You’ll be staying at the Thorold Palace, which is maintained as a common residence in the capital by the heads of the families; it’s doppelgangered and quite safe, I assure you. It will be possible for you to return later.”
“Well, that’s a relief,” she said sarcastically.
“Indeed.” He looked at her oddly. “Well, I must say you look fine. I do commend Olga to you; she is not as stupid as she appears and you will need to learn the high speech sooner rather than later-English is only spoken among the aristocracy.”
“Well, uh, okay.” She shuffled nervously. “I’ll try not to trip over any assassins, and I may even meet an appropriate husband.” She glanced at the coach as one of the horses snorted and shook its harness. She felt even more peculiar when she realized that she was not entirely lying. If marrying Roland-even having another child with him-would get him into her bed on a regular basis, she was willing to at least contemplate the possibility. She needed an ally-and friend-here, and he had the potential to be more than that.
“Indeed.” He nodded at her, and for the first time she noticed that there was a certain translucency to his skin, as if he wasn’t entirely well. “Good hunting.” And then he turned and strode away, leaving her to climb into the carriage and wait for departure.
The first unpleasant surprise-after finding that the Tylenol was all packed in her trunks and inaccessible-was that the carriage was unheated and the leather seats hard. Her second, as she shivered and tried to huddle into one corner under a thick blanket, came as Olga swept up the steps and into the seat opposite her. Olga’s blonde hair was gathered up under a scarf and hat, and she wore a wool coat over a suit that made her look like a brokerage house yuppie. “Isn’t this wonderful?” she cooed as plump Lady Margit, in twinset and pearls by day, huffed and puffed up and into the seat next to Miriam, expanding to flow over two-thirds of it.
“It’s wonderful.” Miriam smiled weakly as the coachman cracked his whip overhead and released the hand brake. The noise and vibration of wooden wheels turning on cobblestones shuddered through her hangover as the coach creaked and swayed forward.
Olga leaned toward her. “Oh dear, you look unwell!” she insisted, peering into Miriam’s eyes at close range. “What could it be?”
“Something I drank, I think,” Miriam mumbled, turning away. Her stomach was distinctly rough, her head pounded, and she felt too hot. “How long will we be on the road?”
“Oh, not long!” Olga clapped her hands briskly and rubbed them together against the cold. “We can use the duke’s holdings to change teams regularly. If we make good time today and keep driving until dusk, we could be at Ode-mark tomorrow evening and Niejwein the next afternoon! All of two hundred miles in three days!” She glanced at Miriam slyly. “I hear over on the other side you have magical carriages that can travel such a distance much faster?”
“Oh, Olga,” muttered Margit, a trifle peevishly.
“Um.” Miriam nodded, pained. Two hundred miles in three days, she thought. Even Amtrak can do better than that! “Yes, but I don’t think they’d work too well over here” she whuffed out, as a particularly bad rut in the road threw her against the padded side of the carriage.
“What a shame,” Olga replied brightly. “That means we’ll just have to take a little longer.” She pointed out of the carriage door’s open window. “Oh, look! A squirrel! On that elm!”
It was at this point that Miriam realized, with a sickly sinking feeling, that taking a carriage to the capital in this world might be how the aristocracy travelled, but in comfort terms it was the equivalent of an economy-class airline ticket to New Zealand -in an ancient turboprop with malfunctioning air-conditioning. And she’d set off with a hangover and a chatterbox for a fellow traveller, without remembering to pack the usual hand luggage. “Oh god,” she moaned faintly to herself.
“Oh, that reminds me!” Olga sat upright. “I nearly forgot!” From some hidden pocket she pulled out a small, neatly wrapped paper parcel. She opened it and removed a pinch of some powdery substance, then cast it from the window. “Im nama des’Hummelvat sen da’ Blishkin un’ da Geshes des’reeshes, dis expedition an’ all, the mifim reesh’n,” she murmured. Then Olga noticed Miriam looking at her blankly. “Don’t you pray?” she asked.
