Prince of Outcasts

by S. M. Stirling

  “Uncle Ingolf’s always saying he wants to imitate a barnacle on a rock, and that travel is overrated, mostly being uncomfortable and bored when you’re not being chased by people trying to kill you, but he’s done it.”

  “Same here,” Suzie said. “Always wanted to travel, never got the chance until I, ah, sorta had to leave.”

  Everyone knew her folk were nomads; she went on at their look of surprise:

  “Yeah, we live in tents . . . ger, actually, some people call ’em yurts. Tipis are sorta for official stuff. And we move camp every couple of weeks in summer. But we move to the same places, mostly. Spring pasture, summer pasture, fall pasture, winter quarters . . . There’s the buffalo hunts, and that’s when the guys get to hunt and we butcher and scrape hides and make pemmican.”

  “I thought you hunted?” Faramir said.

  “Yeah, but I had to kick up a fuss and everyone looks at you funny. The festivals when everyone gets together for the ceremonies and meetings and dances are fun but it’s the same everyone you met last time, except for some traders trying to sell you stuff. A lot of the time it’s almost as boring as farming. Except for horse-stealing, that’s fucking exciting but mostly girls don’t get to do that either, which sucks, frankly. When the High King got me into the Crown Courier Corps I was happy as a colt in clover. Couriers get to go everywhere and see everything.”

  She gave an elbow to the Dúnedain on each side of her. “And you meet people!”

  The dessert was a tribute to Lady Delia’s sweet tooth; layers of dense chocolate cake soaked in a clear light cherry brandy that had a faint overtaste of almonds, separated by layers of sweetened whipped cream and brandied cherries, frosted on the sides with chocolate and topped with more of the cherries and cream and chocolate shavings. Heuradys took a substantial wedge of it and began to chuckle again. When Droyn looked at her:

  “My lady mother Mom One absolutely loves this stuff. Because, well, Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte.”

  Órlaith forced herself not to choke on her piece. Heuradys had once told her that when they were both in their cups her birth mother had confessed with a giggle that she’d had her first experience of this cake when Tiphaine gave her one as a present on her nineteenth birthday. The cake had been presented when they were in bed, and ever since she’d associated it with piling one pleasure on another.

  “So we have it fairly often,” Heuradys said, smiling fondly as you did at a pleasant family memory. “And she takes this little tiny piece, looks at it, pats her waistline, and eats it one teensy particle at a time. The rest of us around the table, Mom Two and Lioncel and Diomede and me and Evil Small Sis would have big slices and be scarfing it down and she looks like she’s going to cry, and Mom Two says she can always spend two or three hours a day running up and down stairs in armor or hunting boar and then Mom One just glares at us.”

  Everyone laughed, though Sir Droyn looked as if he was feeling a little shocked too, or at least thought he should be.

  “Your lady mother the Countess has a most uncommonly genteel figure,” he said. “Spectacular, even, for a lady of her years.”

  “Sure she does, Droyn. She’s as disciplined as a knight. But she has to work at it. And not in the way most people do.”

  Which for the overwhelming majority meant long hours of sweating-hard labor nearly every day. For that matter, given what chocolate and sugar cost, nobody but a noble or a very wealthy merchant could afford to have this sort of dish often enough to be a problem. That reminded Órlaith of an early memory.

  “I remember something Grandmother Juniper said once, that half the people in her coven had weight problems before the Change—I think that’s how they said were fat back then—but that none of the ones still alive did a year later. She said it was a case of be as you wish to seem.”

  Somehow that led to talking about being and seeming and that to the theatre season in Portland, which Alan Thurston had heard of and was eager to hear compared to its competitors in Boise and Corvallis.

  “I’ve only read plays, really,” he said wistfully. “Though I’d love to see professionals stage them.”

  “You don’t get strolling companies, or even tinerants?” Droyn asked; both were common in the Willamette and up the Columbia.

