The Sea Peoples(47)
“Let us agree, if you please, that in this one circumstance Mr. Wilde is wrong,” Castaigne said.
Inwardly, Castaigne was laughing. Cackling, rather, and reciting to himself:
When from Carcosa, the Hyades, Hastur, and Aldebaran . . . and through a long line of names, too: the Last King . . . Hildred de Calvados, only son of Hildred Castaigne and Edythe Landes Castaigne, first in succession . . .”
? ? ?
“Wakey-wakey, sweetie.”
Alan started up. For a moment he had no idea where he was; someone had flicked him on the backside with a towel. Memories fled through his mind as he grasped at them, like eels slithering between his hands. He shook his head, rolling over and sitting up.
He felt tired, which turned out to be as much a feature of a field soldier’s life as it did of a working rancher’s except that it was less seasonal. This time he had no objection, because it hadn’t been a case of staying up late to make sure the tents were pitched and the horse corrals in the right place and the chow line would be ready for breakfast.
órlaith stood grinning at him, as nude as he, his own height of blond comeliness and reminding him of a cougar he’d seen running up a rocky slope once, moving like falling water from boulder to boulder with casual ease. Though she also reminded him of a Golden Eagle swooping down a valley.
Good God, what a woman! he thought; his dreams might be troubled and vague, but he remembered the waking part of last night vividly. I wasn’t a virgin, but I might as well have been.
And that has nothing to do with who her parents are. Well, she takes after the High King’s looks, I’ll admit.
He’d been about eight when Artos the First had visited their ranch; it had been very much High King Artos, and not Rudi Mackenzie. Brief and formal and the High Queen hadn’t been with him, but it had been intended to show that his mother was fully forgiven as far as Court was concerned, and it had. And he’d never forgotten the meeting, or the moment of unaffected kindness to the small boy he’d been.
And it’s not just his height and complexion she’s inherited. He was . . . very alive, and she’s the same way.
“Time for a swim,” she said.
“It’s dawn,” he said blurrily, peering at the morning sunlight falling in narrow slits through the woven bamboo walls of the room.
“That’s why it’s time for a swim,” she said. “I’ve got to be at the conference very soon. As my father said to me, on campaign always take an opportunity; it may be your last chance.”
She winked. “And he said you’ll be short of sleep anyway, but you can sleep in the Summerlands.”
He smiled back; Summerlands was what órlaith’s version of the Old Faith called the afterlife. Even if there weren’t many witches in Latah County, everyone knew a little of the stories behind the High King’s religion. Then the smile faded slightly for an instant. . . .
Is she testing me by mentioning him? he thought. Her father killed mine, after all, even if I was still in the womb at the time. No, probably not.
Everyone in Montival who listened to the epics, and more particularly every educated person whose family was involved in the politics of the High Kingdom, knew the history of House Artos and House Arminger back in the War of the Eye—the Protector’s War, people from the Association called it. And how the son of the Bear Lord and Lady Juniper had ended up marrying the only child of Norman and Sandra Arminger.
And from the stories, the High King did my father a favor, there at the end. Even Mother thinks so, though she’s just said it was very bad after he came under the Prophet’s control and that he wasn’t himself anymore. But he tried to kill her when she defected, after all, and in front of hundreds of witnesses, and while she was pregnant at that. If that crossbow bolt had hit it would have been a short and unmerry life for me. I think Orrey just doesn’t hold him against me, which I like. Very much.
He laughed and stretched. “I was just thinking, one generation with a history of getting together after mutual homicide by their parents could be happenstance, but twice . . . that’s a pattern there.”
She grinned back at him, tossed him one of the towels she was carrying and led the way out to the villa’s courtyard pool. Several of her close household were already splashing around, or watching and letting the mild warmth dry them off. And none of them thought wearing clothes to swim in was a good idea.
He wasn’t shocked, though he’d been raised in a conservative part of a conservative part of Montival. Most of the people he’d grown up around were old-fashioned Protestant Christians, with a scattering of Mormons. The ruling Boise City branch of the Thurstons were of the Old Faith—Asatru heathen specifically, not Wiccans like the Mackenzies or McClintocks. His uncle Frederick had taken to it on his trip to the Sunrise Lands with the High King, and his mother and sister had followed when he came back. It had spread widely through Boise’s territories in the generation since because of the prestige of that association with the victorious General-President, but not yet to many in the remote backlands of Latah County.
You got over being body-conscious in field service, though. The heavy infantry brigades of the US of Boise Army were all-male, but the support echelons and the light cavalry weren’t.
And I don’t want to look like a bumpkin from the back of beyond, anyway. Even if I am a bumpkin from the back of beyond, for now. I’ve got a brother to take over the ranch, and Tom never wanted to leave.