Prince of Outcasts (31 page)

Pip continued: “Just be careful where you put your feet anywhere near the coral. It's sharp, and there are sea-urchins . . . think of them as poisonous underwater hedgehogs.”

What is it with me and masterful women?
he wondered.

To change the subject he turned his head to look at the house. “This doesn't seem much like the rest of Baru Denpasar. Or even the palace.”

“It's pre-Blackout . . . pre-Change . . . and built for foreign visitors then, I rather think. Tourists, they called them, didn't they? Though the rest of the compound is more recent. Now, about that swim?”

He hesitated as she gestured towards the water, and she chuckled.

“Why be such a baby, John?”

“Well, to tell the truth, milady, I haven't been
in
the ocean more than a few times in all my life. And the last time, a forty-foot crocodile tried to eat me.”

From a few remarks and a little discreet pumping of her henchman
Toa, he'd gathered that Lady Balwyn-Abercrombie was of very distinguished ancestry indeed. As daughter to the heir to the Colonelcy of Townsville she was for all practical purposes the child of a monarch, as he was, and through her mother related to the Windsors and of many quarterings. He wasn't a snob about birth, or hoped he wasn't, but it did give them something in common.

Though Father once said you should keep in mind that the first of a dynasty is usually just a warrior with a ready sword and a serious run of luck.

“Which didn't stop you jumping in to save your ship's First Mate,” she said, giving him an admiring glance; she'd gotten the details out of the others.

I must admit, having a beautiful woman wearing very little look at me with admiration is pleasant.

He shrugged, with an it-needed-doing expression. “It was an impulse. But back home salt water is bloody
cold
. Most places if you fall in you'll die if you're not pulled out in time, and it isn't
much
time. There's an arctic current all down our coast. People swim in ponds or rivers . . . a few pools built for it . . .”

He could see her astonishment. “That's . . . that's bloody awful!” Then more cheerfully, “You're in for a treat, then. Last one in is a Tasmanian! Nothing dangerous in the water except
me
!”

She threw her sarong onto the lounger beneath the beach umbrella and ran down the white sand, diving cleanly into the swell of a waist-high wave and sleeking outward like a seal, a white streak in the ultramarine clarity of the water.

John sighed, rolled his eyes upward, and muttered: “But you know what a weak sinner I am, Lord.”

Then he followed her in. Even knowing that the water was warm, and even after his experience on the
Tarshish Queen
in these seas—granted, the one time that he'd gone over the side on her had been a near-death experience—it was still at some level a shock to find the wave no more than slightly, pleasantly cool on a hot day.

He
wasn't
used to swimming in the ocean, but he had a good powerful
crawl stroke. Pip seemed to be part sea-otter, though. By the time he'd reached the raft anchored a few hundred yards offshore he couldn't see her at all.

Until a hand clamped around his ankle and pulled him underwater with a strong backward jerk. It released him almost immediately, and he surfaced coughing and snorting bitter seawater and looking wildly about. Pip surfaced a few yards away, grinning, her hair darkened and sleeked down by the water.

“If only you could see your face,” she laughed.

“Son of a
bitch
!” he swore, coughing.

“Bitch, rather. Care to try for revenge?” she said.

She backed slowly as he swam towards her, then dove and turned in a fluid curve and what was probably a deliberate flaunting of a very shapely backside.

Well, that's enough to drive out visions of giant crocodiles,
he thought, and dove after her.

K
ERAJAAN
OF
B
ARU
D
ENPASAR

C
ERAM
S
EA

O
CTOBER
23
RD

C
HANGE
Y
EAR
46/2044 AD

T
hora Garwood looked up. Prince John was standing not far from where she and Deor sat. He was in local dress, and despite that sweating more than the mild humid warmth of the night in the Raja's palace required. His brown eyes were anxious but determined, yet she'd seen less fear in them on a deck that ran like rainwater with blood, or even when he leapt into the sea with the monster . . .

By almighty Thor, he did do that, when nobody would have thought the less of him for staying where he was. I'll go a little easier on him for it.

“Ah . . . milady Thora . . . I think we need to talk, but . . .” he began, his quiet tone hidden by the rustle and low voices of the rest of the audience taking their places in the amphitheater.

Thora let one eyebrow rise and glanced past him to where Lady Philippa Balwyn-Abercrombie sat with the cool regal self-satisfaction of a tawny cat.

“Johnnie, I hope we'll be talking in the future. But there's really no need for words about
that
. You're a free man and I'm a free woman. You might have told me in words
first
, though.”

“Ah . . . later then . . . Thora, Deor,” he said with a nod, and talked away.

He wasn't dragging his feet or hanging his head, but you could see that it was an effort. Thora grinned for a moment, wryly reminded herself that he hadn't quite seen twenty years yet—there were times you could forget that about him, and others when it was all too obvious. She hadn't wanted to hurt him, much, but that had been a body-blow anyway, and she didn't particularly regret it. Deor made a questioning sound.