  Alan’s smile turned a little sour. “At our ranch, we visit neighbors maybe once a month, and we see real outsiders . . . oh, three times a year. One to buy our wool and steers, one to deliver a pack-train of what we need to buy, and once to collect the taxes. And we go to the county Ready Reserve militia musters, at the same time as the County Fair. Hali’s . . . remote. Nobody had used that land since before the Change, and not much then.”

  More cheerfully: “I used to go outside past the horse barn where nobody could hear and do the parts myself:

  “Along the shore the cloud waves break,

  The twin suns sink behind the lake,

  The shadows lengthen in Carcosa—”

  “Taking in some shows ought to be possible, even off-season. They say you can find anything in Portland,” Heuradys said.

  Alan’s smile turned slightly bitter again. “Then maybe I can find . . . someone who repairs reputations.”

  He nodded upward at the captured banners; in the dark space beneath the rafters you could somehow sense the tatters and the old dark-brown stains where warriors had fought over them savagely, hand-to-hand, and where the vanquished had fallen bleeding to death on the cloth at the last.

  “God, how I hate those people . . . those things behind the people. They’re the ones who really killed my father. He was an ambitious man and maybe a ruthless one, but he was a man, and a great one, before they got their hooks into him.”

  Then he collected himself, rose and bowed. “Many thanks for your hospitality again, Lady Heuradys, and for a delightful evening, Your Highness.”

  “The Steward can find you a room, Rancher Thurston,” Heuradys said. “We’re not crowded!”

  “I appreciate the offer, but it might be better if I don’t sleep beneath your rooftree, my lady. Causing you trouble would be poor repayment for your generosity. I’ll camp with my troop; if I’m to lead them in battle, I should share their hardships.”

  That was, of course, unanswerable; even if sleeping in a hayloft on a summer night after a good dinner wasn’t much of a hardship. When he had gone, Heuradys cocked an eyebrow and glanced after him and then at the Sword where it stood on the polished, carved ashwood of the rack behind them. She knew it and its powers and limitations as well as anyone outside the Royal kindred, and she knew that the truth-sensing remained when it wasn’t underhand, fading and blurring with distance.

  “He was certainly sincere about hating the CUT,” Órlaith said.

  “Well, he’d be the heir of Boise, but for them,” Heuradys said.

  “And sincere in general. But . . . unspoken reservations.”

  Her knight nodded. “Well, who doesn’t have those? Do you think your mother will let him fight? He has gone around his uncle President Fred. Gone over his head, in a sense. If he does well in the field it’ll be impossible to keep him out watching the grass grow and the cows shit for the rest of his life.”

  “Possibly he’s gone around Fred by prior arrangement with people in Boise. Probably Fred himself, even if nobody spelled it out.”

  “Hints and machinations,” Heuradys agreed.

  “He’s his father’s son, but he’s Fred’s nephew, and Fred’s the sort of man who’ll remember that. Doing it under the table, maybe? So Victoria won’t know until it’s too late.”

  Heuradys shuddered slightly. Victoria Thurston was a Rancher’s daughter from the Powder River south and east of the old Montana border. The CUT had killed her father and run her off her family’s land during the war, which was how she’d met the Questers, and she had a ferociously straightforward view of what was best done with enemies . . . or t
heir heirs.

  “You saw Alan’s retainers?” Órlaith went on.

  “I did, briefly, and they were doing a little target practice to keep their hands in. Quite good of their kind for cow-country horse archers, from what I could see, and well mounted and armed. Maybe I’ll go take a closer look after dinner.”

  “Then I think Mother will let him. Another troop of good light cavalry is always welcome. She’ll hope he gets heroically and conveniently killed down fighting the Eaters in Westria or across the sea, but she won’t put him in the way of it. Fighting’s a dangerous occupation all on its own, without any of that . . . what’s that story the Christians tell? From the Jewish part of their Bible?”

  “Uriah the Hittite,” Heuradys supplied.

  “Just so, without any funny business of that not-very-funny kind, so to say. And that may occur to Victoria too, after a while, that it might. She’s a bit bloodthirsty, but no fool. Sharp as Fred, sharper possibly.”

