The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) Read online

  You must prepare, my Reiko-chan, he’d said to her privately then, after they’d knelt in silence for a while with the blade between them. So that for those yet unborn there may be the brush and the poem and the chanoyu, for us today there must be a sword in the hand. And in our souls, the steel.

  The only time she hadn’t actually had live steel on her person since were occasions of State when protocol dictated that an attendant walk behind her with the weapon just ready to her hand.

  Egawa seemed to read something of her thoughts. He inclined his head before he went on more lightly:

  “There’s even a field outside for besuboru.”

  “Ah, they play that here?” Reiko said.

  It was the most popular non-martial sport back home; she enjoyed it occasionally herself.

  “Yes, a few differences in the rules but the same game. And the local people are friendly—in fact some—”

  He coughed. Reiko smiled without showing it in the slightest. If she had been a man he was reporting to, even so exalted a man as her father, he would have joked about how friendly some of the local peasant girls had been to the exotic and romantic visitors. Instead he went on with scarcely a stumble:

  “In fact, the food is too good, if anything. Like festival food. I haven’t eaten so much gyoza and yakiniku and tonkatsu on successive days in my whole life. Captain Nakamura is working them hard, he’s fully recovered from his wounds and it was best to give two days complete rest anyway, but it might be good to suggest something plainer for everyday diet.”

  Reiko nodded gravely. The Montivallans had somehow found a couple of Japanese cooks—they didn’t look very Japanese, and none of them spoke the language beyond words relating to the kitchen and they mispronounced those, but they could produce something quite like the fancier varieties of the homeland’s style. Except that rice was regarded as a luxury product here, which was a major distinction: her language used the same word for cooked rice and meal, but noodles were a perfectly acceptable substitute. Nothing except the raw fish was of precisely the same taste or texture as it would have been at home, but it was much easier for her followers than dealing with a completely alien cuisine.

  Which is important not for itself, but again as a gesture, she thought. I am not sure we would have been so thoughtful to strangers, in such a crisis. Of course, we have less to spare and we are not in a position to choose peace or war as we please and as we think honor dictates.

  She was stretching herself and trying the local dishes. Some of the foods were just horrible—the pungent cheeses came in that category in her opinion—and some were treacherous; ice cream tasted delicious but gave her nasty stomachaches. Others were quite pleasant once you deliberately stopped looking for the familiar. The scrambled eggs with scallions, for instance, or sweet rolls with raisins.

  Egawa’s thoughts had been running parallel to hers. “Majesty, as far as gaijin know how, they are treating us like greatly honored guests.”

  He’d been particularly pleased when he learned the set of rooms she’d been given was called the Royal Suite and used when the monarchs of this land and their kin came calling on the barons of Ath.

  He went on: “They are doing that though we have brought them terrible misfortune. Why? They revered their High King much as we did Saisei Tenno, I can see that now. And they know we are weaker than they; you can tell they’re surprised anything civilized survived in Japan at all.”

  This path to the salle ran down a steep slope, terraced with stone retaining walls; the flat spaces created were planted in colorful flowers, red-and-white komakusa, which they called bleeding heart here, blue-and-white columbine, fuchsia, lupine, hollyhocks and more between neatly trimmed lilac bushes. They trotted easily down the steep switchback stairs, treating going downhill as a rest and timing their words to their deep controlled breath. At first glance it was just the local love of masses of very vivid colors, until you noticed the swarms of bees, colorful moths and butterflies, and—

  “Uso!” Reiko exclaimed in delight. “I don’t believe it!”

  They both stopped, to stare at a swarm of astonishing little birds smaller than her thumb, hovering as they stuck their slender beaks into the flowers. Their wings blurred like those of bees or dragonflies as they did, but they were unquestionably birds, not insects. One of them came and did a slow circuit around her head only a few inches away, a brilliant tiny orange jewel making a humming sound like a giant bee. Then it zipped back towards the flowers. They seemed to be combative little things, buzzing about in furious challenge if another came near their chosen blossom, pursuing each other through the garden in aerial dances of angry grace.

  “Ijona,” she murmured, smiling a little; even the eyes of the grim Guard samurai swiveled a little.

  “Extraordinary, Majesty,” Egawa agreed. “I think these plantings are for these . . . little creatures.”

  She frowned slightly as they turned and resumed their trot, and the previous conversation: “I think . . . I think they do think of us as honored guests. It is extremely important to them that when we met we fought the same enemy.”

  “Hai, Heika,” Egawa said; he could understand that in his bones.

  “And they . . . most of them, Crown Princess Órlaith in particular . . . do not blame us for her father’s death. They blame the jinnikukaburi—it helps much that their Haida enemies were at the side of the ones who killed him. He had fought these pirates before, when he was a young man, and since. Everyone here knows they are enemies, so any allies of theirs would be the same. And I think the Princess sympathizes with us . . . with me particularly . . . since we have suffered the same loss at the same hands. I understand; I feel much the same. Her father seems to have been a man of . . . exemplary character, to judge from his accomplishments.”

  She felt half-admiring, half-resentful about that.

