Kingdom River Read online

  Butter walked down the narrow stone corridor, his shoulders wide enough to often brush the walls. He heard the Queen muttering, ahead and off to the left, in the pickling room…. One of her dear things, pickles. Apparently they hadn't had them in the savage mountain world she'd been born to, so she ordered foods pickled that most had never thought to. Broccoli, carrots, cauliflower.

  The court had taken to these, so every gathering and ball saw bowls of pickles along the sideboards, with the smoked meat, honey candy, hard-cooked eggs and hot barley rolls. The salting prompting thirst, of course…. Butter stepped to the left.

  "So, Master Butter…?" Queen Joan, in ropes of freshwater pearls over a gown of soft imperial cloth — dark blue, with dark-blue lambskin boots to match — was shaking a great blown-glass jar of the tiniest gherkins, finding treacherous sediment. "Look at this sad shit," she said — the Warm-time phrase so apt — and held the jar up to a deep arrow-slit through the tower's stone, so daylight might aid lamplight.

  Master Butter straightened from a bow. "Susan-preserver is getting old."

  "We're all getting old, Butter. But not all of us careless."

  "She's very old."

  "Then let her get her trembling ass off my island. Let her hobble back where she came from." The Queen shook the gherkin jar again. Peered into it. "…. So? What of my Large-Martha; is there prowess there?"

  "Your Large-Martha will do, Majesty — when she learns Island, and always to be a little early rather than late. Should do better than some who call themselves fighting men. She has size and strength, but more important, quickness. A big man, stronger and just as fast, could likely beat her down, but not easily. She doesn't mind bleeding."

  "But can she learn to fight, Master Butter? — fight serious men and sudden, not just bumpkin Ordinaries brawling in her father's yard."

  "I'm sure so."

  "And you're 'sure so'... why?"

  "Most men and women, Queen, if steel or any trouble comes suddenly, throw their heads back in startlement — and so, of course, lose a moment to defend themselves. This Martha does not. She lowers her head to look closer, to watch what comes and how it comes."

  "Hmm... And once she's trained, could you kill her in a fight?"

  "Oh, yes, Majesty, though not easily. But I can kill anyone."

  "Well, Master Butter, I've known two men you couldn't have killed."

  "… Ah, the King, of course. Very strong. Was very strong."

  "My Newton, yes. And another... I don't think you'd find me easy, either, though I'm not what I was."

  "I would cut my throat before that contest, My Dearest Majesty."

  The Queen set the gherkin jar down on its shelf with a clack that almost broke it. "Then you're an ass, and impertinent in your affection!"

  "My apologies, Queen. But of course, I'm mad."

  "Yes, so Paul-doctor says. He says you hear unpleasant voices, but so far manage to disagree with them. And you are useful as master of arms."

  Master Butter bowed.

  "Now, get out of my sight. Hone my guardian-girl to a fine edge, but do not come private into my presence again for a year."

  "A year, Majesty," Master Butter said, " — a year is not so long a time." And bowed himself out of the Chamber of Pickles.

  CHAPTER 11

  Webster was furious from long imprisonment. Patience had kept him basketed by day, allowed only the shortest night flights for exercise. He bit her thumb to the bone when she reached in with a piece of lunch's mess-kettle mutton, then huddled stoic as she shook his basket — cursing while little drops of her blood flew — then threw it onto the tent's canvas floor and kicked it under the cot.

  Sleety early-evening rain came in a gust, as if Lady Weather were angry also.

  "Very well," Webster said from under there, speaking in a thin, weedy little croak that someone unfamiliar might not have recognized as speech. "Very... well."

  It sounded like a threat, but was surrender.

  Patience held her thumb down a moment to bleed it, then insisted that bleeding stop. Even so, it took a while. Webster's teeth, though few and small — a baby's milk teeth in fact — were capable, as he'd proved on a robin once.

  When the thumb stopped dripping, Patience wasn't angry anymore, and went to hands and knees. Under the cot, through the basket's woven willow strips, pale blue eyes — the right, wandering — looked out at her. "Very well." Almost a whisper.

  "Are you hurt?" She meant his wings.

  "No."

