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

by S. M. Stirling

  Órlaith scowled at him: “Or too foreign, in . . . dammit, we’re going to have to use names, among ourselves. Is that all right?”

  “Yes,” Reiko said. A slight smile: “I grant official permission . . . Órlaith. We are in your land; in this we should follow your custom.”

  “Oh, Powers, you can say Orrey, Reiko. All my friends do.”

  Reiko lowered her eyes and swallowed, which was the equivalent of an emotional outburst from her. The Crown Princess of Montival had a feeling that Reiko hadn’t had many friends, growing up.

  “Ah . . . Órlaith . . . what does it mean? Does it mean anything?” she asked.

  Órlaith grinned; Japanese names all had a meaning apart from being an arbitrary noise attached to a person. Reiko meant Courteous Lady, more or less, though ko had several alternative readings.

  The which is appropriate indeed, for she is very much a lady and unfailingly courteous. Though to be sure when you’re facing her in the salle you might think differently!

  Egawa Noburu’s first name meant Arise and Koyama Akira’s meant Bright Intellect. Her grandmother Juniper had told her that English names had been that way once, compounds like Friend of the Elves or Cunning in Battle or claiming relationship with a particular Power. Between the Bible and the Norman conquerors they had gotten out of the habit, because after that their names came from foreign languages they didn’t understand.

  “Órlaith is Golden Princess, in the old tongue. And I can’t even be called immodest, for it was my parents who picked it, and none of my own doing.”

  Reiko laughed, holding a hand before her mouth. “Most of us here are monarchs’ children anyway, neh?”

  “Right. Some will say too foreign, in Reiko’s case. My mother and Chancellor Ignatius would listen to us, think seriously . . . and then possibly send an official expedition. In about six months, after the . . .”

  An unexpected lance of pain hit her. Doing something makes it feel better. She sighed, waited an instant, and continued:

  “. . . after the High King’s funeral in Dun Juniper, after things have settled down. An expedition which would not include us. Does anyone here think that’s after being a good idea?”

  “No,” Reiko said decisively, snapping her fan from one side to the other. “It would be too late, if the jinnikukaburi . . . and our other enemies . . . are already on the track. And it would fail. And also . . . we Nihonjin did not come here to completely hand our mission to strangers . . . even friendly strangers, or even close friends. The Grass-Cutting Sword is ours, as the Sword of the Lady is yours.”

  “I agree,” John said. He ran a hand through his hair. “The problem is that if I hadn’t had those dreams and someone else was telling me about it, I wouldn’t agree. I’d be strongly inclined to think the one telling the story needed a long rest somewhere quiet with lots of chamomile tea.”

  “Right you are, Johnnie-me-boyo,” Órlaith said. “I might believe such a one myself—but I might not, so, if I had no Sword. Or even if I did, for what someone believes to be true feels true, do you see?”

  Reiko’s eyes sharpened on her. “Your Sword . . . it does not reveal truth? This is what I understood?”

  “When I’m listening to another, it tells me if they believe what they’re saying, which is not quite the same thing as truth. I can sense the intent to deceive, you see?”

  Reiko gave a quick nod.

  No flies on that one, indeed. Though there are other things it can do, from what Da said. She went on:

  “The second problem we’re having here is that the . . . other side . . . obviously know something about this, too. That’s clear from what went on down at Eryn Muir.”

  Reiko made a gathering gesture with her fan. “And from the fact that my father’s ship was pursued almost as soon as it left Sado-ga-shima. Pursued relentlessly, regardless of cost.”

  Órlaith made a gesture of agreement. “And the Haida cooperated with them; Da always suspected that their shamans and chiefs were in contact with the . . . the Malevolence, and that it was building them up as a second arrow on the bow if the CUT failed. Our enemies are not going to be sitting about with their thumbs up the orifice and the millwheel of their minds disengaged from the grinding stones. The Powers are at work here, though They must mostly act through human beings. And our enemies are not necessarily stupid. A great pity, but there it is.”

