Mark Delgado frowned; his wife was obviously thinking very hard indeed.
“You actually want us to do well, don’t you?” she said.
Órlaith shrugged. “Yes, and for exactly the same reasons I just advised you about, you see? If you prosper, the Crown prospers.”
There was more to it than that—among other things, she wanted the common folk of this little not-quite-bandit kingdom to prosper too—but what she’d said was true enough. And she’d given them both enough to think about, and while they were thinking how to make Montival work for them and theirs, they wouldn’t be thinking about how to make it not work and get advantage from that.
“We’d better reassure people,” Winifred said.
The troops on both sides stood to again as the principals emerged from the pavilion and walked out into the middle of the highway, where everyone had a clear view. There was a rousing cheer from the Topangans as the Valley’s remaining catapult was turned over—Don Antonio was getting it as part of his fee—and another from both sides as Mark and Winifred went to their knees to put their hands between Órlaith’s and swear homage.
Sure, and most of the people here carrying spears are more than happy to take them home and put them back in the rack over the door, she thought. It’s a good day’s work . . . ruler’s work . . . and now, back to the real task.
• • •
The celebration was modest; gold could not buy more than the land yielded. Fortunately the Valley used money enough that it was possible to send out an emergency call for provisions over a fairly wide area, and folk freed of the prospect of a long war were willing to sell more. One farmer with a lump the size of a pigeon’s egg behind his ear had been virtually cackling as he brought in a very handsome boar-hog trussed in the back of a two-wheeled cart and had even volunteered to help slaughter and butcher it. There was plenty of the terrible local wine, which the locals themselves were thoroughly used to.
As the party wound down, Órlaith found herself in a corner of the pavilion—several had been rigged up on the same spot as the negotiations—with a plate of the roasted boar, along with bread and fried tomatoes and several other things. As usual, a fight left you ravenous for some time; she found that was more so now that she bore the Sword. Moishe Feldman sought her out, and they sat on a pair of the folding chairs; Heuradys moved to the fore to screen their privacy, standing casually close enough to hear but with her sphere of personal space keeping others at a little distance, nibbling on a fig herself.
There were times when Órlaith found court protocol at home more than a little stifling, but at least there it kept people from outright trying to grab her attention by pushing their faces into hers. Heuradys . . . and the hand she rested casually on her sword-hilt and those level, slightly ironic amber-colored eyes . . . did the same here. John and Deor were singing a part-song somewhere not far distant, a northern ditty from Portland, and the locals were wildly enthusiastic. The wine probably had something to do with that, but the music more.
Firelight and lamplight made a flickering mystery of the nook; local technology didn’t run to the sort of brilliant light an incandescent mantle on a Coleman-style lantern could produce. They both rested their plates on a surface of cracked concrete, some sort of fallen pillar. His held fried chicken, and she’d heard him checking that it and the potatoes were fried in olive oil rather than lard. He was fairly liberal about the precepts of his faith, or at least flexible enough to make traveling among strangers practicable, but not that flexible.
“To life,” the merchant said, raising his glass. “And to a war that didn’t happen, Your Highness. Or mostly didn’t. I don’t like wars; they interfere with trade.”
“Doing my job, Captain,” she said, feeling a glow of pride at the thought.
It was her job; warriors chose to take up the sword, but there were plenty of ordinary folk still walking the ridge of the earth today because of what she’d done this last little while, their homes unburned and their crops unwasted and themselves not lying stark and sightless as the gore-crows pecked out their staring eyes. Her father would be proud. And whatever their differences, so would her mother.
“I don’t like wars either,” she said. “For one thing, the outcomes are never certain.” She went on: “My thanks again for squaring Don Antonio, that was important—force is better used as a threat than for bloodletting, and a threat’s the better for being unspoken; so his crew and catapults just . . . standing there . . . were very valuable. I couldn’t have done it, I’m too foreign, and I’m a ruler not a trader, and I don’t think he would have trusted someone of my age and sex.”
“The more fool he, Your Majesty. Though to be fair, the Sword itself and its bearer are . . . disturbing to those not used to them.”
She grinned and swallowed a forkful savory with crackling. “Perhaps, but my parents always said that you had to deal with folk as they were, not as you would have them. Forbye, I think you’ve information for me, and that more precious than rubies the now.”
He nodded. “I’ve been making some enquiries while I scoured around for the supplies,” he said. “It turns out there are still some Jews in the Valley, not all that many but more than a minyan. I attended services at their synagogue, and then some of them and I had a bit of a chat.”
“Your being known as my agent the now didn’t hurt?”
“Quite the contrary. House Artos has its supporters here; part of the conversation was them checking on what they’d heard with me to see how accurate it was. We didn’t get a chance on the relief charters a few years ago, because relations between Topanga and the Delgado lands were too tense for more than a few hurried words.”
“Your folk do get around!”
A chuckle. “Even the Change couldn’t get rid of us all. Nothing ever does. Not quite.”
The smile turned grim. “Some have compared us to cockroaches because of that . . . but I notice that those who said that are mostly extinct. And we are not.”