  "Oh, thank Who Comes," Patience said, reached in, and rolled the basket out while the Mailman scrambled to stay upright. No bitten thumb was worth damaging its wings. More expensive than any two or three occas, this was an embryo halted and kept halted at four months in the womb, while what were becoming arms, wrists, and fingers were encouraged to shape wing-struts instead, and anchorages of muscle were enlarged in the breastbone. All mind-managed, observed through slender glass tubes stuck inside a tribeswoman's belly.

  Delicate work, not to be compared to the easier earlier interventions that almost always produced an occa — delicate work, and often unsuccessful. No apartment on the Common cost as much as one of these wonders. And this — she'd named him Webster, since he spoke so well, had forty-three words — this was Township property, not hers.

  She set his basket on the cot, and unlatched the lid; Webster tried that constantly, but the method was beyond him, his fingertips too tiny. She took the lid off, and reached in to stroke and lift him out. He was withered, very small — a double handful — and brown as an old leaf, his round bald head the heaviest thing about him. He smelled of milky shit, and had left little slender yellow turds in his folded bedding.

  "You bad boy… making messes." And he was a boy, or would have been; there was the tiniest pinch of spoiled cock and balls nested at his bottom.

  Webster was still angry, said none of his words while Patience unfolded one of his comfort cloths and wiped him. She reached up to set him against the tent-pole, where he clung with skin wings and little nearly-legs wrapped around the wood, while she took the messed cloths from his basket and folded two fresh ones in.

  "Want cheese?" Patience smacked her lips to demonstrate how wonderful the cheese would be.

  Webster stared down from the tent-pole — little left blue eye looking straight at her, the other drifting away.

  "Cheese?" Patience dug for the crock in her duffel. Table scraps were often fed Mailmen — little meat pieces they could munch and gum to slurry — but farmer's white cheese was recommended, mashed with goat's milk if possible. Both things produced south of the ice, and very expensive.

  "Oooh, look at this… look at this!" She held a caked forefinger up to him. "If you bite, I'll make you sorry."

  'Make you sorry' was a phrase all Mailmen were taught in training — when occasionally they were made sorry for flapping off the glacier flyway from Cambridge to New Haven and back again. Webster apparently recalled it. He closed his eyes, opened his mouth… and Patience felt eager wetness and heat, the rhythmic tickle of his little tongue as he licked and sucked the clots from her finger.

  Five loaded fingertips later, Webster burped and said, "Fly?" — his first courteous word since their fight.

  "Yes." Patience lifted him down and set him on her shoulder, which he clutched with fanned translucent amber wings. " — To Map-McAllen."

  Webster understood 'McAllen' at least, and nodded. He had — as all completed Mailmen had — a perfect map stuck in his understanding by weeks and weeks of careful feeding of treats for remembering, weeks and weeks of careful scorching with candle flames for forgetting, say, where Map-Charleston, or Map-St. Louis, or Map-Philadelphia, or Map-Amarillo were, and their direction either way and any way. Scorching, as well, for forgetting the how-to-get-theres of much smaller places. All to fashion a messenger so superior to silly pigeons, who could only return where they came from.

  "Not sunshine." Webster was a coward, and frightened of hawks.

>   "No," Patience said. "Moonlight." And turned her head to him for a puppy kiss. He didn't kiss very well... really only licked little licks.

  The near-frozen rain peppered the tent's canvas as Patience sat on her cot, and using her small silvered-glass mirror for backing, while Webster watched from her shoulder, wrote a tiny note in tiny printing on a tiny strip of best-milled white paper.

  fm better-weather, dear cousin louis, voss and 4000 cav going probably north to be bad in probably texas. now send webster back, yrs, p.

  She reread it as Webster crawled down to the blanket beside her and thrust out a fragile little leg. It barely had a knee, had toes too small to count.

  It seems probable, Patience thought. She'd heard the word 'north' spoken by a trooper in horse-lines. And a farrier cursing over the lack of replacement shoes for Voss until Boquillas del Carmen. So… probable.

  She gently wrapped the strip of paper around Webster's leg — there were tiny soft bones in it — then looked in the covers for the piece of string she'd had ready to fasten the message on. She found the string on her pillow… and found also that she'd changed her mind.

