Their Lakota life-partner Suzie Mika was painting her face with finicky care.
“It’ll do,” said, looking in a hand mirror; she’d put a bar of black across her eyes, and dotted white lines down her cheeks, and bound her braided black hair back with a neckerchief tied at the rear so that she could put on her light helmet without delay.
“Not gaudy and overdone, like you guys,” she added with a grin at the little band of Mackenzie archers that Karl and his brother led.
“Sure, and some just don’t understaaand the spiritual significance,” Karl Aylward Mackenzie said loftily, exaggerating his lilting accent.
The Mackenzies were painting for war too, but in the fierce primary colors their Clan used, often in stylized forms that showed the face of the individual’s sept totem, or sometimes sheer fancy.
Diarmuid Tennart McClintock touched the blue designs tattooed into his face as youths and maidens in his Clan did at their Spear-Taking, when they became adults and Initiates, liable to be called to the levy for war and lawful opponents in duel or feud by the McClintock version of Brehon law. He smiled; in fact, you could say he smirked, and his equally if more crudely tattooed clansfolk jeered in their thick growling accents.
Someone muttered Clan Wannabee, and a McClintock replied with Clan Little Wussie Pleated Skirt, and each group laughed at the ancient half-serious jokes, both nearly as old as the Change. Then Gwri Beauregard Mackenzie began singing “The Tale of Liath Duv”—Liath the Dark, in the old tongue—which was about an aunt of hers who’d led a band harrying the Prophet’s men in the High Cascades a generation ago, and they all joined in the chorus which told how the Fair Folk had favored her.
Beyond them the men-at-arms from the Protector’s guard in their black plate armor were being confessed and absolved by their chaplain, kneeling in turn beside him while their comrades made a box around them, leaning on their shields with their backs to their priest to give each some privacy.
They were all settling their spirits in their own way, and making ready to die if needs must. Around them was wrapped the might of Montival’s united realms, and it was all pledged to her.
So their shields and their bodies will be between me and danger, she thought. Or the types that shields and bodies can stop; a catapult bolt or a roundshot or a napalm shell aren’t respecters of persons.
Knowing that there were people—including people she knew and loved, and also absolute strangers, which was daunting in a different way—who’d throw themselves between her and mortal threat without an instant’s hesitation had always been part of her life. Before the last six months it had been theoretical, but now she’d seen the blood and the unpleasantly final death.
Remember always your birth means you can break things so easily, Da used to say. Mother too, in different words.
On the one hand, her being here endangered people because the enemy would drive for her—and she suspected they had those who could sense the Sword of the Lady well beyond eye-range.
On the other, looking brave in public and being a symbol like a banner was part of her basic function in life; the Gods knew she probably wasn’t going to be making any military decisions today, having an embarrassment of seasoned professionals along. It was rather like being a junior officer: they looked inspiring for the troops while the sergeants did the work. Except that she didn’t have to perform a secondary function of stopping spearpoints meant for someone who actually did things.
Heuradys seemed to sense her thoughts. “Mom Two said that having people looking at her all the time was one of the hardest things she had to learn when she moved from being your grandma Sandra’s solitary black-ops specialist to field commands. She’d spent all that time hiding and now she had to perform in public. Doing the technical side of things wasn’t hard, she had good teachers and a natural talent for it; what she hadn’t counted on was a second career as an actress, she said.”
“Whereas I was born to the role,” Órlaith said softly, and slapped her shoulder—which in plate was rather like giving an affectionate pat to a giant lobster. “Ah, but it’s good to have someone I can bitch and whine to, Herry.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it whining, bitch,” she said, in equally quiet tones, and they both laughed. “Not really. Not quite. Though I imagine a lot of peasants and fishermen and blacksmiths might think so.”
“A ruler of the ancient Americans . . . I think it was one of the ones carved into that mountain in the Lakota territory . . . said that the definition of whining was talking about a problem without proposing a solution.”
