“Such a surprise I got that aide-de-camp job,” Heuradys added contentedly, eating a morsel.
“Well, the General Staff—” Órlaith began.
“Meaning Mom Two. It would take a brave general to cross her, my liege!”
“—offered to let you lead a menie from Barony Ath instead,” Órlaith observed, and Heuradys rolled her eyes.
“As in the Platonic Ideal of pro forma offer,” she said. “My beloved brother Diomede has that job, and welcome he is. He should, anyway, he’s the heir to the barony and he had field experience as a junior officer towards the end of the Prophet’s War, when he was Mom Two’s squire for a while. It’s hard on Ysabeau and the kids, but hey, that’s part of being a baron. She’s going to settle down with Mom One for another course of intensive how-to-administer-a-barony instruction, together with a social whirl, and trying to prevent my lady Mom One from totally spoiling the grandkids.”
The grin grew a little wider, and a teasing light came into her eyes; not cruel, but slightly wicked.
“I notice that Alan Thurston did get a company command, light cavalry scouts.”
“It’s fitting, given his birth, and I think he’ll do it well,” Órlaith said.
“And that company is part of the central reserve, so he’ll be close to your Royal headquarters,” Heuradys began. “Not to mention close to your Royal hind—”
Órlaith held up a hand. “And please, spare me the next cavalry joke, and the cracks about riding well.”
“Well, he does,” Heuradys said loftily. “If very briefly, in my case. The things I do for my liege.”
“Or in this case, don’t do. There are some things even vassal and liege shouldn’t share. It would be unsanitary.”
Reiko hid her laugh, mildly shocked. She’d never had young women friends she could relax and gossip and tease with. At home that wasn’t really possible for someone in her position; sisters weren’t the same, however dear, and they were all younger than her anyway.
“Could be worse,” Heuradys said cheerfully, finishing the last of her sea bream. “You and Reiko here could have fallen in love. Mom One would have loved the tragic romantic thrill of contemplating it, but think of the scandal! Among the Catholics, particularly; they still give my parents grief occasionally and we’re a lot less conspicuous than monarchs.”
“Itai!” Reiko said in horror, and did laugh at that. “Even more scandal in my home! Not as bad as it would be if Órlaith were a man, but even so . . . a terrible, terrible scandal. Unthinkable.”
The thought of the Empress being involved with a foreign lover was mind-boggling; she felt an impulse to keep giggling, as much nervousness as humor.
“Do your parents arrange for your marriage here?” she asked curiously instead.
There hadn’t been time to talk of such things before. Negotiations among parents were the usual form at home, though in her case it hadn’t arisen and there had been covert speculation that she wouldn’t wed at all, leaving the continuance of the line to her sisters. There had been occasional ruling empresses before her, but her own grandmother had been one of the very few such to hand down the Chrysanthemum Throne to the child of her own body. Before the Meiji lawmakers copied the German succession law—before the West—it had been merely usual for the Tennō Heika’s child to succeed, rather than a nephew or such, not a fixed rule. If your grandparent or great-grandparent had sat the Chrysanthemum Throne you were eligible. That had led to problems too—in particular, it had made it possible for the ambitious to find puppet Emperors to use as a façade.
Perhaps we should adopt the same system as the Montivallans, she thought. With the eldest child taking the Throne, but regardless of male or female. Hmmm. It might be fortunate if I were to have only daughters. Then I could make a decree, and since there would be no son in any case it would arouse little opposition, and by the time my successor had heirs everyone would be used to it. I will discuss it with Mother. Such things require a delicate touch.
“It differs from realm to realm, like everything else in Montival,” Órlaith said. “Among Mackenzies, no—nor McClintocks. Nor in Corvallis or Boise. Not formally, at least, though there are often sort of understandings between kindred. I think the folk of New Deseret have some sort of system where younger people are introduced at Church meetings.”
