"So you say. But with your throat cut, you'd say no more, issue no commands, invade no one."
Sam took a moment before answering."…I think you won't kill me, Queen, for two reasons: Your war with the Khan has already begun badly, and I doubt you want war with North Map-Mexico as well. Kill me, and you'll certainly have it. And also…"
"Also?"
"My Second-mother, Catania."
Queen Joan sat and stared at Sam, her face bleached pale as bone. "Well… Well, you have a ruler's guts at least, to use her name to me, to assume I honor her memory so much."
"I don't know what memories you honor, Queen – I only know she honored yours."
"You young dog… to use my own heart against me."
"What weapon more worthy than your heart, Queen?"
Queen Joan stared at him; she didn't seem to need to blink. "I have courtiers – ass kissers – who speak to me in just that way."
"No, you don't. Those people fear you, and they lie. I'm as likely to bite your ass as kiss it."
The Queen glanced over at her daughter. "Rachel, what do you think of him?"
"He is… a change, I suppose."
The Queen looked back at Sam. "Let me tell you something, clever young Captain-General of minor importance – let me tell you that if I were even five years younger, and had a different sort of daughter, I'd put you under the river… Yes, and then weep for sweet Catania's memory."
Sam nodded. "But you're not younger, Queen. You need help against the Khan. And you don't have a daughter fierce enough to follow you in this kingdom."
"I'm here," Princess Rachel said. "Don't speak as if I were not."
"I apologize, Princess."
"But you are not here, Rachel." The Queen spoke without looking at her daughter. "You're only present. To be here, you would have had to do more than read and write in your book tower. Do more than tame song-birds. More than conversations and philosophies and letters and studies of this and that. You have not earned being here."
"Then I will not be missed." Princess Rachel left her mother's side and walked out through the double doors. The doors remained open, so her footsteps could be heard down the hall as she went.
"I'm sorry," Sam said, "that the Princess was upset."
"Too fucking easily upset. My Newton wanted a boy. I gave him a girl – and am punished for it."
"A princess may become a queen."
"Some may… Listen, Small-Sam Monroe, you care for your North Mexico, and hope to save it by joining us against the savages. All this perfectly understood, and sensible. Be assured, if I hadn't thought you might be useful to us in just that way, I would never have asked your visit, never offered the possibility of engagement to my daughter."
"Always more improbable than probable."
"Yet here you are, Small-Sam. And apparently intend to make the 'improbable' a fact!"
"Yes, I do."
"We're not in that much trouble. We're a civilized kingdom – well, coming to be civilized – while you lead only border tag-ends, roosting on land stolen from the Emperor. Land that any more formidable emperor will soon take back."
"Queen, if you didn't need me, if you didn't need my army… if you had any man to keep your daughter safe, we wouldn't be talking. I'd be dead, or gone."
"Still a possibility."
"Not since Map-Jefferson City."
Queen Joan sat watching Sam for almost a full glass-minute, then said, "You're fortunate that so many of my ghosts stand beside you."
"I know it."
Queen Joan rose, her armswoman looming behind her. The Queen was tall; she looked slightly down at Sam, her eyes the flat blue of sky reflected in polished metal. "You have my permission to try to persuade Rachel. And also my permission to… advise our commanders in all campaigns where your people will also be engaged." She considered him for a moment. "And I do hope that some foolish treachery of yours, some starving ambition, won't make it necessary to kill you."
"Poison," Sam said, "would be the only way with a chance to keep my army from your river, then your island. An absolutely convincing illness. And even then…"
"Oh," – the Queen smiled – "you know the old copybook phrase 'Where there's a will, there's a way'?"
"I know it. And I depend on it."
The Queen walked away, laughing, her armswoman striding to cover her back.
Sam heard bootsteps behind him, the faint music of oiled mail. "Well, Sergeant?"
"Seems thin ice, sir."
"Yes. Thin ice… over deep water."
The Queen – with Martha nearly beside her, only a half-step back – strolled down the Corridor of Battles. Banners along the walls, some only woven memories, moth-eaten and frail as insect-gauze, billowed slightly in the faint breeze of their passing. The Queen, as always in this corridor, paused beneath the flag of battle Bowling Green – this great cloth, its years recent, still gleamed in white silk and gold thread, its only crimson a tear of loss, sewn at its center.
The Queen whispered to herself, as she always did under that banner. Whispered to herself, or perhaps the killed King… then walked on.
"So, Martha, now what do you think of our sturdy young Captain-General?"
"I think you should be careful, ma'am."
"Mmm. You think he might – if, for example, he and Rachel become engaged to marry – perhaps take advantage afterward, set me aside? Kill me?"
"He might, if he thought it best. Set you aside, I mean. But – "
" 'But?' "
"He wouldn't kill you, ma'am."
"And why not, girl?"
"Same reason you won't kill him."
"Clever Martha… The past weighs on both of us like a fallen tree. And I see Catania, smiling at me."
CHAPTER 18
There were two guards at the door to the West Tower solar. A chamber, as Sam had found – Sergeant Burke clanking up behind him – reached after a steep seventy-two-step climb from the tower gate. As usual at Island, one of the guards was armored in blue-enameled steel-hoop, the other, in green. Also as usual, both were armed with shield and short-sword for handiness in close quarters… They were keeping an eye on Sergeant Burke.
"No entrance here, milord." Green-armor.
"Announce me," Sam said.
"Cannot do it, sir." Green again.
"Announce me," Sam said, "or stand aside."
There were few moments more interesting to a commander, than those spent waiting to see if a questionable order would be obeyed.
After those interesting few moments, Blue-armor turned and knocked gently on the iron-bound oak door. Sam had found no flimsy entranceway on Island, except on the glass greenhouses. Any enemy army reaching Kingdom's capital would find difficult barricades at every turn, on every landing, and before every room.
The door latch turned, thick oak and iron swung open, and Princess Rachel stood impatient in her slate-gray gown. She held a small copybook in one hand, a steel-nib pen in the other.
"I'm occupied, milord." Looking down at him a little, since she was slightly taller. "And I believe our conversation was just completed at my mother's audience."
"I've come to apologize again for that… clumsiness, Princess."
"You spoke your mind."
"Carelessly." Sam tried a smile past a guard's steel shoulder.
"As I said, milord, I'm occupied."
"And since I am not, Princess, I've taken a guest's liberty to visit."
Impatience and annoyance. "Very well." She stepped aside as he came in, then swung the door closed behind him. Sam saw, as if he still stood outside on the landing, the look exchanged by the three soldiers.
This solar was no lady's retirement, with cushions, harps, embroidery frames, little dogs, game-boards and so forth. It was a library and copying room, circled with shelves and copybook stacks, copy stands, and a flat-topped work-desk beneath the north window… Only thick carpets – spiraled tribal work, Roamer patterns woven in greens, golds, and rust reds, with dreamed creatures chasing down the edges – relieved the room's simplicity. The light was good, a bright, cool reading light from four great windows spaced around the chamber – the only windows Sam had noticed at Island that were not narrow and iron-barred.