Kingdom River

'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.'

'The city?'

'All frozen fine. We have an opera theater and a prison. We have our college, of course, our town-meeting hall, and places where other things are done, secret and not so secret. We are civilized people, NP. We have churches to these people's Mountain Jesus and Kingdom River's Rafting one, and to our Frozen Jesus, as well as chapels for every other Possible Great, so Lady Weather is sung to, also. There is nothing Boston doesn't have!'

'I see. Houses?'

'Apartments. Gracious, don't you know what apartments are?' Apparently startled by such ignorance.

'From copybooks, I do, yes.'

'Well, that's what we have! My mother's apartment is almost on the Common. My Uncle Niles – a true Lodge – lives on the Common. He has eleven rooms, not counting the unmentionable.'

'The unmentionable would be… the toilet?'

This strange girl nodded Yes, apparently embarrassed to speak it.

'But how… how does everyone keep warm?'

''Everyone' doesn't keep warm, NP. People of good birth, people with the right piece in their heads, keep themselves warm – warm enough that a cloth coat will always do. The Less Fortunate go around in fat fur boots, and wrapped in furs, and complaining. But they have furs; the Trash-up-top hunt furs for them. I had friends who had to wear furs.'

'A city of ice…'

She tapped my knee gently with the tip of her sword's scabbard. 'Wouldn't you like to see it? I think you would. You'd love Boston – and we could hunt for the Harvard library together!'

'Perhaps one day, Impatience.'

She stuck her tongue out at me. A rude child. 'But you're old. You may not have enough days to get to that 'one day.' '

'Time will tell.'

'Oh, I know that saying. That's a Warm-time saying.'

'Yes.'

'Now…' She settled back on my cot, tucked my pillow under her armpit for support. 'Now, I want to hear your story.'

'But you haven't finished yours. How, for example, you came to be an ambassadress.'

'Oh, my Uncle Niles likes me, so I was made diplomat to North Map-Mexico and here I am… Do you want to hear the oldest song?'

'The oldest song?'

She slid to her feet – supple as a deep-southern snake – dropped her scimitar onto my cot, struck a sudden pose, and astonished me with a prancing, impudent little dance, back and forth, her arms crossed at her breasts. And she sang.

' 'Ohhh… I wish I was in Boston, or some other seaport town…!'' Quick little kicking steps back and forth along my tent's narrow aisle. ''I've sailed out there and everywhere… I've been the whole world round…!''

There were two more verses – their simple ringing melody sung out in a clear soprano, and danced to with no trace of self-consciousness at all. There was great charm in it… charm I found an uneasy decoration for what might lie beneath.

She came to the end suddenly as she'd started – and sat back on my cot, placid, breathing evenly as if there'd been no song, no vigorous dance.

'Now, NP, how did you come to be a slave of the Grass Lord Khan? Is he a pleasant young man – or cruel?'

I was still digesting the performance, her singing echoing in my ears. 'His father's Border Roamers came into our forest. Too many to drive away.'

'Then killed your people, surely.'

'Yes, in the fighting… and after the fighting was over. But I was Librarian, and pushed one of them off the library's walk when he tore a copybook for pleasure, to watch the white leaves fall so far to the ground.'

'A very high library, then?'

'Yes. We built in trees, and of trees, and they loved us.'

'Well done to kill a fool! But NP, why didn't they throw you after him?'

'I think I amused them. I think his being killed by me amused them. Then one of the Khan's officers came and ordered the library sent west to Caravanserai – and me with it.'

'I would never be a slave.' The Boston girl made a face and shook her head. 'I'm almost a Lodge – I am a Nearly-Lodge Riley.' For emphasis, she slid a few inches of her sword's bright steel free of its sheath… then slid it shut.

'You have not met the young Khan.'

'If I did, he would like me for my spirit and beauty. He would never harm someone so pretty and intelligent!' This strange little creature then swooned down along my cot's pillow like a romantic child. 'He would fall in love… and I would be his queen.'

I was startled, charmed afresh – then, as she lay there, her saber cuddled, I saw in those handsome black eyes (eyes dark as the Khan's, in fact) a gleaming amusement, beneath which seemed to lie dreadful energy, incapable of weariness… Something struck me, then, and though I've never been certain, could never be certain, it occurred to me that the New Englanders might have made with their minds more subtle monsters than those that groaned and flapped great wings – might have made these more intricate others out of their own unborn and beloved children…

There were sudden trumpets then, and stirring in the camp.

The Boston girl was instantly up and off the cot – smiled good-bye – and was gone. The tent-flap, swinging closed, stroked the vanishing curve of her sword's sheath. She left, as formidable people do, an emptiness behind her, as if the earth had nothing to offer in her place.

A sergeant was shouting. The ground shook slightly to the hooves of heavy horses.

I followed outside in time to wave an armored trooper to slow. He sat his sidling impatient charger, a roan already becoming shaggy with winter coat, and gave me a courteous moment.

'Are we breaking camp?'

'No, sir.'

'Then what are we doing?'

'What we're told,' he said, smiled, nodded, and spurred away.

… The camp's tumult finally done – an expedition apparently suddenly undertaken, and most of the soldiers