  Heuradys nodded. “As it was before the gates of Troy,” she said. “Let’s just assume we’re not the Trojans.”

  Órlaith looked down at the list she’d drawn up, thought for a moment, and scribbled a note. Then she went to a door, and rang a handbell for a varlet.

  The door opened immediately. “Dicun, take this up to the heliograph station at Castle Ath,” she said. “It’s a summons for a Royal courier, a Lakota woman named Susan Mika. She’ll be at Todenangst, so she ought to arrive in a few hours. When she does, send her straight up here.”

  “Courier?” John asked.

  “Susan Mika’s about our age. And she was very grateful to Da for taking her in and finding her work she loved, hard prideful work. I think she’ll . . . cooperate. And that gives us a way to communicate that doesn’t involve message logs that someone with the Royal codes . . . like our mother . . . can query any time they want to.”

  “Ah,” Reiko said. “Clever! Yes, I remember her from Di-ar-muid’s home.”

  “And that’s one of the places I’ll send her,” Órlaith said. “Larsdalen first—”

  “Luanne?” Heuradys asked. “Good choice, though she’s a bit impulsive.”

  “Grimy arse, said the kettle to the pot. Then Dun Fairfax, for that Karl Aylward Mackenzie would never forgive me if I didn’t, then Diarmuid’s steading, then Eryn Muir for my cousins, and back with the answers . . . not that I much doubt any of them. Reiko, you need to get your guard commander on side. There’s no chance of just walking off with that one not looking, is there?”

  “No,” Reiko said. “He is a dedicate . . . dedicated man. His father . . . remade . . . the Imperial Guard, and raised him very . . . sternly. And he knows me from very small. That is good and bad. And we need the men under his command. Some would follow me anyway, I think, but all would be . . . disturbed.”

  The folk around the table were all within a few years of twenty either way. They all nodded in unison; their worlds were full of authoritative people who were either their parents or who’d known them as infants or at least before they were toilet-trained.

  Sure, and Da said one of the drawbacks of hereditary succession is that you spend your twenties with your parents and uncles and aunts being one and the same with your political superiors, Órlaith thought.

  She had seen enough of the alternatives in stubbornly republican parts of Montival like Corvallis or the Free Cities of the Yakima League to know that she preferred the system she’d been born to, but still . . .

  People who knew you when you were bubbling and dribbling have a hard time seeing you as an adult, and they can be downright irritating and give laughs like a braying donkey if you point out that you’re not a wee puling babe the now.

  Reiko apparently had that problem too, only worse. She wasn’t going to let it stop her. Órlaith looked at the set of those almost-delicate features, and decided she liked that a good deal. Under that careful, gentle courtesy, there was a fair bit of tiger. She went on to her brother:

  “Now, what you need to do, Johnnie-me-lad, is look up an old friend of the family in Newport; I met him not so long ago, and I’ve been in that city in the last few years.”

  John made a gesture of agreement; Órlaith had spent a few semesters studying at OSU in Corvallis, both because it was an excellent seat of learning and because it was politic for the future High Queen. Newport was a part of that city-state’s territory and its principal outlet on the Pacific, a natural place to visit.

  “But you haven’t. Either one,” Órlaith went on.

  Her brother had been taking classes at the Protectorate
University in Forest Grove instead, and at Mt. Angel. Both were heavily Catholic, which was perfectly appropriate since he was heir to the Lord Protector’s position.

  He looked puzzled, but only for an instant. “Oh. That’s why. Nobody in Newport will know me from Adam if I’m careful.”

  “Exactly; or we can hope they won’t, you see? We’re going to need a ship, and we’re going to need money.”

  Everyone nodded, even Reiko. Money—and the things it symbolized, like arms and armor and ships and fighting men and horses and food—greased the axles on which the wheels of kingdoms turned. Wise rulers kept an eye on how much of it was going where, and a very close eye on disruptions to the usual flows. The High Queen and her closest advisors would do that by ingrained reflex, especially if there was a sudden loan to the heirs. Wise bankers would automatically report any large irregular advance made to any highborn client, for related reasons. Certainly any operating in Portland or Astoria would, and there was no time to use financial houses in Walla Walla or Boise.