“Among Associates, yes, sometimes, since so much in the way of politics and power and property are involved, but it’s more a matter of the parents seeing that the youngsters meet the right people so they think it’s their idea,” Heuradys said. “Got the idea from old books, my lady Mom One tells me.”
“Not the only case where they did that!” Órlaith snorted. “The Protectorate is an old book—and a historical novel, at that.”
“Yes, but it’s Jane Austen in that particular case, not Sir Walter Scott or Cecelia Holland or Alfred Duggan or Bujold or Barringer,” Heuradys said. “If you’re a Count’s heir, there just aren’t that many right people even now. God, some of the intrigues . . .”
“Your father didn’t make alliances for your brothers, did he?” Órlaith said.
Reiko remembered that Rigobert de Stafford was a great daimyo, Count of Campscapell, though she hadn’t met him yet. Heuradys was the adoptive child of her second mother, too.
“Or your mothers,” Órlaith added.
Heuradys smiled fondly. “M’lord Dad found the whole thing funny and washed his hands of it when the subject came up; he said that if he’d known reproduction was going to make life so complicated he might have had second thoughts, even via a kitchen appliance. Mom One started making wedding plans—she loves weddings—whenever Lioncel or Diomede wore some maiden’s favor to a tournament, until Mom Two threatened to go on a year-long hunting trip to Dawson and take them both along.”
Reiko joined the laugh. She wasn’t in the least shocked by the domestic arrangements of House d’ Ath or de Stafford. Among her people shudō, love between men of the warrior class, usually an older mentor and a younger man, had a long and honored history; it didn’t affect matters of marriage and children, of course. The custom had returned since the Change, along with much else. The equivalent among women had traditionally been considered so unimportant in the larger scheme of things that before the West came there hadn’t even really been a special name for such things; it was just something that one did do or didn’t do according to inclination and circumstances.
They fell silent for a moment as the maids replaced the sakizuke with the hassun course—named for the measurements of the tray, eight sun on each side. This had a selection of small pieces of grilled octopus on octopus eggs and rice, and lily root with salted plums—always one of her favorites, and she hadn’t thought you could get lily root here. The chef was a man of great energy to locate it, especially considering that he didn’t speak the language.
“Now, that’s interesting,” Heuradys said after the first morsel. “Normally octopus is like trying to chew off someone’s ear, but this is exquisite.”
Reiko made a small tsk sound. “So sorry, but people here really don’t know how to handle seafood well. Too much cooking. And putting cream sauces on it . . .” She shuddered.
The Mukōzuke course came next, in two parts; three small slices of salmon each and then three of kampachi—amberjack—served with fresh grated wasabi and a bright shiso emulsion and tamari. All three of the young women concentrated for a moment on the complex medley of flavors and how they complemented one another. That was respect to the cook’s skill, and to the kami of earth and sea who had provided the ingredients. To despise food, or to take it for granted, was to despise life itself. Their grandparents had seen what happened when Earth withheld Her gifts.
When they had finished it and were cleaning their palates with a little plain rice—how odd it still was to think of rice as an exotic foreign luxury!—Reiko hesitated, then spoke:
“
Orrey-chan . . . there is something that has occurred to me since we came north again. Your mother . . . understand, I do not blame her . . . I sense that she cannot help thinking that if we Nihonjin had not come to these shores, pursued by our enemies, your father would still be alive. Yet though your loss is as terrible as my own, I do not think you have ever felt so, or blamed us. Why is that?”
I might have blamed you Montivallans for coming just a moment too late to save Father, if it had not been that your sire fell also, she thought, with a trace of hidden shame.
Órlaith sighed and looked down at the table for a moment; she and Heuradys still made more eye contact when talking than a Nihonjin found comfortable, but Reiko had become accustomed to it as she had to the odd catlike eye colors of blue and amber.
“I think . . . that’s because Mother is a Christian. I knew in my bones that he was fated; so did he, for he’d had it from the Powers themselves that he would fall in battle before his hair went gray, the which he’d never kept secret. And . . . not long before he died, he pulled the first gray hair from his beard, and then saw the Washer at the Ford in his dreams.”
