The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) Read Online Free Page A

unspoken command that they keep strictly to practicalities. Until she saw her mother and sisters again—and even then only in private—it was unlikely anyone would actually use her name to her face. The living being vanished inside the outline of the Heavenly Sovereign One.
    Egawa’s face was an iron mask, his voice flatly objective, though she knew his grief was if anything worse than hers—and tinged with shame that his lord had fallen in battle while he lived. The bandage on his left hand marked where he’d intercepted the throwing knife aimed at
her
by desperately and instantly putting his own flesh in the way, only moments later. She hoped that soothed his honor; if so it certainly made her glad. He would be the sword-hand of her reign, as he had been for her sire.
    “The Montivallans have furnished all the supplies we could ask,” he began.
    She nodded. They’d had nothing left, and the food and water had been running short for weeks before they made land. For the last ten days of shattering labor at pumps and sails and catapults there had been only a handful of rice each, and barely enough water to cook it and give one strictly rationed cup to drink. Nobody had gone
quite
mad enough to drink the seawater around them, but some had probably been close.
    And Father smiled as he refused the men who pleaded with him to take their ration,
she thought.
    Her people prided themselves on the warrior spirit that could overcome mere material things, but there were limits and thirst and starvation and scurvy were among them in the end. The beaching and desperate flight and savage battle that followed had taken the last reserves of everyone’s strength.
    Nobody showed it openly, of course, but just being able to drink their fill of clean water and feel it soothe the savage pain between the ears was inexpressible bliss. And it had required all the iron control samurai learned not to gobble and stuff themselves with fresh food like peasants at a festival; they had been very hungry, and for just long enough that it became a grinding, nagging ache without the numbing that followed in real famine conditions. The food here was not what they were accustomed to, apart from the fish, but there was plenty of it and they could prepare the raw ingredients in the fashion they preferred.
    In a way she almost missed the physical misery, because it preoccupied you and the spiritual effort of suppressing it smothered the pains of soul and heart.
    Father—
    “And they have provided excellent care for our wounded, treatment much like ours,” Egawa continued.
    “That is most fortunate,” she said, proud that her voice was steady.
    And she’d noticed the same thing when she visited their injured. It was a comfort that those who’d suffered wounds in the Throne’s service were being given the best possible care, though it was a pity that it was among strangers with whom they shared not a word. Still, the skill and sympathy of the healers and their assistants had been unmistakable. To a man in pain, no matter how brave, a smile and a gentle hand meant much.
    “Not one man can be spared if recovery is possible,” she said, with iron in her tones. “And we have no true healers left.”
    One of their doctors had intercepted a
jinnikukaburi
roundshot with her head in the Aleutians, and the other had been slashed to death in the brutal scrimmage around the ship trying to drag a wounded man backfrom the front line. Everyone learned field medicine, but that didn’t make you a real doctor.
    “We have thirty-two men of the Imperial Guard fit for duty, including some lightly wounded, and adequate gear for all though we are short of arrows,” Egawa continued. “Two more have died, and six are seriously injured. I regret to inform you, Majesty, that Watanabe Atsuko
-gozen
never recovered consciousness.”
    Reiko closed her eyes again for an instant. Lady Atsuko had been the last of her female attendants; there had been three originally, all