The Sky-Blue Wolves

by S. M. Stirling

  “My Princess?” he said, after a brief kiss.

  Pip laid her hand on his, and touched the jeweled fillet and net that bound her wimple to make sure it was still on straight. The people in Astoria had offered to find her a lady’s maid, or what they called a lady-in-waiting—in fact, they’d been politely at daggers-drawn with one another over the privilege.

  And I can see that a wardrobe like this means you need help. But . . .

  She’d equally politely declined and hinted mendaciously that Sovereign Mum-in-Law had reserved the choice, sensing that the post was an important bit of patronage, and one in which she’d need someone she could trust. Which she couldn’t from her present state of utter ignorance and clueless baffled alien strangerhood.

  The wimple covered most of her tawny sun-streaked hair except for an artfully arranged fringe at the front, and enclosed the sides of her head and her throat, and fell down her back in a narrowing tail to almost waist-length. She’d thought it was silk at first, and it was . . . but very, very fine white silk lace rather than cloth, in a pattern of minute ovals with a narrow band of red and black embroidery along the edge. Like the rest of the clothing it at least had the advantage of keeping out drafts.

  “How do I look?” she muttered to John.

  He grinned. “Almost as dashing as I do,” he said, giving his sword-belt a hitch. “And together . . . we’ll knock their hose right off their legs!”

  “That stuff does flatter a man’s nethers,” she admitted.

  His knit hose were skintight, and showed off his long legs to perfection, leanly muscled but not thick. She’d been told that his looks favored his mother’s side of the family, and that he strongly resembled his grandfather Norman except that his face was longer. If so, Granddad must have been a handsome devil . . . in more senses of the word than one.

  The door of the railroad car opened, sliding sideways on internal tracks, and a deafeningly loud Tarr-ta-ta-ta-rah! of trumpets just outside followed by multiple echoes made her blink and John sigh. The two-score of trumpeters on either side of the strip of red carpet were blowing long instruments with flags hanging from them, all very much in the playing-card style, as were their heraldic tabards.

  The train had evidently gone under the outer donjon of the immense castle, with its barracks and workshops and armories and granaries and bakeries and whatnot built against the inside of the curtain wall, and right into the inner court. They stepped down, and there was a massive chunk as lines of guardsmen in black plate-armor slammed the butts of nine-foot glaives—like spears except with a head the shape of a long butcher knife with a curved hook on the rear—down on the flagstone paving.

  A great arched roof supported by slender pillars on the outer side covered the spot where tracks stopped; a huge rain-swept open court flanked it on that side, paved with varicolored stone and spotted with clipped topiaries, leafless trees or trained cedars, and planters and great pots that probably had colorful flowers in season.

  On the western and eastern sides of the court were the bases of the Silver and Dark Towers, each surrounded by three-quarter circles of stairs leading up to massive doors, and a series of great buildings with point-arched windows and doors and engaged columns and statues in niches. There was a smell of cold wet stone, wet wool from the crowds, and the faint tang of a piped biogas system; all the windows lit as they stepped down, and exterior globes on cast-iron stands that gripped them with the mouths of hawks or dragons; there must be some sort of clockwork ignition system, since nobody was running around with a Firestarter on the end of a pole. The yellow lights gleamed through the thin streams of rain, catching in wavering patches on edged metal or gilding or bright tile and brighter clothes.

  It would be bloody inky here without those on an overcast night, she thought; she’d been in cities without lighting systems, and it was like being inside a closet with the added joy of running into hard eye-pokey things and stepping in wet, smelly disgusting things. Hurrah for technology.

  The buildings included a cathedral—her mind filled in Flamboyant Gothic, courtesy of Rockhampton Grammar School for Girls and its art-history courses and her parents’ libraries in the town house and the country place. Then she noted it was an enlarged version of the Sainte-Chapelle in Paris, a fond pre-Change teenage memory of her mother’s who had collected equally pre-Change picture books that included several studies of it. The walls were a slender tracery of uprights dividing far larger vertical panels of stained glass and a giant rose window at one end, glowing like a jewel box in rainbow shapes right now with the interior lighting.

