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

by S. M. Stirling

  Then to Heuradys: “Conclete, sis Castle?” he asked. “Wiss steel leinfolcement?”

  “Yes,” Lady Heuradys said. “Covered in buff stucco, as you see.”

  The rolling hills here were blanketed in green rows of grapevines, each with a flowering rosebush planted at its head, or with orchards. Reiko found the taste of wine rather odd compared to the beer and sake she was used to, though she could see it would grow pleasant with familiarity and she could already tell the difference between good and bad. The road wound again, and they caught glimpses of white buildings on a nearer hill through the trees. Then the road broadened, and there was a wall—not a fortification but a marker and barrier to stray beasts, stone posts joined by curling screens of black wrought iron. Two taller stone posts on either side of the road were each topped by a yard-high statue of an owl; between them stretched a metal arch, comprised of Latin letters that spelled out: Montinore.

  The lancers and crossbowmen of their escort split and lined the road on either side with smooth precision, facing inward. Even the horses scarcely moved. Servants in tabards with the d’Ath arms—which Reiko found pleasingly austere, after the busy complexities of many of the Association blazons—pushed the iron gates open. Heuradys reined aside and bowed, moving an arm in a gesture of welcome.

  As Reiko and her retainers rode forward a command barked out, and the long lances dipped as one until the points nearly touched the ground. They held as she passed, and then each came back upright—a long smooth undulating ripple like the spines on the back of a fish bristling. Trumpets sounded, a long brassy note; as soon as the last of the Japanese had passed the gate the commander raised his sword before his face in salute, another order was called, and the column of guardsmen reversed and trotted away in the same easy unison.

  “As I said,” Reiko said to her own guard officer. “To give us consequence.”

  “Yes, Majesty. Very prettily done, too.”

  The gardens beyond were a bit of a shock, totally unlike the spare, restrained Nihon style; there were sweeping green lawns like velvet, great trees of a dozen varieties scattered thinly or standing in clumps, brilliant flowerbanks beside winding pathways of white stone or frothing down terraced slopes, pergolas covered in an extravagance of purple wisteria, statues and benches and a tall fountain like an ascending series of shells where water leapt skyward. As the path rose towards the buildings they could glimpse a small lake beyond, and a hill westward covered in tall firs that seemed to mark the edge of the mountain forests.

  “Gaudy,” Koyama said behind her, with a bit of a wince as he looked about at the gardens. “And chaotic.”

  “Perhaps not altogether,” Egawa said equally softly, surprising her a little. “It’s not how I would do it, Koyama-san, but there is structure here, I think. I cannot see it yet—too unfamiliar. The flesh hides the bones too thoroughly.”

  “Like a message written in a different script. Hmmm. Perhaps. It will reward contemplation.”

  The buildings were in the Western style, familiar enough from surviving examples she’d seen in Japan, the central one with tall pillars, others looking as if they had been added from time to time in a different manner—windows topped with pointed arches rather than square lintels, for starters. They dismounted, and grooms came forward to take the horses. A small guard of spearmen and crossbowmen saluted and stood to attention; the servants knelt.

  Reiko blinked. The tall slender woman of about sixty dressed in a darker version of Heuradys’ costume was certainly the Baroness d’Ath. When their eyes met for an instant she saw with a shock that they were of an inhuman color stranger even than blue, a pale gray like ice on a winter’s day. A slight chill ran through her, and she felt Egawa stiffen a little behind her, with an unconscious grunt of appraisal as his hand tightened on the hilt of his katana.

  The middle-aged woman beside her would be Lady Delia, dark-haired and with those odd blue eyes by now half-familiar . . . and she was in a kimono. So was the barely-adult woman beside her who had a strong family resemblance; Lady Heuradys had mentioned a younger sister.

  Delia’s kimono was a formal iro-tomesode of a rather antique style, a deep crimson, with golden dragons below the obi and the full five kamon; her daughter’s was pale sky-blue above with a pattern of a silver phoenix below. Baroness d’Ath used the flourishing gesture with the hat and a bow over an extended leg, respectful-looking even to one unfamiliar with the system of etiquette from which it sprang.