  Heuradys yawned. “We should turn in. We need to make an early start on doing nothing tomorrow. We could take some falcons out, for example. Or see if there’s a polo match going . . . No, not until the autumn maneuvers are over. Maybe hunt some antelope?”

  “It’s a hard job but, sure, someone must slog through, and it’s up to us,” Órlaith paused. “I wonder what in Anwyn’s name Johnnie’s up to?”

  “And with who?” Heuradys said, watching as Faramir and Suzie and Morfind sauntered off, hand in hand, and the Mackenzies and the house retainers and the Boisean horse-soldiers started to sing.

  “Let’s just hope it involves more fornication than decapitation,” Órlaith said. “We’ll be feeling the consequences fairly soon, I think.”

  “See you later, then,” Heuradys said.

  * * *

  I’m awake, she thought, several hours later.

  Heuradys had shown up a while ago smiling a revoltingly smug smile and with bits of hay in her hair. She was snoring slightly in the other bed, sleeping turned on her left side with one hand under the pillow, resting on the hilt of her knife. Órlaith swung her feet to the floor, feeling oddly reluctant to look back, and walked over to the French doors on tile that felt cool to her feet. They’d been left slightly ajar for the night breezes, and she walked out onto the balcony. Nobody was about in the courtyard below, though there would be two of her party on guard at the foot of the stairs under the arcade below. Moonlight played on the water splashing from a fountain in the middle of the long narrow pool that ran down the center of the rectangular space.

  She looked up. The black of the stars moved against the sky, in patterns obscurely meaningful. A tower rose in a field of dark flowers, and huge blurred columnar shapes with the heads of bats or twisted dogs floated around it, slowly turning so that their blank yellow eyes glared in her direction. They started to drift towards her. The moon was huge and full beyond the wall southward, and behind it were the spires of a city. . . .

  “Whoa!” she said.

  She jerked upright in bed and pressed her hands to the sides of her head. Macmac whimpered and twitched in his basket by the door.

  “Wazzat?” Heuradys said, opening her eyes without moving her head.

  “Nothing, just a dream . . . Can’t even remember the details.”

  She sank back and closed her eyes. Soft music fell down the stairs of sleep with her, past long terraces of pink stone to a cerulean sea where Johnnie’s ship ghosted along with all sails set.

  CHAPTER NINE

  ABOARD THE TARSHISH QUEEN

  CERAM SEA

  OCTOBER 21ST

  CHANGE YEAR 46/2044 AD

  John’s fingers moved on the lute as he sang softly in the darkness, leaning against one of the catapults; Thora was lying on the deck nearby, fingers laced behind her head. Deor had his harp Golden Singer out, and Ruan his flute, and they were letting the tune wander between them as they worked their hands supple again after a spell on the pumps.

  Night and mist enclosed the Tarshish Queen, lit only by gleams from the stern lanterns that sparkled on the drops hanging from the star-tracery of rope and rigging, amid quiet creaks and a faint chuckle from beneath the bows and a gentle whisper of the wind. The words shaped themselves to the sounds:

  “Willows whiten, aspens quiver,

  Little breezes dusk and shiver

  Through the wave that runs forever

  By the island in the river,

  Down to towered Todenangst.

  Sometimes a troop of damsels glad,

  An abbot on an ambling pad,

  Sometimes a laughing shepherd-lad,

  Or long-haired page in crimson clad,

  Goes by to towered Todenangst;

  And sometimes by the river blue

  The knights come riding, two and two . . .”

  “Ah, now that is music,” Deor said, when they’d stopped, and Thora sighed wordlessly. “That’s your grandparents’ dream turned to air and song.”

  “Not my lyrics, mostly,” John said. “An old poet of the ancients, singing of King Arthur’s court. I just reshaped it a bit. And I had a hint on the tune; my aunt Fiorbhinn said someone had sung a bit of it from memory—badly—when she was a child, and she’d always wanted to make something of it but never had the time. She gave me the little fragment she had.”

  “All honor to her as a maker, and she taught me much. But by Woden who sends the mead of poetry to men, you made this,” Deor said.

