The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series)

by S. M. Stirling

  The complex balance of status went through both young Associate nobles’ minds in a subliminal instant; that sort of calculation was as natural as instinct.

  “Droyn, Her Highness isn’t to be troubled with matters of precedence and Household organization yet. Grief aside, there are high matters of State that demand her full attention.”

  He frowned. “Yes, my lady. Everything’s all ahoo, but . . . yes. We can improvise and work around. We’ll leave the High King’s tent and trappings with the baggage we’re having sent on, and leave most of the staff with them. The . . . the High King wasn’t traveling with much state anyway.”

  Heuradys nodded; Rudi Mackenzie had been a knight but not an Associate despite being married to one, and he’d always retained the informality of the Clan’s chieftains when he could. The north-realm’s ideas of how to show the consequence due to rank weren’t popular in the greater part of Montival outside the Protectorate, anyway. They were a legacy of the Association’s precursor, the Society for Creative Anachronism, a pre-Change brotherhood. Who’d practiced them, and the other arts of chivalry . . . as far as she could tell from what her adoptive mother had let fall in private moments, simply as a pastime. They were deadly serious matters to their descendants, most of whom didn’t think of the centuries between modern times and the days of Charlemagne and Arthur and the Black Prince as important . . . or even very real.

  A tradition had to start somewhere, and enough belief made it as real as a rock.

  “So we can . . . ease things in,” Droyn said.

  “Good idea,” she said.

  She was relieved that he was thinking along the same lines. Being the son of a Count didn’t guarantee you weren’t a natural-born damned fool. On the other hand, it didn’t mean you necessarily were, either. She’d dealt with her share of well-and-high-born idiots, though they were rarer than in the general population. Foolish or timid people just hadn’t survived the Darwinian process that had produced the Associate nobility’s survivors in the first generation, and there hadn’t been enough time for much regression to the mean.

  “Select a minimum number of varlets to handle this tent and Her Highness’ baggage. Young and strong ones and good riders, because we want to make all speed we can north. It wouldn’t hurt if they at least knew which end of the sword goes where, just in case.”

  “Guard relays?”

  “Sir Aleaume will handle that as usual, under Captain Edain’s direction; they’ll set the rosters. I’ve consulted with both. Just remember that we do not want to start formally treating the Crown Princess as if she were her father, or as if she’d been crowned High Queen Regnant. High Queen Mathilda wouldn’t get very upset, but a lot of other people would. Starting with Her Highness, which we do not want!”

  “St. Michael and the Virgin, no!” Droyn said, crossing himself.

  “Glad you understand that. We’ll be taking most of the horses to use as remounts at least as far as White Mountain; the carts can wait here for more to arrive. So no gear that won’t fit on a pack-saddle. I’ll coordinate with Sir Aleaume, but I think I can rely on you to be inconspicuous and still get things done? The Household has to keep as much off of Her Highness’ shoulders as we can, right now.”

  His clenched fist in its armored gauntlet clashed on his articulated breastplate again. “My lady!”

  “And one final matter.”

  She turned to a steel box about two feet on a side, turned the key in the lock and opened it. Within rested a vase twenty inches high, a tulip-shape of sleek silver-colored glass with a design of reeds and flowers that made you think of warm early-summer days beneath the shade of a riverside willow-tree. It had been intended as a gift from Dun Barstow to the High King because of its beauty, an ancient thing found in the ruins of a mansion in Napa. Now it held his ashes.

  And there wasn’t anything left but ashes, she thought with a slight shiver. Usually even a hot pyre left bone fragments. This time . . .

  Ashes. Fine as dust, almost. Impossible to tell where the wood-ash left off and the body began. Even the buckles and the gold of the torc were gone.

  The box was sturdy, and the thick glass of the vase was packed carefully with dense soft lamb’s-wool.

  “The most vigilant care must be taken with the High King’s remains,” she said.

  “My lady!” He crossed himself. “My men and I will guard it with our lives, and bring it to the High Queen.”

  “Good man,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. The Crown Princess and I have full confidence in you.”