  "Why," she said to the Mailman, "should we make my so-old Cousin Louis look wise in Map-McAllen? Why let him interfere with my camp's campaigning? Though it would serve a certain rude ruler right, who threatened to pull me off my horse and hit me with a whip…. Still, what could be more foolish than helping foolish Louis rise to Faculty, when he'll deny us credit?"

  Webster watched her from the blanket.

  " 'Oh,' he'll say, 'I knew it before, that cavalry coming up.' His so-old wife will agree. And you know, Webster, if Monroe's people lose severely in Texas, there will soon be no North Map-Mexico. And with no North Map-Mexico, no need for an ambassadress to it."

  Patience unwrapped the note from the Mailman's leg, tucked the paper into her mouth, chewed thoroughly, and swallowed. "Instead, let's adopt the Warm-time attitude of wait-and-see."

  "'Wait and see,'" Webster said, his voice thin as the piece of string, though he had no idea what those words meant. He had suckled his white cheese too greedily, and proved it by burping a mouthful up.

  * * *

  Howell Voss, having restrung the banjar with true cat-gut — two silver pesos a coil, shipped from Imperial Trading & Market in Cabo — leaned back on his cot and played a tuning chord, Warm-time G. Or so it was assumed. He'd long had the suspicion that ancient tuning was slightly different from the present's — different enough so the music said to have been theirs, notated as theirs in surviving copy-works, now probably sounded somewhat off.

  He twisted his pegs, plucked... twisted his pegs again, and was in modern tune at least.

  He'd just taken a singing-breath, when someone scratched at his tent-flap.

  "I heard you tuning," Ned Flores said, stooping to come in out of gathering darkness. He wore an ice-spangled army blanket as poncho, and was pale as a weary girl. "— Thought I'd better interrupt before the camp suffered."

  "You might remember that wasn't your sword hand you lost."

  "No." Flores dropped the blanket, gently kicked open a folding camp chair, and sat. "But you wouldn't duel an officer for an act of mercy."

  Voss sighed and set the banjar down. "Truly refined taste is so rare.... And how is that wound? Should you be up and walking?"

  "Well, after five days in a mercy wagon with a fresh-sewn stump, I'm glad to be up. As for this," holding out a thickly bandaged left wrist, " — not, by the way, as comic as your fresh-trimmed ear — I'm told I can have something made, and strapped on."

  "What something?"

  "Your Portia says, a hook."

  "The doctor's not 'my Portia.' But I think a hook would do." The sleet was rattling, coming down harder.

  "I've been considering tempered steel, Howell, forged from knife stock a flat inch and a quarter wide by a quarter inch thick — in-curving to a wicked fish-hook point. And, and its outer edge filed and sharpened."

  "The whole outside curve of the hook?"

  "Hollow ground to a razor edge. Hook in, slash out."

  "Mountain Jesus. You'll have to be careful with that thing, Ned."

  "Others... will have to be careful of it. I don't suppose you intend to share any tobacco. You're getting damned rude, Howell — or should I say 'General'?"

  "A curtsy will do." Howell dug in a trouser pocket, tossed a half-plug over. "Don't take it all. That's Finest."

  Ned bit off a chew. "Oh, of course it is; it only smells like dog shit. Who sells you this stuff?" He tossed the remainder back.

  "Maurice."

  "Maurice, the Thief of Reynosa?"

  "He was acquitted. And that was about mules; the store was not involved."

  Ned tucked the chew into his cheek. "Remind me, Howell..." he leaned far back in the camp chair, paged the tent-flap aside with his bandaged stump, and spit over his shoulder out into the rain. "Remind me to play pickup sticks with you again. For money."

  "Yes, I will — and what the fuck happened at This'll Do?"

  "What's the Warm-time for it? Got... 'too big for my britches.' "

  "Elvin always gets that wrong." Howell bent to pick up the banjar.

  "Please don't. I'm an invalid."

  "Healing music." Howell commenced soft strumming. "So, what happened at This'll Do?"

