by Victor Milán
Rob blinked. His stomach gurgled unhappily but kept its place. The Emperor’s smile as he looked upon his appointed Champion never faltered. The herald kept declaiming, showing her stomach was made of the same tough leather as her lungs. But the mercantile magnate who stood three places upslope turned, the sixty-centimeter green-and-white Ridiculous Reaper plumes sticking up from his silver bonnet wavering like yarrow shoots and his brown skin gone a sickly ashen-green, and gagged, spilling pale chunky vomit down the silver-and-feathered gorget he wore and across the garnet-bossed target strapped to his bare chest. Others joined him as he fell to his knees to offer his own special sacrifice to the soil of Paradise.
The smell of death wasn’t uncommon. Even the glittering courtiers now either surrendering to sudden nausea or fighting valiant rearguard actions against it had encountered it before, surely. But a stench on this scale was anything but common. It seemed to coat your tongue and suffuse your whole body with uncleanness.
No one Rob knew of ever got used to it. You just learned to deal with it. He felt a certain stab of admiration at the Emperor’s aplomb.
Rob kept his face stiff with the reflex of a peasant who knew too well that the mere hint of a smile at his betters’ discomfiture could earn him at best a buffet, and at worst a noose. Then he remembered, Wait, I’m one of these hada now! And let himself guffaw.
And of all things, that broke him.
Thought of the Fae inevitably brought their archenemies the Grey Angels to mind. The reminder that the rudely ejected Raguel had mates shot a memory into him like a stinger-bolt in the stomach.
It was last night. Sure, he’d been thoroughly ossified—drunk enough to find himself not just pissing on the backside of the Emperor’s own tent but daring to peep inside through a small slit, which he may or may not have improved with his dagger for the purpose. But Rob had never drunk enough to make him hallucinate.
Which meant he had really seen raw horror.
He now knew a thing apparently unknown to Felipe, or anyone else in the Empire: that the Emperor’s confessor and closest confidant, the mysterious Fray Jerónimo, was himself the same terrible thing as Raguel.
A Grey Angel. Who likely enough, even now, sat in his screened cell in that selfsame pavilion not fifty yards from where Rob stood.
And thus he dropped to his knees and added the gruel, flatbread, and fatty-bacon he’d had for breakfast to the offerings he’d just been mocking from his fellow lords and ladies of Nuevaropa.
Chapter 3
Matador, Slayer.…—Allosaurus fragilis. Large, bipedal carnivorous dinosaur. Grows to 10 meters long, 1.8 meters at shoulder, 2.3 tonnes. Nuevaropa’s largest and most feared native predator. Famed for its often incredible stealth.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
When the wind changed, Shiraa raised her head. And growled.
The several small, skinny, tailless two-legs her mother had left to care for her grew agitated. One of them tossed a slab of meat from a long-crested two-leg plant-eater into her pen of palings driven into the hard dirt.
She scooped it up in her long, strong jaws, tossed up her head, swallowed it. It pleased her, of course. It was meat! But it didn’t take her mind off that smell.
The strongest smell was the delicious aroma of dead flesh ripening in the daytime heat. Though she was well fed—of course, now that she was back together with her mother!—and little driven by hunger, the smells themselves were like a feast. Normally she would’ve simply lain down and slept in sheer pleasure, the decaying meat filling her nostrils with joy and her dreams with plenty.
But another odor rode that wind. It was faint. Beside the aroma of so much food becoming tender and more tasty, anything would have been, except perhaps the smoke of a wildfire. Yet it stung like a thorn driven deep in her flank by brushing against a nosehorn bush.
It was him. Her enemy. Raising her head, she looked furiously around for the hated white Tyrannosaurus.
I will kill him!
* * *
As the pyroclastic-flow of stench rolled over her, Melodía Estrella Delgao Llobregat, heir to the Archiduché de Los Almendros and Princesa Imperial, ground her jaw defiantly.
I’m damned if I’m going to lose control and my breakfast like some of these perfumed and pampered hangers-on around me. Especially since the Imperial Herald kept right on singing her long-lost lover’s praises in stupefying detail without so much as blinking at the stench.
She’d smelled that smell before. If not, admittedly, at that intensity. She was a veteran of many battles. And by Maia and Bella and all the Creators, she was going to act like one.
Which wasn’t easy. Does anyone ever get used to the stink of death? she wondered. Even Karyl’s famous and fabulously rare matadora war-mount, Shiraa, responded with a roar to the wind shift.