  His face looked more alive after that, though still very solemn. She’d found that with men of his sort giving them an important task to focus on was the best way to get ten-tenths of capacity working. She settled her hat, draped the liripipe over her shoulder and came out of the tent, making her stride brisk and nodding to the squad of the High King’s Archers outside as they brought up their longbows in salute.

  High King’s Archers? she thought grimly. That’s going to change.

  Her own status was going to change; everything would. The ground was shifting under her feet, and Droyn’s attitude had been a foretaste.

  What was that ancient saying? I expected this, but not so soon?

  As she walked away there was a concerted rush of varlets behind her; the baggage was coming out and the canvas coming down before she’d gone a dozen paces.

  The camp in one of Dun Barstow’s fields was larger now that the reinforcements from Castle Rutherford had joined the party that had first accompanied the High King and his heir on their tour of the new Westrian settlements. The broad flat expanse had been in wheat last year and was thick with green burrclover and medic now, knee-deep where it hadn’t been trampled and sweet-smelling where it had, starred with yellow and purple flowers and murmurous with bees and hummingbirds.

  The breakfast table stood beneath a great live oak, one that must have been growing here when Napa was a sea of vines. Possibly before the old Americans or even their Hispano predecessors had come, in a distant pre-dawn past when only the tribes of the First Folk dwelt here. The Mackenzie settlers establishing Dun Barstow had left it in their turn when they ripped out the thickets of dead and living vines and brush to make their crofts, for looks and shade for livestock in the fierce southern summer.

  And as an act of piety to the Goddess in Her form as Lady Flidais and to the Horned Lord, Cernunnos of the Forest, Master of Beasts. It was a recognition that humanity was not over and above the other kindreds, and held what they did on sufferance. Órlaith was just lowering her arms from her own morning devotion to the rising Sun, and her expression froze for an instant as she turned. As if everything in the world reminded her of her loss and her dead.

  “I know, Orrey,” Heuradys said softly, and rested her hand on her liege-lady’s shoulder.

  Órlaith laid her own hand on the knight’s and squeezed briefly. Heuradys saw the Gods thanked for her for a moment, which was comforting; it meant she was making a difference. She loved all three of her own parents and would grieve when they died in the way of nature, but Órlaith had been much closer to her father than Heuradys was to the Count of Campscapell, who was more like a wonderful uncle in many ways. And the brutal surprise of the assassination made it far worse, like a raw wound on the soul.

  Plus Orrey is probably feeling guilty that he took a knife meant for her. Illogical, but the heart has its own reasons that the mind does not know.

  The camp looked different without the High King’s pavilion, sparser somehow despite the greater numbers, and all the banners flying at half-mast. Even the bustle of packing up and getting ready for departure was somehow subdued. It was odd to think that in most of Montival things would still be completely normal, the High King merely gone on a progress with his heir to inspect the remote southern frontier.

  The news of his death would be spreading northward already, of course. As fast as relays of couriers on horseback could take it to the edge of the heliograph network, and then
by coded flashes of light from hilltop to hilltop, city to city, castle to castle, mirrors reflecting the sun’s rays in the day and burning lime in darkness. They would know in Portland in a few days, and eastward to the Lakota country and north to the Peace River in a fortnight. It might be months before it filtered out to the most remote villages and ranches, or even years in the vast wilderness borderlands. Large chunks of those weren’t inhabited at all, or had a few wildmen who weren’t even aware that they were part of the kingdom.

  But there will be a great stirring, a sharpening of blades and a stringing of bows. Whoever those strangers were, they made a very bad mistake when they shed our King’s blood on our own land.

  “I’ve asked the Nihonjin ruler . . . jotei, Tenno, Empress . . . over for breakfast,” Órlaith said. “Her and two followers, and you and me and Edain.”

  “Are you ready for that, Orrey?” Heuradys asked bluntly. “If you’re so stressed your judgment’s off it would be better to wait. You took a heavy hit, we’re all here to handle things for you, and our guests aren’t going anywhere soon.”

  “No, I can push it,” Órlaith said calmly, after glancing aside for an instant. “It’s not a council, just a talk. I think this could be really important and we need to set things off on the right foot. There will be plenty of time for detail on the way north.”