“One of the Four Big Wasicu Guys of the Hˉe Sápa, as Suzie says. Except there is no solution here, so you might as well bitch and whine— Excuse me: muse aloud upon the philosophical ironies of your situation.”
Órlaith’s hand went to the pommel of the Sword of the Lady, as the topsails of the enemy fleet grew larger against the low green horizon of Oahu. She thought she could scent danger coming down the landward breeze, along with an increasing smell of nasty smoke; pillars of black bending towards them showed where the enemy had been methodically destroying buildings and workshops and ships.
“I think it’s probably still a better situation than John’s,” she said grimly. “Only my body’s in danger.”
Heuradys glanced aside; Reiko was a few steps off, and talking to King Kalaˉkaua, which given the differences in their versions of English required intense concentration.
“You’re thinking of—”
Reiko’s brother, who had been burned to ash when the Grasscutter sensed his corruption. Or when Amaterasu-oˉmikami did so Herself, which was even more alarming when you thought about it.
Órlaith swallowed and nodded. “Not exactly. But Da . . . told me once of using the Sword to heal the mind of a magus of the Church Universal and Triumphant, back during the Prophet’s War.”
Heuradys’ brows went up. “It didn’t work?”
“Yes, it did work, in a manner of speaking. When it took out the parts of his mind that had been corrupted, it turned him into a child again, in the body of a man in his middle years—a child who could never grow. It scourged out all the parts of him that had been tainted by the Power behind the CUT, and those were most of what makes you . . . you.”
Her liege knight winced. “A painless death is almost better.”
CHAPTER TWELVE
BETWEEN WAKING WORLD AND SHADOW
“We need to know who that man is, and where he dwells,” Deor said as they came down from the third floor.
Pip smiled. “I think I know how, too,” she said.
Deor’s eyes went a little wide as she knocked on the armorer’s door.
“Good day,” she said as they came through to the chime of the bell above the door, falling back into an exaggerated version of her mother’s dulcet tones, without the underlying hint of Townsville dialect she usually had. “Please forgive my intrusion. I am Miss Philippa Balwyn-Abercrombie. Pleased to make your acquaintance, Mr. Hawberk, Miss Hawberk.”
The older man looked up, stood, and bowed politely, taking Pip’s hand in an abbreviated gesture that wasn’t quite kissing it but was visibly one that had evolved from it. His daughter was sitting on the workbench beside him, and he had been comforting her. He was visibly composing himself in a flash as he made his own introductions, and she finished dabbing at her eyes and tucked away her handkerchief.
My goodness, Pip thought. The fabled stiff upper lip swinging into operation. But he’s badly off balance.
He cleared his throat. “Good day, Miss Balwyn . . . Balwyn-Abercrombie? A relation of the Herefordshire Balwyns, by any chance?”
You could see that he wished the words back as soon as he’d spoken them. Pip thought they must have been reflex, a flashback to the life he’d led before he came here fleeing scandal.
“Remotely. My branch of the family moved to Australia some time ag
o.”
At least the Abercrombies had, in the 1860s. Assuming that had happened in this odd version of history, or cycle of the universe, or whatever it was. Deor might understand it fully, if he wasn’t just putting on the Wise Sage, but Pip didn’t pretend to. She suspected that it couldn’t really be reduced to simple declarative sentences anyway, which bothered her sharp but practical mind.
“May I present my companion, Miss Thora Garwood, and our associate Mr. Godulfson?”
A woman companion and a bodyguard-secretary would make her respectable, if she remembered the mores correctly.
No need to tell him Thora and I are both preggers and looking for the man responsible, Pip thought. Though what a handy stick to beat John with, and won’t I use it, just?
She assumed they were more or less like Victorians here, which might be a mistake, but there wasn’t enough time to do anthropology and she’d have to rely on what she remembered from classes and books.
“Ah,” he said cautiously. “And this is my daughter, Miss Constance Hawberk.”
