The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (5 page)

“St. Michael and the Virgin, no!” Droyn said, crossing himself.

“Glad you understand that. We’ll be taking most of the horses to use as remounts at least as far as White Mountain; the carts can wait here for more to arrive. So no gear that won’t fit on a pack-saddle. I’ll coordinate with Sir Aleaume, but I think I can rely on you to be inconspicuous and still get things done? The Household has to keep as much off of Her Highness’ shoulders as we can, right now.”

His clenched fist in its armored gauntlet clashed on his articulated breastplate again. “My lady!”

“And one final matter.”

She turned to a steel box about two feet on a side, turned the key in the lock and opened it. Within rested a vase twenty inches high, a tulip-shape of sleek silver-colored glass with a design of reeds and flowers that made you think of warm early-summer days beneath the shade of a riverside willow-tree. It had been intended as a gift from Dun Barstow to the High King because of its beauty, an ancient thing found in the ruins of a mansion in Napa. Now it held his ashes.

And there wasn’t anything left
but
ashes,
she thought with a slight shiver. Usually even a hot pyre left bone fragments. This time . . .

Ashes. Fine as dust, almost. Impossible to tell where the wood-ash left off and the body began. Even the buckles and the gold of the torc were gone.

The box was sturdy, and the thick glass of the vase was packed carefully with dense soft lamb’s-wool.

“The most vigilant care must be taken with the High King’s remains,” she said.

“My lady!” He crossed himself. “My men and I will guard it with our lives, and bring it to the High Queen.”

“Good man,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. The Crown Princess and I have full confidence in you.”

His face looked more alive after that, though still very solemn. She’d found that with men of his sort giving them an important task to focus on was the best way to get ten-tenths of capacity working. She settled her hat, draped the liripipe over her shoulder and came out of the tent, making her stride brisk and nodding to the squad of the High King’s Archers outside as they brought up their longbows in salute.

High
King’s
Archers?
she thought grimly.
That’s going to change.

Her own status was going to change; everything would. The ground was shifting under her feet, and Droyn’s attitude had been a foretaste.

What was that ancient saying? I expected this, but not so soon?

As she walked away there was a concerted rush of varlets behind her; the baggage was coming out and the canvas coming down before she’d gone a dozen paces.

The camp in one of Dun Barstow’s fields was larger now that the reinforcements from Castle Rutherford had joined the party that had first accompanied the High King and his heir on their tour of the new Westrian settlements. The broad flat expanse had been in wheat last year and was thick with green burrclover and medic now, knee-deep where it hadn’t been trampled and sweet-smelling where it had, starred with yellow and purple flowers and murmurous with bees and hummingbirds.

The breakfast table stood beneath a great live oak, one that must have been growing here when Napa was a sea of vines. Possibly before the old Americans or even their Hispano predecessors had come, in a distant pre-dawn past when only the tribes of the First Folk dwelt here. The Mackenzie settlers establishing Dun Barstow had left it in their turn when they ripped out the thickets of dead and living vines and brush to make their crofts, for looks and shade for livestock in the fierce southern summer.

And as an act of piety to the Goddess in Her form as Lady Flidais and to the Horned Lord, Cernunnos of the Forest, Master of Beasts. It was a recognition that humanity was not over and above the other kindreds, and held what they did on sufferance. Órlaith was just lowering her arms from her own morning devotion to the rising Sun, and her expression froze for an instant as she turned. As if
everything
in the world reminded her of her loss and her dead.

“I know, Orrey,” Heuradys said softly, and rested her hand on her liege-lady’s shoulder.

Órlaith laid her own hand on the knight’s and squeezed briefly. Heuradys saw the Gods thanked for her for a moment, which was comforting; it meant she was making a difference. She loved all three of her own
parents and would grieve when they died in the way of nature, but Órlaith had been much closer to her father than Heuradys was to the Count of Campscapell, who was more like a wonderful uncle in many ways. And the brutal surprise of the assassination made it far worse, like a raw wound on the soul.

Plus Orrey is probably feeling guilty that he took a knife meant for her. Illogical, but the heart has its own reasons that the mind does not know.