  Heuradys looked at the Sword of the Lady hanging in its black tooled-leather scabbard at Órlaith’s left hip. The High King had always worn it on his right, and it looked a little odd there.

  And I could swear it’s a bit smaller. A weapon sized for her father would over-blade Orrey, but that looks as perfect for her as it did for him. Brrr!

  “Talk?” she said. “You can understand them?”

  Órlaith nodded as she turned and walked towards the meeting-place. She was wearing a loose saffron shirt and Mackenzie garb, a pleated knee-length kilt in the Clan’s brown-green-orange tartan. A plaid of the same fabric was wrapped around her chest and under the right arm, pulled firm to the body, pinned at the left shoulder by a sapphire and gold knotwork brooch that left the trailing end with its fringe hanging down behind to her knee-hose. Her hair hung loose past her shoulders under the flat blue Scots bonnet with its spray of Golden Eagle feathers in its silver clasp, and the morning sun brought out the hint of copper in that thick yellow mane. She put her left hand to the pommel of the Sword.

  “Yes, it’s working for me the way it did for . . . for Da.”

  She swallowed, and visibly forced herself back to calm. “It feels . . . odd. For a moment there was . . . was this balloon swelling in my head, then it popped and I knew the language. As if I’d always known it, somehow. No, as if I’d grown up speaking it. I could tell that some of the people with her speak different dialects, and I just . . . knew what the honorifics and so forth meant, not just literally but all the implications. I can switch over to thinking in it like turning a tap and when I do the whole world looks a wee bit different.”

  “Useful!” Heuradys said. “But better thee than me, my liege.”

  “Arra, tell me. Being warned isn’t like feeling it. There’s all sorts of stuff that comes with it, too. I think ‘food’ and . . . what comes into your mind when you’re after thinking the word food, Herry? Comes first, at least.”

  “Bread,” she said instantly.

  A loaf was what you thought of immediately. A nice long crusty loaf right out of the oven and off the baker’s wooden paddle, butter melting into the steaming surface when you broke it . . . damn, but she was ready for breakfast. Feeling sorrow didn’t stop your digestive system, outside the more romantical chansons, she found.

  “Me too. But I switch over to Nihongo and suddenly for a moment I’m thinking of a bowl of rice . . . or noodles . . . with little separate dishes of things on the side, and I look at an ordinary plate and go euuu at the way everything’s mixed up. Fair disgusting . . . for an instant.”

  “How many times have you eaten rice? Really, I mean,” Heuradys asked curiously.

  It wasn’t grown in Montival, not yet, and anything imported was a hideously expensive luxury. Though it still grew wild, seeded from old plantings in the Sacramento Delta not far from here. Perhaps someday folk would settle there to raise it.

  “A few times. Rice puddings at Yule, mostly, and sushi on occasion in Portland. But when I start thinking in Nihongo my mouth wants it steamed and sort of sticky . . .”

  “The Sword of the Lady is a cookbook, too?” Heuradys said, chuckling.

  Having been around it so long at court, from her childhood as page and then squire and now household knight, she didn’t have quite the awe of the Sword that most people did.

  Not quite, and that still leaves a fair degree of awe. And not that I’d touch it willingly.

  “Not recipes exactly, but sort of . . . an ideal of what food is. Or I think ‘hello’ and I know how to say hello to people of different ranks and in different circumstances and a whole bunch of stuff like that. I think ‘clothes’ and it’s various robes that come to mind, not a kilt or hose. Kimono just means the thing you wear. I get the language, and how to use it. It doesn’t . . . I mean, I still want bacon and eggs. But I can sort of . . . switch.”

  “I don’t know what we’d do without the Sword this time. Though there’s the other stuff.”

  “No need to mention that just yet, I think.”

  They both nodded slightly. The bearer of the Sword of the Lady could detect falsehood—or as Rudi Mackenzie had put it, the speaker’s belief that what he was saying was false, the intent to deceive. Everyone in Montival knew that and virtually all of them had believed it by now; it had been a long time since anyone but foreigners and the densely stupid tried to lie to the High King. There was no need to explain that to their new . . .

