Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

A scratching at my tent-flap, as if a kept cat wished in – then the Boston girl's quite pretty face peeping past the canvas cloth. She had set her large blue hat aside.

"Are you doing something private?" she said. "Something you wouldn't want anyone to see?"

"Not that private," I told her. "Come in."

She ducked inside, very small in a voluminous coat – a coat freshly unpacked, by the even creases in it, and made of dark-blue woolen cloth, finely woven and heavy, though not the equal of what Gardens used to weave. I've seen no cloth of that quality anywhere else.

The young woman sat on the edge of my cot – perched there, her booted, blue-trousered legs crossed like a boy's – and settled her scimitar across her lap as if it were a pet.

"Neckless Peter. Is that correct?"

"Peter Wilson – but yes, my friends call me Neckless Peter. 'Neckless' since my neck is short – though originally 'Neck- lace' because I wore the gold necklace of Librarian in Gardens. The nick-name was given me by a friend; I keep it in her memory."

"I know 'nick-names'; we called a friend Piss-poor Penelope, just for the three p's in a row. And you're the intelligent person here, aren't you? Little and old, but intelligent?"

"I suppose that's true."

"Isn't it wonderful?" She made a child's face of wonder. "I'm little and intelligent, too! Though I'm not old. So we can be friends, and find out things from each other. Try to hide things… then find them out."

"I don't doubt it, though I'm not told North Map-Mexico's secrets."

"Oh, you and I will discover them." She gave me that steady fresh regard – knowledgeable and innocent at once – that children bestow on their elders. And I saw that she was dangerous, certainly – would not have been sent, otherwise – but also, that she might be mad.

"You're thinking something about me."

"Yes."

"You think I'm very strange. Perhaps with a bird in my head?"

"Yes."

"And has it occurred to you, small, old, and intelligent one, that I might not be strange? That's it's you people of the warmer places, you who haven't learned to live in ice without being swaddled and farting in furs, who haven't learned to do even simple things with your thoughts, that you are the sad and strange ones?"

"Yes, it has occurred to me."

"Then let me confirm it – it's the fact."

"Perhaps."

"'Perhaps.' 'Perhaps' is the curse of intelligence."

"…Perhaps."

She'd spoken like a clever child, but now laughed like a woman, richly, and in deeper voice. She laughed, then recovered in near hiccups. "Now" – she settled herself comfortably – "is the young Monroe, our Captain-General, a war-lord perfect, despite his losses here?"

"No."

"The Kipchak Khan, Toghrul, whom you betrayed – is that a painful word?"

"Only a little."

"He is believed in Boston to be a war-lord perfect, and almost certain to win, moving against Middle Kingdom."

"Mmmm."

"You don't believe that?"

"I believe that war is too imperfect for a perfect master."

Again that steady regard. She ran a small white finger slowly back and forth along her saber's sheath, thinking. Then she nodded. "You are intelligent – but are you cruel? You wouldn't hurt me, would you? Use intelligence against me, who am only a girl, and pretty?"

"I think… you would be difficult to injure."

She grinned, was up off my cot, bent and kissed my forehead, then sat back down again. She'd smelled of cool air, and nothing else.

"Let's tell our stories – but only the truth; it's too early for lies. Yes? May I call you NP? Short for Neckless Peter?"

"I suppose so. And I suppose I must call you… Impatience."

"I like that. My Uncle Niles would agree it was just."

"Your Uncle Niles…?"

"Ah, you want my story first."

"Why not?"

"Hmmm." She sat at ease, thinking… her smooth, oval, nearly childish face changing in swift reflection of the memories she was choosing. Her face seemed to me not an ambassador's – an ambassadress's – but an emissary's, perhaps.

"… Well, I was born to a fine family, only slightly beneath the finest. Cambridge-born in Boston Township. I was taught the past and present. I read and write and configure the mathematics… within reason."

"Within what reason, Impatience?"

"Within the quadratics, but not fluxions."

"Do you have Newton's work? The mathematician, I mean, not the dead River King."

She smiled at me. "Why, NP, you just came to life!"

"Do you have it – and original, complete?"

"No. We, like all the world, are only copybook people, though there are rumors of a great library where the ancient campus was, by old Harvard Yard."

"Under the ice…"

"Under a mile of ice." She toyed with her saber. "Someday… someday, since you will be my friend, perhaps you could come to Boston, help us excavate, search for it. Someday perhaps become librarian for those endless shelves of Warm-time books, waiting now in cold and darkness with all their secrets."

"Secrets…"

"The secret of flying to the moon. The secret of the so-tiny bad things that make sickness happen – though Boston already knows some of that secret. The secrets of waves of radio, of black boom-powder…" She leaned closer. "NP, the pupils of your eyes just changed the littlest bit! Have you been naughty?"

"I don't – "

"Have you found… could you have found, in the Great Khan's fine library, the making-means of boom-powder?"

"No."

"No?" The predatory attention of a teasing child. "You didn't discover the method mentioned – perhaps unbind the book to take that page away and write another in its place?… Then burned that taken-away page?"

"No." This 'no' spoken, I believe, fairly convincingly.

"Well, I won't mention even the possibility to the Captain-General or his officers. I'm afraid of what they might do to such a little old man, to have that secret out of him."

"I know no such secret."

"Well, of course I believe you. I believe you, NP – though Boston suspects that several scholars, over the centuries, have found the making-means of boom-powder… then burned those pages, rather than accomplish even more mischief in a mischievous world, than sharp steel has done."

"I said, I know no such secret."

"Even if you did," she reached to pat my knee "even so, I would never betray you, NP – as you must never betray me. In any case, Boston prefers that secret remain secret, so the city not be overrun by any crowd of fools trained with tubes and flint-sparkers for its use. The present state of affairs suits superior talents very well."

"I do not know the method."

"As you say. – You see? We're friends, NP, and would have been friends as children, except you would have been too old."

"And you, too dangerous a child."

"I was… You know, I killed a friend. I sliced her with Merriment, and sometimes I feel sorry for it. I miss Teresa. I'm glad I killed her – but I miss her."

"Yes… Which of us isn't partly a child, who still wants everything?"

"She called me All-Irish. I wouldn't have killed her except for that."

"I understand. A serious matter."

"Well, you think it's funny, NP – but it isn't funny in Boston."

Someone spurred by my tent, close enough so the cloth billowed slightly as the rider passed. "And so, Impatience, you all live on the ice?"

"No. Only trash lives on the ice. We live in the ice. Boston is in the ice, and of the ice."

"But I'd heard there were great buildings…"

"Yes, and ice is what we make them of. We carve beneath-buildings – and very big – all white white white, or clear as water. I thought you people knew how we lived in the ice."