“No. It's a bit sad, but I'm not angry, my friend,” Thora Garwood said, very quietly. “We never pledged troth, just companionship, and I didn't expect us to be lovers for long—not as long as happened, given how unexpected that storm and this voyage were! We'll still be good friends, I think, in the end.”

“You were right. He might have told you first,” Deor grumbled.

Thora's shrug was rueful. “He did, just not with words, and yes, he should have spoken the words. But John's always going to be putty in the hands of a woman who wants him. He was for me! Though it would be different if he were married; he'd sweat blood resisting temptation, but he'd try and I think he'd manage it. And I saw that one stalking him like a wolf-bitch who's seen her mate. What we had was good, but we're too unalike, not to mention the gap in our ages. It wouldn't have lasted as long as it did, if we hadn't been on the
Queen
and cut off from the world.”

She breathed out through her nose, long and slow. “Let's pay attention here. We may never see this again—I didn't think we would, when we left Bali.”

That argument moved him; his appreciation of beauty was keener than hers, but that wasn't to say she lacked it altogether.

The Cendrawasih dance was to be performed in a sort of amphitheater in Raja Dalem Seganing's palace, lit by lanterns in bamboo cages around the upper tier and over the split gateway—through which the dancers would come—shaped like a temple entrance into fantastically-shaped gods and monsters and curl-tusked, club-wielding guardian
raksasa
spirits on either side, with stairs descending to the coral-block floor. Stone benches surrounded it on three sides; the local folk mostly sat on
mats with their legs crossed. Prince John was a few yards away to her left now, with Captain Pip sitting next to him; Thora thought it was her imagination that a clear quivering barrier separated them from her and Deor. Both were wearing local clothes which the Raja's tailors had run up for them. They were wearing daggers as well—perfectly acceptable here, since no male Balinese went beyond his own threshold without his keris tucked into his sash, and for that matter half the women did too.

Deor looked at her dubiously, and she put a hand to her stomach. “Besides which . . . remember what we discussed? You might say I've gotten what I wanted.”

“How did—” he began.

Then he cut himself off and glanced around. Ruan had been quiet, probably out of embarrassment; now his gossip-loving Mackenzie ears pricked up visibly. Thora leaned close and whispered in Deor's ear, and the younger man was too mannerly to do anything but look away. His folk knew that two could be
anamchara
, siblings of the soul, whether or not they were lovers in the conventional sense.

“The usual way, and by happenstance; precautions don't always work, you know. Which relieved me of the weight of deciding! And right now . . . well, I don't even feel I'm obliged to talk it over with the Prince, all things concerned. Later, maybe.”

Deor looked slightly panicked. “Don't worry,” she said. “We've months before things get urgent.”

“How many months?”

“Oh, about eight, I think. Though it'll be a nuisance a bit before that.”

*   *   *

John sat and smiled weakly as Thora nodded to him, and swallowed. Her answering smile seemed genuine, if a bit pawky.

I should have remembered that I can't get
away
from this. But I wasn't thinking, not with the head on the end of my neck, was I? I like Thora. On the other hand, I like Pip, a lot—we're more comfortable together, and despite her not being from Montival we have more in common. Except that right now, I'm extremely uncomfortable. Maybe I wasn't born to be a Prince or a musician. I should look into a career as a worm instead.

“It's not fair,” he murmured. “We Catholics get to feel everyone else's guilt too.”

“Well, I'm Anglican Rite,” Pip said.

The Anglicans over in Greater Britain had rejoined the Church en masse back before he was born, not long after his grandfathers killed each other and the Association lands found there was still a Pope in Italy. It had been a matter of politics, mostly, and he supposed the ones in Australia had eventually done likewise; though thus was the will of God fulfilled. It was through men and their works that He brought to be that which must.

“We don't do guilt,” she went on. “Such a grubby little emotion, and such a handicap to empire-building.”

He glanced at her in startlement and she smiled fondly and went on:

“As Mummy explained it, we'd land somewhere and plant the banner and claim it in the name of the current enthroned wastrel, and if a native of the place ran up gibbering in protest we'd look at him like this—”

Her drawl grew more pronounced, and she mimicked an icy, condescending stare down her short straight nose:

“—and we'd say just before we kicked him out of the way:
Do you have a
flaaag
? No? Can't have a country without a
flaaag
, old boy.
As Mummy told me, keep this basic attitude firmly at the forefront of your mind and life becomes much simpler. And that's why there are people speaking English all over the world.”

He glanced at her again out of the corner of his eyes, unsure of how serious she was. Instead of asking for details he gave her hand a quick pat.

She'd given him a rundown on local etiquette;
don't show people the soles of your feet
was part of it, and while hugging and hand-holding were common, they had a stiff sense of propriety here in their own way. And this was a court occasion, so reasonably formal.

There was a very quiet murmur of conversation in the liquid local language; for once he felt a pang of envy for his elder sister and the instant comprehension the Sword gave her. Huge colorful moths flew around the lanterns, and bats swooped through occasionally to harvest
them. The night smelled of damp stone and the sea not far away, and of the palm-oil burning in the lamps; very little of the city not too far distant apart from the smoke of fires, for these seemed to be a very cleanly people, and ones who wasted nothing.

