Prince of Outcasts (43 page)

“For a lot of Associates it's such a big part of what they are . . . who they are,” Heuradys said. “And for some it's their work, their calling.”

“It would be cruel to just disregard that,” Órlaith said.

“Hubristic, and unlucky,” Heuradys added.

“But so tempting, sometimes!”

Reiko put her fan before her lips. “I was just thinking very nearly the same about some of my own followers!” she said, and they shared a chuckle.

“
Such
a surprise I got that aide-de-camp job,” Heuradys added contentedly, eating a morsel.

“Well, the General Staff—” Órlaith began.

“Meaning Mom Two. It would take a brave general to cross her, my liege!”

“—
offered
to let you lead a menie from Barony Ath instead,” Órlaith observed, and Heuradys rolled her eyes.

“As in the Platonic Ideal of
pro forma offer
,” she said. “My beloved brother Diomede has that job, and welcome he is. He should, anyway, he's the heir to the barony and he had field experience as a junior officer towards the end of the Prophet's War, when he was Mom Two's squire for a while. It's hard on Ysabeau and the kids, but hey, that's part of being a baron. She's going to settle down with Mom One for another course of intensive how-to-administer-a-barony instruction, together with a social whirl, and trying to prevent my lady Mom One from
totally
spoiling the grandkids.”

The grin grew a little wider, and a teasing light came into her eyes; not cruel, but slightly wicked.

“I notice that Alan Thurston
did
get a company command, light cavalry scouts.”

“It's fitting, given his birth, and I think he'll do it well,” Órlaith said.

“And that company is part of the central reserve, so he'll be close to your Royal headquarters,” Heuradys began. “Not to mention close to your Royal hind—”

Órlaith held up a hand. “And please, spare me the next cavalry joke, and the cracks about
riding well
.”

“Well, he does,” Heuradys said loftily. “If very briefly, in my case. The things I do for my liege.”

“Or in this case, don't do. There are some things even vassal and liege shouldn't share. It would be unsanitary.”

Reiko hid her laugh, mildly shocked. She'd never had young women friends she could relax and gossip and tease with. At home that wasn't really possible for someone in her position; sisters weren't the same, however dear, and they were all younger than her anyway.

“Could be worse,” Heuradys said cheerfully, finishing the last of her sea bream. “You and Reiko here could have fallen in love. Mom One would have loved the tragic romantic thrill of contemplating it, but think of the scandal! Among the Catholics, particularly; they still give
my
parents grief occasionally and we're a lot less conspicuous than monarchs.”

“Itai!”
Reiko said in horror, and did laugh at that. “Even more scandal in
my
home! Not as bad as it would be if Órlaith were a man, but even so . . . a terrible, terrible scandal. Unthinkable.”

The thought of the Empress being involved with a foreign lover was mind-boggling; she felt an impulse to keep giggling, as much nervousness as humor.

“Do your parents arrange for your marriage here?” she asked curiously instead.

There hadn't been time to talk of such things before. Negotiations among parents were the usual form at home, though in her case it hadn't arisen and there had been covert speculation that she wouldn't wed at all, leaving the continuance of the line to her sisters. There had been occasional ruling empresses before her, but her own grandmother had been one of the very few such to hand down the Chrysanthemum Throne to the child of her own body. Before the Meiji lawmakers copied the German succession law—before the West—it had been merely usual for the
Tennō
Heika
's child to succeed, rather than a nephew or such, not a fixed rule. If your grandparent or great-grandparent had sat the Chrysanthemum Throne you were eligible. That had led to problems too—in particular, it had made it possible for the ambitious to find puppet Emperors to use as a façade.

Perhaps we should adopt the same system as the Montivallans,
she thought.
With the eldest child taking the Throne, but regardless of male or female. Hmmm. It might be fortunate if I were to have only daughters. Then I could make a decree, and since there would be no son in any case it would arouse little opposition, and by the time my successor had heirs everyone would be used to it. I will discuss it with Mother. Such things require a delicate touch.

