Kingdom River Page 5

  "Let's tell our stories — but only the truth; it's too early for lies. Yes? May I call you NP? Short for Neckless Peter?"

  "I suppose so. And I suppose I must call you... Impatience."

  "I like that. My Uncle Niles would agree it was just."

  "Your Uncle Niles... ?"

  "Ah, you want my story first."

  "Why not?"

  "Hmmm." She sat at ease, thinking... her smooth, oval, nearly childish face changing in swift reflection of the memories she was choosing. Her face seemed to me not an ambassador's — an ambassadress's — but an emissary's, perhaps.

  "... Well, I was born to a fine family, only slightly beneath the finest. Cambridge-born in Boston Township. I was taught the past and present. I read and write and configure the mathematics... within reason."

  "Within what reason, Impatience?"

  "Within the quadratics, but not fluxions."

  "Do you have Newton's work? The mathematician, I mean, not the dead River King."

  She smiled at me. "Why, NP, you just came to life!"

  "Do you have it — and original, complete?"

  "No. We, like all the world, are only copybook people, though there are rumors of a great library where the ancient campus was, by old Harvard Yard."

  "Under the ice...."

  "Under a mile of ice." She toyed with her saber. "Someday... someday, since you will be my friend, perhaps you could come to Boston, help us excavate, search for it. Someday perhaps become librarian for those endless shelves of Warm-time books, waiting now in cold and darkness with all their secrets."

  "Secrets...."

  "The secret of flying to the moon. The secret of the so-tiny bad things that make sickness happen — though Boston already knows some of that secret. The secrets of waves of radio, of black boom-powder..." She leaned closer. "NP, the pupils of your eyes just changed the littlest bit! Have you been naughty?"

  "I don't — "

  "Have you found... could you have found, in the Great Khan's fine library, the making-means of boom-powder?"

  "No."

  "No?" The predatory attention of a teasing child. "You didn't discover the method mentioned — perhaps unbind the book to take that page away and write another in its place? .... Then burned that taken-away page?"

  "No." This 'no' spoken, I believe, fairly convincingly.

  "Well, I won't mention even the possibility to the Captain-General or his officers. I'm afraid of what they might do to such a little old man, to have that secret out of him."

  "I know no such secret."

  "Well, of course I believe you. I believe you, NP — though Boston suspects that several scholars, over the centuries, have found the making-means of boom-powder... then burned those pages, rather than accomplish even more mischief in a mischievous world, than sharp steel has done."

  "I said, I know no such secret."

  "Even if you did," she reached to pat my knee "even so, I would never betray you, NP — as you must never betray me. In any case, Boston prefers that secret remain secret, so the city not be overrun by any crowd of fools trained with tubes and flint-sparkers for its use. The present state of affairs suits superior talents very well."

  "I do not know the method."

  "As you say. — You see? We're friends, NP, and would have been friends as children, except you would have been too old."

  "And you, too dangerous a child."

  "I was.... You know, I killed a friend. I sliced her with Merriment, and sometimes I feel sorry for it. I miss Teresa. I'm glad I killed her — but I miss her."

  "Yes…. Which of us isn't partly a child, who still wants everything?"

  "She called me All-Irish. I wouldn't have killed her except for that."

  "I understand. A serious matter."

  "Well, you think it's funny, NP — but it isn't funny in Boston."

  Someone spurred by my tent, close enough so the cloth billowed slightly as the rider passed. "And so, Impatience, you all live on the ice?"

  "No. Only trash lives on the ice. We live in the ice. Boston is in the ice, and of the ice."

  "But I'd heard there were great buildings..."

  "Yes, and ice is what we make them of. We carve beneath-buildings — and very big — all white white white, or clear as water. I thought you people knew how we lived in the ice."

  "The city?"

  "All frozen fine. We have an opera theater and a prison. We have our college, of course, our town-meeting hall, and places where other things are done, secret and not so secret. We are civilized people, NP. We have churches to these people's Mountain Jesus and Kingdom River's Rafting one, and to our Frozen Jesus, as well as chapels for every other Possible Great, so Lady Weather is sung to, also. There is nothing Boston doesn't have!"