“For I will bless them that bless you, and curse them that curse you, and through you all peoples will be blessed,” Órlaith quoted. “In fact, my father said Jews were any realm’s anti-canaries.”
Feldman frowned a little then chuckled. “Ah, the old story of how they took canaries into mines to detect poison gas? And if we flock in, it shows the air is good?”
“More that the rulers are doing the right things, he said,” Órlaith said, remembering her father’s smile. “And securing useful subjects to the realm’s benefit; merchants, scholars, craftsmen and artists and makers who sharpen wits and make folk in general less sleepy. Speaking of useful, what did your people here tell you that you wished to pass on?”
“For starters, that the Koreans have . . . disappeared. Heading south and west, any that survived; and absolutely nobody was sorry to see them go. Apparently they were on their best behavior while they were Mark Delgado’s allies, but it’s hard to completely conceal what you are.”
Órlaith sucked in a breath. “South into the ruins of LA.”
Feldman nodded. “That’s where they’d have concealed their ship. Or ships. The old harbor there is an impossible tangle. It would take a fleet to search it. Or even to blockade it.”
She sipped at her wine—they had not set out their own stock with the barrels of the local stuff everyone could tap.
“Not a surprise, but good it is to have confirmation anyway. There’s more, I’d be assuming.”
Feldman finished the drumstick of the chicken, wiped his fingers on the coarse linen napkin and nodded.
“This goes back to the Change, more or less,” he said. “A group . . . mainly of my people . . . came through here from LA, just as things were getting very bad indeed. Needless to say, a crazy Jew led them.”
“Such is often the case,” Órlaith said dryly. “Often great things come of it, from my reading of the Histories, for good
or ill. Better this time than . . . oh, Sabbatai Zevi, I hope!”
“Considerably, from what I heard. Jacob Lefkowitz was his name; he had been a soldier, and he was a rabbi . . . Conservative variety.”
“A stickler for your Law?”
“More of a label for a . . . denomination. Which meant more back then. And he led them on a camel,” Feldman said. “On a group of camels. Bicycles and pushcarts too, but plenty of camels. It seems he had a revelation . . . or said he did . . . that people would blame us for the Change.”
He shrugged expressively and spread his hands. “Not totally unreasonable, though fortunately wrong this time. We got blamed for the Black Death, after all, not to mention droughts, hangnails, the common cold and the consequences of everyone else’s unacknowledged blunders. As it turned out he needn’t have worried about that, people were too busy dying for scapegoating. But at least it got his group moving fast and in a direction like the deep Mojave, which was so unlikely—settling in the Mojave to avoid dying of thirst—that it saved their lives. Apparently he was familiar with the area. A couple of hundred of them, all in all, via the camel farm he . . . liberated.”
“There was a camel farm in Los Angeles?” Órlaith asked in surprise. “Some of my grandmother’s people . . . liberated . . . horses and wagons and tools from an outdoor museum exhibit, but camels?”
“Evidently. Evidently there was at least one of anything you care to name in Los Angeles, before the Change; the people I talked to were mostly older, and they got very nostalgic about that. Camels are remarkable animals—very efficient, in the right climate, though it’s a pity they’re tref.”
Órlaith shrugged. “Most Christians won’t eat horsemeat, which is odd when you think about it.”
Feldman nodded. “And they’re still out there, or their descendants are.”
“The people or the camels?” Órlaith asked with a chuckle.
“Both. There’s some contact . . . clandestine, mostly. Somehow the Delgado family, Bruce and then Mark and Winifred, ummm, failed to inspire perfect trust, shall we say. And Jacob’s people are . . . suspicious. To a fault.”
“And wasn’t it convenient that I drew a line on Lord Mark’s map excluding the Mojave from his domains?” she said. “And he objecting not at all to being denied the rocks and salt and Joshua trees and Gila monsters.”
“You may not run into the bnei Yaakov; it’s a big desert. But just in case . . .” Feldman said.
He extended his fist and then opened it as he turned the hand. She took up the thing of metal and enamel he offered and held it up to the light.
“Ah. The Star of David.”
He shook his head. “Mogen David. Shield of David. And another name for Him. And may He go with you, Your Highness, and be your shield too. The world is not so oversupplied with good rulers that we can spare any.”
• • •
“A very pretty piece of statecraft, Majesty,” Egawa said as she finished the explanation. “Fragile, I suppose. Still, when we arrived here our enemies had the stronger allies, they were standing in our path, and war threatened our passage. Now after a week’s work and one small battle . . . granted, one with features I will enjoy telling my grandchildren . . . the land is reduced to obedience, and our way is open.”
“For now; there will be counterstrokes. But as you say, well-done for an improvisation,” Reiko replied.
They were sitting on a tarpaulin in an open field, an encampment where the party that would take them over the mountains waited; fires and voices were dying down, and the moon rose enormous and ruddy over the blue-black peaks. The light was stark on the bare slopes, bone-white, blood-red, midnight-blue; so different from the mountains of home, where the very word brought images of mist and pines and bracken. She raised her eyes to the bright alien stars.
