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

crowd.
    “Huzzah! Huzzah for JB! Long live the King!”
    “Long live the People of the North!” he crowed back, summoning up a hint of the residual power in the voice that had more than once called the whole city to arms.
    “The People!” roared Prince Thomas, already on his feet.
    “The King, the blood, the People and the Land,” they roared back.
    Who’d-a-thunk an undergrad degree in politics and bullshit psychology would lead to this?
he thought.
    The King belched softly again, his head a spinning a little from the cold, heavy lager. Brewed from the finest barley malt and Tasmanian hops. None of your Sorghum Specials here.
    Thomas resumed his seat and leaned forward to speak to his father under the roar of the crowd. “Come on, Dad, do you really have to whip up the Bogan Horde like this? It’s been a long time since you had to call them to weapons. The bad times are done with. Passed. You don’t reckon you could throttle back the politics a bit?”
    The King had been a heavy-boned muscular man for most of his life; he was stringy now and nearly hairless except for the beard, but still spry enough, especially for a man with his collection of scars. Those weremostly visible, dusty white against his tanned skin, because he was wearing the national costume; khaki shorts, sandals on knobby bare feet, a sleeveless vest, and a low-crowned, broad-brimmed hat with corks dangling on strings around the edge to encourage the ubiquitous flies to move along.
    Part of him still thought the hat a ridiculous piece of costumery, but one that had become necessary about five minutes after the last aerosol can of insect repellent had run out. He still remembered fashioning his first one a year after the Change, when feeling like an idiot was less important than keeping the flies out of the sores that had opened up on his face after the scurvy caught up with them on the road.
    His son and heir sat across from him dressed much the same, save for the kerchief tied around his graying blond hair and knotted at the rear.
    “Bad times are like the Big Wet and the Dry, son, they always come around. And at least I don’t have tickets on myself like you,” King John said affectionately. “Wanker.”
    “Your time has passed, old man,” Prince Thomas smiled, a long-running family joke. “At least make yourself useful and fetch me a Saltie.”
    King John leaned forward and flipped up the top of the cooler, pulling another bottle from the slurry of lightly salted water and ice. Very, very expensive ice. He waved an informal salute to the Captain of the Royal Escort; six mounted troopers of Capricornia’s First Light Horse, in old-fashioned bush hats, one side of the brim pinned up with a long ostrich feather; their bowl helmets hung at their saddlebows. They were armed with Golok knives—heavy single-edged chopping swords—at their belts, lances in scabbards at the rear of their saddles, and cased bows at their knees. Each man carried a heavy slingshot on his right hip, and a leather pouch full of heavy warshot on the left. The Captain of the Guard also sported a long boomerang in a scabbard on his back. The sun glinted on the razor sharp steel embedded in the shorter, killing arm of the throwing stick. A highly polished ceremonial weapon, to be sure, but no less deadly for it; it stood up from the fancy off-the-shoulder tigerskin cloak the officer wore, product of some demented idiot’s decision to let his beloved big kitties go feral when he couldn’t feed them.
    The King hoped they’d eaten him first of all; their descendants were all over the Top End, meeting the lions spreading up from the south and tucking in to livestock and the odd farmer and bothering the roos. There were even giraffes around now, ripping the tops off the gum-trees. He could remember when the worst intrusive exotic animals had been rabbits and cane toads and Englishmen. . . .
    “Poor fellah my country indeed,” he muttered.
    Three of the troopers rode