Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

Strange he'd been dreaming of summer. Summer in the fourth week, when it was perfect in the fields of August, leaf-green everywhere, so winter seemed only a story that might not be repeated.

He reached under thick wool blankets to touch his long dagger's hilt. Sergeant Wilkey would be sleeping at the room's door. Carey'd wanted the man in the room, had gone round the walls under the tapestries, looking for any secret entrance.

The fat man's ways were Eric's. Secret, sly, often useful… often ineffective.

The Queen wouldn't send a killer to his room, certainly not before she'd heard him out, and likely not after. His death would be no advantage to her now, though it might be later, once – if – the Kipchaks were beaten. Now, she'd make him wait a few days, then be dismissive, just short of insult. It would be interesting to see how Queen Joan ruled and decided. Interesting to see how she managed a court that might kill her on a notion… how she managed a people who still occasionally ate people.

The duck-feather bed was too soft; it was hurting his back.

Sam got up with his dagger, tugged the blankets with him, and padded through the dark to a carpet near a stove's dimming coals. He rolled himself in wool, felt the support of cut stone stacked deep beneath him, and went to sleep… hoping for more dreams of summer.

After days of wandering, walking through glassed gardens, examining walls, fortifications, the great stone-built entrance harbors – the Silver, the Gold, the Bronze, the Iron – his inspections never seeming to disturb the officers and men guarding those places, Sam had seen enough of Island.

It lay, a mountain of snowy, wind-struck stone in an ice-flowed river, and seemed to him about as useful as any natural mountain might have been. A great redoubt, no question, and would be very expensive to reduce – but by that time, with an enemy having won to its walls, the war would already be lost. It seemed a poor substitute for a veteran field army, well led, an army not divided into East-bank and West, with a fleet uncomfortable with both of them.

After those inspections, Sam saw what Toghrul had seen, even though far away at Caravanserai in Map-West Texas. The Khan had seen – had sensed – the Kingdom as a giant, but bound in chains of long habit and regulation, often slow, awkward, and shambling… All a hunting call to the Kipchaks, so numerous, so neatly swift, so wonderfully well-commanded.

And, of course, that very instinct, that eagerness, had exposed them. Toghrul had paid no heed – after his one warning attack south – to an enemy left behind him. As a wolf pack, chasing elk, might run by a bowman waiting in a snowy wood, with nothing but glances and a snarl as they passed.

But then, the bowman might follow, so that on a final field, the pack in battle with a furious great bull elk, arrows came whistling from behind.

These notions were confirmed for Sam as he walked the grand stone corridors of Island, whose high ceilings stirred and eddied with lantern smoke and the smoke of torches, which flowed to any outlet of air like a gray ghost of the great river sliding past them.

… During meals in an echoing dining-hall of granite and oak beams, huge as a roofed landscape, the Boxcars – Extraordinaries, of course, at the high tables – were courteous enough. They asked polite and apparently interested questions about North Mexico – its longer summers, its sources of labor, what beasts there were to hunt. Then chatted of hunting, of old campaigns against the tribes. Nothing was said about the Kipchaks.

Pleasant conversations, as by hosts to somewhat dubious guests, and all accompanied by very good food – cow roasts, stuffed geese, cabbage boiled or chopped cold – all meats spiced, carefully cooked, and sauced with gravies a little rich for Sam's stomach. And at every meal, even with breakfast's chicken eggs, fish, or pig-slices, various sorts of pickles and candied imperial fruits were served, with jellied berries from the river's thickets.

In that hall, only breakfast was eaten without music to listen to. Banjar men, a shaman-drummer from some backwoods tribe, and a blind woman with a harp were the orchestra – or more properly, a Warm-time 'band' that strummed and drummed and plucked to ease the later dining down.

Courteous and perhaps a little careful dealing with Sam and Margaret Mosten, the Boxcars seemed more than courteous to Pedro Darry, the lieutenant having become a favorite with the younger men – and possibly some older wives – so he laughed and joked with the Kingdom people as if born on the river.

Sam had been glanced at by a number of the Boxcar women, and found himself, a night or two, dreaming of jeweled and furred beauties… particularly one, smoothly plump, with fiery red hair. She was apparently of some notable tribal family allied to the Kingdom, since her small white teeth were filed to neat points.

Sam dreamed of her, but would have sought no introduction, even if there'd been the time, and this the occasion for it. None of the high-table ladies came to dine without cold-eyed husbands, brothers, or a hot-eyed lover, as escort.

At ease with Pedro, these richly dressed men and women – their cheeks dotted with blue tattooing – remained more guarded with Sam, though friendly enough, smiling as they suggested second helpings of this or that. They appeared to wait for their Queen's decision on him, not caring to be caught wrong-footed.

The great tables, so piled with food being busily served by Red-liveries, seemed to Sam a hint of the Queen's contempt for the courtiers' greed. He grew used to their soft, slurred speech – and sudden eruptions of temper down a table's polished hardwood when enough vodka or barley-whisk was drunk. They all, men and women, came to meals armed – their children also armed with ornate little daggers – but never drew in argument.

"Carey says the tables here are all the Queen's," Margaret had said when Sam mentioned it, "with everyone her guests. No one draws steel on her or hers."

Queen Joan had joined the diners only twice, for mid-meals, while Sam and his officers were eating there. She'd seemed to enjoy herself at the north table, and ate very well – particularly a pudding of preserved fruits – but paid no attention to the North Mexicans.

On one of those occasions, the more than three hundred Ordinaries lining the low tables had raised their beer jacks to her, swayed in place, and sung a song, 'Mammy, How I Love You.'

The high tables hadn't joined in the singing, and the Queen had stood to shout the Ordinaries to silence – "Stop that damned noise!" – which had seemed to please the singers very much. Sam saw they loved her, and were her strength against the generals, admirals, and lords of the river.

On the fifth morning, at a breakfast of imperial coffee, slice-cut barley bread, cheese, eggs, and a sort of sausage, a servant in the Queen's blood-red livery came easing along the wall, past the high tables' seated diners.

Margaret Mosten slid her bench-chair back a little as the man came, and hooked her little finger in her rapier's guard to loosen the blade in its scabbard.

"Oh, I'd say no trouble there." Darry, on Sam's other side, reached for another slice-cut of bread. "Some errand…"

The errand ended at Sam's place.

"Milord." The servant had a murmuring, messenger's voice. "Her Majesty is pleased to give you audience… If you'll follow me."

"About time," Margaret said, and stood.

"Only the Captain-General," the servant said.

Even so, when Sam walked after the man down the hall's long center aisle – watched, it seemed, by every eye – and Sergeant Wilkey left his place at a low table to come with him, the servant said nothing.