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

still be completely normal, the High King merely gone on a progress with his heir to inspect the remote southern frontier.
    The news of his death would be spreading northward already, of course. As fast as relays of couriers on horseback could take it to the edge of the heliograph network, and then by coded flashes of light from hilltop to hilltop, city to city, castle to castle, mirrors reflecting the sun’s rays in the day and burning lime in darkness. They would know in Portland in a few days, and eastward to the Lakota country and north to the Peace River in a fortnight. It might be months before it filtered out to the most remote villages and ranches, or even years in the vast wilderness borderlands. Large chunks of those weren’t inhabited at all, or had a few wildmen who weren’t even aware that they
were
part of the kingdom.
    But there will be a great stirring, a sharpening of blades and a stringing of bows. Whoever those strangers were, they made a very bad mistake when they shed our King’s blood on our own land.
    “I’ve asked the Nihonjin ruler . . .
jotei
, Tenno, Empress . . . over for breakfast,” Órlaith said. “Her and two followers, and you and me and Edain.”
    “Are you ready for that, Orrey?” Heuradys asked bluntly. “If you’re so stressed your judgment’s off it would be better to wait. You took a heavy hit, we’re all here to handle things for you, and our guests aren’t going anywhere soon.”
    “No, I can push it,” Órlaith said calmly, after glancing aside for aninstant. “It’s not a council, just a talk. I think this could be really important and we need to set things off on the right foot. There will be plenty of time for detail on the way north.”
    Heuradys looked at the Sword of the Lady hanging in its black tooled-leather scabbard at Órlaith’s left hip. The High King had always worn it on his right, and it looked a little odd there.
    And I could swear it’s a bit smaller. A weapon sized for her father would over-blade Orrey, but that looks as perfect for her as it did for him. Brrr!
    “Talk?” she said. “You can understand them?”
    Órlaith nodded as she turned and walked towards the meeting-place. She was wearing a loose saffron shirt and Mackenzie garb, a pleated knee-length kilt in the Clan’s brown-green-orange tartan. A plaid of the same fabric was wrapped around her chest and under the right arm, pulled firm to the body, pinned at the left shoulder by a sapphire and gold knotwork brooch that left the trailing end with its fringe hanging down behind to her knee-hose. Her hair hung loose past her shoulders under the flat blue Scots bonnet with its spray of Golden Eagle feathers in its silver clasp, and the morning sun brought out the hint of copper in that thick yellow mane. She put her left hand to the pommel of the Sword.
    “Yes, it’s working for me the way it did for . . . for Da.”
    She swallowed, and visibly forced herself back to calm. “It feels . . . odd. For a moment there was . . . was this balloon swelling in my head, then it popped and I knew the language. As if I’d always known it, somehow. No, as if I’d grown up speaking it. I could tell that some of the people with her speak different dialects, and I just . . . knew what the honorifics and so forth meant, not just literally but all the implications. I can switch over to thinking in it like turning a tap and when I do the whole world looks a wee bit different.”
    “Useful!” Heuradys said. “But better thee than me, my liege.”
    “
Arra
, tell me. Being warned isn’t like feeling it. There’s all sorts of stuff that comes
with
it, too. I think ‘food’ and . . . what comes into your mind when you’re after thinking the word food, Herry? Comes first, at least.”
    “Bread,” she said instantly.
    A loaf was what you thought of immediately. A nice long crusty loafright out of the oven and off the baker’s wooden paddle, butter melting into the steaming