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

and the folk of Chosen have never been what you would call friends—too many old wars and grudges—butthey are not evil in their natures or corrupt in their blood, any more than we. They have been forced and twisted to become the enemies of the human race. Fate, neh?”
    Egawa looked obedient, but not altogether convinced: Órlaith thought he must not be a man much given to that sort of fine distinction. To him an enemy of his nation and ruler was just an enemy, and scum were just scum.
    And it says something about Reiko, that she
does
make that sort of distinction. Even now. Da always said a ruler couldn’t afford hot hatreds, and she seems to know that too. Be careful not to underestimate this one!
    Edain leaned close and murmured to her after she translated: “Sounds as if they had a Prophet’s War of their own, these Chosen folk. But the wrong side won.”
    Órlaith nodded. “My grandmother Juniper said visions had shown her the same conflict in many lands,” she said softly. “Why suppose the outcome would always be the same? It was a close-run thing here.”
    “We apparently have a common enemy,” she said across the table, in Japanese once more. “And for that at the very least we owe you transport back to your homeland, and possibly much more . . . and more would be my inclination, as of this moment.”
    Then she held up a hand. “But I am not High Queen Regnant yet. Not until I come of age, which is twenty-six for heirs to the Throne. Five years from now. Until then my mother is ruler, though she will listen very carefully to my advice. My . . . my father has been killed, but we need to know much more before we send the kin of many to die. Much more of what is gathering on the other side of the Mother Ocean.”

CHAPTER FOUR
    Darwin
    Capital city, Kingdom of Capricornia
    (Formerly northern Australia)
    May 10th, Change Year 46/2044 AD
    “H uzzah! Huzzah for King Birmo!”
    “Good on you, JB!”
    Prince Thomas frowned at the informality: “Cheeky fucking peasants.”
    The King of Capricornia snorted at his son as the carriage rumbled slowly through the crowd over pavement that had started out as tarmac and been patched with whatever came to hand over the generations since. He turned a wave to the crowd into a mime of a clout over the ear.
    “You were born a peasant, or a bloody commoner at any rate, and don’t forget it, you little prick. The whole fucking realm is only as strong as the lowliest peasant. They carry us all, in the end, the poor bastards. Remember that, and respect the truth of it.”
    The King was eighty-two, unbelievably ancient in this new world. There were a couple of hundred thousand people in Capricornia, counting everyone from his family to the ones living on grubs, roos and other assorted bush tucker in the outermost outback down towards Uluru. Out of all of them there probably weren’t more than a dozen older than he was, and most of those had been on remote cattle stations when the Change came and spent the first year comfortably eating the beef theycouldn’t sell anymore.
He’d
been in bloody Brisbane, ninety-nine percent of whose population hadn’t survived those twelve months.
    New world?
    He snorted again, but quietly and to himself this time. This was a
new
world that looked like it’d been stitched together from a madwoman’s patchwork quilt of the old, the not-so-old, and the
really
old. What he liked to refer to as
Ye Fuckin’ Olde
when he had a few quiet drinks under his belt. But never aloud, and never in public. King John knew that the new world took itself very seriously indeed. As deadly serious as edged metal and liquid fire.
    He turned inwards, away from the happy, caterwauling crush of his subjects.
    My
subjects
? Sweet baby cheeses isn’t that a sour fuckin’ fate for a bloke who’d once been a member in good standing of the Australian Republican Movement? But not as sour as starvin’ to death or being eaten by Zed or chopped up with a shovel or