The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (26 page)

“Mom’s still in bed,” John said as he poured coffee for them both.

It was expensive, but not impossibly so anymore. Her father had disapproved of
that
sort of ostentation. Órlaith added cream and honey to hers,
frowning in worry; her mother had been very glad to have her here, and Órlaith had felt an overwhelming relief when she saw the familiar face, but they’d found little to say and you could only hug and cry so long.

I really am an adult,
she thought sadly—she could remember when she’d been wildly eager for that to happen.
I know mother can’t make it all better. And on the whole, I wish I didn’t know it. I can see why housecats enjoy being sort of like kittens all their lives. Of course, they’re not cursed with a sense of duty or knowledge of their own mortality . . .

It wasn’t like her mother to simply lie abed in sheer misery, either, no matter how great that misery was. Her last pregnancy had gone wrong, and she’d come back from that with grim fortitude, not least by refusing to miss a single day’s work that she was physically capable of. High Queen and Lady Protector Mathilda Arminger Mackenzie was a woman of strong will and, usually, very disciplined habits.

“Give her time,” John said. “Vuissance and Faolán are with her and that’ll help, and she’s been spending a lot of time with Chancellor . . . no,
Father
Ignatius. He’s wearing his spiritual-counselor hat, and he’s good at it—he’s kind, but he doesn’t cut you any slack to wallow either. I think the memorial Mass will help too, they’ve been making arrangements for that. Also . . . did you know she’s expecting?”

“No, I didn’t!” Órlaith blurted.

She was obscurely shocked both at the fact and that her mother hadn’t informed her. Of course, she’d been away—her mother might not have been certain before the Westrian tour began. Her father would have been, the Sword let its bearer see things like that where the Royal kin were concerned, but he’d told her he didn’t speak of what it told him to anyone else unless there was some strong need. And since then other things had preoccupied them both.

“Well, she’s only forty-six and healthy,” John observed. “And . . .”

She nodded. Their parents had been reasonably decorous—very much so, by the Clan Mackenzie standards her father had grown up with—but you could tell that side of their bond was still very much present along with the bone-deep comradeship and the sheer comfort that radiated when they were together.

All acts of love and pleasure were pleasing to the Goddess, but it was still obscurely embarrassing thinking about your parents in that context.

Mother-of-All, be gentle to her who wore Your seeming to me and walked in Your power, however she names You. It must be like having a foot and a hand amputated, only inside. Worse for her than for me. I lost my father, and it hurts, oh how it hurts, but people do outlive their parents and that’s what parents wish. That is the way the Powers made us. She lost the companion of all her life—they were
anamchara
when they were ten years old, even though their families were at war then, long before there was any question of marriage. All their lives after that they were friends, and when the time came lovers, and comrades-in-arms and parents and working partners in all the wonderful things they did. I can’t imagine what it must be like to have that cut off after so long, only that it’s worse than anything I’ve ever felt.

Her brother’s hand tightened on the edge of the table.

“She’s kicking herself—beating herself bloody inside, I’m sure of it—because she didn’t go along on that trip with you and Father, and of course that was the reason, she suspected it even a month ago and didn’t want to risk another miscarriage by spending weeks in the saddle. Damn, if
I’d
only gotten off my useless butt and been there instead of that troubadours’ convention—”

“Don’t you start beating yourself up either. What would you have done that I couldn’t?” Órlaith said bluntly. “I
was
there, Johnnie, and it was just . . . too quick. If
he
wasn’t fast enough—”

He sighed. They’d both seen their father slash flies out of the air in practice sessions in the
salle d’armes.
Órlaith went on:

“You think I haven’t played it over and over in my head, thinking what I
might
have done, or he
might
have done? That knife was headed for
me
. I think it would have gone right into my eye. I’m
certain
it would have, and I couldn’t have stopped it, I didn’t see it coming in time. He swung me back, that’s why he didn’t have enough time to shield himself, that and the old wound to his right arm. Herry snapped her shield up in front of me, but that’s her duty and she was too far away to do it for him, anyway.”