At her puzzlement Órlaith chuckled sadly, and spoke in Nihongo for a moment: “Ah, and we’re close enough something in me forgets at times that you weren’t raised here.”
Then in English again: “Among Mackenzies . . . and McClintocks too, it goes back to the old Gael . . . There’s a belief that if you dream you’re crossing a river and see an old woman washing a shirt at a ford with blood running downstream from it . . . well, the clothes are yours. A sign, and that sign is of death not long delayed.”
Reiko shivered slightly, as at the touch of something cold on the back of her neck. You didn’t need a miko, a shrine-maiden, to interpret a dream like that for you!
“You were expecting . . . What happened, then?” she said.
“No. That is . . . sometime, yes, sometime soon; but not just then, for he didn’t tell me. Or Mother. The one because he didn’t want to spoil our last time together, the trip to Westria, by making my grief start early.”
Reiko nodded somberly. “Hai! I feared for my father constantly on our voyage, but that was a matter of war anyway. If I had known . . .”
“And he didn’t tell Mother for the same reason and because she was pregnant and because . . . well, she is a Christian. He knew that the time had come when the King must die that the folk might live, and the land be renewed by the willing sacrifice of his blood. So it was he walked to the Dark Mother consenting, with a smile, savoring every moment the more because it might be the very last.”
“Clotho spins, Lachesis measures, Atropos cuts,” Heuradys said with a sigh. “We don’t choose our fate, only how we meet it.”
Softly she went on: “And you did that well indeed, my King. In your dying you united your people for this war. Your spirit will lead us, as well as the heir of your blood.”
Órlaith was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. But the White Christ’s followers don’t think that way, despite the fact that He did the very same thing. And had foretelling of it from His Father.”
“Strange people, Christians,” Heuradys agreed. “Even my own relatives.”
“It is easier for us, since everyone follows the Way of the Gods in Japan,” Reiko said. “Well, and we honor the Way of the Buddha too, of course.”
A mixture of the two had been her people’s manner of dealing with the divine and the world of spirit for a very long time. Since the Change the balance had swung heavily to the older, native Shinto side of the mixture, but the Eightfold Way was far too closely woven into the fabric of Nihon to ever be removed.
Órlaith went on: “She’d have driven herself frantic trying to avoid it. He told Edain, and Uncle Wolf told me afterwards. He was Father’s right-hand man and battle comrade, and his heart-brother since they were children.”
“Like you and Heuradys-gozen,” Reiko said, and Órlaith nodded.
“Father knew that if you run from your fate, you run towards it, for it’s always before you, waiting, whichever way you turn,” she said.
“Hai, very true,” Reiko agreed.
Grief never went away; hers for her father was still a dull ache. But it did . . . get out of the way of things as time went on, so that it no longer required a mental effort like battle to deal with normal life.
The takiawase course was traditionally items cooked in broth separately and combined just before serving; this was fried tofu balls with prawns, something very like home’s black fungus, and ginkgo nuts and water chestnuts simmered in broth.
“Yoshihito always loved ginkgo nuts,” she said with a sigh.
The conversation had reminded her of how she’d lost him twice, when his ship disappeared, and again more terribly when trying to hold the unsheathed Grasscutter Sword had burned him to talc-fine ash in an instant. That had proved him corrupted by his captivity; Kusanagi itself had chosen which of her generation was worthy of the Chrysanthemum Throne. But with the pain she would also remember there had been gratitude in the last look on his face. She would remember that until her own death. Only that made it bearable at all.
“When we were both very young . . . I remember he would ask for them and pout a little when he couldn’t have them all the time.”
“Why not?” Órlaith asked.
“They cause convulsions,” Reiko said, then smiled with a flash of amusement as Heuradys stopped with one halfway to her lips. “Only if you eat them all the time and while you are young,” she added.
She finished the motion and ate it, but Reiko thought her enthusiasm had diminished, and suppressed an impulse to giggle.