  "I see. Houses?"

  "Apartments. Gracious, don't you know what apartments are?" Apparently startled by such ignorance.

  "From copybooks, I do, yes."

  "Well, that's what we have! My mother's apartment is almost on the Common. My Uncle Niles — a true Lodge — lives on the Common. He has eleven rooms, not counting the unmentionable."

  "The unmentionable would be... the toilet?"

  This strange girl nodded Yes, apparently embarrassed to speak it.

  "But how... how does everyone keep warm?"

  "'Everyone' doesn't keep warm, NP. People of good birth, people with the right piece in their heads, keep themselves warm — warm enough that a cloth coat will always do. The Less Fortunate go around in fat fur boots, and wrapped in furs, and complaining. But they have furs; the Trash-up-top hunt furs for them. I had friends who had to wear furs."

  "A city of ice..."

  She tapped my knee gently with the tip of her sword's scabbard. "Wouldn't you like to see it? I think you would. You'd love Boston — and we could hunt for the Harvard library together!"

  "Perhaps one day, Impatience."

  She stuck her tongue out at me. A rude child. "But you're old. You may not have enough days to get to that 'one day.' "

  "Time will tell."

  "Oh, I know that saying. That's a Warm-time saying."

  "Yes."

  "Now..." She settled back on my cot, tucked my pillow under her armpit for support. "Now, I want to hear your story."

  "But you haven't finished yours. How, for example, you came to be an ambassadress."

  "Oh, my Uncle Niles likes me, so I was made diplomat to North Map-Mexico and here I am.... Do you want to hear the oldest song?"

  "The oldest song?"

  She slid to her feet — supple as a deep-southern snake — dropped her scimitar onto my cot, struck a sudden pose, and astonished me with a prancing, impudent little dance, back and forth, her arms crossed at her breasts. And she sang.

  " 'Ohhh... I wish I was in Boston, or some other seaport town...!'" Quick little kicking steps back and forth along my tent's narrow aisle. "'I've sailed out there and everywhere... I've been the whole world round...!'"

  There were two more verses — their simple ringing melody sung out in a clear soprano, and danced to with no trace of self-consciousness at all. There was great charm in it... charm I found an uneasy decoration for what might lie beneath.

  She came to the end suddenly as she'd started — and sat back on my cot, placid, breathing evenly as if there'd been no song, no vigorous dance.

  "Now, NP, how did you come to be a slave of the Grass Lord Khan? Is he a pleasant young man — or cruel?"

  I was still digesting the performance, her singing echoing in my ears. "His father's Border Roamers came into our forest. Too many to drive away."

  "Then killed your people, surely."

  "Yes, in the fighting... and after the fighting was over. But I was Librarian, and pushed one of them off the library's walk when he tore a copybook for pleasure, to watch the white leaves fall so far to the ground."

  "A very high library, then?"

  "Yes. We built in trees, and of trees, and they loved us."

  "Well done
to kill a fool! But NP, why didn't they throw you after him?"

  "I think I amused them. I think his being killed by me amused them. Then one of the Khan's officers came and ordered the library sent west to Caravanserai — and me with it."

  "I would never be a slave." The Boston girl made a face and shook her head. "I'm almost a Lodge — I am a Nearly-Lodge Riley." For emphasis, she slid a few inches of her sword's bright steel free of its sheath... then slid it shut.

  "You have not met the young Khan."

  "If I did, he would like me for my spirit and beauty. He would never harm someone so pretty and intelligent!" This strange little creature then swooned down along my cot's pillow like a romantic child. "He would fall in love... and I would be his queen."

  I was startled, charmed afresh — then, as she lay there, her saber cuddled, I saw in those handsome black eyes (eyes dark as the Khan's, in fact) a gleaming amusement, beneath which seemed to lie dreadful energy, incapable of weariness.... Something struck me, then, and though I've never been certain, could never be certain, it occurred to me that the New Englanders might have made with their minds more subtle monsters than those that groaned and flapped great wings — might have made these more intricate others out of their own unborn and beloved children....

  There were sudden trumpets then, and stirring in the camp.

