The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (39 page)

The beast came over, sniffed her hand and consented to a scritch on the head; its ears were rather tattered. Reiko chuckled; that died at the scrutch of feet.

A man was approaching, in the dress of a manor-house servant: neat brimless felt hat with the d’Ath livery badge, breeks and charcoal knee socks, with a laced hip-length jerkin. The varlet uncovered his short fair hair—with a slight twitch of the eyes towards the bodyguards, especially the samurai—made a leg, and spoke:

“Your Highness, there’s a Royal courier,” he said.

Órlaith raised an eyebrow. Generally a message for her here would simply be sent over the heliograph net to Castle Ath—with a skilled operator modern fixed models with four-foot triple mirrors could transmit fifteen words a minute, and over distances up to a hundred miles with favorable geography and weather and powerful telescopes at the receiving end. From here to Todenangst was a single stage, and as near instantaneous as no matter; John’s had probably taken about twenty minutes from Corvallis, faster than the time required to write it down up at the castle and have someone trot over here.

“Not a message?” she said.

“No, Your Highness; a riding courier in the High King’s . . . my apologies, the High Queen’s livery, the Crown Courier Corps. And looking like it’s been a long hard ride too.”

The varlet bowed to Reiko as well as to her, she was glad to see; the d’Ath household servitors were well-trained, and just as important they really wanted to please. There were usually plenty of applicants for jobs like his in the Association territories; it was a lot easier than what a peasant did, and while you didn’t get the same things served at the foot of the lord’s table as they did above the salt, there was always plenty of it and you didn’t have to grow it yourself. On the other hand, not all commoners liked being around nobles all day, without much time to call their own, especially if the lords in question were bad-tempered or hasty. That wasn’t a problem here.

“Send him through, thank you, Dicun,” Órlaith said with a smile.

He coughed discreetly into a hand. “The courier is a lady, Your Highness. A Sioux lady, I believe, the one who came here some time ago.”

“Ah,” Órlaith said, feeling a quick thrill, the sort you did when the bushes moved against the wind on a boar-hunt.

The game begins indeed.

Beside her Reiko stiffened, an infinitesimal motion that still made silk and linen rustle.

“Well, send her along, then. And have some refreshments sent up here as well, she’s probably had a hard ride.”

“We’ve already sent for that, Your Majesty,” Dicun said, confirming her guess.

She didn’t offer him a tip, which would be gross and insulting, though she did smile and nod. She reminded herself to leave a vail for the staff when she left, though; normally the senior Household servant along with her would handle it.

Susan
Mika
—Susan Clever Raccoon—came walking up with a slightly bowlegged stride, amid a powerful odor of horse. She made a knee, and gave a tired grin at the same time. Using relays of horses wasn’t the fastest way to travel overland, not where hippomotives were available, or the fastest way to send a message when you had heliographs . . . but it was considerably less conspicuous than either and left far less of a paper trail. And if you pushed it you could cover well over a hundred miles a day, which was fast enough.

Fast enough for government work,
Órlaith thought with a trace of whimsy.

“Your Highness, from Dun Fairfax—” Mika began.

“Lakhotiya Woglaka Po!”
Órlaith replied.

And blessed the Sword; she’d had only a little of the language before, since all of that folk spoke English too, and a fair number had only ceremonial Lakota. Especially the ones with a lot of white-eye in their background; people had moved around a good bit in the years right after the Change, and settled and married where they could. Whatever their myths and stories, few could trace all their blood from any one tribe or folk.

She remembered that Mika was fully fluent, though, and the chances of anyone being able to understand them were only marginally greater than it would be with Japanese. The courier dropped into that sonorous swift-rising, slow-falling tongue:

“—from the Dun below the sacred hill in the Mackenzie dùthchas:
Let the old man say what he will, we’ll skip the harvest and meet you where the fairies dance
. From Larsdalen:
You’re on!
From the steading of your friend in the land of the McClintocks:
We’d have been at feud if you’d left me out.
”

The grin got a little wider, and she went on: “From the lady with the garland in that place:
Don’t get him killed and forbye keep your princessly hands to yourself the while.
”

She tried and failed to put a McClintock burr to the last.

“And from the tall trees:
I may not live while the slayer of my kinsman walks beneath the stars
.”