The futamoto course in its elegantly simple lidded stoneware bowls was soup made from suppon, what the Montivallans called snapping turtle, which turned out to be very common here. The broth was gelatinous and silky, and viscous enough for the little bits of sweet corn, winter melon, snap peas, scallops and tiger prawns to appear suspended in time and place.
“Now that’s a winter soup,” Órlaith said appreciatively.
They chatted through the other courses; the real meat of the meeting had been Órlaith’s appointment, conveyed to Reiko first by her own words as a mark of regard. It came to Reiko with a shock that she was going to miss Órlaith very badly when the war was over. And Heuradys and the others as well.
Or perhaps really the freedom of action I had here.
“It was a feast,” the two Montivallans said as the last trays were removed, which was both polite and in this case literally true, and prepared to make their good-byes.
Then there was a brief scuffle at the door.
“Kiwako!” a young woman called in Nihongo. “Kiwako, you wicked little gaki, come back—oh, masaka! No, not there!”
A child just past the toddler stage ran through, with a maid in close pursuit. The little girl in her colorful double kimono over a shift plumped herself down in seiza and made a fair approximation of an obeisance, then gave a brilliant gap-toothed grin. She was shooting up, already taller and a little plumper than the skinny feral thing Reiko had found chained by an ankle amid the cyst-like horrors of the castle in the Valley of Death.
“Majesty! So sorry!” the maid said. “She scampers about like . . . like . . .”
“Like a scampering child,” Reiko said indulgently. “I seem to remember one named . . . oh, I think her given name was Misako . . . who was prone to that. Even to climbing through windows from trees. Scandalous!”
The maid of honor, who was twelve and who of course had been that girl a few years ago, sighed almost inaudibly and waited with patience. Most Nihonjin were mild with young children, however stern life became later, and the Heavenly Sovereign Majesty favored the Gaijin infant.
Kiwako—Reiko had given her the name, for she had had none in that place of abominations—was still slender, but longer-faced and bigger-nosed than a
Japanese infant, pale and ginger-haired and green-eyed. To modern Nihonjin eyes she looked like a fox, or the fox spirits who went by the same name, which was why Reiko had carefully avoided calling her Kitsune, except sometimes as a joke between them in private. The name she had bestowed meant One Born on a Border, among other things, and was entirely fitting. She had been born in a shadowy place between worlds.
Kiwako had just called herself th’kid, and had not even imagined other children.
“Heika!” she said; that was the polite informal form of address, but Reiko rather thought Kiwako used the title as she would have a given name. “I had dinner! There was noodles and miso and piece fish and pickles!”
Precisely what I was hoping for, Reiko thought fondly, as she absently corrected the child’s grammar.
Food was still a wonder to Kiwako; as the youngest and last descendant of the little clan who’d been trapped in the lost castle—descendants and slayers of the man who’d stolen the Grasscutter Sword from Nihon after the Pacific War—she’d grown up eating insects and vermin and possibly other things. She was already forgetting and the nightmares growing less, but nourishment fit for a human being still delighted her. So did clothes, bathing, and language—she’d had a little slurred English to begin with, but in the months since she had absorbed Nihongo like a sponge soaking up water.
The child shuffled sideways on her knees and leaned into Reiko, a small solid weight, her hair bound back and smelling of herbal wash. The contrast with the filthy feral creature she’d met was utter . . . but it had been that creature who warned her in time to turn a descending blade. She put an arm around the girl’s shoulders. Versions of that crucial aid had also passed to the newcomers from home, and everyone had seen how the Tennō helped the girl make offerings to Inari Okami. Who was patroness of rice and swordsmiths . . . and served by white foxes who were Her messengers and agents.
Little Fox, your life will not always be easy in Dai-Nippon, however much I protect you. We of the Land of the Gods have never been a folk easy with outsiders, and now less so than ever. But with Inari as your guardian, it will be easier than it might. And many fear my namesake the Ghost Fox.
Prince of Outcasts Page 39