The camp looked different without the High King’s pavilion, sparser somehow despite the greater numbers, and all the banners flying at half-mast. Even the bustle of packing up and getting ready for departure was somehow subdued. It was odd to think that in most of Montival things would still be completely normal, the High King merely gone on a progress with his heir to inspect the remote southern frontier.

The news of his death would be spreading northward already, of course. As fast as relays of couriers on horseback could take it to the edge of the heliograph network, and then by coded flashes of light from hilltop to hilltop, city to city, castle to castle, mirrors reflecting the sun’s rays in the day and burning lime in darkness. They would know in Portland in a few days, and eastward to the Lakota country and north to the Peace River in a fortnight. It might be months before it filtered out to the most remote villages and ranches, or even years in the vast wilderness borderlands. Large chunks of those weren’t inhabited at all, or had a few wildmen who weren’t even aware that they
were
part of the kingdom.

But there will be a great stirring, a sharpening of blades and a stringing of bows. Whoever those strangers were, they made a very bad mistake when they shed our King’s blood on our own land.

“I’ve asked the Nihonjin ruler . . .
jotei
, Tenno, Empress . . . over for breakfast,” Órlaith said. “Her and two followers, and you and me and Edain.”

“Are you ready for that, Orrey?” Heuradys asked bluntly. “If you’re so stressed your judgment’s off it would be better to wait. You took a heavy hit, we’re all here to handle things for you, and our guests aren’t going anywhere soon.”

“No, I can push it,” Órlaith said calmly, after glancing aside for an
instant. “It’s not a council, just a talk. I think this could be really important and we need to set things off on the right foot. There will be plenty of time for detail on the way north.”

Heuradys looked at the Sword of the Lady hanging in its black tooled-leather scabbard at Órlaith’s left hip. The High King had always worn it on his right, and it looked a little odd there.

And I could swear it’s a bit smaller. A weapon sized for her father would over-blade Orrey, but that looks as perfect for her as it did for him. Brrr!

“Talk?” she said. “You can understand them?”

Órlaith nodded as she turned and walked towards the meeting-place. She was wearing a loose saffron shirt and Mackenzie garb, a pleated knee-length kilt in the Clan’s brown-green-orange tartan. A plaid of the same fabric was wrapped around her chest and under the right arm, pulled firm to the body, pinned at the left shoulder by a sapphire and gold knotwork brooch that left the trailing end with its fringe hanging down behind to her knee-hose. Her hair hung loose past her shoulders under the flat blue Scots bonnet with its spray of Golden Eagle feathers in its silver clasp, and the morning sun brought out the hint of copper in that thick yellow mane. She put her left hand to the pommel of the Sword.

“Yes, it’s working for me the way it did for . . . for Da.”

She swallowed, and visibly forced herself back to calm. “It feels . . . odd. For a moment there was . . . was this balloon swelling in my head, then it popped and I knew the language. As if I’d always known it, somehow. No, as if I’d grown up speaking it. I could tell that some of the people with her speak different dialects, and I just . . . knew what the honorifics and so forth meant, not just literally but all the implications. I can switch over to thinking in it like turning a tap and when I do the whole world looks a wee bit different.”

“Useful!” Heuradys said. “But better thee than me, my liege.”

“
Arra
, tell me. Being warned isn’t like feeling it. There’s all sorts of stuff that comes
with
it, too. I think ‘food’ and . . . what comes into your mind when you’re after thinking the word food, Herry? Comes first, at least.”

“Bread,” she said instantly.

A loaf was what you thought of immediately. A nice long crusty loaf
right out of the oven and off the baker’s wooden paddle, butter melting into the steaming surface when you broke it . . . damn, but she was ready for breakfast. Feeling sorrow didn’t stop your digestive system, outside the more romantical chansons, she found.

“Me too. But I switch over to
Nihongo
and suddenly for a moment I’m thinking of a bowl of rice . . . or noodles . . . with little separate dishes of things on the side, and I look at an ordinary plate and go
euuu
at the way everything’s mixed up. Fair disgusting . . . for an instant.”

“How many times have you eaten rice? Really, I mean,” Heuradys asked curiously.