  The Boston girl was instantly up and off the cot — smiled good-bye — and was gone. The tent-flap, swinging closed, stroked the vanishing curve of her sword's sheath. She left, as formidable people do, an emptiness behind her, as if the earth had nothing to offer in her place.

  A sergeant was shouting. The ground shook slightly to the hooves of heavy horses.

  I followed outside in time to wave an armored trooper to slow. He sat his sidling impatient charger, a roan already becoming shaggy with winter coat, and gave me a courteous moment.

  "Are we breaking camp?"

  "No, sir."

  "Then what are we doing?"

  "What we're told," he said, smiled, nodded, and spurred away.

  ... The camp's tumult finally done — an expedition apparently suddenly undertaken, and most of the soldiers gone with it — I wandered the hill-top, asked questions of those few left behind, was given no answers, and returned to my tent for a nap. It did occur to me that trouble might have come to the northern border while the army's commander was occupied here…. That trouble, of course, would be of my previous master's making, with the appearance of horse-tail banners, and horse archers with angled eyes.

  I had, I suppose, convinced myself that my unimportant defection would be pardoned, if the Grass Lord ever met me again. But that conviction proved fragile as smoke when I tried to sleep in the quiet of an almost empty camp, and I realized that I would certainly be casually strangled by my student — Evgeny Toghrul being not a bad loser, but no loser at all. Not even of elderly librarians.

  I slept at last, dreamed of perfect painless poisons milked from lovely vines — droplets certain to provide ease and freedom's easy end. I dreamed of dark doses through the afternoon, could taste them... then woke to early evening. I drew a cloak over my shoulders against the chill, and trudged over an encampment scored by horses' shod hooves, dappled with their manure, to a lamp-lit mess tent almost deserted.

  The walking wounded, unfit to ride, had been left behind — left behind to cook supper, as well, a grim portent. A corporal I knew, called Leith, was limping among the pans and great kettles, blood spotting her bandages, while she spooned and stirred this and that, exchanging obscenities with two soldiers still staggering from injuries.

  Portia-doctor, darkly handsome in a stained brown robe, and seeming weary, sat eating at a bench-table in the big tent's back left corner — and I was interested to see the Boston girl sitting across from her. The girl's tin platter was piled with the army's dreadful Brunswick slumgul, stew enough for two hungry men. This evening, apparently, boiled goat and halved turnips.

  Patience saw me, nodded me over… and was well into her supper when I came from the serving kettles to join them.

  I bent to kiss the doctor's cheek, a privilege — and sensible precaution — of age, and sat beside her to watch Patience Nearly-Lodge Riley eat. It seemed important eating.

  Portia-doctor smiled. "Fuel after flying, I believe." And I saw that of course she must be right.

  Patience nodded, swallowed a large bite, and said, "Nothing comes of nothing. — Where have the soldiers gone? People won't tell me."

  "South," Portia-doctor said, and poked at a piece of goat with a two-tine fork. "South through the mountains, to hunt down the cataphracts."

  "Good God." Perhaps my favorite Warm-time phrase. "Can they catch them, three days gone?"

  "Probably." The doctor ate her piece of goat. "The imperials will be leisurely, have no reason to hurry."

  "Impatience, I thought you would have followed the soldiers south."

  "I would have, NP. I wanted to see fighting, but they refused me permission — cited my safety and that sort of shit. The Big One-eye wouldn't lend me a horse to follow them." More spoonfuls of turnip eaten.

  "Ah — Voss. Howell Voss."

  "Yes, the Big One-eye. But I'm going to get a riding horse of my own — buy it out of my expense fund. Then, fuck him, I'll go where I want!"

  "But you could have Walked-in-air."

  Patience had very good table-manners; she finished chewing, and swallowed before she answered. "NP, I'm not a stupids' witch. I have just come over two thousand Warm-time miles. And I've stopped traveling, and said to myself, 'I'm here. I've arrived.'"

  "And therefore?" Portia-doctor, interested in this phenomenon.

  "Therefore, Doctor, if I air-walk again too soon, my head might ache, and I might fall."

  "So, a rest."