  “We’ll need a lot more than our allowances, or what we can borrow in the ordinary course of things without word getting back to Mother or the Chancellor. Here’s what you’ll be proposing—”

  • • •

  “Newport!” the conductor said in a voice that managed to be loud and a bit blurred and utterly bored all at once.

  She blew a whistle and repeated it as brakes squealed and steel wheels rattled on rail.

  “Newport!”

  And not a moment too soon, Prince John of the House of Artos thought. Mary Mother, I hate rail travel.

  He’d done a fair bit of it with his parents, as a child and youth, and it was annoying if you were naturally active. Carriages were worse, but you didn’t normally stay inside one nearly as long. He’d rather bump his backside against saddle leather anytime, or walk for that matter.

  All I’ve done is sit and watch trees and hills go by for hours and I feel tired out by it as if I’d been hacking at a pell or riding at the ring wearing a suit of plate. It’s a mystery. And it seems unnatural to see a town without farms outside, just a few turn-out pastures and truck gardens. Here they plow the sea.

  “End of the line! All off for Newport!”

  But at least the weather’s all I could want, he thought happily, yawning with his hand over his mouth and looking out the window.

  There was a fine drizzle coming down. With a wind off the cold current that ran southward along the coast, it was also a bit chilly. Throughout Montival west of the Rockies summer was the dry season, but hereabouts on the ocean side of the Coast Range they got at least a few rainy days every month. Even a summer’s day like this could suddenly dip into the fifties. The cold current running south down the shore from the Arctic made the weather undependable compared to the interior valleys.

  Which is lucky. People will be keeping their heads down, not strolling along looking at strangers. Even in a fair-sized city like this, people usually notice outsiders.

  The railway station was post-Change, a barn-like wooden structure with an overhang next to the tracks and a pavement of bricks salvaged here and there and brought in as ballast, which showed in the different shades of brown and red. His valet Evrouin slung his own smaller suitcase over his back and took his lord’s canvas-and-leather bag and cased lute from the overhead rack and followed him as he hopped down. The servant would make him a lot more plausible.

  The other passengers hurried off, some whistling for porters. There had been a score or so of travelers in each of the passenger cars but he’d simply put Evrouin in the aisle seat, pulled his hat down over his eyes and dozed or pretended to. That discouraged conversation and everyone would just put it down to Associate snootiness, which people in this part of the High Kingdom were always ready to believe in anyway.

  The return passengers were waiting for the cars to be swept and looking at watches if they had them or the station clock if they didn’t; stevedores were already slinging barrels and bundles and sacks and bales and boxes from the freight cars onto horse-drawn wagons and replacing them with other barrels and bundles and sacks and bales and boxes; clerks were ticking things off on clipboards; the chain team of twelve massive draught horses was being led away to the stables and paddocks and their replacements munched the feed in their nose-bags as they waited to be hitched to the other end of the train. This short workaday route that handled a lot of heavy freight usually didn’t rate a hippomotive and made do with horses on their own four feet.

  Everyone was moving just a little faster than he was accustomed to, not because they were in any tearing rush but simply because that was their customary pace. Corvallans had a reputation for bustling along, and apparently it was well-justified. Since he didn’t have his head down and wasn’t charging for the door a small group of touts also headed his way, holding up signs with the names of the inns they fronted for. That was perfectly familiar from train stops everywhere; a combination of golden spurs on your heels and no cordon of flunkies drew them. He flung up his hand and then pointed.

  One of the touts bore a sign with the name Seagull’s Roost. He had a stiff left arm and a rigid claw of shiny melted-seeming flesh at the end of it along with a few smaller spots of white-and-pink scar tissue on the left side of his face and scalp. That accounted for his occupation. Several of the others were also too disabled or young or too old for a full day’s work; this was a thriving town where a strong back and willing hands could always at least pick up enough day-labor for a bellyful of bread and fish stew, a doss and the odd mug of beer. The leaping horse badge on his jacket was something Corvallans only granted to wounded veterans of the Battle of the Horse Heaven Hills, along with a small pension if the wounds were crippling, which accounted for the injuries and the occupation.