  Lady Delia and her youngest managed a well-executed deep formal bow in the true Nihon style, only a little stiff and as old-fashioned as the kimono, but obviously something over which they had taken a good deal of care. So was the careful, and just-understandable pronunciation of:

  “Heika! Youkoso irasshai mashita.”

  Reiko felt a melting of a tension she had not been fully conscious of until that moment.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Barony Ath, Tualatin Valley

  (Formerly northwestern Oregon)

  High Kingdom of Montival

  (Formerly western North America)

  May 25th, Change Year 46/2044 AD

  “The kimono was a nice touch, Mom,” Heuradys said much later that night, stretching and leaning back in her chair.

  “I was worried I’d do some sort of faux pas with it and ruin the effect, but it came off, I think. Of course, Yolande absolutely loved it. She’s still slim enough that the padding isn’t too bad. Kimonos can be absolutely lovely, but they really don’t suit women who have breasts . . . or hips . . . or a waist. In fact, they’re best for women built like the pillars holding up the porch.”

  The lamp left a puddle of light around the upper table in the Great Hall of the manor; they were the last ones in it, except for the tail-end of the clean-up squad waiting patiently by the doors.

  “Reiko said it was perfect, in a very old-fashioned way,” Heuradys reflected. “And that you carried it off in the same style. I get the impression that they’ve simplified things a bit there.”

  Montinore manor-house had started as a mansion, built in the later nineteenth century as a mining magnate’s country place and becoming the center of a large-scale vineyard in the generation before the Change. Over the years Baroness d’Ath, or more accurately her Châtelaine once she had talked Tiphaine out of living in the castle, had added refinements. The most essential was a true Hall, a necessity for a large household where everyone from highest to lowest usually ate their main meal in the same room and you had to do anything from holding the formal Court Baron to giving a masque with a big crowd after a tournament.

  Other bits and pieces had been tacked on, including the royal guest suite necessary for a baron whose offices, first as Grand Constable and then High Marshal, drew monarchic visits. Reiko was now installed there, though they’d had to scare up some domestics for her since she hadn’t arrived with a staff of ladies-in-waiting and maidservants.

  Montinore didn’t have quite the smoothly organized spaces of St. Athena manor-house on Barony Harfang out east, which had been purpose-built after the Prophet’s War with modern methods for modern purposes, but Heuradys found the very irregularity charming. And of course rich with memories of her childhood, including the old bedroom she’d sleep in tonight. The windows were still open, letting in a breath of cool night air, and the scent of clipped grass and flowers. The dim light glimmered on the tile patterns of the floor and the bright hangings.

  “It was all very mysterious,” Delia said; she looked at a pastry filled with honeyed hazelnuts, unconsciously patted her waist and put her fork down with a sigh. “Getting your message, I mean, Heuradys darling.”

  From what people said and from the portraits she’d been a raving beauty, back when she first caught the eye of the newly ennobled and newly enfeoffed Tiphaine d’Ath and vice versa, though she’d been only a miller’s daughter on this estate then and younger than Heuradys was now.

  About Yolande’s age, which is sort of strange when you think about it
.

  Class distinctions and relations had been more fluid in the Association lands in those days, though also often more brutal. The later promotion to Associate status and pro-forma marriage to Lord Rigobert de Stafford had been engineered by Sandra Arminger, Tiphaine’s patron, as her protégé rose and wanted to share that with her girlfriend. Sandra had discovered that Delia’s looks simply complemented a valuable talent for social skills, which she promptly had trained and put to work. And in any case she’d always been open-handed to her followers; and if you were loyal, she’d back you through thick and thin. Though if you weren’t loyal . . .

  Brrr. She died old, in bed, of natural causes, and without much pain. From what I’ve heard not one of those who crossed her that way managed any of those. She didn’t kill people with her own hands and she didn’t do it for kicks, but you ended up just as dead. Usually soon, though not as soon as you wanted by that point. That’s why they called her the Spider.

  Heuradys thought her lady mother was still quite beautiful in her fifties, in a comfortable . . .