  Though I think the solid parts of the walls are reinforced concrete covered in stucco and glazed tile. Doesn’t really matter, I suppose. Very nice!

  She blinked again, doing a quick cost estimate on the great church structure; even allowing for the ease of salvage back then, and how much cement and rebar must have been lying around . . .

  “How did you do the stained glass?” she murmured to John.

  “In pieces over the years, as the workshops built up,” he said. “The last of it was finished in time for my confirmation, when I was about twelve.”

  That was impressive, not least the determination involved. Either they were very religious here, or just very persistent, or both. An archbishop and a full train—including incense-swinging acolytes—were standing under the overhang at the tall doors covered in low-relief bronze, singing and generally projecting blessings at her. They’d probably be closer if it weren’t raining.

  John had warned her they’d probably have to have another ceremony there to mark the marriage and give the panjandrums of the Portland Protective Association a chance to attend, though nobody would dispute the one they’d had was ecclesiastically correct. Pip was an Anglican Rite Catholic, of course, and they were Roman Rite there, but both styles worked for the same boss off in the hills of Umbria these days.

  And after what we saw in Baru Denpasar . . . and off in that weird evil whatever- it-was Deor took us through to get to Johnnie’s indubitably separated . . . soul, I suppose . . . I’m going to treat it all a bit more seriously. In the world as it is, a girl needs help from On High. The other side certainly seems to get it Down Low from their spiritual patrons! Though there’s all the manky mind-enslavement and degradation and living-death eternal suffering botheration they go through too.

  If the weather had been better the greeting would probably have been in the courtyard, for the maximum audience—there were at least a couple of thousand people there anyway, braving the drizzle and the gathering darkness. More, those with higher rank or pull, lined the arched way to the semicircular steps at the base of the Silver Tower, kept back by the glaivesmen, and well-disciplined enough that the men-at-arms didn’t need to put the shafts level and push.

  Pip blinked again; as they passed all the men except the guards went to one knee—the right—and uncovered and bowed their heads, and the women sank into deep almost-kneeling skirt-spreading curtseys with eyes downcast.

  I suppose I could get used to this, she thought, and almost burst out laughing when she imagined trying to get the inhabitants of Darwin to perform in such a fashion. You were likely to get a pie chucked at your head.

  It certainly wasn’t much like home. Even in staid Townsville ordinary people tended to be aggressively self-assertive, and in freewheeling Darwin . . . Jeez. It didn’t bear thinking about.

  But I’m not absolutely sure I want to get used to it. It’s amazing how easygoing Johnnie is, if he grew up with this! It makes the sunny self-confidence more understandable, but it’s reassuring he didn’t turn out spoiled and arrogant.

  John seemed to pick up on the thought; he was good at that.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, hardly moving his lips at all and keeping up an occasional nod to either side. “This is much more formal than usual.”

  They went up the steps between more of the motio
nless black-armored guards, looking disturbingly mechanical with their visors down and their shields blazoned with the creepy flame-wreathed Lidless Eye. This set had their longswords sloped over one shoulder, and as the couple went by they snapped them up before their faces in salute as they passed and then back to the slope, in a rippling motion as regular as if done by gears.

  High Queen Mathilda Arminger Mackenzie stood waiting for her within a great room that spanned the entire ground floor of the Silver Tower, under an embroidered canopy with a clutch of ladies-in-waiting in the background, and officials lay and ecclesiastical. She glittered darkly in her cotte-hardie, but the face was ordinary until you saw the eyes in the wimple-framed face; middle-aged, slightly stout, a little darker than John and with the marks of recent grief and care.

  John went to one knee and kissed the extended hand—which was incongruously roughened and bore old scars and nicks.

  “My mother, my Queen, and my liege,” he said. “I have returned; forgive the prodigal, as Our Lord said in the parable.”

  “Rise, my beloved son, in whom We are well-pleased,” Mathilda said warmly despite the formal language, and gave him an embrace and kiss on both cheeks. “No forgiveness is necessary on this happy, happy day!”