Then with an oddly catlike expression, she added: “Those two are real enthusiastic types.”

Dicun came back with a tray in his hands and a boy carrying a little folding table behind him. The lad set out the table and whipped a coarse brown linen napkin over it; the varlet set down the tray and removed the cover on a big bowl. That proved to be a dense chicken stew with peas and carrots and potatoes, accompanied by slices of thick-cut buttered brown maslin bread and a wedge of a strong-smelling yellow cheese and some dried apricots. A turned-maple mascar of beer stood beside it.

“Go ahead, you earned it,” Órlaith said. “And I’m going to ask you some questions while you do. This is about as private a place to talk as I can imagine.”

She gave Dicun a glance. He smiled, bowed, and as he left grabbed by one ear the lad who’d been helping him; the ears in question had been fairly quivering with curiosity. Mika sat on the end of the bench and plied a busy spoon.

“
Wopila!
Been eating jerky and trail mix in the saddle,” she said around a mouthful. “I must’ve lost weight and I don’t have any to spare.”

The questions were few and to the point, mostly about the condition of the trails.

“And I’m coming too,” Mika mumbled at the end of the conversation, after she’d mopped the bowl with the last heel of bread and swallowed the last apricot. “No way will I miss this.”

Órlaith nodded and slapped her on the shoulder; the feel beneath the leather was boney, but the slender muscle was like iron wire.

“Of course not, cousin. I may need someone who can really ride.”

“Instead of being a blacksmith’s shop strapped into an easy chair mounted on a horse’s back,” Mika said, slandering Associate knights and Bearkiller cataphracts alike, and yawned enormously.

“Go get a bath and a bed,” Órlaith said.

The courier nodded, lurched up and stumbled away. Dicun met her at a discreet distance and lent a helping hand. Reiko’s hand was tight on her sword as Órlaith translated, the thumb pressing against the guard in that unconscious gesture.

“That’s got us a dozen each of Mackenzies and McClintocks, and a couple of Rangers, who’ll all be waiting at Stath Ingolf,” Órlaith said. “And at least one A-lister. Now I have to get us some men-at-arms.”

“And I some samurai,” Reiko said.

•   •   •

Reiko and Egawa Noboru knelt on the grassy level patch beneath the great chinar tree and looked out over the little lake where mist curled, pink dying to a glowing white as the moon shone brighter. The sun was setting behind the forested hills to the west, silhouetting the tall firs as the rim of red dipped beneath the crest, and birdsong fell silent above them. The night was mild but underneath it was a faint chill, the earth breathing a scent of falling dew. Dim yellow light shone through the slit windows in the castle’s tower and keep half a mile away, and the first stars spangled the purple above them. Mist curled over the water, and a frog leapt.

Egawa spoke:

“Furu ike ya . . .”

An ancient pond . . .

She took it up:

“Kawazu tobikomu . . .”

A frog jumps in . . .

The soldier completed it:

“Mizu no oto.”

The splash of water.

They both waited in silence as the sound of their voices faded into the dimness; the evening stillness was departing, and wind soughed gently in the branches. That poem was a work of the great master Basho. Egawa sighed and repeated another, murmuring softly as if to himself:

“Tabi ni yande . . .

Falling sick on a journey . . .

Yume wa kareno wo . . .

My dream goes wandering . . .

Kake meguru . . .”

Over a field of dried grass.

“I long for home as well, my bushi,” Reiko said, and spread her fan. “And wonder if I shall see it again, and bear my father’s ashes to his resting place beside my grandmother. We stand on the edge of deeds and times great and terrible, beyond the fields we knew.”

The sat in silence for a while longer, listening to the alien night—loud crickets, something that buzzed in the tree above them, then the familiar threefold yipping bark of a fox setting out on the work of the night.

My namesake, perhaps,
Reiko thought.
The Ghost Fox.

“Having thought, you must decide,” she went on, gently implacable. “The Grand Steward would, I think—with the best, the most selfless of intentions, thinking it only temporary—bind me to what he considers wisdom. And he would use you to do so. Setting you up as a new tent government, with a puppet Empress.”