  . . . Matronly fashion, that’s it, she thought fondly. Matronly. And still the most brilliant facilitator and social manager I know. Go, Mom!

  Heuradys went on aloud: “I’m not absolutely sure—I don’t have a magic sword that gives me special linguistic powers, and they’re mostly the most stoic, low-affect people you’ve ever met, at least around outsiders. But I’m pretty sure they were feeling touchy as cats on the way here, even if Reiko is a sensible sort for a monarch. Very sensible for a girl who’s just lost her father—and that hit her as hard as it did Orrey, I’d swear to that, too. But they’re proud people, very, and they knew they were being stuck here like a document put in a file for future reference. The pride’s more understated than your average Associate’s bravado and less obviously bloody-minded, but it’s there.”

  “You’re right,” Tiphaine said. “Serious people.”

  The three Associates nodded, knowing exactly what the term meant. Those who lived by their pride, and died by it.

  “They appreciated you laying on a Japanese formal dinner, I could tell, the gesture as much as the meal. They know we’ve got the whip hand, they’re feeling very isolated here, and showing respect really helps. How did you manage it, though?” Heuradys asked. “I like tempura as well as the next and sake is fine for a change, but I didn’t know you could get some of that stuff out here in deepest rural-dom? I mean, edible seaweed? Wasabi?”

  “Deepest?” Tiphaine said. “Nonsense. Ath is practically a suburb of Portland these days. Barony Harfang, now, that’s rural. They’d have had to settle for roast mutton on the bone there.”

  “I have my methods, Watson,” Delia said, smiling. “Actually I raided the best Japanese restaurant in the palace district in Portland; the grandfather used to work for Sandra and set up on his own after she died. She left him a bequest for it, in fact, money and the property. I just descended on them with a couple of fast carriages and lifted everything from the chef on down complete with materials and cookware, soothing objections with streams of gold.”

  The smile died. “Nobody’s eating out much there right now anyway, what with Rudi dying and the Court in mourning. Goddess, it felt like the bottom fell out of the world. I could . . . feel something was wrong. Something terrible, something fearful. And then the news . . . I couldn’t breathe for a while, I swear.”

  Heuradys nodded. Her mother wasn’t just of the Old Faith; she was a High Priestess of its Wiccan branch, albeit a very discreet one; her mother had been one before her.

  In the Lord Protector’s day, if she hadn’t been discreet, and had Sandra’s protection to boot, that could have gotten her burned at the stake. We don’t do that anymore, thank the Gods, but it was a real risk. I think that’s one reason she still feels . . . obliged . . . to Sandra, despite everything.

  Tiphaine nodded somberly and sipped at her brandy, glacial eyes hooded. Back in those days she’d been an actual atheist, though of course she’d learned better since. She spoke musingly:

  “I have the spiritual sensitivity of mashed turnip, but I felt winded too when the dispatch came in. I never expected to outlive him. Completely aside from being older.”

  “He was so alive,” Delia said, and Heuradys found herself nodding; she’d never met a man as . . .

  Vivid, she thought.

  “I know what you mean, sweetie, but three inches of edged metal in the wrong place does for the best of us,” Tiphaine said. “It’s . . . I expected to be the one who got it from a random arrow in some skirmish in the butt-end of nowhere, or—”

  They all shared a look of agreement; if the High King hadn’t appointed one Tiphaine d’Ath as Marshal of the High King’s hosts when she retired as Grand Constable, and hence out of bounds for personal challenges under the Great Charter, she wouldn’t have outlived him and they all knew it. Too many old feuds simmered from the days when she’d been Sandra Arminger’s best and most feared enforcer-assassin-duelist, and she’d barely survived her last duel—in cold weather she still limped a little from the leg wound she’d taken in it.

  More would have come as the sharks scented blood, or revenge, or just an opportunity for the fame of the one who killed Lady Death; after a certain point experience didn’t compensate for a well-trained younger warrior’s speed and endurance, especially in a dueling circle.

  “Rudi . . . damn, it’s like yesterday I brought him to Castle Ath during the Protector’s War. Ten years old, alone among enemies and totally fearless . . .”