  Then she covertly tweaked his ear sharply, prompting a well-stifled yelp and twitch.

  “And that’s for running off with your sister and scaring me half to death!” she added in a non-carrying tone. “And getting yourself blown to God-knows-where and menaced by demons and evil magicians! There are some family traditions it’s better to let drop!”

  Cheers broke out in the huge room and echoed off the carved plaster of the groin-arched ceiling high above. There was a subdued fumph! of flash-powder as photographers for magazines and newspapers did their business, providing material for the mezzotints and woodblocks that would grace posters and newssheets and papers and magazines all over Montival.

  Pip sank into the deep curtsey that she’d been given a quick course in—not much different from the one they used in Winchester, at that; left leg forward, right back, heels in line, toes out, sink down with the torso upright, then incline forward as you used both hands to extend the skirt until you were almost touching the rear knee to the ground. Then she did the hand-kiss thing, which required a bit of juggling.

  Thank God for Rockhampton Grammar.

  “And rise, my newest daughter!” the High Queen said warmly, giving her a kiss on both cheeks too; she wore some mild flowery scent. “Greetings and welcome to the High Kingdom, and twice welcome to the House of Artos, Princess Philippa.”

  Stone the crows and bugger the ducks, I am a Princess now!

  More cheers, and then a quick address to the crowd: “. . . I ask your pardon, Gentles, as a mother who feared for her son that this evening be private and not an affair of State . . .” followed by cheers that made the roof ring.

  Despite the plea, a little more bullock poop followed before they could get going, and Pip quickly filed the names—it was a useful talent and she’d worked hard on it.

  There was a working elevator enclosed in a framework of gilded brass with accordion-pleat doors drawn aside by pages, and they all paced over to it between crimson ropes looped on stands and more guardsmen, through a cheering, bowing-and-curtseying (and photograph-taking) mob. It was the first she’d ever ridden in and it took a bit of an effort to be blasé as they lifted smoothly upward; it wasn’t crowded with the seven of them—the five who’d arrived, the High Queen, and a quiet but extremely clever-looking woman about a decade younger who was evidently her confidential secretary, or amanuensis as they said here, and stayed resolutely in the background but missed nothing and had a notepad ready to take dictation.

  The cage went up smoothly; at her glance Thora pointed down: “Convicts in a giant hamster-wheel in the dungeons. Usually there’s music.”

  “I had the carillon disconnected for the occasion, Mistress Garwood,” Mathilda said dryly.

  Apart from Toa and Pip, everyone here seemed to be old acquaintances at least.

  And Queen Mum is stuck with me. I hope . . . think, actually . . . she’s more than smart enough to realize that getting off on the right foot is her best option.

  John held up his hands defensively as the High Queen turned to him. “I couldn’t help it, Mother! You know Órlaith can talk anyone into doing anything!”

  Mathilda chuckled grimly and nodded.

  “Well, she’s her father’s daughter . . . and you’re not so bad at it either. All’s well, John. And apparently, you’re presenting me with my first grandchild, too, for which I will forgive you a good deal.”

  “Umm . . . yes, we are, Your Highness,” Pip said.

  “Though it’s a minor miracle it didn’t happen earlier, and without the sacrament.”

  Pip choked back a nervous laugh. Apparently, the Queen Mum had no illusions about her darling boy, and that remark was . . .

  Too right, she thought. We didn’t know we were serious when the impregnation came along. I hadn’t noticed myself, Deor just picked up on it with that spooky thing he does.

  “It . . .” she began.

  “Don’t tell me it ‘just sort of happened,’ child,” Mathilda said.

  Pip clenched her teeth; she hadn’t intended to be quite that inane about it, but that was the gist of anything she could have said.

  “I have five of my own, one not weaned yet, and I’m fully aware of how it happens. And in close company, style me Mathilda, I think. Or Mattie, if you like. Perhaps it’s a little soon for Mother, though I hope that’ll seem natural in time.”