  Ned shifted his chew. "Absolute dog shit.... Well, nothing as wonderful as the Boca Chica thing, from what I hear. Our Sam standing aside to watch you make an ass of yourself — which, by some miracle, you did not."

  "Which — by some miracle, Ned — I did not." Howell struck a chord, then lightly muffled it with his fingers. Struck... muffled. Struck... muffled.

  "At This'll Do, I thought.... Howell, I thought there was a very good chance to beat those people."

  "You did?"

  "And I would have, if they'd had the usual old fart commanding them."

  "But they didn't; I know. He gave us a hard time. Rodriguez, one of the new ones."

  "So" — Ned leaned back to spit again — "a lot of our people killed. All my fault."

  "Ned..." Howell plucked out a soft fandang rhythm. "What in the world were you doing down there at all? And with only half a regiment of Lights? Why would Sam send you? We could have waited for those people to come up, get into real trouble."

  "Oh, both of us thought it seemed a good idea."

  "At the time."

  "Yes. Seemed a good idea at the time."

  "Mmm...."

  "Change of subject from my command blunders, Howell.... I'm interested in going up into Texas with you. Map-Fort Stockton."

  "No."

  "No?"

  "If you were four weeks better healed, Ned, you wouldn't have to ask. I'd have asked for you."

  "I can sit a horse."

  "Not for a three-day ride north, and then a fight. You're not going."

  "I'm not going...."

  "No, you're not."

  "And if Sam says I am?"

  "You're not going."

  "Well... play me a tune on that fucking thing, if you're going to sit there with it."

  Howell bent his head to the instrument, watched his large hands as if they were another's, and picked out a swift, soft, twanging melody.

  "That's not... not terribly offensive." Ned, grown paler, leaned back to spit the chewing tobacco out.

  "'Camp Ground Racers,' supposedly," Howell said. "But I doubt it."

  Ned sat back with his eyes closed, listening.

  "Ned?"

  "I'm not dead. Though I'm sure I look it."

  Howell stopped playing, set his instrument aside. "Come use my cot. Lie down for a while."

  "Tell you something funny, Howell..."

  "Come on, lie down."

  "Tell you something funny." Eyes still closed. "I have — had — always assumed I'd be next in line. Take command under Sam. Take command if anything happened to him. Always assumed it would be me."

  "Ned — "

  "And of course,
that very assumption demonstrated I would never be any such thing. But I didn't see it."

  "Stop the horseshit, and lie down."

  "I don't know how it happened." Ned sat up, looked across the tent as if there were distance there. "When Sam and I were kids, I led, more often than not. Then, when we got older — when the fighting started — I don't know how it happened. Just... after a while, people were coming to Sam and saying, 'What now?' "

  "Ned — "

  "They asked him. They didn't ask me. And that fucking This'll Do thing is beside the point. I've made damn few mistakes in seven, eight years fighting. I've been a hell of a commander. Better than you, Howell, Light Cavalry ranging."

  "That's true."

  "It wasn't that I made mistakes. It was just that people didn't come to me and say, 'What now?' "

  "Come on." Howell got up, took Ned's good arm. "Come on. Lie down and get some rest."

  Ned stood, and staggered. "Lie down, or fall down. Not ready for Map-Fort Stockton, after all...."

  * * *

  Coming back from john-trench in gusting sleet — and regretting he hadn't moved into his rooms at the fort, after all — Sam heard music, banjar playing from Howell Voss's tent on officers' row. Bright music; surprising how lightly those big fingers strummed.... It was a temptation to walk over, sit laughing, listening to sleety rain and music, while talking army. Three years ago, even two years ago, he would have done it. But the distance of governing had grown between them, or seemed to have, which made the same difference.

  Voices over there. Ned; certainly off his cot too soon after wagoning in. — Interesting that loneliness was never mentioned in the old tales of kings, presidents, generals and heroes. Those men and women somehow told as sufficient of themselves, and never, after crapping, walking alone under freezing rain.

  Going down tent lines to the third set-up, his boots scuffing through ice-skimmed puddles, Sam heard- another conversation — one-sided conversation, it sounded. He scratched at the canvas flap. "May I enter?"