  Tiphaine raised her glass, and they all sipped the brandy in tribute.

  “Reiko is interesting, apart from being the only Empress I’m likely ever to have as a house-guest,” Delia said. Impishly: “Cute, too. If I were her age and single . . .”

  “Mom!”

  “I’m middle-aged and monogamous, Herry, not dead or blind. That face . . . and that serious, tragic air . . . you want to pick her up and cuddle her like a kitten to see if she’ll purr.”

  “Mom!”

  Suddenly Tiphaine chuckled softly. Heuradys stared in mild astonishment; you could go for weeks without much more than a small smile from her adoptive mother. For a generation her title had been pronounced as Lady Death by some very hard men, and for good reasons. She swirled the brandy in her snifter and spoke.

  “That scar-faced one built like a barrel is formidable,” she said. “Egawa?”

  “Egawa Noboru, the Imperial Guard commander, yes,” Heuradys agreed. “I’ve seen him working out. One of those heavy quick men, like a solid block of catapult springs.”

  “Rare, dangerous,” Tiphaine agreed. “Different gear and style, of course. Which brings back some very old memories.”

  Baffled, Heuradys raised a brow. You never got anything by pushing at Auntie Tiph, but sometimes just waiting receptively would work.

  They sat comfortably in the half-light for a moment, and Tiphaine said meditatively, “Memories from before the Change . . . I’m showing my age . . . when I was this huge teenage nerd. Nerd or geek, I forget the distinction, but it was one or the other.”

  Heuradys blinked. Teenage was a term she understood though these days people said youth or maiden, but nerd was only vaguely familiar, something she couldn’t quite pin down. And huge? It was impossible to imagine the woman who’d made her way to the top of the Association’s warrior ranks despite the rampant plate-armored machismo, not to mention militant Catholicism—and that back when it was even harder than it was now—as being in anything but an absolute perfection of fitness and deadly skill. Even in her sixties she could make you sweat in a practice bout; some of the speed and flexibility was gone and the strength and endurance were less, but the form and ability to anticipate were utterly perfect.

  Delia was gurgling her infectious laugh. “Oh, Goddess, darling, you are acting your age again. How many times must I tell you, it’s not funny if you have to explain it? Humor was never your strong point.”

  “Applying sta
bby, slashy pointy things to people who needed it was my strong point, but I’ve outgrown that.”

  Heuradys asked plaintively: “OK, parents are supposed to bewilder children. Huge . . . geek? I thought you were an athlete . . . a gymnast? Headed for the Olympics in Greece?”

  “Wherever they were held, actually, they weren’t always in Greece,” Tiphaine said. “Yes. Though I’d already gotten too tall to be an Olympic gymnast by the time I was thirteen, they were all pixies. I was starting to think of going for track and field instead, the pentathlon.”

  Heuradys nodded. She and Tiphaine had almost identical height and build, though they weren’t related by blood at all. People who’d seen Lady Death at her peak said the young knight was as fast, too, which was enormously flattering. Though . . . there was also a reason there were fourteen little notches in the black bone of her adoptive mother’s sword-hilt, each filled with a bit of silver wire hammered smooth once and then polished every day.

  We don’t do that sort of thing as often anymore, either . . .

  “But I was also a huge nerd. Or geek. It’s a term describing character and interests, not physique. You know people who can’t shut up about . . . oh, their falcons? It’s falcons morning, noon and night, jesses for breakfast and hoods at luncheon and gloves for dinner with fewmets for dessert? They’re falconry geeks. Or nerds.”

  “You were a falconer?”

  “Think general, not specific. Norman and Sandra were giant nerds . . . giant truly evil nerds, it turned out when they got a real country and real people to play with . . .”

  “Darling!” Delia said reprovingly. “I won’t say anything about Norman, but Sandra was very good to us. She was only . . . well, sort of evil.”

  “Oh, I was pretty evil back then too, sweetie. But nerds they were, being in the Society all their lives when other people grew up and moved on. I was much younger and just blossoming into full-blown nerd-hood when . . . well.”