled back the mask for an instant so that he could see her.

“Yes, I recognize you. Little Tiphaine, the tomboy lady-in-waiting. Perhaps you've decided you like me after all? Get me loose and I'll forgo the dowry.”

Mother of God, not now!
she thought; that had been two years ago. Aloud: “I'm here on my liege-lady's orders, Sir Jason.”

“Dyke!” he spat with sudden fury—more than a casual insult, where the writ of the Holy Office ran; a cold shudder of rage and fear went over her skin.

Then he went on more calmly: “Well, get me out of here, woman! Those maniacs weren't just going to bankrupt me, they were planning on dragging me through Corvallis like a dancing bear.”

“Just a second, Sir Jason,” she said, putting the key in the lock.

The man tried to push past her as the door swung open; that gave her the perfect position to stamp on his instep, a thrust-kick with the heel of her left foot. He jackknifed forward with a slight, shrill squeal of pain as the small bones there cracked like twigs breaking, and then the knife in her hand came down—the pommel, not the blade. It smacked into his right collarbone with a muffled wet snap that left the man with two crippled arms; she followed it up with a swift whipping blow to the larynx, then pushed him back into the little windowless room. He fell backward across the cot, turning as he tried to scrabble away from her. That let her pounce again, one knee in the pit of his stomach and her left hand gripping the longer hair at the front of his head, jerking it to one side to press his face into the bedding.

“Lady Sandra didn't send me here to get you out,” she said. “She sent me here to shut you up, you loud-mouthed moron.”

He was still conscious enough to feel the cold kiss of steel; then she rammed the blade up under his breastbone, angling slightly to the left. It was an ordinary single-edged belt-knife, more tool than weapon, but eight inches of sharp steel would do the job anyway.

“And you know,” she went on to the still-twitching corpse, “I
really
don't like it when anyone except another dyke calls me a dyke.”

Tiphaine left the knife where it was; if there were any useable prints on the horn of the hilt, they'd be the unconscious Dave's. Now, to get out, she should be able to use the courtyard door…

“Hold it! We don't want to harm you!”

A head rose, a man standing on the stairs. Blond, sharp-featured; enough like her to be her brother, ironically enough. No way back. Decision and action followed together; she closed her eyes to get the advantage of a crucial second's adjustment, whirled, kicked over the lamp and leapt forward over his head as it winked out. Darkness descended, not absolute but shocking to anyone expecting the light to continue. In midair she twisted and drew her legs up, and landed in a crouch behind him; wood rapped painfully against her shin, but she didn't fall. Instead she was in a perfect three-point stance, two feet and left hand supporting her, the right fist curled back to her ear.

The narrow confines of the stairwell trapped the man above her for an instant. In that instant she struck, hammering a knuckle into the inside of his thigh where it would paralyze the muscle. The leg buckled under him. Tiphaine slapped both her hands down on the wood of the stair as he fell and struck out behind her with both feet, a mule-kick at the shadowy figure behind her at the bottom of the stairs, lashing out with all the strength of her long, hard-muscled legs.

Thump.

Surprise almost slowed her as the half-seen opponent managed to get forearms up for a cross-block, riding the bone-shattering force of the blow backward, falling to the asphalt floor of the warehouse.

Fast, that one. Be careful!

Tiphaine let her feet fall back just in time for the man she'd leg-punched to topple back on top of her. The weight drove an
ufffff!
from between her teeth, but she made her arms and legs springs to push back at him, tossing him head-foremost with his spine to the stairs. With a strangled yell he went hurtling down the stairs behind her, even as she turned and crouched and leapt again; he landed hard, and yelled again, this time in pain.