  Ruan spoke up unexpectedly. “It’s the Prince’s grandparents’ dream—his mother’s parents. But it’s the best of it. The beauty and the gallantry beneath. And that’s why they built better than they knew with their waking minds, or even intended. That’s what has lasted when the rest was burned away by time and war.”

  Deor nodded soberly and carefully wiped down the harp with a special cloth before he snapped it into its padded leather case. John did the same before he put Azalaïs into the case Evrouin held out. He’d let the valet handle it a few times, which he’d done quite competently, but found himself reluctant to do that when Deor was around.

  He sets a high standard, as a troubadour, John thought whimsically. And when you’re around a man like that, you . . . just don’t want to let the side down.

  The First Mate went by, pulling on his long shirt as he did, his feet still wet from the hold. They all glanced at each other and waited in silence; they were just under the break of the quarterdeck, and they could hear a conversation by the wheel.

  “She’s gained another foot overnight, Cap’n,” Radavindraban said. “The pumps are indeed going flat-out, but they cannot keep pace.”

  John rose, as if casually, and went up the quarterdeck ladder himself; he had that privilege, as Prince or perhaps just as the one who’d chartered the ship, as long as he kept out of the way. Thora and Deor did too, as very old friends of the Captain.

  Feldman gave them a glance and then nodded to his first officer.

  “Then we’re beaching her today, like it or not,” he said. A grim smile. “On the bottom, if nowhere else.”

  There was a thick mist, curling around the Tarshish Queen like darker tendrils in the gray light of predawn, and John was glad of his arming doublet. There was a damp chill to the air now, despite the tropic heat he knew was coming. The ship was silent save for its eternal creak and groan, and the rhythmic thumping of the pumps and the splash of water jetting overside. The motion beneath their feet was perceptibly different from the big schooner’s usual light dance with the waters, a sluggish check to the roll as the liquid weight surged through the hold and ran inches deep on its planking. It would have been worse if the ship had been carrying cargo there as usual, rather than just people and their supplies.

  “I’d really rather not go for a swim around here, Captain,” John said lightly. “Considering the sort of thing they have in the water.”

 
A few within hearing smiled, but only Thora Garwood’s chuckle was heartfelt. There hadn’t been any sign of the monster saltie, but none of them had forgotten it. In a few months it would be a valuable prop in tales told in longshore bars provided that they ever saw one again, but right now the memory was entirely too fresh. Deor was at least as courageous, but he’d obviously sensed something about the animal that wasn’t of the world of common day. So had John, but he didn’t want to think about it. It was hard not to, drifting over a dark ghost sea through the mist, as if they were on some voyage in Limbo that would never end. In fact they had less time than that; the sail they’d fothered over the leak was pressed away from the hull whenever they made any progress forward. The winds had been faint and irregular, but a flat calm wouldn’t save them, just make sinking slower. Those triangular fins were still out there.

  “There’s land nearby,” Feldman said. “I can smell it, even if we’re not sure on the charts.”

  John breathed in deeply. There were the usual smells of wood and tarred cordage and the breakfast hash frying, crumbled ship’s biscuit and salt beef, and the slightly stale brine of the bilges—much cleaner because of the flow-through between leak and pumps. Perhaps there was a hint of something else, something between rotting fish and hot sand and compost, but it was nothing like the cool fir-sap scent you mostly got off Montival’s coasts, or the dry rock and fennel of the far southern reaches they’d left. Or it could be his imagination.

  “Aye, Cap’n, maybe,” Radavindraban said doubtfully. “The islands don’t move, but the shoals do, and the reefs grow fast this past while. Bad sightings these last few days, too.”

  “That’s why we’ll have soundings, Mr. Mate.”

  Silence fell again, broken every few minutes by the cry of the leadsman in the bows: “No bottom! No bottom at forty fathom!”

  Then another cry came from the lookout at the masthead. “Light! A light!”

  John’s breath caught. That brought every head up, and the Captain’s speaking-trumpet. “What light, and where away?”