  John had grown up around veterans of the Prophet’s War, and the Horse Heaven Hills had been where it was won and lost, though the fighting had gone on for more than a year afterwards—years, if you counted chasing down the last bands of fanatics in the vast tumbled wilderness that made up much of Nakamtu Province. There had been a lot of catapults throwing glass balls full of napalm in the great battle, and footmen had had no option but to spit on their palms and brace the pike while they stood and took it. From the look of it one of the incendiary roundshot had split in midair, and he’d thrown up his hand at the last instant to protect his eyes from a spray of liquid fire.

  He’d succeeded . . . mostly.

  He also looked clean, neatly if cheaply dressed and not as if he escaped his fate daily at the bottom of a bottle or a pipe of maryjane as soon as he could scare up the price, though you couldn’t have blamed him if he did. John wouldn’t have picked that inn if he had, though.

  “I’ve heard praise of your hostel, goodman,” John said with charitable untruth, and gave a respectful inclination of the head. “Evrouin, please accompany him and get us rooms; we’ll be staying for some time. I’ll take Azalaïs with me.”

  That made the valet stir a little and shoot him a glance as he handed over the lute in its tooled-leather case. He was a dark hard-faced man in his late thirties, just barely old enough to have fought in the Prophet’s War, and an Associate himself. Though of the lowest class within that order—from the sort of family who got a double-sized peasant holding, what was technically a fief-minor in sergeantry, and supplied crossbowmen and spearmen to the manor lord instead of paying rent and labor-service. He’d been chosen by the High Queen when John turned sixteen, and over the three years since had displayed a number of talents beyond laying out a suit of clothes. They got on reasonably well and Evrouin was always impeccably polite, but he had an uneasy feeling that the man regarded him more in the light of an idiot younger nephew who had to be protected from himself than anything else.

  “I think I’ll be safe enough in Newport, Evrouin. I’ll see you this evening.”

  “Yes, y . . . Sir Guilliame.”

  John was hiding who he was, but he had decided it was probably better no
t to try and hide what he was, which was essentially an Associate noble. Hopefully people would see that and not look further, and if he tried to be anything else his own clumsiness might attract unwelcome attention. You could put him in a kilt and he’d look like an Associate in a kilt, not a Mackenzie.

  Hence his long hooded cloak, calf-boots, breeks, jerkin and light houppelande coat with long dagged sleeves and chaperon hat and liripipe, and the small golden spurs on his heels; also the long sword and poniard on his belt, crimped with the lead-wire peacebonding local law required. He had a mourning band on his arm, but then so did more than half the adults he saw—the tout for the Seagull’s Roost had, for instance.

  PPA gentry traveling outside the Protectorate on business or pleasure were plentiful enough in other parts of western Montival that seeing one didn’t automatically make your mind run on royalty, and there were any number of reasons one might be here—selling the wool clip or brandy from his father’s demesne to a shipper, for instance, or looking for a better deal on farm machinery or a hydraulic ram than he could get from Protectorate workshops. He’d picked solid sad colors of brown and gray, with just enough color—a little gold thread at the collar of his jerkin, a ring or two, and a jeweled buckle—to be credible. The arms of an uprooted tree, argent on gules, in the shield on his jerkin were mythical, but skill at heraldry was rare here in the south-country.

  The rain gave a perfect excuse to swing on his cloak and pull up the full hood as well as he walked out of the front gate of the railway station and looked around the main street running down to the docks, leaving his face in deep shadow. The air above was loud with the harsh cries of seagulls even in bad weather, and more stood about looking cross and giving way reluctantly as people crowded them. Now and then someone would kick at one, and it would half-open its wings and give the avian equivalent of a curse.

  The same misty drizzle that ran in little drops off the wool—woven undyed in the grease—made the wooded hills on three sides disappear into trailers of green and gray as the fog wound through them.