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

by S. M. Stirling

  Prince Thomas took the offered gift with a nod and a wink, and King John flipped a small silver coin back at her. About ten times the value of the meal, and having King and Prince tucking in to her stock-in-trade in public wouldn’t do her business any harm at all.

  “Cheers, luv,” he called out over the din of the crowd. “I do like me a fish finger sandwich.”

  The flaky white flesh had been marinated with onion juice, tamari, lemon and black pepper before it went over the coals, and he savored every bite, wishing he hadn’t necked that whole beer in one go. It would have gone down a treat with this. They said that knowing hunger, real hunger, changed the way you tasted food forever, the way you thought about it. It made even the plainest meal something to be savored and thankful for. Every bite, ever after, a joyful thing. He’d heard some survivor of a Japanese POW camp in Burma say that on the television when he was a kid.

  God knew he’d done some starving of his own in the year after the Change—he and his young family had made it out of Brisbane early, which was why they hadn’t quite died by the roadside like millions of the slow, the stupid and the unlucky.

  Then again, he thought, I always loved a feed, even in the old days.

  A memory shook free and dropped on him, wholly formed and heavy with significance; a dinner date with his late wife, his one true love, at a restaurant by the ocean in the golden days. They had ridden an elevator—an elevator!—to the top floor of an old, whitewashed building on the bay at Bondi Beach. It was the first time he had ever had real French champagne. He . . .

  “Dad? Earth to Dad. You’ve gone to your happy place again, haven’t you?”

  King John shook his head, the memory gone, only sadness left. For his wife. For a whole world. It had been so real.

  “Come on,” said Thomas. “Focus. At least give them a wave.”

  His hand came up automatically, a thumbs-up gesture for the crowd that brought forth another cheer as the traffic snarl at the intersection cleared. The mounted troopers clip-clopped back into formation and the carriage lurched forward again. King John shaded his eyes, which were no good for close reading work anymore, but not bad over longer distances.

  Northeast from here you could just see the thick forest of masts at the docks, pennants hanging limp in the hot moist air, dirty canvas sails visible above the roofline of the waterfront. The port grew busier every month, though he could still remember the first outside trader in the fifth year after the Change—a schooner from New Caledonia with a hold full of yams, taro and coconuts looking for metal tools and cloth. Today the warehouses were stuffed with goods from as far away as Puerto Mont and Hinduraj, Zanzibar and Astoria and Newport; there was even a ship or so from Europe per year. A goodly number of those ships down the harbor were built and crewed right here in Capricornia, merchantmen and Navy frigates, fishing boats and the half-piratical salvager craft working the dead cities, crewed by mad fuckers who risked becoming dinner for Zed, all to bring back cargoes of metal and lenses, gearwork and sometimes even art treasures or precious metals that could make such a crew rich for life. He’d seen long ago that Darwin could be the meeting-place and entrepôt of continents, and by God it was coming true.

  The odd tall building still reared skywards, but most of them had been disassembled for materials as the township rebuilt. Two or three stories of brick or timber was typical now, with lots of verandahs, tall slatted windows and overhanging roofs, and for the better-off, courtyards with shady plantings within. Colorful signage was everywhere, with paper lanterns waiting to be lit.

  Anyway, he thought, old Darwin was a low rise joint.

  Now the highest points were usually church spires; there were a dozen different varieties, along with gaudy Buddhist temples, even gaudier Hindu shrines covered in writhing sculptures and flower offerings, the odd mosque and a couple of synagogues. Another of life’s insulting ironies. He had once been quite the fiery atheist. Now he was Protector of the Faiths. All fifty-seven flavors of them.

  Well, most of them.

  He beckoned Prince Thomas forward again, waving a suntanned, liver-spotted hand around.

  “You’re gonna be right with all this, aren’t you, mate? You’re gonna do the right thing? Look after ’em all?”

  Thomas frowned.