  “Pip, then . . . since we’re family . . . Mattie. Whether we like it or not. . . .”

  “So we’d better like it, shouldn’t we?”

  Pip snorted, and met a raised brow that echoed the sentiment exactly. She liked this woman already . . . and the more so because she recognized exactly how she’d been manipulated into it, and how she’d been shoved slightly off-balance at the same time.

  Then the High Queen gave Thora a fleeting glance that convinced Pip she was entirely aware of their arrangement about the unacknowledged second . . .

  First, really. Month farther along than I am. Fertile little bastard, my Johnnie!

  . . . pregnancy and very willing to keep it confidential.

  The elevator went high enough that when it opened the windows at the ends of the cruciform corridors dividing the tower were actual windows rather than arrow-slits, though widely spaced; no practical siege tower or ladder could reach anything this high, even a first-class modern steel one driven by hydraulic rams. The guard-captain here was in half-armor, with a livery badge pinned to the front of his roll-edged chaperon hat, a blond good-looking man in his thirties who saluted and bowed smoothly. His second-in-command looked almost identical, except that he was shorter, darker and had slanted eyes.

  “Ah, Lioncel,” Mathilda said to him. “Glad to see you back from the wilds of the Palouse. How’s my lord Count your father? And your good lady and the children?”

  “My father’s still the pattern of knighthood and a bit of a fashion plate, Your Majesty,” he said. “But champing to be off overseas and most displeased that you won’t let him go. Azalaïs and the children are busy preparing Castle Campscapell for the Twelve Nights.”

  “And you, Huon. My goodness, you look more like Odard all the time.”

  They were presented as Viscount Lioncel de Stafford of Campscapell and heir to the County of that name, and to the Barony of Forest Grove; his second in command was Baron Huon Liu de Gervais.

  God, these names! It’s like a historical novel. . . . Wait a minute, the names are mostly from actual historical novels. Though that was their parents and grandparents; I suppose to them it’s just their names. And what they’re wearing. . . . It’s not costume anymore, to them it’s just their clothes.

  L
ioncel added: “An honor to make your acquaintance, Your Highness,” to Pip, with Huon murmuring the same.

  For a moment she blanked, her mind not translating Your Highness into me, and was panic-stricken at how exactly to respond. Then she copied John’s friendly nod to him and his second. Their attitude to John was respectful, but . . .

  But they saw him growing up as a spotty adolescent and don’t subconsciously really regard him as an adult, she thought. Hmmmm. And he notices it.

  “The Lord Chancellor, the Grand Marshal and my lady mother and the others await you in the Lesser Presence Hall, Your Majesty,” Lioncel said to Mathilda; Huon walked ahead to open the door and bow them in.

  The ceiling of the corridors was high, fifteen or sixteen feet and covered in ancient-looking carved wood coffering, and the walls were smooth pearl-gray marble flecked with green. Glass doors at the end of one corridor led onto a broad balcony that must have spectacular views in good weather, but they were closed now and streaked with rain, beyond which was blackness like a velvet curtain.

  Above their heads were bronze light-standards with softly hissing gaslights in frosted-glass globes, and there were niches between the widely-spaced doors along all four corridors. Those held an eye-catching assortment of art, pictures or small statues or things less describable. At first she was too tight-wound to more than let her eyes flick over them and note that they’d make this a fantastic place to loot . . .

  Pardon me, salvage.

  . . . but gradually they began to sink in as they passed. Darwin and Townsville held a good many treasures garnered from the lost cities by salvagers like her mother and friends, but nothing approaching this.

  “Good God, that looks as if it was really as old as it looks,” Pip said, halting almost involuntarily before one for a moment.

  It held a Madonna and Child done in an almost-Byzantine style, in egg tempura on wood with a gold-leaf background, but softer in outline, the play of light and dark colors revealing the figures underneath the heavy drapery in rounded three-dimensional life, with an inviting warmth that felt somehow compassionate. Swatches of precious fabric and jewels had been incorporated into the work, and it glittered softly.