The Golden Princess: A Novel of the Change (Change Series) by S. M. Stirling

badly. But from little things . . .”
    “Big things grow,” Thomas finished for him. He stared at his old man, searching his eyes for something as the noise of the crowds seem to fall away. “You know things can never go back to the way they were, don’t you? Before . . .”
    “Before the Change, yes, I know,” said King John testily. “I understand that. There will always be a King in Darwin. Just like there’s a Premier of Hobart and a Mayor of Launceston, a Colonel in Townsville and a fucking idiot in Cairns.”
    Thomas grinned for a moment. “The Lord High Moron Joh III? You think that dynasty’s going downhill?”
    “Nah. They started in a pit under the Seventh Circle of Hell. They’ll be right.” He went on seriously: “We’ve done well here, son. But we can do better. For them and by them.”
    He waved his hand at the crush of townsfolk on the sidewalks. He knew visitors from the south referred to Capricornia’s capital as Wogland and Slopetown or the City of a Thousand And One Frights; the polite ones with an air of disbelief, but many with open distaste.
    About what you’d expect from a bunch of inbred bogans.
    Down south the Change had all but erased a century of migration by killing off the big coastal cities while sparing the Outback and, of course, gallant little Tasmania. He’d noticed that a fair number of their youngsters drifted up here, looking for something more exciting than a life spent growing spuds or staring up the arseholes of sheep.
    Tasmanians. Those self-important pricks,
he thought, even as anxiety at the latest reports from his spies in Mindanao stabbed at him:
Christ, there’s a whole
kingdom
of Zed up in the islands? We might just
need
those self-important pricks.
    “And we’ll need
them
,” said King John jerking a thumb at the throngs of peasants and commoners. “More than they need us.”
    The driver took his bare foot off the brake lever and sat up as they came up to the wrought-iron gate and the four mules pulling the carriage slowed. The guards rapped the butts of their pikes on the brick roadway, or presented their crossbows.
    A banner over the arch read:
Darwin Welcomes The Regional Security Conference Delegates.
    “Because I’ve got a bad fucking feeling about this. It’s going to be bad. For us and everyone else.”

CHAPTER FIVE
    Dúnedain Ranger outpost Amon Tam
    (Formerly Mt. Tamalpais)
    Ithilien/Moon County, Crown Province of Westria
    (Formerly Marin and Sonoma Counties, California)
    High Kingdom of Montival
    (Formerly western North America)
    May 10th (Lothron 9th), Change Year (Fifth Age) 46/2044 AD
    “Three kings in darkness lie
    Gutheran of Org, and I
    Under a bleak and sunless sky—
    The third beneath the hill . . .”
    F aramir Kovalevsky snorted. “Oh, shut the fuck up, Malfind,” he said. “That one sounds better in the Common Speech, anyway.”
    It was the late morning of a fine day, more than half-way through their eight-hour shift, with high white clouds in the blue sky. May was late spring, by the standards of their home here in Ithilien, and from the walls of this lookout station on the mountaintop you could see across a huge stretch of green-gold meadow, olive-green chaparral, leaf-green oak grove and ravines where conifers stretched tall. In the distance they faded to a dreaming blue-purple.
    The Bay and the lost cities lay blurred with miles to the south, and westward long steep slopes led down to the white line of surf that marked the Mother Ocean three thousand feet below. Beyond were the blackspecks of the rocky islands called the
Haeron Thavnath
, the Far Pillars, just this side of the horizon. Gulls were thick along the shore below, white specks floating against the blue water, and sometimes the wind carried the echo of their massed quarrelsome squabbling. Closer a red-tailed hawk soared just below them, flight-feathers extended and moving with a subtle grace like a harper’s fingers on the strings as it danced with the