  “Well yeah, but where do you think you’re pissing off to, you lazy bugger? You’ve still got years of work ahead of you.”

  King John leaned back and grinned with pride at the crowds; Station-bosses in from the remote countryside with their outriders, cockies with carts of vegetables from the small farms around the city, a Papuan merchant in grass skirt and mother-of-pearl nose pendant, a party of chattering Surabayans in sarongs with kris-knives thrust through the waistbands, a band of Koori Warriors from Arnheim-land leaning on their spears and watching the pageant. Altogether livelier than any other town in Australia, and a lot more interesting in his opinion.

  “I’m almost done, I reckon, son,” he said. “On the back nine, as Greg Norman used to say.”

  “Norman who? That mad black knight prick in America? Shit, he’s long dead.”

  “Not that wanker, no. Classical reference, forget it. But don’t forget what I’ve taught you and your sister.”

  Prince Thomas seemed to catch himself before he could sigh. Instead he sat up and rather than reciting the lessons, as he had a thousand times before, he spoke them as if revealing a truth for the first time.

  “The kingdom is the people. The people are the land. Without them we are nothing.”

  “Good lad. Say it like a prayer, every night. God knows you’re gonna have the fucking bunyip aristocracy in your ear before my scrawny carcass is even cold, and the merchant prince wannabees are even worse because they’re smarter. They’re gonna want to tighten their grip on things, on people. But it’s plenty tight enough already and could even do with some more loosening up in my opinion. Might be we should offer up a little more power to the Council and the Guilds.”

  Thomas look alarmed.

  “Bloody hell! Really?”

  King John smiled, a wicked mischievous smile.

  “Oh, yeah, make it an offer they can’t refuse but with a rider they wouldn’t otherwise go for. True universal suffrage. One man or woman, one vote, and none of this bullshit about property requirements. You come of age. You serve your time in the militias or the army, you get a say. A small one at first. You don’t want to freak the station-bosses too badly. But from little things . . .”

  “Big things grow,” Thomas finished for him. He stared at his old man, searching his eyes for something as the noise of the crowds seem to fall away. “You know things can never go back to the way they were, don’t you? Before . . .”

  “Before the Change, yes, I know,” said King John testily. “I understand that. There will always be a King in Darwin. Just like there’s a Premier of Hobart and a Mayor of Launceston, a Colonel in Townsville and a fucking idiot in Cairns.”

  Thomas grinned for a moment. “The Lord High Moron Joh III? You think that dynasty’s going downhill?”

  “Nah. They started in a pit under the Seventh Circle of Hell. They’ll be right.” He went on seriously: “We’ve done well here, son. But we can do better. For them and by them.”

  He waved his hand at the crush of townsfolk on the sidewalks. He knew visitors from the south referred to Capricornia’s capital as Wogland and Slopetown or the City of a Thousand And One Frights; the polite ones with an air of disbelief, but many with open distaste.

  About what you’d expect from a bunch of inbred bogans.

  Down south the Change had all but erased a century of migration by killing off the big coastal cities while sparing the Outback and, of course, gallant little Tasmania. He’d noticed that a fair number of their youngsters drifted up here, looking for something more exciting than a life spent growing spuds or staring up the arseholes of sheep.

  Tasmanians. Those self-important pricks, he thought, even as anxiety at the latest reports from
his spies in Mindanao stabbed at him: Christ, there’s a whole kingdom of Zed up in the islands? We might just need those self-important pricks.

  “And we’ll need them,” said King John jerking a thumb at the throngs of peasants and commoners. “More than they need us.”

  The driver took his bare foot off the brake lever and sat up as they came up to the wrought-iron gate and the four mules pulling the carriage slowed. The guards rapped the butts of their pikes on the brick roadway, or presented their crossbows.

  A banner over the arch read: Darwin Welcomes The Regional Security Conference Delegates.

