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

surface when you broke it . . . damn, but she was ready for breakfast. Feeling sorrow didn’t stop your digestive system, outside the more romantical chansons, she found.
    “Me too. But I switch over to
Nihongo
and suddenly for a moment I’m thinking of a bowl of rice . . . or noodles . . . with little separate dishes of things on the side, and I look at an ordinary plate and go
euuu
at the way everything’s mixed up. Fair disgusting . . . for an instant.”
    “How many times have you eaten rice? Really, I mean,” Heuradys asked curiously.
    It wasn’t grown in Montival, not yet, and anything imported was a hideously expensive luxury. Though it still grew wild, seeded from old plantings in the Sacramento Delta not far from here. Perhaps someday folk would settle there to raise it.
    “A few times. Rice puddings at Yule, mostly, and sushi on occasion in Portland. But when I start thinking in
Nihongo
my mouth wants it steamed and sort of sticky . . .”
    “The Sword of the Lady is a cookbook, too?” Heuradys said, chuckling.
    Having been around it so long at court, from her childhood as page and then squire and now household knight, she didn’t have
quite
the awe of the Sword that most people did.
    Not
quite
, and that still leaves a fair degree of awe. And not that I’d touch it willingly.
    “Not recipes exactly, but sort of . . . an ideal of what food
is
. Or I think ‘hello’ and I know how to say hello to people of different ranks and in different circumstances and a whole bunch of stuff like that. I think ‘clothes’ and it’s various robes that come to mind, not a kilt or hose. Kimono just means
the thing you wear.
I get the language, and how to
use
it. It doesn’t . . . I mean, I still want bacon and eggs. But I can sort of . . . switch.”
    “I don’t know what we’d do without the Sword this time. Though there’s the other stuff.”
    “No need to mention that just yet, I think.”
    They both nodded slightly. The bearer of the Sword of the Lady could detect falsehood—or as Rudi Mackenzie had put it, the speaker’s belief that what he was saying was false, the
intent
to deceive. Everyone in Montival knew that and virtually all of them had believed it by now; it had been a long time since anyone but foreigners and the densely stupid tried to lie to the High King. There was no need to explain that to their new . . .
    Guests,
Heuradys decided.
Possibly allies, but not until we know a lot more.
    “Is there anyone in Montival . . . besides you . . . who speaks Japanese?” she asked.
    “Not that I know of, though there are almost certainly a few tucked away somewhere. Ones who learned from their grandparents.”
    A weary smile; Órlaith hadn’t slept much. “Reiko . . . that’s her name, it means something like
Child of Courtesy
 . . . or possibly
Courteous Lady
 . . . actually speaks English quite well.”
    “It didn’t sound like it!” Heuradys said.
    She’d
thought
the woman was trying to say
Thank you very much
to the people who’d saved her outnumbered party from being overrun and slaughtered where they’d been brought to bay, but she hadn’t been at all certain, and she was well-traveled and versed in the weird and wonderful ways the English language had evolved in Montival since the Change. It was amazing what could happen to a language if a few hundred people were cut off from most outside contact for a half-century, and that was just accidental stuff and not counting deliberate alterations, which were also common.
    “All right,
knows
English. She learned from people who’d learned from people who’d learned English as a second language. For someone who grows up hearing nothing but
nihongo
the sounds are difficult. She’s got the grammar and vocabulary quite well; it’s just a matter of learning to pronounce them.”
    Edain came up and saluted briskly.
    “Sir Aleaume has matters in hand; we’ll be ready to march as soon as breakfast