  My father was a very great man, wise and strong, gentle when he could be and hard when he must, she thought. Truly and justly his era is called Rebirth. He never ceased to work for our people, night and day. He died for them. But what he was able to accomplish was so . . . so cramped by comparison to what Órlaith’s could do. Fate was less kind to him than he deserved.

  Railing against Fate was unbecoming futility, and resenting the Montivallans for their better fortune would be ungracious and foolish . . . but she had to fight the temptation.

  “You can judge a man by the hole his going leaves in the world,” Egawa agreed, and grunted thoughtfully again. “I wish we could make some definite alliance, Majesty.”

  “So do I. Grand Steward Koyama has been sounding out Marshal d’Ath.”

  “Good, though I wish my English was capable of handling subtleties so that I could join them.”

  He added dryly: “At first I thought he had simply vanished into the library here, Majesty.”

  “It is tempting.”

  There were thousands of volumes, including both works that had simply not survived the Change in Japan and a wide selection of new material. Montival was at least sporadically and indirectly in contact with much of the world, and the Grand Steward was in a position to satisfy a lifetime’s curiosity in one mad gulp. His resistance and focus on the essential had been very creditable.

  She went on: “But I must consider how to . . . to make them understand my father’s . . . visions.”

  He looked uncomfortable, and more so when she added quietly: “Which I have now had myself. Three nights in succession, unmistakably this time. Very much as Saisei Tenno described them, but . . . very vivid. And while his was . . . general, I see myself in them.”

  She swallowed, feeling the sensation of terrible thirst again. That dread, and the shadow of towers. Eight heads in darkness, and a long hissing . . .

  “Majesty . . . have you spoken of that with Grand Steward Koyama?”

  “No,” she said. “Not yet.”

  “He is an extremely intelligent man, and has much scholarly knowledge,” Egawa said.

  It wo
uld have been grossly impolite for him to directly urge her, but there was no harm in pointing out the reasons for doing something. The two men had a certain rivalry, but there was also a solid mutual respect.

  She nodded. “Yes. But he has read so much of the world before the Change that sometimes he is not quite at home in this one, my bushi, even if he has lived in it most of his life. Not as you and I are at home. You see what I mean?”

  His heavy scarred features knotted. “Yes, Majesty. Yes, I think I do.”

  “Do not forget why we came on this voyage in the first place, General Egawa. It was not to make alliance with Montival. We did not know that this place existed. Koyama was the most reluctant of you all. Finding Montival allows him to . . . repurpose the expedition in his mind, into something more . . . mundane.”

  She could see that he would have preferred to do exactly that himself—the prospect of a strong alliance against their enemies had given him hope, something in sparse supply for far too long. The desperation which had made her father’s vision at least a little plausible was less in proportion.

  “Majesty . . .” he began.

  “No, General Egawa. Saisei Tenno’s reasoning remains completely valid. And consider the . . . sacred weapon the Montivallan High Kings bear. The shintai.”

  He did, baring his teeth a little. Even just lying in its scabbard, it was a mental punch in the solar plexus, the worse the more closely you looked. She drove the point home as if it were the steel of her naginata:

  “The possibility of an alliance is related to our original mission. I have asked, discreetly. The Sword they carry was found after a quest that seemed as mad as ours. It is their founding epic—a very recent one by our standards, as if Yamato Takeru were someone your parents knew, but I suppose every story has to start somewhere.”

  He nodded. “Hai, Majesty. So sorry; I worry.”

  “Saisei Tenno decreed when we left that both at home and on the expedition there should be no worry until one year had passed, and no despair for two.”

  There was a very slight trace of the affection she felt in her voice as she spoke, though what she said was literally true. An Emperor could order that. People would worry just the same, of course, but they would be much less likely to show it. If you did not act on an emotion or display it, for all practical purposes it might as well not be there. More, human beings being what they were, suppressing the appearance of an emotion reduced the thing itself. She could see Egawa following the argument through and accepting it.

  They ran onto the flat and slowed to walk into the salle, pausing to slip out of their boots and into soft practice shoes. The two Guardsmen took stance at either side of the entrance; she could tell they and their commander would have preferred to keep both at her heels, but she had forbidden. The complex was entirely of post-Change construction, a set of cloisters with big barn-like rooms, and courtyards enclosing different terrain.

  It was handsome in a severely plain fashion she liked, built of stone and the long, straight timbers so enviably abundant in this land of tall mountain forests. Evidently maintaining it for the gentry of the fief was one of the baron’s duties. The ground outside provided woods, hill and bare grassland for the students’ use and mounted work. There were certain necessary, fundamental likenesses to the dojos she had grown up with, just as hakama and breeks had a similarity based on their common function of enclosing human legs.

  A bit more surprising had been real common elements. The unarmed combat techniques here were closely similar to what she’d learned, and even used bits of mangled Japanese terminology. And there were Nihon-style practice weapons, bokken and naginatas; they studied them a little here, though in the main their styles were based on European models she hadn’t been aware existed. It was a little flattering, if you thought about it.