  Guests, Heuradys decided. Possibly allies, but not until we know a lot more.

  “Is there anyone in Montival . . . besides you . . . who speaks Japanese?” she asked.

  “Not that I know of, though there are almost certainly a few tucked away somewhere. Ones who learned from their grandparents.”

  A weary smile; Órlaith hadn’t slept much. “Reiko . . . that’s her name, it means something like Child of Courtesy . . . or possibly Courteous Lady . . . actually speaks English quite well.”

  “It didn’t sound like it!” Heuradys said.

  She’d thought the woman was trying to say Thank you very much to the people who’d saved her outnumbered party from being overrun and slaughtered where they’d been brought to bay, but she hadn’t been at all certain, and she was well-traveled and versed in the weird and wonderful ways the English language had evolved in Montival since the Change. It was amazing what could happen to a language if a few hundred people were cut off from most outside contact for a half-century, and that was just accidental stuff and not counting deliberate alterations, which were also common.

  “All right, knows English. She learned from people who’d learned from people who’d learned English as a second language. For someone who grows up hearing nothing but nihongo the sounds are difficult. She’s got the grammar and vocabulary quite well; it’s just a matter of learning to pronounce them.”

  Edain came up and saluted briskly.

  “Sir Aleaume has matters in hand; we’ll be ready to march as soon as breakfast is over, Princess,” he said. “And once we’ve talked to the foreigners.”

  He scowled a little at that. Órlaith laid a hand on his arm below the short mail sleeve, where it was corded with muscle and scars.

  “It’s not their fault, my old wolf,” she said. “And they suffered a like misfortune. We have a common enemy, at the very least.”

  He drew a deep breath. “Yes. Yes. I saw the one who did it—”

  And you put three clothyard arrows through him in less than three breaths, Heuradys thought.

  The commander of the guard regiment was known as Aylward the Archer for good reason.

  I’d heard about you doing things like that in
the chansons about the old wars, but I’d thought they were exaggerated. And the dead man didn’t stop moving. I’d hoped that those stories were exaggerated too, but apparently not.

  “—and he was like a magus of the Church Universal and Triumphant; I haven’t seen the like since Corwin fell in the Prophet’s War, nor missed it, but it’s not something you forget. It was fated that your da would not live to see his beard go gray. It’s not just Fiorbhinn’s songs. The Chief told me so, long ago on the Quest. And not a month past, just before we came south . . . he told me he’d dreamed of wading across a river, and seeing blood flowing by his feet from the clothes an old woman beat on the rocks.”

  Heuradys shuddered very slightly, and she and Órlaith made the sign of the Horns with their left hands. The scarred archer did so too; they all knew what it meant to see the Washer at the Ford in your dreams. The knight shared a look with her liege-lady, and saw she also knew why the High King had spoken no word of it to anyone else but his trusted lifelong comrade: he’d wanted Órlaith to have the joy of their last time together on this journey, not to blight it with pain come before its season. The Princess’ eyes closed again, then opened as her face set.

  Edain gave a crooked smile. “So don’t worry, lass . . . Princess . . . I’ll keep an open mind with these strangers.” Thoughtfully: “They’re bonny fighters, and that’s a fact. So let’s go break bread with them this spring morn. And speak of the fine red revenge the both of us will be having, to brew bale-wind for the chieftains we’ve both lost.”

  A dozen of the Archers were drawn up a tactful twelve paces behind the folding camp table, in brigantine and short mail sleeves and kilts, with their longbows cradled in their arms; equally tactfully, they were wearing their flat Scots bonnets rather than their helms, with the raven-feathers of the High King’s sept-totem in the badges. A man-at-arms in a full suit of armory-issue plate held the banner of Montival. You couldn’t tell much when the visor of the sallet helm was down and he wasn’t wearing a tabard with his own arms, but Heuradys knew it was Sir Aleaume de Grimmond, commander of the mounted guards on this expedition and son of the Grand Constable of the Association, Baron Maugis de Grimmond. He’d probably taken the duty so he could keep a close eye on the Crown Princess without openly violating orders to be inconspicuous and tactful. To be fair, the foreigners wouldn’t know him from Prometheus.