Prince of Outcasts Read online

  ALSO BY S. M. STIRLING

  NOVELS OF THE CHANGE

  ISLAND IN THE SEA OF TIME

  AGAINST THE TIDE OF YEARS

  ON THE OCEANS OF ETERNITY

  DIES THE FIRE

  THE PROTECTOR’S WAR

  A MEETING AT CORVALLIS

  THE SUNRISE LANDS

  THE SCOURGE OF GOD

  THE SWORD OF THE LADY

  THE HIGH KING OF MONTIVAL

  THE TEARS OF THE SUN

  LORD OF MOUNTAINS

  THE GIVEN SACRIFICE

  THE GOLDEN PRINCESS

  THE DESERT AND THE BLADE

  NOVELS OF THE SHADOWSPAWN

  A TAINT IN THE BLOOD

  THE COUNCIL OF SHADOWS

  SHADOWS OF FALLING NIGHT

  OTHER NOVELS BY S. M. STIRLING

  THE PESHAWAR LANCERS

  CONQUISTADOR

  ROC

  Published by Berkley

  An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014

  Copyright © 2016 by S. M. Stirling

  Penguin Random House supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin Random House to continue to publish books for every reader.

  ROC with its colophon is a registered trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  The author acknowledges permission to use the following:

  “To Njord” © Diana L. Paxson

  Map by Jade Cheung

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Names: Stirling, S. M., author.

  Title: Prince of outcasts: a novel of the Change / S. M. Stirling.

  Description: New York City: New American Library, [2016] | Series: Change

  series; 10 | Description based on print version record and CIP data

  provided by publisher; resource not viewed.

  Identifiers: LCCN 2016019575 (print) | LCCN 2016012398 (ebook) | ISBN

  9781101603390 (ebook) | ISBN 9780451417374 (hardcover)

  Subjects: LCSH: Inheritance and succession—Fiction. | Regression

  (Civilization)—Fiction. | Voyages and travels—Fiction. | Kings and

  rulers—Fiction. | Princes—Fiction. | BISAC: FICTION / Alternative

  History. | FICTION / Fantasy / Epic. | GSAFD: Alternative histories

  (Fiction) | Fantasy fiction.

  Classification: LCC PS3569.T543 (print) | LCC PS3569.T543 P75 2016 (ebook) |

  DDC 813/.54—dc23

  LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016019575

  Jacket art by Larry Rostant

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Version_1

  To Jan, and it always feels good to say that

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Kier Salmon, unindicted co-conspirator, who has been my advisor and helper on the Change since the first.

  To Gina Tacconi-Moore, my niece, flower-girl at my wedding twenty-eight years ago, Queen of Physical Fitness and owner of CrossFit Lowell, who gave me some precise data on what a really fit young woman, such as herself, could do.

  To Steve Brady, native guide to Alba, for assistance with dialects and British background, and also natural history of all sorts.

  Pete Sartucci, knowledgeable in many aspects of Western geography and ecology, including the Mojave and Topanga.

  To Miho Lipton and Chris Hinkle, for help with Japanese idiom; and to Stuart Drucker, for assistance with Hebrew.

  Diana L. Paxson, for help and advice, and for writing the beautiful Westria books, among many others. If you like the Change novels, you’ll probably enjoy the hell out of the Westria books—I certainly did, and they were one of the inspirations for this series; and her Essential Ásatrú and recommendation of Our Troth were extremely helpful . . . and fascinating reading. The appearance of the name Westria in the book is no coincidence whatsoever. And many thanks for the loan of Deor Wide-Faring and Thora Garwood.

  To Dale Price, for help with Catholic organization, theology and praxis.

  To John Birmingham, aka that silver-tongued old rogue, King Birmo of Capricornia, most republican of monarchs.

  To Cara Schulz, for help with Hellenic bits, including stuff I could not have found on my own.

  To Lucienne M. Brown, Pacific Northwesterian and keen wit, for advice and comments.

  To Walter Jon Williams, Emily Mah, John Miller, Vic Milan, Jan Stirling, Sarena Ulibarri, Matt Reiten, Lauren Teffeau, and Shirl Sazynski of Critical Mass for constant help and advice as the book was under construction.

  Thanks to John Miller, good friend, writer and scholar, for many useful discussions, for lending me some great books, and for some really, really cool old movies.

  Special thanks to Heather Alexander, bard and balladeer, for permission to use the lyrics from her beautiful songs which can be—and should be!—ordered at http://faerietaleminstrel.com. Run, do not walk, to do so.

  To Alexander James Adams, for cool music, likewise: http://faerietaleminstrel .com/inside.

  To Johnny Clegg for permission to use the lyrics of his beautiful song “Digging for Words,” which can be found at www.johnnyclegg.com.

  Thanks again to William Pint and Felicia Dale, for permission to use their music, which can be found at www.pintndale.com and should be, for anyone with an ear and salt water in their veins.

  And to Three Weird Sisters—Mary Crowell, Brenda Sutton, and Teresa Powell—whose alternately funny and beautiful music can be found at http://www.threeweirdsisters.com.

