The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) (37 page)

It came quickly; Feldman remained quiet until it did, and so did John—he wasn’t one of the people who felt compelled to break silence. The merchant nodded slightly, and John flushed—he didn’t particularly like being tested, but it was always good to pass one. Even if the substance of it was
not a jittery young idiot
.

The Tuna special turned out to be pound-weight steaks an inch thick, marinated in honey, mustard and vinegar and then grilled with a little oil, accompanied by the seasonal treat of a green salad and the usual loaves of bread and wedge of cheese. John crossed himself and kissed his crucifix and murmured:

“Bless us, O Lord, and these, Thy gifts, which we are about to receive through Thy bounty, through Christ our Lord. Amen.”

Feldman broke off an end of his loaf, took a bite, and recited:

“Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech Haolam, hamotzi lechem min haaretz.”
He cocked an eye at John and translated. “Blessed are You, HaShem, our God, King of the Universe . . .”

“. . . who brings forth bread from the earth,” John said, cutting in as he completed it.

Ignatius and the other clerics who taught him had once tried to pound in a little Hebrew along with the Latin before they gave it up as a bad idea; not much had stuck, but that had. That had been about the time that he came to the realization that while he was a loyal son of Holy Mother Church, he had no slightest trace of a vocation for the life of a religious.

“Same ultimate overlord, different chain of vassalage, Mr. Feldman,” he added.

“Well, that’s a uniquely Associate way to look at it,” the merchant said with a chuckle.

John shrugged. “The . . .”

Best not say
Crown Princess
aloud.

“My older sister is as much a Mackenzie clanswoman as anything; and she’s of the Old Faith. I loved my father very much, but I’m an Associate and a Catholic like my mother.” He sighed. “I’m going to be Lord Protector of the Association eventually, so I might as well do it whole-heartedly.”

Feldman nodded. “Good attitude. Now, this whole affair has something to do with the . . . interesting Japanese-looking people who accompanied your sister north after the High King’s death, doesn’t it?”

He touched one corner of his jacket; John saw that it had been torn, the ritual gesture of mourning in Feldman’s faith. He looked aside and blinked: keeping busy helped, but every now and then it struck him again.

“I lost my father two years ago, and there is a hole in your life that takes a long while to close,” Feldman said gently. “But the Lord gives; the Lord takes; blessed be the name of the Lord.”

John nodded, took a deep breath, and went on: “What happened, and what we want to do about it, is this. They really
are
from Japan, it turns out there are survivors there, and they came here because—”

He continued, with an occasional sharp question to clarify some point. Once Feldman said:

“You’re sure they were being candid?”

“My sister is sure that they were telling the truth as they knew it,” he said. “And she carries—”

The man across the table nodded. “I’ve seen the Sword of the Lady. It’s . . . disturbing. And no offense, it’s particularly disturbing for a Jew.”

John smiled wryly. “None taken, Mr. Feldman. I’ve been around it all my life. And
I
find it disturbing . . . as a Catholic, and for that matter a human being. I’m deeply thankful I won’t have to carry it. Unless something happened to . . . my sister. Which God prevent.”

“Alevai, omayn,”
Feldman sighed. “I hoped they were mistaken or lying. That particular evil . . . I was hoping my father’s generation dealt with it for good and all.”

“So did I!”

He paused when the waitress came and removed the plates, replacing them with raisins and nuts and mugs of small beer—John recognized Sophomore, a Corvallis brew, tasty if deliberately weak. He sipped while the merchant sat back, his eyes hooded. He thought for perhaps ten minutes before he spoke again:

“Let me sum this up. You want me . . . my family . . . to not only
transport this expedition of yours, but to lend you the money for it, because this Japanese lady had some dreams. Oh, pardon me, you and your sister had dreams too. The only security you offer being your promise to pay us back later. Which would of course be worthless if you get killed, in which case the High Queen Mathilda, the Lord bless and sustain her, will want my head on a pike, if there’s anything left after bankruptcy court gets through with me.”

“Yes, Mr. Feldman, that’s pretty much it. She wouldn’t break the law to get it, and we’re not asking you to do anything technically illegal, but she’d want it.”