“It differs from realm to realm, like everything else in Montival,” Órlaith said. “Among Mackenzies, no—nor McClintocks. Nor in Corvallis or Boise. Not formally, at least, though there are often sort of understandings between kindred. I think the folk of New Deseret have some sort of system where younger people are introduced at Church meetings.”

“Among Associates, yes, sometimes, since so much in the way of politics and power and property are involved, but it's more a matter of the parents seeing that the youngsters meet the right people so they think it's their idea,” Heuradys said. “Got the idea from old books, my lady Mom One tells me.”

“Not the only case where they did that!” Órlaith snorted. “The Protectorate
is
an old book—and a historical novel, at that.”

“Yes, but it's Jane Austen in that
particular
case, not Sir Walter Scott or Cecelia Holland or Alfred Duggan or Bujold or Barringer,” Heuradys said. “If you're a Count's heir, there just aren't that many
right people
even now. God, some of the intrigues . . .”

“Your father didn't make alliances for your brothers, did he?” Órlaith said.

Reiko remembered that Rigobert de Stafford was a great
daimyo
, Count of Campscapell, though she hadn't met him yet. Heuradys was the adoptive child of her second mother, too.

“Or your mothers,” Órlaith added.

Heuradys smiled fondly. “M'lord Dad found the whole thing funny and washed his hands of it when the subject came up; he said that if he'd known reproduction was going to make life so complicated he might have had second thoughts, even via a kitchen appliance. Mom One started making wedding plans—she loves weddings—whenever Lioncel or Diomede wore some maiden's favor to a tournament, until Mom Two
threatened to go on a year-long hunting trip to Dawson and take them both along.”

Reiko joined the laugh. She wasn't in the least shocked by the domestic arrangements of House d' Ath or de Stafford. Among her people
shudō
, love between men of the warrior class, usually an older mentor and a younger man, had a long and honored history; it didn't affect matters of marriage and children, of course. The custom had returned since the Change, along with much else. The equivalent among women had traditionally been considered so unimportant in the larger scheme of things that before the West came there hadn't even really been a special name for such things; it was just something that one did do or didn't do according to inclination and circumstances.

They fell silent for a moment as the maids replaced the sakizuke with the
hassun
course—named for the measurements of the tray, eight
sun
on each side. This had a selection of small pieces of grilled octopus on octopus eggs and rice, and lily root with salted plums—always one of her favorites, and she hadn't thought you
could
get lily root here. The chef was a man of great energy to locate it, especially considering that he didn't speak the language.

“Now, that's interesting,” Heuradys said after the first morsel. “Normally octopus is like trying to chew off someone's ear, but this is exquisite.”

Reiko made a small
tsk
sound. “So sorry, but people here really don't know how to handle seafood well. Too much cooking. And putting cream sauces on it . . .” She shuddered.

The
Mukōzuke
course came next, in two parts; three small slices of salmon each and then three of
kampachi
—amberjack—served with fresh grated wasabi and a bright
shiso
emulsion and tamari. All three of the young women concentrated for a moment on the complex medley of flavors and how they complemented one another. That was respect to the cook's skill, and to the
kami
of earth and sea who had provided the ingredients. To despise food, or to take it for granted, was to despise life itself. Their grandparents had seen what happened when Earth withheld Her gifts.

When they had finished it and were cleaning their palates with a little plain rice—how odd it still was to think of rice as an exotic foreign luxury!—Reiko hesitated, then spoke:

“Orrey-chan . . . there is something that has occurred to me since we came north again. Your mother . . . understand, I do not blame her . . . I sense that she cannot help thinking that if we Nihonjin had not come to these shores, pursued by our enemies, your father would still be alive. Yet though your loss is as terrible as my own, I do not think you have ever felt so, or blamed us. Why is that?”

I might have blamed you Montivallans for coming just a moment too late to save Father, if it had not been that your sire fell also,
she thought, with a trace of hidden shame.