Her brother sighed again and nodded, turning up his hands. Like hers they had thick sword calluses, but he’d never been quite her match in the
salle d’armes
; he was stronger now, but just a hair slower.

“I’d rather be in my schoon than yours right now,” he admitted gently. “But do you think he’d make
that
decision differently, even knowing what it meant and with a thousand times to reconsider? And father usually made the right decisions, especially when he had to do it fast and dirty like that.”

She nodded. Her brother had always been good at seeing what people felt. He also looked a little more haggard than was right even now.

“Not sleeping?” she asked.

John shrugged. “Not sleeping
well
, no.”

He was in full Court garb, though the tight hose weren’t parti-colored and the fabrics were all plain and none brighter than the indigo blue of his houppelande and there were no little golden bells on the upturned toes of his schoon and there
was
a mourning band on his left arm. The turn-out was immaculate as always, but he didn’t seem to be as . . .
smooth
as usual.

“Bad dreams,” he said.

She felt a chill, a prickle up her spine and arms the way you did when the moaning, coughing grunt of a tiger came from a swamp and the reeds stirred against the wind. He went on:

“Well,
odd
dreams, really. Usually I just have the common sort, you know, I’m playing a lute and suddenly realize all the strings are out of tune, or I’m in the
salle
and realize my breeks have fallen down and the audience are all nuns? These have been . . . different.”

“Oh?” she said, very carefully. “Different how?”

“Nonsense, really. I’m floating in seawater, only it’s
warm
.”

They knew that was theoretically possible, but you were well-advised not to go swimming in the Pacific anywhere on Montival’s inhabited shores without a wetsuit—a cold current hugged the shore, bringing richly abundant life to the sea but making falling into it a real risk of death by core-chilling.

“And then there’s this really old man with a white beard and weird clothes shouting something I can’t understand, but in the dream it seems really important. And there’s a boat with skulls all along the gunwales. And storms and shouting and . . . just nonsense, really, however real it feels at the time. I’ve been reading too much Howard and Fraser.”

“Possibly,” she said, feeling the chill settle deep in her stomach, as if she’d eaten snow in winter. “Been bothering you a lot?”

“Just the last three nights, like going to the same play three times in a row. But . . . louder each time. Though I may have had it earlier and not remembered.”

A jolt went through her.
That wasn’t anything like
my
dream. Still, the dreams of the Royal kin . . . are not those of ordinary folk. Sometimes they’re not, at least.

Then she took a long breath, returning to what could be dealt with in the light of common day.

“OK, Mom’s out of it for a little while, though when the baby comes that’ll help. I’m not sure seeing me did more good than harm.”

“Hey, she loves you too, Orrey! You’re her first.”

“Yes, she does love me, very much—I never doubted that, even when we were fighting about religion.”

He made a slight grimace, for which she didn’t blame him. Back when she was thirteen—and he eleven, old enough to remember it—she’d suddenly decided that she was of the Old Faith after wavering for years between the different beliefs of her parents. That had been just before Nonni Sandra’s funeral mass, on the very day of it in fact. In retrospect she admitted to herself suddenly refusing to take communion at her mother’s own mother’s funeral was a typical thirteen-year-old’s act of offensively, grossly inconsiderate narcissism. Especially since the Old Faith allowed for its followers occasionally taking part in other rites. It didn’t make the same sort of ferociously exclusive claims that the Religions of the Book did.

At that age you were still rebelling against the notion that you weren’t the center of the universe, or at least had the star role in the great drama of life. Their mother hadn’t reacted well. A coldly furious Arminger was not something to be taken lightly. Still, that was years ago now—most of a decade—and it helped that John had chosen their mother’s Catholic faith, along with her sister Vuissance.

And that I made a deservedly humble apology after I came back from that trip to Stath Ingolf. Which was no fun, but I felt better afterwards about myself. When you
do something that wrong, some groveling helps all around. You can’t really say sorry unless you acknowledge that you’re to blame.