  Men were fighting; and a few women, though those were mostly younger ones learning unarmed combat, shooting crossbows on the range, knife-fighting or working with glaives—bladed polearms not unlike the naginata, though the blade was shorter and straight, heavier, and had a hook at the rear. Here as in Japan all noblewomen learned self-defense but few made a career of the sword, though there were exceptions. Reiko suppressed a smile as a giggle rose behind them but did let her eyes narrow in amusement since her companion couldn’t see it: except for servants sweeping and cleaning, the women present wore clothes very closely resembling her kimono and hakama . . . or her Imperial Guard commander’s uniform.

  Egawa had seethed for hours when he found that he was, by local standards, wearing women’s dress, suitable for an elegant noble lady out to take the air. And while he found breeks ugly he thought actual tight hose, which was what Associates wore as the alternative, actively obscene; fortunately they usually went with something loose and concealing worn over it, down to thigh-length or the knees.

  The men practiced with shield and sword and shield and spear, and men-at-arms with shields and swords or using a two-handed technique, or with various polearms; classes of beginners as young as six hacked at wooden pells or practiced kata. The combat in full armor had looked unsophisticated at first, but there was skill to it as well as straightforward battling, hard and quick and murderous. A couple of trials had shown that the big teardrop-shaped shields were both an effective protection and a menacing weapon that was irritatingly hard to deal with, though the Montivallan knights were also surprised with what a real expert could do with the katana. Shouts and clatter filled the air and then faded behind as they passed. There was an odor of clean sweat, cloth and greased metal and leather and weathered wood in sunlight, things half-familiar and half-strange.

  She and Egawa walked through the corridors, nodding to bows, until they reached a large open-sided room whose floor was covered in straw mats over boards. Hooks showed where board panels could be put up between the thick wooden columns to make solid walls in winter. Racks around the pillars held weapons and gear, and there were full-length mirrors on the one solid inner wall. A dais at one end had chairs for spectators; right now four of them were occupied, by Baroness d’Ath, Lady Delia and her youngest daughter Yolande. This household had a rather . . .

  Unusual and distinctive set of domestic arrangements, she thought; even more so for this part of Montival than they would be for Japan, she gathered. But certain patterns seem to hold in all these han, these fiefs.

  The fourth was a young man, younger than she but full-grown, in dark rich clothes though not black except for the mourning band. D’Ath rose and bowed. Both of the ladies curtsied to Reiko, the colorful skirts of their garments spreading like flowers, and she nodded in return, before she and Egawa racked their swords and she the polearm.

  The young man made a bow too, but not as deep. Reiko blinked thoughtfully at him, memorizing the face, then put it out of her mind for the present. When you fought Egawa Noboru, even for sport and training, you did well to focus completely.

  They took the practice weapons they would use in hand—he an oak bokken, a wooden katana, and she a naginata, a two-foot curved wooden sword mounted on a six-foot shaft—and she could feel his attitude changing. Long ago he had first told her that there was no rank in a dojo except that of student and teacher, and on a battlefield that of victor and vanquished. Then he had proceeded to run her ragged and on occasion administer fine sets of bruises.

  They sank to their knees and sat back. Two figures in hose and black padded canvas doublets and wire masks attached to leather helmets much like the ones she and Egawa carried were facing each other in the center of the floor, with straight long swords and twelve-inch poniards in their gauntleted hands; the blades were edgeless and had rounded points. An instructor who worked here—an older man with a patchy white beard, a limp, and a scar on his face that crossed an empty eye-socket and took the tip off his nose—raised a white baton above his head.

  “Ready!”

  The masked figures raised their swords hilt-high before their faces in salute, the movements swift and smooth and definite.


  “Position!”

  That was left foot slightly forward and dagger advanced, knees a bit crooked, long sword held with the hilt high and point down. The white rod whipped groundward.

  “Fight!”

  Egawa gave a happy sigh beside her, having found something which did indeed make him stop worrying for a while. She blinked; the movements had been very fast, a blurring flicker and a ting-ting-ting of metal on metal, feint-strike-parry-strike-strike-parry, a brief grapple and hard blows with knee and elbow and the pommels of the weapons, and then they were apart again. They began to circle, feet rutching with careful swiftness on the mats, balance transferred without ever being lost.

  Ting-ting-ting-crash. One of the contestants was thrown, but rolled head-over-heels and came back to her feet in guard position even as the other advanced with a series of stamping lunges. Ting-ting-ting!

  Very softly, and without taking her eyes from the contestants, she said: “Mostly with the point.”

  “And cuts from the wrist,” Egawa said. “Straight cuts, not drawing ones such as we use. Intriguing.”

  “But still, this is not altogether unlike Musashi’s two-sword style,” she observed.

  Equally low, Egawa murmured: “And for comparable reasons, Majesty. This is their duelist’s style, designed for fighting a single unarmored opponent.”

  She nodded. The great author of the Book of Five Rings had fought in some of the last engagements of the Age of Battles, but he had spent most of his martial career in the opening years of the long peace, when the samurai were warriors without wars to fight. For the conflict of one man against another in a duel or a scrambling affray in some feud he was unsurpassed, but he dealt less succinctly with the more linear and massive form of combat when organized groups collided.