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

stabbed with a pair of garden shears on a stick, which was what happened to most of the people I knew in the way back when. Along with typhus and cholera. But sour enough.
    He sketched an expression somewhere between grimace and grin at the idea of the old British monarchy carrying on up there in the cold, gray isles, turning into a fierce squint at the tropical sun before Thomas asked him what was wrong. That nearly led to a giggle: he’d gotten a letter from the King-Emperor of Greater Britain in Winchester last year, addressed to
His Majesty John I
and hoping for a continuation of their
brotherly
relations and a discreet hint that they had a surplus Windsor princess or two they needed to place usefully if any of his grandsons were interested. He wondered what poor old Lizzy II would have thought of it, since he’d been born
her
not-so-humble subject.
    And after all, what could be wrong? He was only the most powerful wrinkly in the world, lord and master of a fairy-tale kingdom he couldn’t have dreamed up in the wildest drug-addled days of his youth.
    His youth.
    The King stifled a sigh, hid it away behind a wave and thumbs-up gesture for an especially rowdy concentration of well-wishers, the frontrow of the Backwater Rugby Club if their banner didn’t lie. They cheered him past.
    “Hats off for JB!”
    “Pants down for JB!”
    Raucous laughter and another frown from Thomas.
    “Go you good king!”
    Ah, his youth. Nineteen sixty-four, he’d been born, under the old calendar. The Age of Mystery to most of his subjects. A long lost Golden Time, to him.
    God I miss television. And espresso. And rock music.
    He found himself recalling the distant past more and more often these days. Sometimes it was a comfort, but often it just made him grumpy for what was lost.
    Being grumpy was acceptable when you were older than God, or at least thirty-four years older than the Change, but he tried to avoid it. Had to work his benevolent dictator mojo, after all. He waved back to the crowd and shouted:
    “Have a cold one on JB. And if you’re goin’ to the bar grab your mates one!”
    He felt the high sun on the parchment-thin skin of his hand when it crept out from beneath sheltering shade of the parasol.
    Another stifled sigh.
    Yeah, that’s right, a fucking parasol. What of it?
    His rapidly advancing years made riding in the open carriage with a parasol top totally bloody acceptable. His subjects were a hard people, as unforgiving of weakness in themselves as they were upon finding it in any of their many foes. But beneath the armor of that sometimes callous stoicism he knew them to be a good and even kind-hearted mob. They indulged him in his twilight years and increasingly quaint fancies, after all.
    He pulled a bottle of Saltie Bites Lager out of the cooler; the label had a lively print of the giant seagoing crocodile in question biting a fishing boat in two, something which did happen now and then. They were a lot less cautious around people now that guns were gone and catapults rare.He tossed the treat to one of his enthusiastic subjects in the dense crowd, who snatched it out of the air with a broad grin.
    “Thanks, JB!”
    The grin was all the more conspicuous because the face under the shock of white-blond hair was very black; he pulled out the cork with his teeth, spat it aside, then poured the icy beer down with a blissful expression and an evident determination to transfer the frosty beverage from bottle to stomach without touching the sides of his gullet. It wasn’t an especially hot day for the tail-end of the Big Wet, which meant it was a hundred degrees and steamy, literally so as the puddles on the pavement smoked vapor upwards. King John decided what was good enough for the freeman was good for his Lord and fished out another longneck for himself, his Adam’s apple bobbling up and down under a snowy beard as he drank. He lowered the bottle and belched.
    “He necked it in one,” cried out a voice from the