They both knew his mother never forgot a friend . . . or an enemy, come to that. Feldman’s links had mostly been to his father’s side of the family, not the Armingers. The merchant nodded and went on:

“And there’s a distinct possibility that diabolists, of the sort who killed this Japanese woman’s father and burned her ship and then killed the High King, may be involved. And may attack
my
ship. In other words, you’re asking me to fight devil-worshipping sorcerous cannibal pirates.”

“Quite correct.”

“Possibly Haida too, who are all of the above minus the cannibalism—and what happens to your body after you’re dead, is that really such a big deal? And assorted other low-lifes, possibly, including Eater bands in Los Angeles.”

“That’s pretty much the situation, Mr. Feldman. Actually according to our sources there may be Eater bands from the Bay area involved, too.”

Feldman’s face suddenly split with a grin, very white against his black beard. “I have to consult with my brothers and my mother, but I’m currently head of the family business and essentially I’m inclined to agree. Subject to negotiating the details, of course; though I insist on captaining the ship myself. Hmmm, the
Tarshish Queen
would do nicely.”

John had been feeling a little discouraged. He blinked.

“You’re saying yes?” he said, and managed not to let his voice break in a humiliating squeak for the first time in years. “Why?”

Feldman spread his hands in an eloquent gesture. “For a whole bunch of reasons. I have a debt to your family, but which part of it is most
important? Which generation? I think you and your sister. She’ll be High Queen, and you’ll be Lord Protector of the Association. Good to have you both looking with favor on my family . . . and good for the High Kingdom for the Royal kin to have good relations with some of the prominent merchant families here. Of which I intend the Feldmans to be one, by the way. How can I expect loyalty and favor from House Artos, if I don’t show loyalty now when you really need it, need it badly enough to ask, and when it takes real effort and real risk for me to help? Some of my more ambitious and less sensible colleagues here in Corvallis—”

Like most, he used the term to refer to the whole of the city-state’s territory as well as the city proper.

“—think they are, or could be, the second coming of the Venetian Republic. Too much time with the history books.”

“Third coming,” John said absently. “Or the local version thereof.”

News did travel around the world, if slowly; failing all else, the Papal couriers carried it on their rounds and clerics gossiped like other men. It turned out that Venice, or some part of it,
had
survived, and was a trading city once more. No doubt its defensible island location had helped, and local accident whose details were lost in the mists of time and distance.

Feldman nodded, taking the point that John kept himself informed.

“But unlike
La Serenissima
, we aren’t an island,” he said, putting his finger on the same factor. “We’re part of Montival and we need the High Kingdom to be strong. Your father was a strong king, and just, but I think his heir will do as well. So would your mother, but she only holds the position for another five years in any case.”

John frowned, thinking. “But why are you going to captain the ship yourself?” he asked. “I thought you’d manage things from here.”

“And stay to face your mother?” Feldman chuckled.

“A definite point!”

“And I’m not going send one of our skippers into a place I won’t go myself. And on a more personal level . . . you know what Feldman And Sons do . . . Sir Guilliame?”

John spread his hands in turn. “You ship cargo under charter, and trade on your own account, and in quite distant lands,” he said.

“Right. My father helped open the Hawaii trade, back when that was risky. He was jumped by pirates off Maui once. Suluk corsairs out of Mindanao, and they chased him all the way to the Mendocino coast, down in California—excuse me, Westria, your grandmother Lady Sandra renamed it after those books . . . quite good books, incidentally. He found a little civilized community there, too, opened up that trade as well.”

“The Barony of Mist Hills,” John nodded; his father had confirmed the self-conferred title when contact was restored.

The merchant continued: “I took the first Montivallan ship into Darwin myself on my maiden voyage as skipper.”

“That’s the Kingdom of Capricornia, isn’t it?” John frowned, calling up lessons and things he’d heard from the Lord Chancellor. “Northern Australia.”

“Just so. Very lively place, big entrepôt, and I made some deals so sweet . . .” He kissed his bunched fingertips. “But right now I’m outfitting my
Tarshish Queen
to do a trip so far west it’s far east, past Darwin—that Capricornian trade’s getting crowded, and that means buying higher and selling lower.”