“They are extremely different from us,” Egawa said thoughtfully. “But there are fundamental similarities. This reminds me of some aspects of our history; very ancient ones.”
She nodded. “Different from us. Different from one another, also; and that too is a difference. We have been one people with one tongue and customs and beliefs for a very, very long time.”
“Unity is strength,” Egawa said. “These divisions . . . it makes me doubt them, Majesty.”
Reiko snapped her wrist and her fan opened; then she slowly closed it, one steel batten overlapping and locking with another until it was a rod of metal.
“Unity is our strength, General. Truly. Long ages have forged it; long ages tempered it, in blood and fire and slow strong growth. Their differences . . .”
She opened the fan again, until it was fully extended and each component separate, pointing in different directions yet joined at the base.
“. . . may well be theirs.”
The insects were loud in the night. She cocked her head a little to listen to their shrilling:
“Semi no koe . . .” she said: Cicadas singing.
“Keshiki wa miezu . . .” Egawa replied: No sign.
“Yagate shinu,” she concluded: Of dying soon.
“We have faced men who opposed us, and we have cut them down,” Egawa said. “We have faced evil akuma, and our guardian kami have protected us.”
“Now we face more terrible enemies,” she said.
“Deserts and hardship, Majesty?” Egawa said, smiling slightly.
“Those. And ourselves, General. And ourselves.”
CHAPTER THIRTY
ERETZ BNEI YAAKOV
(MOJAVE DESERT)
CROWN PROVINCE OF WESTRIA
(FORMERLY CALIFORNIA)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
AUGUST 12TH/HAOCHIZUKI 12TH/AV 19TH
CHANGE YEAR 46/SHOHEI 1/5084TH YEAR OF THE WORLD/2044 AD
“I’ve seen deserts before, but none like this,” Órlaith muttered to herself.
She felt a little groggy despite sleeping through the day in the shelter of the tarpaulin, or perhaps because of it. It was hot; the sort of hot that meant you felt baked in the shade but if you stuck any part of yourself out into the sun it grilled; it made her regret that so much of her blood came from lands of mist and cloud and scant sun, because even though she tanned fairly well and had been keeping covered as much as she could her face and hands were sore and skin peeled. Her mouth felt gummy, not quite dry but getting there, and there was a thrum as of fever in her veins. She took a smooth rock out of her sporran and popped it into her mouth, working it around until the saliva began to flow a little.
The whole encampment was in the shade of a red-rock cliff striped horizontally with paler color. It ran northeast-southwest and turned into a narrow canyon, so it would provide some shade even at noon. There was a smell of warm rock and dust and aromatic, almost creosote-smelling vegetation. She carefully checked her boots before she pulled them back on—scorpions liked to curl up in the toes, for some reason, and made objections of stinging force if you jammed your toes into them while they took a nap.
The fact of the matter is I can feel the place coming alive, in a spare sort of way, she thought. We’re just doing what the birds and beasts and bugs do here; sleep in the day. Summer daylight here is the anvil of the sun indeed!
Heuradys came in with their share of the rations, and Reiko and Egawa followed her, and John; Diarmuid too, and Karl and the Dúnedain. They all sat in a circle around the folded cloth and ate and drank with slow care, sipping the water at long intervals, and eating the crackerlike biscuits with nuts in them, olives and dried fruit. The olives were salty, but that was a necessity too—Órlaith could feel where a rime had been left on her skin where sweat dried during the day. In fact you were seldom conscious of sweating here; the atmosphere was so dry it sucked the moisture right out of your pores.
She rubbed a little of the oil into her face—it stung in her crac
ked lips—and her hands. They couldn’t wash—that was often the case in the field, but more so here—yet the dry heat made the smells less offensive.
“Well, friends, according to the map, we have made exactly . . . no progress in the past five days.”
She laid it out and tapped her finger down on it; they were at a place that had been called Emigrant Canyon in the old days.
“This is the castle that the Majesty and I have seen,” she said, stabbing at a spot farther into the Valley of Death.
“It’s plainly marked. There’s a road of the ancients, and we can go along the foot of the mountains. We set out in the evening, and . . . somehow . . . in the morning we’re a day’s march from where we started, but no closer to where we were supposedly headed. If I take the lead, more often than not I look around and you’re all gone, unless we blindfold you and rope you to my belt . . . the which is scarcely practical for long, and there was that time you all started dragging me in the opposite direction while swearing you weren’t doing it! It’s getting fair monotonous and we’re running short of supplies and time. Now, does anyone deny that this is happening?”
Several faces clenched in frustration; there wasn’t a single one here who wasn’t strong-willed to the point of being bullheaded. She held up a hand.
“No complaints, mind, no anger. I’m not interested! I’ve enough complaints and anger of my very own, thank you all. Just . . . does anyone deny that this is happening? And that we cannot afford the time? We’ve been delayed again and again on our road here, and that may very well have been in the enemy’s plan.”
Silence grew as the first stars appeared overhead. At last Karl spoke. “No, that’s what’s been happening . . . and Princess, I’ve heard something much the same.”
At her raised brows he went on, a little reluctantly, as if speaking of it was an effort:
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