  “Because I’ve got a bad fucking feeling about this. It’s going to be bad. For us and everyone else.”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Dúnedain Ranger outpost Amon Tam

  (Formerly Mt. Tamalpais)

  Ithilien/Moon County, Crown Province of Westria

  (Formerly Marin and Sonoma Counties, California)

  High Kingdom of Montival

  (Formerly western North America)

  May 10th (Lothron 9th), Change Year (Fifth Age) 46/2044 AD

  “Three kings in darkness lie

  Gutheran of Org, and I

  Under a bleak and sunless sky—

  The third beneath the hill . . .”

  Faramir Kovalevsky snorted. “Oh, shut the fuck up, Malfind,” he said. “That one sounds better in the Common Speech, anyway.”

  It was the late morning of a fine day, more than half-way through their eight-hour shift, with high white clouds in the blue sky. May was late spring, by the standards of their home here in Ithilien, and from the walls of this lookout station on the mountaintop you could see across a huge stretch of green-gold meadow, olive-green chaparral, leaf-green oak grove and ravines where conifers stretched tall. In the distance they faded to a dreaming blue-purple.

  The Bay and the lost cities lay blurred with miles to the south, and westward long steep slopes led down to the white line of surf that marked the Mother Ocean three thousand feet below. Beyond were the black specks of the rocky islands called the Haeron Thavnath, the Far Pillars, just this side of the horizon. Gulls were thick along the shore below, white specks floating against the blue water, and sometimes the wind carried the echo of their massed quarrelsome squabbling. Closer a red-tailed hawk soared just below them, flight-feathers extended and moving with a subtle grace like a harper’s fingers on the strings as it danced with the currents of air.

  Morfind Vogeler stood silent lookout while her twin, Malfind, blew a raspberry at Faramir, and then lifted his flute, which was shutting up, technically.

  Behind them eastward were the valleys where human-kind lived again, however thinly spread the new settlements were. Where the wheat would turn gold for the harvest in a few weeks, the folk whose fields and children and sleep the Rangers guarded, and beyond it all the faintest blue-white hint of the Sierra peaks. The air was cool enough to be comfortable wearing Dúnedain field gear with their cloaks around their shoulders. It smelled faintly of sea and more strongly of mountain herbs and the pink-and-white blossoms of the wild roses that grew shaggy over the chest-high walls, making them look like any other set of tumbled boulders and broken concrete in the ruins hereabouts.

  Faramir was in charge of the lookout patrol at this outpost as part of his training and he knew his cousin would do whatever he was told, just as Faramir would when the positions were reversed. For example, if he told him to put the flute away, he would. Though he’d probably suggest Faramir putting it somewhere extremely uncomfortable while he tucked it into his haversack. The Dúnedain Rangers were highly disciplined and they all understood that you couldn’t get into the habit of sitting around arguing about what to do in the field.

  They were also a family business and the three of them had grown up together, and they were all just eighteen years old. He wasn’t going to get the sort of deference an Associate nobleman expected up in the north-realm, even if it had been a much happier day than this. Dúnedain had ranks, but they didn’t have an aristocracy. Or to be more precise, they all thought of themselves as nobles whatever work they did. That meant he wasn’t going to get the sort of military punctilio you could expect from Boisean legionnaires or Bearkillers either.

  Still, he took a breath to speak. This sort of thing was why you practiced being in command. Watching other people do it or talk about it was one thing, and helped you see the right thing to do and when it needed to be done. Doing it felt different, and less agreeable.

  Morfind snorted from where she stood at the heavy tripod-mounted binoculars they were using to keep the western approaches to the Golden Gate under observation. At the same time she tossed a pebble at her brother over her shoulder . . . accurately and fairly hard.

  “Ouch!” Malfind said, as it smacked into his forehead and then bounced away; it didn’t draw blood, not quite.

  “Stuff the flute up the back way, dear brother,” she said. “This isn’t a Ring Day dance.”

  “It’s makework,” Malfind grumbled, rubbing the red spot. “It’s staring at nothing!”

