The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) by S. M. Stirling

slight shiver. Usually even a hot pyre left bone fragments. This time . . .
    Ashes. Fine as dust, almost. Impossible to tell where the wood-ash left off and the body began. Even the buckles and the gold of the torc were gone.
    The box was sturdy, and the thick glass of the vase was packed carefully with dense soft lamb’s-wool.
    “The most vigilant care must be taken with the High King’s remains,” she said.
    “My lady!” He crossed himself. “My men and I will guard it with our lives, and bring it to the High Queen.”
    “Good man,” she said. “I’ll leave you to it. The Crown Princess and I have full confidence in you.”
    His face looked more alive after that, though still very solemn. She’d found that with men of his sort giving them an important task to focus on was the best way to get ten-tenths of capacity working. She settled her hat, draped the liripipe over her shoulder and came out of the tent, making her stride brisk and nodding to the squad of the High King’s Archers outside as they brought up their longbows in salute.
    High
King’s
Archers?
she thought grimly.
That’s going to change.
    Her own status was going to change; everything would. The ground was shifting under her feet, and Droyn’s attitude had been a foretaste.
    What was that ancient saying? I expected this, but not so soon?
    As she walked away there was a concerted rush of varlets behind her; the baggage was coming out and the canvas coming down before she’d gone a dozen paces.
    The camp in one of Dun Barstow’s fields was larger now that the reinforcements from Castle Rutherford had joined the party that had first accompanied the High King and his heir on their tour of the new Westrian settlements. The broad flat expanse had been in wheat last year and was thick with green burrclover and medic now, knee-deep where it hadn’t been trampled and sweet-smelling where it had, starred with yellow and purple flowers and murmurous with bees and hummingbirds.
    The breakfast table stood beneath a great live oak, one that must have been growing here when Napa was a sea of vines. Possibly before the old Americans or even their Hispano predecessors had come, in a distant pre-dawn past when only the tribes of the First Folk dwelt here. The Mackenzie settlers establishing Dun Barstow had left it in their turn when they ripped out the thickets of dead and living vines and brush to make their crofts, for looks and shade for livestock in the fierce southern summer.
    And as an act of piety to the Goddess in Her form as Lady Flidais and to the Horned Lord, Cernunnos of the Forest, Master of Beasts. It was a recognition that humanity was not over and above the other kindreds, and held what they did on sufferance. Órlaith was just lowering her arms from her own morning devotion to the rising Sun, and her expression froze for an instant as she turned. As if
everything
in the world reminded her of her loss and her dead.
    “I know, Orrey,” Heuradys said softly, and rested her hand on her liege-lady’s shoulder.
    Órlaith laid her own hand on the knight’s and squeezed briefly. Heuradys saw the Gods thanked for her for a moment, which was comforting; it meant she was making a difference. She loved all three of her ownparents and would grieve when they died in the way of nature, but Órlaith had been much closer to her father than Heuradys was to the Count of Campscapell, who was more like a wonderful uncle in many ways. And the brutal surprise of the assassination made it far worse, like a raw wound on the soul.
    Plus Orrey is probably feeling guilty that he took a knife meant for her. Illogical, but the heart has its own reasons that the mind does not know.
    The camp looked different without the High King’s pavilion, sparser somehow despite the greater numbers, and all the banners flying at half-mast. Even the bustle of packing up and getting ready for departure was somehow subdued. It was odd to think that in most of Montival things would