  And to Heather Dale for permission to quote the lyrics of her songs, whose beautiful (and strangely appropriate!) music can be found at www.heatherdale.com, and is highly recommended. The lyrics are wonderful and the tunes make it even better.

  To S. J. Tucker for permission to use the lyrics of her beautiful songs, which can be found at http://sjtucker.com, and should be.

  And to Lael Whitehead of Jaiya, www.laelwhitehead.com, for permission to quote the lyrics of her beautiful songs. One of which became the Montivallan national anthem.

  Thanks again to Russell Galen, my agent, who has been an invaluable help, advisor and friend for decades now, and never more than in these difficult times. I’ve had good editors, but none who’ve helped my career and work as much.

  All mistakes, infelicities and errors are of course my own.

  CONTENTS

  ALSO BY S. M. STIRLING

  TITLE PAGE

  COPYRIGHT

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  MAP

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER
SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Visit http://bit.ly/29TNpx7 to view a larger, printable version of this map.

  CHAPTER ONE

  PARTICIPATORY DEMOCRACY OF TOPANGA

  (FORMERLY TOPANGA CANYON)

  CROWN PROVINCE OF WESTRIA

  (FORMERLY CALIFORNIA)

  HIGH KINGDOM OF MONTIVAL

  (FORMERLY WESTERN NORTH AMERICA)

  AUGUST/HAOCHIZUKI 26TH

  CHANGE YEAR 46/SHōHEI 1/2044 AD

  Prince John Arminger Mackenzie stood and sweated in his suit of chrome-steel plate, glad of the shade of the raised visor that stuck out from his flared sallet helm like the bill of the ritual cap baseball players wore. The fierce southland sun glittered off the rocky ground and sank into the faded asphalt of the ancient roadway and blinked in endless sparkles from the surface of the Pacific to the southward.

  There was a familiar smell of hot horse, hot human, sweat-soaked leather and metal greased with canola oil that always went slightly rancid, a composite scent common to wherever warriors gathered, no matter how polished their appearance; it was fairly powerful since his sister, their men-at-arms and crossbowmen and Mackenzie archers and McClintock caterans, the Japanese contingent and several hundred local levies from Topanga and the Chatsworth Lancers were all standing and sweltering together. The score of robed bnei Yaakov from the Mojave were a little to one side—a people apart—but their mounts added hot camel to the mix, which was indescribable.

  Despite the tension of the moment as everyone stared out over the water towards the quartet of enemy ships, he smiled to himself, remembering his parents inspecting troops once. That had also been on a hot day, in the County Palatine of Walla-Walla far up the Columbia. There had been a rather sheltered town-based cleric with them and he’d asked what the smell was. His mother had considered gravely for a moment, and said:

  “Esprit de corps.”

  She’d said it deadpan, but he’d noticed his father working hard at not bellowing with laughter.

  Today that familiar almost-stink went with the odd alien scents of fennel and sage that summer baked out of the chaparral here, harsh and spicy at once.

  We’re back in the stewpot just when we thought the adventure was over with, he thought. Though everything’s grist for the mill.

  He was a prince and warrior by birth—second child of the first High King and Queen of Montival—but a troubadour and bard by aspiration, and he could appreciate the irony of the situation from an artistic point of view. They’d dared the desert and the supernatural perils of the Valley of Death . . .

  Well, to be entirely fair, mostly Orrey and Reiko dared them in that last bit. Good ensemble cast, some comic relief from the heroic characters’ points of view, someone for the groundlings to identify with too . . .

  . . . they’d reclaimed the fabled Grass-Cutting Sword that their Nihonjin friends had crossed the sea to find, made unexpected allies of the desert-dwelling bnei Yaakov to bring it back through the desert and the just-barely-friendly lands of the Chatsworth Lancers and the Topangans . . . and now four enemy ships were sitting out there waiting for them, instead of the clear passage back to the northern heartlands of the realm that they’d expected.

  It would make an excellent startling reverse in the epical chanson he’d tentatively entitled The Desert and the Blade. A quiet interlude in the music, then a hint of doubt, minor key, crashing chords building to a crescendo—

  Artistically fine. In my all too mortal person, it’s a bloody menace. Not to mention those ugly-looking Eaters the Koreans have picked up from the Los Angeles ruins.

  The locals had a powerful pre-Change telescope set up. One look had been enough. The Korean vessels swarmed with the naked savages, scrawny and scarred and ferocious as great rats among the ordered, armored easterners. The diabolists could control them, somehow.

  This bunch look even worse than the ones we fought up on the Bay, and those were bad enough.

  He swallowed and blinked as the stink came back, and the screaming faces and the ugly feel of edged metal hammering into meat and bone vibrated up into his hand. And the taste, when a gout of blood landed on his face. He hadn’t had time to be frightened during the actual fighting, mostly that had been drilled reflex working.

  But the times in between the rushes waiting for the wild men to work themselves up to another attack and listening to their mad squealing brabble . . . that had been fairly bad. Having to keep up appearances had helped, and so had giving everyone some verses from La Chanson de Roland. He found that a bravura gesture could convince one’s own mind just as thoroughly as it did an audience.