  “So what? It’s still a scout, so play the flute when we get back. And if you ever miss the first sharp on ‘Sing Ho to the Greenwood’ again I’m going to hang your severed head in a tree and say the yrch did it.”

  Faramir turned his head so that he could smile for an instant. Malfind would take that from his sister and remember it better, since it didn’t involve butting horns with another young ram. He was bored; so was Faramir. He’d much rather be hunting, or fishing, or even singing along with Malfind’s truly terrible version of “Sing Ho to the Greenwood,” which the poor fool actually thought would help him with girls. Or working on a woodcarving project he had going to make illustrated printing blocks for the press. Or even just weapons drill or barnyard chores.

  Malfind chuckled. “All right, I’d better practice where you’re not listening, beloved sister from Udûn.”

  A lot of what Rangers did was pretty boring. Much of the rest was . . .

  What was the old-world word? Stressful, that’s it. Stressful.

  “You used the old loan-word, too,” Morfind said disapprovingly to Faramir, also without turning around. “You should use the pure Noble Speech when you’re telling someone to shut the fuck up in Sindarin. Particularly when they really need to shut the fuck up.”

  “Oh, shut the fuck up, Morfind,” Faramir said, but this time he used the true term as she did, and smiled.

  It was more authentic, but somehow . . . and it was the word the Sword of the Lady had given the High King when he returned from the Quest, before any of them had been born. There was a reason they were all feeling prickly today; it was an alternative to being depressed, and you couldn’t spend time on watch weeping and mourning.

  The High King was dead, murdered by a prisoner right over in Napa.

  And I sort of feel . . . numb about it, he thought. Like when you’ve just broken a bone and you’re looking at it and thinking, uh-oh, damn but that’s going to hurt in a second.

  That had happened to him a few times. Falls as a child, since Rangers learned to climb like squirrels, and fractures in two ribs once in a fight in the ruins, from an Eater’s flung stone when they’d snuck around to attack the apprentices serving as horse-holders for the Ranger ohtar and roquen. There he hadn’t had time to feel anything but terror at how helpless he was with the maneaters near until a shower of arrows drove the savages off and friendly hands pulled him out of the hole where he’d been pinned, trying to hold a knife ready despite every breath feeling like blades in his body.

  And after that it hurt a lot, but I almost didn’t mind even when they threw me across a saddle. Not at first.

  He knew the pain from this loss was going to be even worse; it wasn’t just the death of a lord, however much respected and revered for his great deeds and firm hand and fair justice, but of an elder kinsman who he’d always liked. Though Stath Ingolf was a long way from the center of things, his parents had gone on visit
s to wherever the Court was, or to Stardell Hall in Mithrilwood in the Willamette where the founding lords of the Dúnedain dwelt, and the High King’s kin were always welcome at Dun Juniper too. They’d seen one or the other every second year or so, and the High King and his family had visited here about as often. Sometimes just to see his half-sisters and his other old comrades from the Quest and their families rather than any reason of State.

  I think part of that was getting away from the crowds and the pomp, here where there’s room to breathe and he could let the man out of the King, with people who knew him when he was a kid.

  So High King Artos was also Uncle Rudi, his mother’s elder half-brother. A man he could remember telling stories that kept them all silently enthralled while the youngsters crowded around his feet at the hearth in Tham en-Araf—Wolf Hall in the Common Tongue—over in the Valley of the Moon. Or throwing ten-year-old Faramir Kovalevsky into the hill-pool reservoir there on a hot summer’s afternoon, and jumping from the Leaping Rock himself and sputtering and roaring with laughter and mock-growls as his nieces and nephews swarmed on and gleefully tried to drown him in the cold spring water.

  Or once giving Faramir a quick wordless slap on the back after he’d done something needful and risky and just at the margins of his fifteen-year-old strength on a boar hunt, when a massive projectile of bone and gristle and goring tusks nobody had noticed had exploded foaming and squealing murder-rage out of a thicket.