Órlaith went on:

“But I was there when Da died, and she wasn’t, and she just can’t help envying me the extra time we had together, and then feeling bad that she does. She did always say that she got terrible mood swings when she was pregnant—when it doesn’t make her sleepy all the time. I was . . . frightened when I noticed her crying in public yesterday, but maybe that’s part of the reason. So we’d better settle some things ourselves. The kingdom comes first. First off, we’re going to have to finally get off our rumps and publicly declare you heir to the Protectorate. The time for artful ambiguity is past.”

He winced and occupied himself with the plates. There were four small omelets a few inches across, fluffy things with golden-brown crusts and a scent of strong melted cheese and ham, hot rolls under a cloth, butter, jam, and small bowls of stewed dried fruit and nuts with whipped cream. Órlaith nodded thanks, said the Blessing, and ate a forkful of her omelet. She stopped and made herself actually taste it by an act of will: one thing her parents had always agreed on was that taking food for granted was an insult both to the Divine in whatever form you followed it, and to the people who worked to produce it for you.

Nine-tenths of the human race had starved to death within living memory, after all. That wasn’t as real to her down in the gut as it was to her parents’ generation, who’d grown up children of the survivors; and vastly less so than it was to those last few survivors of the great dying themselves, many of whom were slightly mad on the subject, but she could see the point. And the overwhelming majority of living humans worked all their lives in the fields as they had since the age of polished stone; she’d done a little of that, enough to know first-hand how hard it was.

The smoky flavor of the ham and the sharp Tillamook cheese went well with the creamy lightness of the egg and the hint of garlic and chili from the crust. The tastes awoke her stomach, making the day seem more real.

Her brother crossed himself, kissed his crucifix, murmured:
“Bless us, O Lord, and these Thy gifts which we are about to receive through Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen,”
buttered a roll and went on plaintively, in a fair imitation of a sulky three-year-old:

“Do I
hafta
be Lord Protector?”

He could have been a fair actor, if he hadn’t been born a prince, in one of the troupes that shuttled between Corvallis and Portland and Boise. He might even have made it into the Lord Protector’s Men and had a permanent slot.

“Yes, you have to. Absolutely. Eventually.”

“There are all sorts of things I’d rather do than be Lord Protector. Hunt. Make music. Make love. St. Michael witness, I’d even rather carry a spear in a foot-company with a mean sergeant.”

“You
absolutely
have to,” Órlaith said firmly. “Besides the legal part. The barons want it, and the Church wants it even more badly.”

“I know,” he said, and added impishly: “My confessor comes down on me like an avalanche of anvils every time I tell him how I wish I didn’t have to do it. Tells me there are no princes in a confessional booth, so take up the cross God’s handed me, drag it up to Heaven’s gate, and stop whining in the meantime.”

Órlaith nodded; Mom would have picked the man, and she always chose conscientious ones for the Royal family. “Da was never Lord Protector; our grandfather Norman was the last man to carry the title.”

“And he was a mad tyrant by all accounts, so it’s not a good precedent.”

“Mad tyrant or not, he built the Protectorate and it’s a big part of Montival.”

She made a gesture around, as if to indicate what that demonic will had accomplished, the bulk of the Onyx Tower, rearing even higher than this; the great circuit of the inner keep, with its round machicolated towers, the outer bailey and the linear town along the inside of the wall, courtyard and cathedral, garden and workshop and barracks and armories. The realm governed from here and from the City Palace in Portland stretched from the lower Willamette to the Peace River in the north, and
inland to the borders of Boise and the Dominion of Drumheller. It was the largest single unit in the inhabited part of the High Kingdom, had at least a quarter of its people and wealth, and everywhere within it the patterns of life followed the Lord Protector’s dream . . . or much of it, however modified by his wife, daughter, and less directly, his son-in-law, who was the son of the man who’d killed him.

Probably the Protectorate was rather more than that proportion of Montival’s military power, which would be crucial when the summons went out, and the barons were the core of that.