  And the Koreans may not be savages, but they’re outright diabolists. Or at least their rulers and lords are.

  His eyes narrowed. It had been servants of the Korean ruler who killed his father the High King only a few months ago, a spillover of their long war with Dai-Nippon, and a chess-move in the game Heaven and the Malevolence were playing in the Changed world. There was a blood-debt yet unpaid. That would be part of the song too.

  “Reiko, can I borrow your Captain Ishikawa, and his men?” Crown Princess Órlaith said.

  John’s ears perked; when his older sister . . .

  . . . three years older. I’m almost twenty and it’s not as if we were children anymore . . .

  . . . adopted that crisp tone, things were about to happen. She sounded like their father when she used it, allowing for her being a woman of twentyone and not a man in his forties.

  The Empress of Dai-Nippon nodded decisively, and spoke a word of command to her followers. She was actually a little older than Órlaith, though her almost-delicate features made some layer of his mind see her as closer to his own nineteen summers. He’d been half in love with her since they met at Montinore Manor in June, when his sister had brought him into the conspiracy. It was more or less required of a young knight when confronted with a beautiful, absolutely unobtainable foreign princess. The romaunts made that clear enough. And of course her father had died in the same skirmish as his, just too late for rescue. He hadn’t been there, she had, and somehow that made her a link to that tremendous absence, the loss that still broke through the shell of his life at times with a jarring suddenness that he never expected.

  In actual fact as opposed to aesthetic theory he found her very capable, and very likeable on the rare occasions when she relaxed . . . and more than a little intimidating.

  “Johnnie,” Órlaith went on in a clipped tone.

  Her chiseled face was utterly intent as she weighed the situation. The cooler sea-breeze cuffed at the little wisps of sun-faded yellow hair that escaped her tightly-clubbed fighting braid; she took more after their father’s side of the family, while he had the hazel eyes and brown hair and blunter features of the Armingers. She was also an inch taller that he was, but since that made him a very respectable five-ten he didn’t mind.

  Come to think about it, she’s getting very focused too. Granted this is a good time for it.

  They’d always been fairly close, and the gap in their ages mattered less now. He gave her the Associate salute, a martial clank of gauntlet against breastplate.

  “Take Ishikawa and the Nihonjin sailors, and go there.”

  She pointed westward and downslope from the low ridge that bore the old coast road.

  “There are some longboats at the Topangans’ saltworks. Take them, and . . . the crossbowmen from the Protector’s Guard, and a few others, say four, pick them yourself. Feldman’s short-handed; you reinforce him. And tell him to be cooperating fully with the Stormrider.”

  He shot her a swift look of surprise; for weeks now they’
d been dodging the Royal Montivallan Navy warship their mother had sent to drag them back as if they were naughty toddlers to be hauled in by one ear. And there it was, to seaward of Captain Feldman’s Tarshish Queen, their own hired ship, which in turn was slowly cruising back and forth south of the four Korean ships at anchor just offshore.

  Órlaith stepped closer and spoke softly; there was no need to broadcast the facts about their little disagreement with their mother, High Queen Regnant Mathilda.

  “Johnnie, Reiko has her Sacred Treasure the now. We’ve done what we set out to do. Now we clear this up, go back to Mother, roll on our backs, wave our paws in the air and whimper for forgiveness. We’ll get it, too. Eventually.”

  He didn’t let the jolt of raw fear that image brought show on his face.

  I knew we’d have to confront Mother eventually. Ah, well, better to seek forgiveness than ask permission! And we did bring it off. Success has a thousand fathers and failure’s an orphan.

  “She’ll recognize a magic sword when she sees one!” his sister said, echoing his thought.

  Her hand rested on the moon-crystal pommel of the Sword of the Lady, the heirloom of their House that their father and mother had won on the Quest.

  “So will anyone with the least bit of the Sight, without Reiko having to do anything too . . . dramatic.”

  John gave the not-really-a-katana-anymore at Reiko’s side a glance and suppressed an impulse to cross himself. The Sword of the Lady was disturbing enough, but his Church officially regarded it as the gift of the Lady, Mary Queen of Heaven and Mother of God, which pagans like his father and sister unfortunately conflated with their mythology. Coming from a mixed family could be awkward at times; his mother was a devout Catholic, and he was too or tried to be, but Órlaith followed the Old Faith as their father had. It wasn’t like having the old wars of Clan and Association in the same household—the union of their parents had laid that to rest, with many other feuds—but it could be . . . difficult.

  Kusanagi-no-Tsurugi, the Grass-Cutting Sword, was something else entirely, altogether outside Montival’s complex of religions and all their mixed history and old grudges and sometimes grudging common life. As far as he could tell from what Órlaith and Reiko had let slip, the pieces of it had been absorbed into her Masamune sword as the Empress fought her way through that lost castle and his sister stood guard outside with the Lady’s blade. There had been something about a monster with eight heads as well. . . .