It wasn’t grown in Montival, not yet, and anything imported was a hideously expensive luxury. Though it still grew wild, seeded from old plantings in the Sacramento Delta not far from here. Perhaps someday folk would settle there to raise it.

“A few times. Rice puddings at Yule, mostly, and sushi on occasion in Portland. But when I start thinking in
Nihongo
my mouth wants it steamed and sort of sticky . . .”

“The Sword of the Lady is a cookbook, too?” Heuradys said, chuckling.

Having been around it so long at court, from her childhood as page and then squire and now household knight, she didn’t have
quite
the awe of the Sword that most people did.

Not
quite
, and that still leaves a fair degree of awe. And not that I’d touch it willingly.

“Not recipes exactly, but sort of . . . an ideal of what food
is
. Or I think ‘hello’ and I know how to say hello to people of different ranks and in different circumstances and a whole bunch of stuff like that. I think ‘clothes’ and it’s various robes that come to mind, not a kilt or hose. Kimono just means
the thing you wear.
I get the language, and how to
use
it. It doesn’t . . . I mean, I still want bacon and eggs. But I can sort of . . . switch.”

“I don’t know what we’d do without the Sword this time. Though there’s the other stuff.”

“No need to mention that just yet, I think.”

They both nodded slightly. The bearer of the Sword of the Lady could detect falsehood—or as Rudi Mackenzie had put it, the speaker’s belief that what he was saying was false, the
intent
to deceive. Everyone in Montival knew that and virtually all of them had believed it by now; it had been a long time since anyone but foreigners and the densely stupid tried to lie to the High King. There was no need to explain that to their new . . .

Guests,
Heuradys decided.
Possibly allies, but not until we know a lot more.

“Is there anyone in Montival . . . besides you . . . who speaks Japanese?” she asked.

“Not that I know of, though there are almost certainly a few tucked away somewhere. Ones who learned from their grandparents.”

A weary smile; Órlaith hadn’t slept much. “Reiko . . . that’s her name, it means something like
Child of Courtesy
 . . . or possibly
Courteous Lady
 . . . actually speaks English quite well.”

“It didn’t sound like it!” Heuradys said.

She’d
thought
the woman was trying to say
Thank you very much
to the people who’d saved her outnumbered party from being overrun and slaughtered where they’d been brought to bay, but she hadn’t been at all certain, and she was well-traveled and versed in the weird and wonderful ways the English language had evolved in Montival since the Change. It was amazing what could happen to a language if a few hundred people were cut off from most outside contact for a half-century, and that was just accidental stuff and not counting deliberate alterations, which were also common.

“All right,
knows
English. She learned from people who’d learned from people who’d learned English as a second language. For someone who grows up hearing nothing but
nihongo
the sounds are difficult. She’s got the grammar and vocabulary quite well; it’s just a matter of learning to pronounce them.”

Edain came up and saluted briskly.

“Sir Aleaume has matters in hand; we’ll be ready to march as soon as breakfast is over, Princess,” he said. “And once we’ve talked to the foreigners.”

He scowled a little at that. Órlaith laid a hand on his arm below the short mail sleeve, where it was corded with muscle and scars.

“It’s not their fault, my old wolf,” she said. “And they suffered a like misfortune. We have a common enemy, at the very least.”

He drew a deep breath. “Yes. Yes. I saw the one who did it—”

And you put three clothyard arrows through him in less than three breaths,
Heuradys thought.

The commander of the guard regiment was known as Aylward
the
Archer for good reason.

I’d heard about you doing things like that in the
chansons
about the old wars, but I’d thought they were exaggerated. And the dead man didn’t stop moving. I’d
hoped
that
those
stories were exaggerated too, but apparently not.

“—and he was like a magus of the Church Universal and Triumphant; I haven’t seen the like since Corwin fell in the Prophet’s War, nor missed it, but it’s not something you forget. It was fated that your da would not live to see his beard go gray. It’s not just Fiorbhinn’s songs. The Chief told me so, long ago on the Quest. And not a month past, just before we came south . . . he told me he’d dreamed of wading across a river, and seeing blood flowing by his feet from the clothes an old woman beat on the rocks.”