I took her from that place because I could not bear to leave a child in it, Reiko thought, making her face stern. But I have kept Kiwako with me for my sake as well as hers. And to show that there had been atonement for the crimes of Cody Biltmore, and a lifting of the curse on his line.
Kiwako meant one born on a border, and it was certainly appropriate; for her, it had been the border between the world of common life and the Otherword, and no healthy part of it, either.
Yet now she is much like a normal child—a clever and playful one and full of mischief. And even toilet-trained, at last.
“Look, Heika!”
By now she had as much command of Nihongo as a Japanese child of her age, and even a Sado accent of the type frequent at Court. The toy she held up was a set of propeller blades in a circle, made of a disk stamped from salvaged tin. It rested on the end of a spindle with a cord wrapped around it, in turn fastened to a handle. Kiwako pulled the string, and the disk lifted off, careening around the tent like a living thing, blurring like the wings of the little jeweled birds common on this continent.
Akira was smiling broadly; Ishikawa and Egawa laughed outright, the Imperial Guard commander snatching the thing out of the air with his good right hand. They were all family men, and the Guard commander’s youngest daughter was about Kiwako’s age. Her folk were mostly kindly with children, though firm; you didn’t expect someone Kiwako’s age to have perfect etiquette. Childhood was a time to learn.
“Soldier gave me,” she said happily. “Looks like Egawa-sama!”
That almost certainly meant Edain Aylward Mackenzie, commander of the High Queen’s Archers. He was a kindly man and absolutely trustworthy, but . . .
“Kiwako,” Reiko said, and tapped her—very gently—on the head with the folded Tessen. “It is a good toy, but you should not run away from Lady Fumiko and wander alone among strangers! You have caused her bad feelings!”
Not to mention public shame for not fulfilling a duty.
Fumiko was a well-meaning childless widow in her thirties, but not particularly intelligent; if she’d been brighter, someone of her middle years would be doing more responsible work. Most of the day-to-day administration of Dai-Nippon was done by women of the warrior class, so that men could be spared for the unending war against the jinnikukaburi. The fact that your father was a samurai and that he and your husband had fallen bravely didn’t mean you could learn to be competent at accounting or estate management or laying out drainage ditches or assessing tax levies, though.
Kiwako’s face clouded and her lower lip pouted a little. She didn’t like to make Reiko unhappy, but she also didn’t like minding her minders.
“I’m sorry, Heika,” she said, and leaned her head forward between her palms in a creditable childish copy of the dogeza.
“You should make apology to Lady Fumiko, Kiwako,” Reiko said. “You hurt her feelings and made her sad.”
The girl obediently faced her and bowed again. “I’m sorry, Fumiko-sama,” she said contritely. “I’ll be good.”
Then with another grin: “It’s a good toy! Subarashii!”
Fumiko smiled; it was hard to resist that enthusiasm, and Reiko knew the widow’s lonely heart had long since warmed to the child. In a way it was a perfect match for both, and the loyal service of Fumiko and her kin deserved a little thought to find her a long-term place of honor at court.
“Did you eat your dinner?” Reiko asked.
Kiwako nodded; she didn’t wake up weeping or growling or screaming much anymore, but she was still entranced by decent food. Reiko carefully didn’t think about some of the things the child had probably eaten in the lost castle; body-lice were the least of it.
“Okonomiyaki!” the girl said. “And anmitsu!”
Which meant stuffed fried pancakes and sweet agar jelly with fruit. Reiko cocked an eyebrow at Fumiko, who nodded without looking back, which meant that Kiwako had been as mannerly as could be expected at her age.
She has made astonishing progress, Reiko thought, and opened her arms.
After the hug—delivered with surprising strength and a scent of clean well-washed little girl, very different from their first contact—she said:
“Now go play with your toy, but do not go out of Lady Fumiko’s reach! I will come later and tell you another story.”
“An Inari-fox story?”
The adults glanced at one another. It was impossible for a Nihonjin to look at Kiwako and not think the word fox. Reiko had taken advantage of that by directing her devotion to Inari, the great kami whose messengers were magical foxes. A physical protector, even the Tennō, could not always be there. Inari ōkami could, and with the eeriness of the child’s origins everyone would remember it.
“A story of the nine-tailed golden fox who carries messages for Inari,” she promised.
When Reiko looked up the three men had all schooled their faces, and had their eyes properly lowered, but she could sense their smiles and the approval behind them. That was nothing bad; she didn’t want to be viewed as entirely a creature of power and awe. And they’d all been part of her education themselves, especially the two elders who’d been her father’s right-hand men. It was good that they knew she too could handle children properly.
“We will be returning to Japan soon; the High Queen will follow with the additional troops and supplies when they are ready, and the final campaign will begin. I will see to settling Kiwako at the palace in the course of our stay in the homeland this summer.”
The rather modest current palace had been the old Tokugawa governor’s home on Sadogashima, and then a museum until the Change. Sometimes words were easier to preserve than things.
“My mother and sisters and Lady Fumiko will like her, I am sure,” Reiko said, to a chorus of bows and murmurs of agreement.
