Mitchell Smith - Kingdom River

In that quiet, the soft sound of cloth breezing could be heard. In dark-blue greatcoat and dark-blue hat, the Boston person – certainly a woman – sailed down, sailed down… and settled with no stumble on the ground. She held, sheathed in her right hand, a slender curved scimitar, and was smiling.

"Mountain Jesus," Margaret Mosten said. "She's a baby."

"Clever." Sam smiled to match the visitor's, and went to meet her. He was still drunk, and would have to be careful.

The woman – the girl – had a white face, wind-roughened but beautiful, oval as an egg. Black hair was drawn tightly back under the blue curl-brimmed hat, and her eyes were also black, dark as licorice chews. Sam noticed her gloved hands were fine, but what could be seen of a slender wrist was corded with sword-practice muscle.

The girl was smiling at him as if they were old friends – apparently knew him from description. "I thought I had another day or two to walk to Better-Weather, but then I saw your camp, and said to myself, 'Ah – there's been fighting! So surely there the Captain-General will be.' " She made a little curtsy as a lady might have done south, in the Emperor's court, then took a fold of heavy white parchment from her coat, and handed it to him.

"I'm instructed to serve the Lord Small-Sam Monroe as the voice of New England, at his pleasure of course. Ambassadress." The girl dwelt on the final s's and made a sudden face of glee.

"From McAllen?"

"No, lord. Second-cousin Louis is superseded. I come down from Harvard Yard directly to you… Poor old Cousin Louis; he'll be furious." She spoke a very elegant book-English.

"I see."

There was a spatter of dried blood down her long blue coat.

She saw him notice it. "Travel stains of the travel weary – I walked all the way down."

Walked, Sam thought, and walked in the air… Still, from Boston-in-the-Ice to North Map-Mexico – alone and in however many weeks – was remarkable. And New England's first mistake, to let him know she was remarkable. They should have sent her by ship.

He read – in black squid ink on fine-scraped hide – the submission of Patience Nearly-Lodge Riley's service as go-between (and Voice of the Cambridge Faculty and Town Meeting) to 'the person Small-Sam Monroe, presently Captain-General of North Map-Mexico'… The 'presently' being a good touch.

"Am I accepted?" She had a girl's fluting voice, as free of vibration as a child's.

"For the present." 'The present' being a good touch.

"Then, my baggage?" the ambassadress pointed up into the air. "So, soon I will be out of my stained coat."

"Call the thing down," Sam said, and raised his voice to the troops. "Stand still, and keep silent!" The shouting hurt his head.

The girl looked up, put two fingers into her mouth, and whistled as loud as he'd ever heard it done. That hurt his head, too.

From high… high above, came a distant hooting, a mournful, uneasy sound. The troops shifted in the sunshine, and sergeants called them to order. They were looking up at what slowly circled down, sweep by sweep on great wings, making its low worried noises.

Sam didn't look up. Margaret Mosten watched the Boston girl.

Slow sweeps, slow descending, so the girl put her head back and whistled again. Sam's head throbbed. Fucking vodka – and the wrong day to have drunk it.

Then the thing came swooping in, wings sighing… the sighs turning to thumps of air as it beat the hilltop's wind to slow… hang almost stationary over their heads in heavy flappings, and finally – as the girl stamped her booted foot and pointed at the ground – come down in a collapse and folding of great bat's wings. It folded them once, then again, so it fell forward on what should have been elbows, and crouched huge, hunched, and puffing from exertion or uneasiness. Its body was pale and freckled – smooth skin, no fur – its neck long, wattled, and odd. But it was the head made the troops murmur, no matter what the sergeants ordered.

Sam stayed standing close by an effort, and looked at a toothed thin-lipped jaw almost long as a man's arm, a round bare bulge of skull with human ears, and eyes a suffering woman's tragic and beautiful blue. A pair of little shrunken breasts dangled from the creature's chest.

The Boston girl went to the thing, made soothing puh-puh noises to it, and began to unbuckle its heavy harness. The wide leather straps were difficult to deal with, stiff with wetting and drying.

Sam stepped beside her – heard Margaret grunt behind him – and leaned against the thing's flank, warm and massive as a charger's, to work a big buckle free. The creature smelled of human sweat, its skin smooth from crease to crease, and damp with the effort of flying.

"What have you done?" he said, not a question he would have asked without the vodka.

But the girl understood him.

"Oh" – she patted its hide – "we make these… Persons from beginning babies, inside tribeswomen, or New England ladies who won't be responsible, fall into bad habits, and don't pay their debts." She tugged a second strap loose, then stepped aside so Sam could lift two heavy duffels and a shrouded wicker basket down from the thing's hunched back.

Something rustled in the basket.

"Weather be kind…" Michael Sergeant-Major came and shouldered Sam aside, bent to pick up the baggage. "Sir, where do you want these?" There was sweat on the sergeant-major's forehead.

"Set a tent for the lady. East camp, beside Neckless Peter's, I think. Tent and marquee, camp furniture."

"Canvased tub-bath," Margaret said. "Canvased toilet pit."

Sam turned away, and the Boston girl came with him in quick little steps alongside, the long blue coat whispering. She smelled of nothing but the stone and ice of the high mountain air she'd walked through.

"How are we to keep that sad thing, lady?"

"Call me Patience, please, Lord Monroe; since we'll be camp-mates. I don't keep her; I send her home."

"Home… And it goes all that distance back?"

"Oh, yes. Its mother is there. It will wander a few weeks… but get to home hutch at last."

"Its mother?"

"Occas always rest in their mothers' care."

"Nailed Jesus…"

"May I change the subject – and ask, are you always so sad at your soldiers' dying?"

Sam stopped. "What did you say?"

The girl smiled up at him, her right hand resting at her side, casually on the grip of her scimitar. "I thought you must be sad for the soldiers I saw being buried below me, to be drunk so early in the day. It proves a tender heart."

Margaret had come up behind them. "You mind your fucking manners," she said to the Boston girl, "or we'll kick your ass right out of here. Who are you to dare – "

"Let it go, Margaret," Sam said. Then, to the girl:

"Still, not a bad idea to mind your manners, Patience… or I will kick your ass right out of here."

"Oh, dear. I apologize." The girl curtsied first to him, then to Margaret. "It will take us a while to learn to know each other better." She snapped her fingers at Michael Sergeant-Major, and he led her away, bent beneath the weight of her baggage and basket.

When she was a distance gone, Sam began to laugh. It hurt his head, but was worth it for the pleasure of first laughter since coming down to This'll Do.

"Nothing funny there," Margaret Mosten said.

"Wouldn't want her for a daughter, Margaret?"

"Sir, I would take a quirt to her if she were."

"Mmm… It's interesting that the New England people sent us such a distraction. I wonder, to distract us from what?"

"If necessary," Margaret said, " 'distractions' can have regrettable accidents. And that blood on the coat – 'travel stains.' "