  "Yes, a few weeks, then I'll be able to say to myself, 'Now, I'm going. I'm going somewhere else. Then I'll do it, and my head won't ache, and I won't fall."

  "I see."

  "The piece in the brain doesn't like to be hurried, Doctor. One thing at a time is what it likes, with a long rest between." She demolished a last piece of goat meat, then attacked the rest of her turnips — which, frankly, were barely edible.

  "And your beast?"

  "The occa's risen and gone north. I had to kick her to get her up and going; they depend on you, then they want to stay. She'll wander awhile, but end with her mother." Salt sprinkled on turnips. "They're better than pigeons, for going back where they come from."

  I tried the most promising piece of goat. "And how are the wounded, Doctor?"

  Portia turned those sad brown eyes to me, eyes into which too much of others' suffering had reflected. "We've saved some — saved some of those for sitting, blind or legless, to beg in town squares."

  "An army doctor is, I suppose, something of a contradiction."

  "Yes, 'something of a contradiction,'" Portia said, and smiled — was almost beautiful when she smiled. Then she took up her platter, stood, and was gone.

  "Is it true," Patience said, "that Big One-eye likes her?"

  "Howell Voss? Where did you hear that?"

  "I scented it from him while he was telling me I couldn't follow. He talked to me, but looked at her for a moment when she walked by. Then, he smelled of sad desiring — as you did, NP, when I mentioned the ancient Harvard library."

  More Boston tinkering, apparently, and for sense of smell!

  "Impatience, I believe we'll all be happier with you if you don't sniff around us like an eager hound."

  "Well, then..." A slight pout. "Then I'll keep it to myself, what I discover that way."

  "Please do."

  "Why aren't you eating?"

  "They have not peeled the turnips."

  She smiled. "Do you know the Warm-time word 'eccentric'?"

  "There is nothing eccentric about wanting turnips peeled."

  "How are your teeth?" Patience showed me her small white teeth in illustration.

  "I still have my teeth."<
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  "Here." She reached over quickly, took my platter, and began to peel the halved turnips on it. She'd reached very quickly, and she peeled very quickly, so the blade of her knife flashed and flickered. "Now, eat them. They're good for you."

  I ate them, and could only hope they were good for me, since they were good for nothing else. I do not imagine there is any more reliable sign of civilization than food that is a pleasure to eat, not simply grim forage. In Gardens, we had bird stews flavored with little forest friends….

  Having finished my slight platter as the Boston girl finished her weighty one — Corporal Leith had limped over and snatched the tin dishes up, muttering — I walked with Patience out into darkness and a cold wind come down from the mountains.

  "Isn't this an adventure, NP?"

  "If it ends well." Stepping carefully to avoid horse manure.

  "Oh, adventures are ends in themselves."

  "And what is it you want here, Impatience — besides adventure?"

  "Want? Here, I want to watch warlords' grand clockwork tick, whir, and turn — have you ever seen wind-up clockwork?"

  "No. Read of those time-pieces, of course."

  "We have a large weight-wind-up clock at the entrance to Ice-clear Justice, though it keeps uncertain time.... What I wish, is what Boston wishes, NP. I wish for perfection, as Boston wishes for perfection — and we will have it, or make it, so the sun is satisfied at last and comes to us as it did before, hot as fire."

  "I see...." But I didn't, then.

  CHAPTER 5

  Colonel Rodriguez had come from Indian people — and wasn't ashamed of it. He'd never kissed a man's ass because that man was pale under sunshine, and could grow a fine mustache.

  His mother had told him that good comes to those who wait for it, and Colonel Rodriguez — though not yet forty — had waited out several such officers, milky as girls, who spoke only the Beautiful Language, not Nahua, and knew women at court. The northern bandits had worn those men out, or killed them — and the Emperor, who knew truth when evil men permitted him to see it, saw the value in officers such as Michi Rodriguez, and gave him at last his regiment.

  And see the result — with only three squadrons brought north! Victory. The troopers had celebrated every evening since the battle. Six slow marches riding south through the passes, the men dancing in camp every evening — and drinking aguardiente they were forbidden to have with them. Easier to find a cavalryman's soul than his hidden leather bottle.