Kingdom River

keeping in mind there are no dulled instruments here, bleeding being the best teacher.'

***

'The Queen is among her pickles.' The East-bank soldier, steel armor-straps enameled to gleaming jade, stepped aside to let Master Butter pass into storage – household storage, not the great, dark, echoing chambers beneath Island's inner keep, stacked with barrels of crab-apple, barley, pickle-beets and onions, salt beef, salt mutton, salt pork, and salt cabbage.

Here, in Household, were small rooms of special cooked and jarred far-south fruits, condiments, compotes, and particular meats – boiled and poured into clamp-lid crocks, then sealed with wax, so they almost always lasted more than a year. Though sometimes not, and burst with hard sounds and messes.

Butter walked down the narrow stone corridor, his shoulders wide enough to often brush the walls. He heard the Queen muttering, ahead and off to the left, in the pickling room… One of her dear things, pickles. Apparently they hadn't had them in the savage mountain world she'd been born to, so she ordered foods pickled that most had never thought to. Broccoli, carrots, cauliflower.

The court had taken to these, so every gathering and ball saw bowls of pickles along the sideboards, with the smoked meat, honey candy, hard-cooked eggs and hot barley rolls. The salting prompting thirst, of course… Butter stepped to the left.

'So, Master Butter…?' Queen Joan, in ropes of freshwater pearls over a gown of soft imperial cloth – dark blue, with dark-blue lambskin boots to match – was shaking a great blown-glass jar of the tiniest gherkins, finding treacherous sediment. 'Look at this sad shit,' she said – the Warm-time phrase so apt – and held the jar up to a deep arrow-slit through the tower's stone, so daylight might aid lamplight.

Master Butter straightened from a bow. 'Susan-preserver is getting old.'

'We're all getting old, Butter. But not all of us careless.'

'She's very old.'

'Then let her get her trembling ass off my island. Let her hobble back where she came from.' The Queen shook the gherkin jar again. Peered into it. '… So? What of my Large-Martha; is there prowess there?'

'Your Large-Martha will do, Majesty – when she learns Island, and always to be a little early rather than late. Should do better than some who call themselves fighting men. She has size and strength, but more important, quickness. A big man, stronger and just as fast, could likely beat her down, but not easily. She doesn't mind bleeding.'

'But can she learn to fight, Master Butter? – fight serious men and sudden, not just bumpkin Ordinaries brawling in her father's yard.'

'I'm sure so.'

'And you're 'sure so'… why?'

'Most men and women, Queen, if steel or any trouble comes suddenly, throw their heads back in startlement – and so, of course, lose a moment to defend themselves. This Martha does not. She lowers her head to look closer, to watch what comes and how it comes.'

'Hmm… And once she's trained, could you kill her in a fight?'

'Oh, yes, Majesty, though not easily. But I can kill anyone.'

'Well, Master Butter, I've known two men you couldn't have killed.'

'… Ah, the King, of course. Very strong. Was very strong.'

'My Newton, yes. And another… I don't think you'd find me easy, either, though I'm not what I was.'

'I would cut my throat before that contest, My Dearest Majesty.'

The Queen set the gherkin jar down on its shelf with a clack that almost broke it. 'Then you're an ass, and impertinent in your affection!'

'My apologies, Queen. But of course, I'm mad.'

'Yes, so Paul-doctor says. He says you hear unpleasant voices, but so far manage to disagree with them. And you are useful as master of arms.'

Master Butter bowed.

'Now, get out of my sight. Hone my guardian-girl to a fine edge, but do not come private into my presence again for a year.'

'A year, Majesty,' Master Butter said, ' – a year is not so long a time.' And bowed himself out of the Chamber of Pickles.

CHAPTER 11

Webster was furious from long imprisonment. Patience had kept him basketed by day, allowed only the shortest night flights for exercise. He bit her thumb to the bone when she reached in with a piece of lunch's mess-kettle mutton, then huddled stoic as she shook his basket – cursing while little drops of her blood flew – then threw it onto the tent's canvas floor and kicked it under the cot.

Sleety early-evening rain came in a gust, as if Lady Weather were angry also.

'Very well,' Webster said from under there, speaking in a thin, weedy little croak that someone unfamiliar might not have recognized as speech. 'Very… well.'

It sounded like a threat, but was surrender.

Patience held her thumb down a moment to bleed it, then insisted that bleeding stop. Even so, it took a while. Webster's teeth, though few and small – a baby's milk teeth in fact – were capable, as he'd proved on a robin once.

When the thumb stopped dripping, Patience wasn't angry anymore, and went to hands and knees. Under the cot, through the basket's woven willow strips, pale blue eyes – the right, wandering – looked out at her. 'Very well.' Almost a whisper.

'Are you hurt?' She meant his wings.

'No.'

'Oh, thank Who Comes,' Patience said, reached in, and rolled the basket out while the Mailman scrambled to stay upright. No bitten thumb was worth damaging its wings. More expensive than any two or three occas, this was an embryo halted and kept halted at four months in the womb, while what were becoming arms, wrists, and fingers were encouraged to shape wing-struts instead, and anchorages of muscle were enlarged in the breastbone. All mind-managed, observed through slender glass tubes stuck inside a tribeswoman's belly.

Delicate work, not to be compared to the easier earlier interventions that almost always produced an occa – delicate work, and often unsuccessful. No apartment on the Common cost as much as one of these wonders. And this – she'd named him Webster, since he spoke so well, had forty-three words – this was Township property, not hers.

She set his basket on the cot, and unlatched the lid; Webster tried that constantly, but the method was beyond him, his fingertips too tiny. She took the lid off, and reached in to stroke and lift him out. He was withered, very small – a double handful – and brown as an old leaf, his round bald head the heaviest thing about him. He smelled of milky shit, and had left little slender yellow turds in his folded bedding.

'You bad boy… making messes.' And he was a boy, or would have been; there was the tiniest pinch of spoiled cock and balls nested at his bottom.

Webster was still angry, said none of his words while Patience unfolded one of his comfort cloths and wiped him. She reached up to set him against the tent-pole, where he clung with skin wings and little nearly-legs wrapped around the wood, while she took the messed cloths from his basket and folded two fresh ones in.

'Want cheese?' Patience smacked her lips to demonstrate how wonderful the cheese would be.

Webster stared down from the tent-pole – little left blue eye looking straight at her, the other drifting away.

'Cheese?' Patience dug for the crock in her duffel. Table scraps were often fed Mailmen – little meat pieces they could munch and gum to slurry – but farmer's white cheese was recommended, mashed with goat's milk if possible. Both things produced south of the ice, and very expensive.