Órlaith sighed and looked down at the table for a moment; she and Heuradys still made more eye contact when talking than a Nihonjin found comfortable, but Reiko had become accustomed to it as she had to the odd catlike eye colors of blue and amber.

“I think . . . that's because Mother is a Christian. I knew in my bones that he was fated; so did he, for he'd had it from the Powers themselves that he would fall in battle before his hair went gray, the which he'd never kept secret. And . . . not long before he died, he pulled the first gray hair from his beard, and then saw the Washer at the Ford in his dreams.”

At her puzzlement Órlaith chuckled sadly, and spoke in Nihongo for a moment: “Ah, and we're close enough something in me forgets at times that you weren't raised here.”

Then in English again: “Among Mackenzies . . . and McClintocks too, it goes back to the old Gael . . . There's a belief that if you dream you're crossing a river and see an old woman washing a shirt at a ford with blood running downstream from it . . . well, the clothes are yours. A sign, and that sign is of death not long delayed.”

Reiko shivered slightly, as at the touch of something cold on the back of her neck.
You didn't need a miko, a shrine-maiden, to interpret a dream like
that
for you!

“You were expecting . . . What happened, then?” she said.

“No. That is . . . sometime, yes, sometime soon; but not just then, for he didn't tell me. Or Mother. The one because he didn't want to spoil our last time together, the trip to Westria, by making my grief start early.”

Reiko nodded somberly. “Hai! I
feared
for my father constantly on our voyage, but that was a matter of war anyway. If I had
known . . .”

“And he didn't tell Mother for the same reason and because she was pregnant and because . . . well, she
is
a Christian. He knew that the time had come when the King must die that the folk might live, and the land be renewed by the willing sacrifice of his blood. So it was he walked to the Dark Mother consenting, with a smile, savoring every moment the more because it might be the very last.”

“Clotho spins, Lachesis measures, Atropos cuts,” Heuradys said with a sigh. “We don't choose our fate, only how we meet it.”

Softly she went on: “And you did that well indeed, my King. In your dying you united your people for this war. Your spirit will lead us, as well as the heir of your blood.”

Órlaith was silent for a moment, then nodded. “Yes. But the White Christ's followers don't think that way, despite the fact that He did the very same thing. And had foretelling of it from His Father.”

“Strange people, Christians,” Heuradys agreed. “Even my own relatives.”

“It is easier for us, since everyone follows the Way of the Gods in Japan,” Reiko said. “Well, and we honor the Way of the Buddha too, of course.”

A mixture of the two had been her people's manner of dealing with the divine and the world of spirit for a very long time. Since the Change the balance had swung heavily to the older, native Shinto side of the mixture, but the Eightfold Way was far too closely woven into the fabric of Nihon to ever be removed.

Órlaith went on: “She'd have driven herself frantic trying to avoid it. He told Edain, and Uncle Wolf told me afterwards. He was Father's right-hand man and battle comrade, and his heart-brother since they were children.”

“Like you and Heuradys-
gozen
,” Reiko said, and Órlaith nodded.

“Father knew that if you run from your fate, you run towards it, for it's always before you, waiting, whichever way you turn,” she said.

“
Hai
, very true,” Reiko agreed.

Grief never went away; hers for her father was still a dull ache. But it did . . . get out of the way of things as time went on, so that it no longer required a mental effort like battle to deal with normal life.

The
takiawase
course was traditionally items cooked in broth separately and combined just before serving; this was fried tofu balls with prawns, something very like home's black fungus, and ginkgo nuts and water chestnuts simmered in broth.

“Yoshihito always loved ginkgo nuts,” she said with a sigh.

The conversation had reminded her of how she'd lost him twice, when his ship disappeared, and again more terribly when trying to hold the unsheathed Grasscutter Sword had burned him to talc-fine ash in an instant. That had proved him corrupted by his captivity;
Kusanagi
itself had chosen which of her generation was worthy of the Chrysanthemum Throne. But with the pain she would also remember there had been gratitude in the last look on his face. She would remember that until her own death. Only that made it bearable at all.