Egawa pointed with his own fan. “Beyond this hill the sun paints the path homeward,” he said. “But my Emperor died on foreign soil. Am I to come so far, and outlive him, only to betray his heir? Yet what is true allegiance here? You are . . . forgive me, Majesty . . . still very young.”

“You must decide if I am a child, to be constrained, or truly what you call me, the Heavenly Sovereign One,” Reiko said. “Because if I am
sovereign, General Egawa, then ultimately I—and none other—am responsible to my ancestress Amaterasu-omikami in this matter.”

They waited. Reiko let the silence and the sounds fill her.
Having thought, I have acted,
she thought.
Let the arrow fly.

In the end, Egawa startled her by laughing. She turned her head to look at him, and saw him gather up his sheathed sword and tuck it through his sash.

“My only regret, Majesty,” he said, “is that I won’t be here to see Koyama-san’s face when he finds we’re gone. When we leave, at least; perhaps I shall see it, when we return with
Kusanagi
.”

He made his bow. “Majesty. I will have considerable work to do, to prepare all quietly.”

His feet padded softly into the night, almost soundless on the springy grass of the path. Reiko closed her fan with a snap, after an instant studying the razor edges of the metal segments. It quivered in her grip. There were things that you must be
prepared
to do that still made your soul clench with a relief so strong that it was also pain . . . if you found you need not.

When she had command of herself again she studied the moonlight and the frosted arch of stars overhead until they washed through her being, then said at last:

“Araumi ya . . .”

The rough sea

“Sado ni yokotau . . .”

Stretching out towards Sado

“Amanogawa . . .”

The Milky Way

“I will bring you home, Father. You and all our people.”

•   •   •

Heuradys thought Sir Aleaume de Grimmond was handsome, especially when he laughed, which he didn’t do all that often. He was smart enough, well-educated in the things considered important among his class and nation, a first-rate fighter, and extremely conscientious. The last was the problem here, though it would probably make him a good baron someday.

And it may be an opportunity as well as a problem. I certainly hope so.

She’d invited him—and Órlaith, of course—and Droyn Jones de Molalla for a morning of hawking. Falconry was the all-purpose social lubricant, and one that even conventional females—which neither she nor her liege-lady were, of course—could share. They’d had a successful few hours, with half a dozen ring-necked pheasants and a wild turkey in the game basket.

Then they’d retired to the edge of the field for lunch in the shade of the hedge and row of Lombardy poplars that marked its limit; they were hunting one of the demesne fields of Montinore manor, currently planted in grass and clover for pasture rather than hay. Those attracted game birds, for feeding and nesting and as convenient refuges to stage quick trips to the grainfields.

The guards were having their own lunch a little way off, in relays so that there were always four on watch, and the falconer and his assistants and the grooms in another group yet, since they weren’t even the lowliest of Associates. She and Órlaith were both in a noblewomen’s riding garb, jacket and divided skirt—something very similar to what Reiko and her samurai wore, which all three of the young women had had a good laugh over.

Reiko’s not bad company at all now that she’s relaxed a bit,
Heuradys thought.
Though the Gray-Eyed Lady knows she’s got reasons for that grimness. Still, she’s smart and well-read and she has a nice sense of humor if you like it extremely dry. She and Orrey are getting on very well.

Sir Aleaume had lost some of his haunted look, and if falconry didn’t relax a young Associate noble—Aleaume was the eldest here and he was still a young man—nothing would. Heuradys enjoyed it herself, even when done with an ulterior motive. It wasn’t exactly the most fun you could have with your clothes on; for that, she was divided between . . .

. . . well, music of course . . .

. . . steeplechasing and hunting tiger, with single-handing a small boat right up there, and dancing close thereafter, but it was definitely a pleasant way to spend some outdoor time in good weather. Not to mention controlling the bird and small game population and providing food.

They’d chatted about the differences between the sport here in the close-grown Willamette country and the open eastern ranges; the de Grimmond family’s barony of Tucannon was near the Blue Mountains, out in the County Palatine of Walla Walla. That was very similar to the Palouse just north of there where Barony Harfang was located, and House Ath had a hunting lodge in the Blue Mountains anyway—the Counts had given it to her adoptive mother after the Prophet’s War, as a thanks-gift for dealing with a Cutter assassination attempt.