Then his eyes lit on Toa, apparently slightly surprised to see a gigantic tattooed Maori with a shovel over one shoulder and a box on the other.
“Teˉnaˉ koe,” the Englishman said.
Which meant a formal hello in Maori; specifically, the way you said it to a single other person.
Toa grunted in surprise and answered: “Teˉnaˉ koˉrua.”
Which was the same thing to two people.
“I have traveled in your part of the world too,” Hawberk said. “Both Australia and New Zealand. How may I help you? Do you have a matter of armorer’s work in which I might be of assistance?”
Deor had bent over the piece on the wooden brace that held it as a shoemaker’s lath did leather.
“This is fine work, Mr. Hawberk,” he said. “Double-coil on the mail, I see, then alternate rows closed with rivets. Very strong, but a bit less flexible. Even if it’s to be a display piece, I’m glad you’re not just using butted mail.”
Hawberk brightened, with that peculiar expression that someone who loved their work got when hearing it knowledgeably praised.
“Pleasant to meet a man who knows mail, Mr. Godulfson,” Hawberk said. “Very pleasant. It happens so seldom.”
What? But obsessive armor enthusiasts are ten a penny—Pip began to think, then realized: Ah, nobody wears mail for real here. Bullets. Like those lancers—there’s no point, when it can’t protect you. Though those bright uniforms are odd, then: you’d think they’d want something inconspicuous, the way scouts do in modern armies.
“And those are the arms of the Dukes of Burgundy, aren’t they, Miss Hawberk?” Pip said brightly, looking at the embroidery she’d set aside. “Though I couldn’t say which one.”
“Charles the Bold,” Constance said shyly.
“Or Charles the Foolhardy, Ms. Hawberk,” Pip said, and gave her a smile before turning to her father.
“Well, the real reason we dropped by, Mr. Hawberk, is that—it’s just a trifle embarrassing—we’re traveling in New York and trying to look someone up. And we just missed him here! I didn’t realize it was him until after he’d passed us by, for I’ve never met him, only seen a photograph. A Mr. Castaigne.”
Hawberk looked at her, then at Deor, as if surprised she was taking the lead in the conversation, then turned to Pip when Deor nodded towards her.
“Would that be Hildred, Miss, or his cousin Louis?” he said. “Louis is an officer in the 20th Dragoons.”
“Oh, Mr. Hildred Castaigne,” Pip said. “He mentioned your shop in one of his letters, and even said where it was located . . . but neglected to note his new address! This was a letter to my father, you understand, who traveled extensively in America and was acquainted with Mr. Castaigne’s father. He’s corresponded with us, but, ah, over the last six months his letters have gotten a bit . . . eccentric. My father did so wish us to drop by and make sure that everything was, as they say here, OK.”
“Eccentric since he was in the asy—” Constance began, then stopped as her father made a gesture.
Pip made herself look wise and discreet; her mother had given her lessons in that, disguised as amateur theatricals.
Never say too much, let the mark fill in the details themselves had been part of the teaching.
“I believe I can be of assistance,” he said. “Mr. Castaigne has been ill, and it will do him good to meet friends of the family. He does tend to be too much taken up with his books and his routine.”
He looked around, found a scrap of paper and wrote: 80 Washington Square East on it.
“This is the address of his rooms at the Benedick,” he said.
Pip gave him a glimpse of her dimples. “As in the bachelor in Much Ado About Nothing? A nest for those who consider themselves silver-tongued rogues immune to the darts of Cupid?”
He smiled, and so did his daughter; genuinely in her case, Pip thought.
“Yes, it’s an apartment for bachelor artists—there are studios on the upper floor.”
“Thank you very much, Mr. Hawberk,” Pip said, and the others followed through with murmurs of gratitude.
Outside the building they paused, Toa helping to create a bubble of space on the crowded sidewalk. Deor regarded her with pawky amusement.