They would; and however much a gaijin child stood out, by the time the campaign started up again in the fall it would be clear that Kiwako had the Tennō Heika as her patron. That wouldn’t necessarily protect her completely from other children, but four or five was young enough that bullying wouldn’t be a serious problem.
“All Japan owes that child a debt, Majesty, since she warned you of a blow from behind,” Akira said, and the other two nodded.
Reiko inclined her head slightly; her Chancellor was also making a promise that he’d look out for her if there was a disaster in Korea and one of her sisters had to step into her place. It had been more of a reflexive scream of fear than a deliberate warning, but real enough for all that and quite possibly the reason she was here today. Reiko certainly wasn’t going to take a child to Korea on campaign, but six months was a long time in the life of a toddler.
“All debts of honor must be paid,” she said.
Her glance fell on the Grasscutter. “And when the campaign begins, we will pay many.”
Another set of short sharp nods, but this time the subtleties of their expressions wouldn’t have reassured a child.
Quite the contrary.
The reckoning with the tormentors of their people had been a long time coming, and it would mean a winter campaign in Korea’s fabled frozen wastes, but all of them were looking forward to it.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
CHOSŎN MINJUJUŬI INMIN KONGHWAGUK
(KOREA)
PUSAN
NOVEMBER 25TH
CHANGE YEAR 47/2045 AD
“By the Eternal Blue Sky and the ninety-nine Tengri, what’s that?”
Dzhambul, Börte and Gansükh lay side-by-side on a hillside, binoculars leveled and watching ships out on the water, a novel sight to them all—he hadn’t seen the ocean at all until after the Mongol armies crossed the Yalu, and not more than twice since. Pusan lay on the southeast corner of the Korean peninsula, far enough south that it was no more than a little chilly this evening, nothing like the deep cold farther back along their journey.
The sun was setting behind them, making this a good time for stealth—no risk of the light glinting off the lenses, to start with. They were most of the way up a mountain, on the crest of a cliff of pink granite and under the shade of sharp-smelling pine trees that had coated the rock with soft brown duff beneath them. Below the cliff were dense thickets of bamboo, and then a river-valley ran southward to the sea, its upper reaches in rice paddy and vegetable garden.
The remains of the pre-Change city were mostly out of sight to the left, the eastward side, but enough remained to make an enormous bulk of ruined leaning towers, scorched snags, and the cleared areas that showed where methodical salvaging was stripping out metal and glass and other goods.
“I’ve seen bigger,” Gansükh said. “In China. But not much bigger, and never such heavy salvage.”
Smelters and straggling slave barracks grimy with the smoke that misted around them showed where a good deal of it went, and there were timber yards and sawmills and shipbuilding slips too.
A huge modern-looking fortress stood a few miles away on a crest of the mountain. They’d seen troops marching to and from it, but it apparently hadn’t occurred to the enemy they needed to patrol close to its walls. What attention they were paying seemed directed against the sea, as if the main threat lay there. The Mongols had been able to lay up for a day, and do some repairs to their gear and even bathe in a spring.
Perhaps they can hear my belly rumble in Pusan, Dzhambul thought ironically. But at least we don’t smell so bad.
They had all lost weight, though occasionally they’d had time to hunt and usually Mongol troops could live off country where anyone else would starve, including the natives, not least because they would eat anything, except the natives. The problem was that there was hardly anything to hunt or forage here. The last place they’d had any luck at all was a strip of lusher territory that marked the division between the old North and South Kingdoms that had divided the peninsula back before the Change. The Northern dynasty had taken over the whole place in the aftermath of the Change, and kept itself going during the crash by systematically feeding most of the population to some of it, starting with the conquered southern part and going on from there.
There had been real forests there of ancient trees, not just the timber and fuel plantations they’d seen elsewhere. And thick-grassed meadows where deer grazed, and marshlands rich with birds and the pathways made by wild boar, enough to show that this peninsula wasn’t barren by its nature. They’d gorged for a week, and smoke-dried some meat while dodging the patrols looking for them. But a few loads of jerky made from musk deer and goral—wild goats—didn’t go very far among nearly twenty people moving fast and hard.
They’d been reduced to tapping a little blood from the veins of their horses, but that was an emergency measure . . . and the horses hadn’t been feeding very well either. It was doubtful they’d be fit for much once they turned back north.
There wasn’t even enough livestock to steal enough to eat. Dzhambul grimaced slightly, remembering lying up in some hills for a day with nothing to do but watch the man-eaters plow . . . using teams of fifteen naked men to each piece of equipment, and the outer one had come close enough to his scouting perch to see that the ones drawing the plow all had one eye, and to hear the thick tongueless gobbling they made, see the stunned brainless look on their faces. He’d heard reports of breeding pens where other types were raised, nice and fat. . . .
He shrugged that off. Who was keeping them company in the pot wouldn’t matter to him or Börte or any of the others if the man-eaters caught them.
“What are the Miqačin doing out there on the water with all those big ships?” Gansükh said.
“I don’t think they’re doing anything at all,” Börte said thoughtfully. “I think someone’s doing it to them. That’s a battle—a battle on the sea. Not all the ships are theirs!”