“Pray?” Miriam shook her head. “I don’t understand-”
“Prayers! Oh, yes, I forgot. Didn’t dear Roland say that on the other side everybody is pagan? You all worship some dead god on a stick, impaled or something disgusting, and pray in English” she said with relish.
“Olga,” Margit said warningly. “You’ve never been there. Roland’s probably telling fibs to confuse you.”
“It’s all right,” Miriam replied. What, Margit isn’t a world-walker? she wondered. Well, that would explain why she’s stuck chaperoning Olga around. “We don’t speak, urn, what is the language called again?”
“Hoh’sprashe?” said Olga.
“Yes, that’s it. And the other side is similar to this side geographically, but the people and how they dress and act and talk are different,” she said, trying to think of something it would be safe to talk about.
“I’d heard that,” said Olga. She leaned back against her bench, thoughtfully. “You mean they don’t know about the Sky Father?”
“Urn.” Miriam’s evident perplexity must have told its own story, because Olga beamed brightly at her.
“Oh, I see! I’ll have to tell you all about the Sky Father and the Church!” Olga leaned forward. “You don’t believe, do you?” she said very quietly.
Miriam sat up. Wha-a-at? she thought, suddenly surprised. “What do you mean?” she asked.
“Sky Father.” Olga glanced sideways at Margit, who appeared to be dozing. “I don’t believe in him,” she said, quietly defiant. “I figured that much out when I was twelve. But you mustn’t ever-ever-act as if you don’t. At least, in public.”
“Hmm.” Miriam tried to think straight, but her headache was militating against coherency. “What’s the problem? Where I come from, I was raised by unobservant Jews-Jews are, like, a minority religion-but I wasn’t Jewish, either, I wasn’t their child and it passes down by birth.” Let’s leave what I actually believe out of this or we ‘II be here all day. “Is there… what’s the Church like? I haven’t seen any sign of it at the duke’s palace.”
“You didn’t see the chapel because he told us you weren’t ready,” Olga said quietly, pitching her voice just above the level of the road noise. “But he told me you’d need to know before court. So you don’t give your enemies anything to use against you.”
“Oh.” Miriam looked at Olga with something approaching respect. The ditz is a self-made atheist? And the families are religious? “Yes, I think he was right,” she said evenly. “Just how influential is the Church?” She asked, steeling herself for bad news.
“Very!” Olga began with forced enthusiasm. “Mass is held every day, to bring the blessing of Sky Father and Lightning Child down upon us. They both have their priests, as does Crone Wife, and the monastic orders, all organized under the Church of Rome by the Emperor-in-God, who rules the Church in the name of Sky Father and interprets Sky Father’s wishes. Not that we hear much from Rome-it has been under the reign of the Great Khan these past decades, and the ocean crossing is perilous and difficult. Next month is Julfmass, when we celebrate Lightning Child driving out the ice wolf of the north who eats the sun; there’ll be big feasts and public entertainments, that’s when betrothals and further knots in the braids are formally announced! It’s so exciting. They’re cemented at Beltaigne, as spring turns toward summer, right after the Clan meets-”
“Tell me about Julfmass,” Miriam suggested. “What happens? What’s it supposed to be about, and what do I need to know?”
Ten miles down the road they were joined by a mounted escort. Rough-looking men on big horses, they wore metal armour over leather. Most of them carried swords and lances, but two-Miriam peeped out at the leaders-had discreetly holstered M-16s, identifying them beyond a shadow of a doubt as family troopers.
“ Halle sum faggon,” the sergeant called out, and the coachman replied, “Fallen she in’an seien Sie welcom, mif ‘nsh.”
Miriam shook her head. Riders ahead and riders behind. “They’re friendly?” she asked Olga over Margit’s open-mouthed snores.
“Oh yes!” Olga simpered her patented dumb-schoolgirl simper, and Miriam waited for her to get over it. She’s been raised wholly apart from men, unless I am very much mistaken, she reasoned. No wonder she goes strange whenever anything that needs to shave passes through the area. “Your uncle’s border guards,” she added. “Aren’t they handsome?”