The ground floor of the warehouse gave her space to move. The man was tangled up with the one she'd kicked. A corner of her mind registered moon-pale hair: Astrid Larsson. The door was temptingly open…

Instead she turned and ran down an alleyway between towering piles of full, sixty-pound sacks of oats, the layout flashing through her mind as she moved. A deep bass voice swore outside the doorway, and the floor thudded as a man came through; he'd been waiting outside.
John Hordle.
Every bit as big as she remembered him but astonishingly quick, right on her heels. If
those
hands closed on her, she was doomed. It would be like trying to fight a grizzly.

No choice.

She sprang again, landed halfway up a fourteen-foot stack of bagged grain and scrambled to the top like a squirrel running up a tree. Across the top of it, slippery burlap moving beneath the soft gripping soles of her boots. The whole stack thudded and shivered under her as Hordle's massive weight slammed into it without slowing, then started to topple towards the wall in an avalanche that could shatter bones and kill. Desperate, Tiphaine let that fling her towards the window there, launching herself out with her arms crossed before her face.

Crash.

Glass shattered, and the thin laths broke and twisted. Tiphaine's belly drew up of itself—she had a fifty-fifty chance of carving her own guts out and spilling them on the ground, with a crazy stunt like this. At least she wouldn't have to try and explain to Lady Sandra how she'd missed four people lying in wait—

Then she was rolling on the asphalt in the cold darkness; only superficial cuts. They stung, but no tendons were severed, no muscle deeply gashed. Rolling, up on her feet again, and another figure was coming around the corner of the warehouse, clearing a stack of boxes with a raking stride and landing smoothly, beautifully fluent. A woman, as tall as she, black hair—Eilir Mackenzie. The others would be seconds behind her.

Tiphaine turned and leapt again, her foot hitting the top of a wheelbarrow leaned against the cinderblock outer wall of the Hatfield property and giving her a brace for another scrabbling jump. The top of the wall had a coil of barbed wire on it, bad but better than spikes or broken glass. She grabbed, heedless of the sharp iron punching into her palms, wrenched, pulled, flung her body up sideways and rolled across it, pulling with desperate strength as cloth and skin tore.

Whump.
The sidewalk outside struck her, nearly knocking out her wind. That wouldn't do.

She was up and running down the street, pulling the rope and grapnel slung over her shoulder loose. As she did she filled her lungs and screamed:

“Help! Police! Murder! Help!” and for good measure added a scream pure and simple, a shriek of fear and pain. Summoning one wasn't all that difficult.

There weren't many houses in this neighborhood, but there were some, and night-watchmen as well. Lights flared, and doors opened, spilling yellow flame-light onto the pavement. A whistle sounded sharply not far away, and a clatter of hooves. The grapnel buzzed over her head and flew out, and the thin, strong rope snaked behind it. The tines came down on the peak of a roof, and she hit the side of the building running, swarming up the knotted rope with the strength of her arms alone and fending off with her feet; for a heart-stopping instant she thought the blood on her palms had made them too slick, but the chamois leather gave her enough traction.

No time to stop on the roof, though her lungs burned and the cold air was like some hot, thin gas rasping her lungs. She snatched up the rope behind her as she ran, heedless of the risk of tripping, gathered it into a rough bundle and jerked the grapnel free as she passed. An alleyway beyond, another roof past it; she pumped arms and legs to gather momentum, leapt outward—

Behind her a great bass voice shouted:
“What a sodding balls-up!”

Corvallis, Oregon
January 12th, 2008/Change Year 9

Michael Havel stirred the body with a boot, carefully avoiding the tacky red-brown trickle of blood from the death-wound and the corpse's mouth and nose, still congealing in the cold air of a winter dawn. He was thankful there weren't any flies; a few tiny footprints indicated that the rats had been nosing around, though they hadn't had peace enough to settle in for a snack.

“Three guesses as to the cause of death,” he said dryly, touching a toe to the staghorn hilt of the knife whose blade had been driven up under the ribs.

“Gee, that's a toughie,” Signe said, her tone as pawky as his.

We've been married going on ten years and we're starting to think alike,
Havel thought.
Apparently that old saying is true.