“Where to?” John asked, distracted and intrigued.

He loved hearing of those faraway places with strange-sounding names. Not least for the contrast with the workaday, everyday modernity of Montival.

“Bali first—they’ve got some lovely stuff and they don’t much like sailing themselves, though they’ve been settling some of the surrounding islands, they’re densely populated, since they came through the Change better than any of their neighbors. Then New Singapore for rubber goods and lenses, they make some excellent lenses there . . . and then we’re going all the way to Hinduraj on the Bay of Bengal as a speculation based on what I heard in Darwin. The Andaman islands on the way there are a pirate haven, but that’s why the prices are so good, and there are people in Hinduraj interested in trade now the wars there have died down.”

“They have?” John said, searching his memory; faraway places might
be enjoyable settings for romantic fantasies, but they didn’t really impact . . .

Wait a minute. Father was
killed
by people from the other side of the
Pacific Ocean
who we’d never even heard of. Maybe we ought to be less casual about writing a place off as unimportant because it’s so far away.

He coughed; from Feldman’s ironic look he’d followed the thought. John went on aloud:

“It’s been thunder and blood from that part of the world as long as . . . well, I can remember my parents talking about it when I was barely able to understand.”

“It’s more peaceful lately, mainly because Maharaja Mahendra the Purifier—”

“Ah, the mystery man,” John said wisely; nobody knew much beside the name and a reputation written in fire and blood.

“Not so mysterious now I’ve done some research, though a nasty piece of work: his original name was Ravinder Kumar Pal, for example, and from what I’ve been able to learn he reminds me of your maternal grandfather, on a larger scale. He and his son finally finished killing nearly all the many, many people they didn’t like. The ones within reach, at least, which means within a thousand miles or so of their palace in Sambalpur. So there’s peace of a sort there. His grandson took the throne two years ago and seems to be much less of a maniac. A very hard young man, but . . . rational, which is fortunate considering how very many people he rules.”

“What’s worth going there for?” John said dubiously.

“Hinduraj has indigo and saffron, spices, cotton and silk cloth, tea, coffee, worked brass—artwork in general—semiprecious stones and some really spectacular intaglio work, rare woods . . . they want raw salvage metals, tools and machinery. That route means a big crew and an armed ship. The Royal Capricornian Navy patrol where they can, but most of those seas are completely lawless, everyone with a dugout canoe and a rusty kitchen-knife thinks he’s a budding Pirate King. You know the point of doing trade like that? Two points, really.”

John had had excellent tutors. He hadn’t enjoyed studying economics, but . . .

“Reward’s a function of risk.”

Feldman made clapping motions. “An Associate who doesn’t think
wealth
is just another way to spell
wheat
, and vice versa! A miracle!” he said, grinning to take away the sting.

“You can do without silk and cinnamon a lot more easily than without bread, but I take your point.”

“Right. I’m not interested in sitting in a countinghouse in Corvallis trying to squeeze another tenth of a point out of the miserable five percent return you make on milk routes like shipping grain and linen to Hawaii these days, or the downhill run to Tillamook with Bearkiller brandy to swap for cheese. I’d rather go to Degania Dalet and farm myself.”

“And the other reason?”

“It’s related. Milk runs are
boring
,” he said, with a chuckle. “Understand, I don’t take unnecessary risks, I don’t fly gliders or hunt tigers for fun, I’m a family man.”

John nodded; he
did
do both of those things for fun, of course. On the other hand, he’d never had a boatload of screaming corsairs come over the rail waving their parangs amid a hail of blowgun darts. Feldman went on:

“But I do enjoy
overcoming
risks, by planning and improvising. Pitting myself against necessary ones and coming out on top, and seeing places and people nobody else does while I do it. Have since I made my first run as assistant supercargo and general dogsbody on my father’s ship. I don’t pick fights, either . . . but anyone who sends a roundshot through the hull of a pirate
prau
is doing a
mitzvah
for the whole world as well as a favor to some poor, suffering, hungry, deserving sharks.”