The orchestra filed in and struck up and dead silence fell among the watchers. The instruments were only very roughly similar to those he knew, and the musicians sat crosslegged or kneeling on woven bamboo mats to play them—flutes, long drums held across the lap and slapped with the hands, a zither-like piece, and an amazing array of xylophone-like things played with hammers over bamboo sounding tubes, or suspended gongs struck with mallets. Just looking at them was a pleasure. He could recognize fine workmanship when he saw it even in another idiom, and the golden winged gryphons . . . more or less gryphons . . . that held them and carved and inlaid teak and bronze of the frames was as good as any he'd ever seen back in Montival.

The music made him close his eyes with a frown of concentration. Nothing was familiar, but . . .

Ah, a five-octave range or better. My God, but that's a complex background rhythm! As complex as a chamber orchestra doing Bach, and at a faster tempo. This particular piece is sprightly, too. I can feel colors in it.

He relaxed his mind, and felt movement in the music as well. It was for a dance, after all.

Pip touched him and he opened his eyes with a slight jerk. Deor was looking at him; the other musician raised a brow and nodded slightly, sharing this at least.

I hope I haven't lost his friendship. That would be a pity, after we've made music together and fought side-by-side.

Pip murmured very softly in his ear. “This is the
tari Cendrawasih
. It's supposed to be the mating dance of the Bird of Paradise. The Bird of the Gods, they call it here.”

The doors on the other side of the amphitheater opened. Two men stepped out carrying fringed parasols of red silk very like the four who surrounded the Raja on the other side of the enclosure, and stood stock-still.
A woman danced down the steps after them—and the dance was as alien as the music, and like the music held him spellbound. She was dressed in a tall golden headdress plumed with impossibly colorful feathers and a sheath-like red dress that left arms and shoulders bare save for a fretted golden necklace and armbands, with deep pleats in the skirt that swirled around her bare feet. From the rear of the dress hung two long swaths of golden silk; when she grasped them and raised her arms high they trailed behind her like wings.

There's a whole language of step and gesture here I don't know,
he thought with fascination.
But even the glimpses are lovely.

The side-to-side motion of the head, the curling spread-fingered movements of hands and arms, the eloquent darting glances of her eyes, the quick bobbing movements of the whole body, all suggested a bird—and also longing. Then the music rose to a crescendo and a second figure arrived, her costume subtly different but just as flamboyantly colorful. They faced each other with the yellow wings outstretched, bobbing and circling, then danced apart . . .

You know,
John thought,
there's nothing here that you couldn't put in front of a convocation of abbots and abbesses, but that's an
extremely
sexy dance.

He stopped himself on the verge of applauding when he noticed nobody else was; evidently you showed appreciation by intense focus and approving looks. The performers didn't bow to the audience either, just circled still dancing as they exited up the staircase they'd entered by.

Did she wink at me? That was the first one, the dance leader. She
did
wink at me, I think! What a remarkably accomplished girl. And very pretty, too.

Pip chuckled softly. “I think Sulastri wants an introduction. She's not as standoffish with outsiders as most people here, I found.”

My God, I'm transparent!

At his look of alarm she tucked a hand into his arm and went on: “And I have
no
intention of introducing you.”

The look of teasing mockery died down. “This dance is sort of unusual here; it isn't really religious . . . not part of a ceremony, at least.”

“Most of their dances are?”

Pip frowned in thought. “More a matter of nearly everything being part of their religion here, and religion being part of everything else.”

Sounds like Mackenzies!
he thought.

She paused for a moment and went on: “Well, not absolutely everything, and putting it on for us with the best performers in town is a gesture of honor. It's also a way of saying that the Raja is willing to do serious business . . . in a day or two.”

“Aren't they in a hurry?” John said.

“For them, this
is
hurrying. They've got dances that go on for
twelve hours
, more like ballet combined with a mystery play. Anything less than what we're getting would be mutually insulting.”

John ran a hand over his hair. “And I thought we Associates were obsessed with ceremony!”

“Oh, you have no idea. It doesn't hurt that you're a Prince, too, and not just some weird foreigner. Weird foreign
woman
, at that,” she added dryly, an edge in her voice.

“Weird foreign male Prince,” John said, and glanced over at Raja Dalem Seganing. “They should count themselves fortunate they didn't get my elder sister.”

The ruler of Baru Denpasar was in his sixties, and like most of his people he was lean and slightly-built. And short by Montivallan standards; about four inches below John's five-foot-ten, which made him tall for his folk, with thick white hair that still held a few streaks of black, cropped closer than the shoulder-length or more which seemed standard for men here. The Montivallan thought there was a profound weariness in his eyes, under a smooth mask of calm good nature and a costume which, despite its darker colors, made the dancers seem positively restrained—it included a crown of leaves made of gold, for starters, and a jacket that showed patches of black between riots of embroidery in threads of precious metal and jewels.