“I cry hail to you, Captain Pip,” he said, with the gesture his folk used as a salute. “I’m a musician, but you played those two like a lute. For one so young, you show much skill in dealing with an audience.”
Pip inclined her head, hiding a smile but feeling genuinely flattered. In her experience, men of Deor’s persuasion were often better at understanding women—not because they were more womanlike themselves, for they weren’t, but because they were less distracted and more able to see you as simply a person and not a set of animated signals for their mating drive. Provided they were smart to begin with, and Deor Godulfson was very sharp indeed.
Toa snorted. “You should have seen her mum. When she wasn’t just chopping people up with those two kukris—ah, now that was a pleasure to see. Sort of like one of those machines they use on sugarcane at the mill . . . but she was just about as dangerous when she turned on the charm, straight up. Left people wondering why they’d agreed to sell her their liver for five pence and a pint of the mild and bitter.”
They were standing around a food cart of a sort she’d seen in many cities, though in Darwin they reached the status of an art form. This one had an internal charcoal grill, selling various flavored drinks and simple foods. The elaborately braided salty bread thing they called a pretzel was particularly interesting, given the way she’d suddenly remembered how ravenous she was.
Pip reached for the bottle of lemonade, then hesitated. “Wait a minute—didn’t you say we should refuse food and drink?” she said.
Deor put mustard on the sausage in a bun he’d bought. “Only those offered as gifts,” he said. “That creates . . . debt, you might say, which makes for bonds. Where we are now, there’s little difference between symbol and reality. Exchange doesn’t have the same effect.”
Pip looked down at the pretzel. “Why do we need to eat at all?” she said.
Deor grinned again. “Because our minds—the part that make our bodies work, that has an image of our physical selves in it—think we do. Try not breathing! Your body is back on that bed, breathing Baru Denpasar’s air . . . but you’ll go blue in the face and faint here, too.”
Grimly: “Which is why a blow here can hurt you there.”
“So now we know where this man linked to Prince John lives,” Thora said, taking a bite of her own sausage. “What do we do? Break into his house and make him talk?”
Deor shook his head, half-admiringly. “Not so straightforward, oath-sister.”
She snorted, chewed and swallowed. “You’ve used those words to me often enough over the years! And sometimes
you were right, and sometimes straightforward was better than twisty. What then?”
“The man . . . the shadow of the man that lives forever here in the dream of a mad God . . . is only a finger on the hand of the Power which snatched our John away. Once it becomes fully aware of us and strikes, we will have little time before we return to the waking world . . . or do not. Death is not the worst threat to us, or to the Prince.”
Thora signed the Hammer. “Why isn’t it already aware of us? If this place is its domain?”
“I am not sure. Perhaps because those Powers who wish human kind well and those who are our guardians shield us; and also because it is mad.”
He frowned. “I spoke with the High King a few times of the Prophet’s War . . . which was also not merely a thing of blades and bows, politics and the contentions of kings. The Power behind the Church Universal and Triumphant . . . and I think behind the dynasty in Korea who sent the men who killed him a generation later . . . is . . . not mad. Malevolent in human terms, yes, and hostile to us, to the whole world of matter. But mainly it is alien.”
“If it’s not mad, it’s stupid,” Thora said. “I’ve talked with those who were commanders in the Prophet’s War too—even with High Marshal d’Ath.”
She smiled for a moment. “Now, there’s one who should have been a Bearkiller! She’s wasted among Associates. They all said that the enemy then, everyone under the CUT’s control, just walked up to problems and hit them with a hammer. If the hammer broke, it looked for a bigger hammer. The war was only serious because they had a lot of hammers, including ones that hit us in ways only the Sword of the Lady could parry.”
“Neither mad nor stupid, but alien,” Deor insisted. “From what the High King said, just to operate in our world, in contact with human minds and spirits, was agony to it. It did not . . . does not . . . comprehend us well. He once told me that the Powers said to him that that Enemy was not evil in our sense, not in its own place and time. That was how it manifested in the world of common day, of course.”
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