Dzhambul grunted and scratched with one finger under the edge of his helmet. Once she said it, he could see that it was true; it was just that it was all so unfamiliar, when the largest vessels he’d ever seen were boats on rivers. And nobody he’d heard of in this part of the world had a navy except the man-eaters, and the as-yet-unseen Japanese. The ships were maneuvering around one another like a slow stately dance, with tall shapes of sails above their decks. They were miles away, and small even with the binoculars, but being a couple of thousand feet up on the mountainside was an advantage.
As he watched one of the larger ones suddenly shot a series of flaming streaks—
“Fire-shells!” he said.
—and the target virtually exploded into flames; in seconds it was burning from front to back, red and yellow. Down there men would be screaming and probably throwing themselves into the water.
“Couldn’t happen to a nicer set of fellows,” Gansükh said with satisfaction, and Börte made a sound of agreement. “Whoever it is, may the Ancestor give strength to their arms!”
Dzhambul found himself nodding. Usually the thought of men, even enemy soldiers, roasting alive would give him no pleasure; you killed fighters on the other side because they were the enemy, and they tried to do the same to you because you were their enemy. It was necessary, but he’d never taken any great pleasure in it, only the transient rage of combat and the raw animal relief of realizing you’d come out the other side one more time. This enemy, though . . . after crossing their country, the nod was natural.
Another set of shells struck, invisible this time and therefore probably cast roundshot, and a . . .
“What are those tall things that carry the sails?” he asked.
“Sails . . .” Börte said. “It’s a . . . mast, that’s the word.”
Mongol is a wonderful language for describing horses and grass, he thought. But a bit short on matters concerning the sea.
“One of them just fell over and the ship’s burning even faster. As Gansükh said, a beautiful sight.”
He scratched at his chin. “Who could it be, fighting the man-eaters?”
“The Han? There’s a Han kingdom a bit south and west of here . . . a new one, founded by some warlord from the interior . . . what’s it called . . . Yantai, I think,” Gansükh said. “I’ve seen it on maps in the briefing reports. It’s a peninsula with sea on three sides . . . perhaps they have ships?”
“Or it could be the Japanese,” Börte said. “We don’t know anything about Japan now except that there are people there and they fight the Miqačin.”
“Everyone who’s close to them fights the Miqačin, except the ones the man-eaters have eaten, Princess,” Gansükh pointed out.
He frowned. “Didn’t we invade Japan once?”
Börte snorted. “We invaded everyone at least once,” she said. “Except the places that hadn’t been discovered in the Ancestor’s time. We invaded Japan, we invaded Europe and we invaded Burma. We even invaded Java once, merciful Bodhisattvas witness I speak the truth.”
“Well, we didn’t invade America,” Dzhambul said. “Nobody knew about America then. Maybe those are Americans down there, fighting the Miqačin!”
Then he frowned thoughtfully as they all chuckled at the thought; Americans presumably existed in some form, but practically speaking they were more mythical than animal spirits, which at least some claimed to have seen with their own eyes.
The man-eater ships were pulling back into the old harbor, which was flanked by massive forts built of concrete and steel from the ruins. The stranger ships—whoever they were—sheered off when some monstrous engine there threw a boulder that must be larger than a horse, from the size of the waterspout when it struck.
“I think we should stay here in this general area for a while,” he said. “There’s grazing in that hollow we found. We’ll slaughter the worst of the remounts, that bay who’s favoring its left fore, and let the rest recover some condition before we swing west and back north.�
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Both the others sighed. They were all used to and fond of horsemeat, but they’d have to eat it raw, because they couldn’t risk the smoke and light of a fire or the smell of cooking.
“The Miqačin are reinforcing here, Noyon,” Gansükh pointed out.
“Yes, but they’re doing that because of these strangers. They must fear a landing. The high command and the Khan need to know what’s going on, and what’s drawing troops away from the armies facing our main force. We’re scouts; that is our task.”
Gansükh sighed. “The Noyon wishes,” he said.
Börte was silent, but her eyes glowed with curiosity as she looked down the tumbled, riven granite of the mountainside, watching the warriors from who-knew-where sailing up and down in their ships to blockade Pusan.
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
LOST LAKE
CROWN FOREST DEMESNE
(FORMERLY NORTH-CENTRAL OREGON)
HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL
(FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)
JUNE 20TH
CHANGE YEAR 47/2045 AD
(PLACES OUT OF SPACE, AND TIME)
Her father was gone when she opened her eyes and drew a long shuddering breath. Grief pierced her again, an odd overlay with the sense of loss she’d felt beneath everything else since he was killed.
But he’s not gone. I felt him. I feel him now. He’s part of this, part of Montival . . . or part of him is, somehow. And always will be. The tales will remember him for a long, long time, and the land and its spirits even longer.
She stood and held the blade of the Sword she bore across the palms of her hands, raising it high and turning to the four Quarters:
“By the North . . .” she began, calling the shapes of the Guardians and their protections, invoking their vigilance. “By the East . . . By the South . . . By the West!”
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