From her vantage point atop the conical Boule, Melodía could see work gangs gathering the tens of thousands of human dead into piles. Armed patrols circled the slaughter grounds, keeping all but the most intrepid—or small, or winged—of scavengers at bay.
It wasn’t for the sake of the dead. The waiting slayers and raptor-packs would get their feast. There was no practical way to dispose of all that carrion other than to leave it to nature’s ravenous appetite. The watchful sentinels, many of whom were her own light riders, were guarding the mercy-parties and the corpse-handlers from the deadlier meat-eaters—unseen, but unquestionably lurking nearby.
At least there are no settlements near enough to risk a disease outbreak from all the decay, she thought. Disease was rare and thus terrifying; plagues were dreaded as greatly as Grey Angel Crusades. And the army would soon have to shift camp toward Canterville to keep itself safe from an epidemic.
But the reason nobody dwelled nearby was as awful as the stink: the Imperial command had already begun getting reports that hardly any survivors could be found in the villages or farmsteads east of here, probably all the way to the Shield Range. The few people reconnaissance parties spotted were wary as wild mother vexers.
The Grey Angel Horde had acted like a swarm of soldier ants—up to and including a self-sacrificing lack of concern for personal safety, or even hunger or thirst. Everything human in its path had either joined it or been eaten, or just gruesomely killed. Even Canterville and its surrounding farms lay empty, its residents having prudently fled west at word of Raguel’s approach.
Not all the survivors were victims who had managed to hide, either. Most of the men and women clearing the battlefield were former Hordelings. Deprived by Shiraa’s heroic and conveniently timed jaws of the terrible Grey Angel glamour that had compelled them to commit atrocities with suicidal abandon, they found themselves exhausted, scabby, and sickly from personal neglect and deprivation, befuddled, demoralized, and far from home.
Felipe’s declaration, right after the battle, of blanket amnesty to commoners who had belonged to Raguel’s Horde had outraged many in her father’s camp. Melodía knew it was the only sensible thing to do. Tens of thousands of them had survived. Trying to punish them all would be a crime to match the ones Raguel had driven them to.
And Melodía knew something the protesting grandes could not: the awful power to compel that a Grey Angel has. She herself had been victimized by Raguel’s power, though she had been compelled to forget, not serve. The memory made her skin crawl still. It was the second greatest violation of her life.
Of course, what really outraged the grandes about Felipe’s amnesty was his decision to exempt the knights and nobles who had fought for Raguel. He had promptly placed them under attainder, declaring them outlaws to be hunted down and killed without hesitation, warning, or mercy.
Melodía agreed wholeheartedly with her father—as had Jaume and most of the nobles who had actually been present for the battle. The majority of dinosaur knights and chivalry who’d served the Angel as the leaders and elite striking arm of his Crusade had done so willingly. For once she approved of the fact that Felipe, though easily influenced befor
e he made a decision, tended to drop his hindquarters and dig in like a balky dray-nosehorn once he did decide.
The wind continued to blow from the east. Courtiers continued to be overcome by vomiting fits. Shiraa continued to roar from her pen behind La Boule. And Melodía had to keep part of her mind on keeping her stomach in check.
It was still easier to resist the nausea the stink caused than the nausea of having to bear the nearness of the man who had falsely accused and then raped her.
Though her father had won Election on the basis of appearing to be the most unassuming and unambitious eligible member of Torre Delgao—from which Emperors of Nuevaropa were always Elected—Felipe’s flair for showmanship was only one of many ways he’d surprised his supporters. He had shown it by choosing to launch today’s elevation ceremonies with one of the three most conspicuous heroes of yesterday’s battle and to end with the other two.
That first one was Falk, Duke von Hornberg, made an Imperial Duke in recognition of his saving the Emperor’s life from the Horde.
She knew it was true, too. The Imperial bodyguards, the Scarlet Tyrants, had suffered incredible casualties guarding the Imperial body from waves of reeking and shrieking flesh. Even at that, Melodía’s father had had to swing a sword in his defense. And Falk and the albino Tyrant Snowflake had fought in the forefront against the mad Crusaders. Everyone had seen it. Including her beloved Jaume.
So his courage and prowess are equal to his evil, she thought bitterly. I will not forget. I will not forgive. Least of all will I condone.
And yet he saved my father’s life against unimaginable odds. How can I accuse him of falsely arresting and then raping me?
But then she heard her father order Jaume to approach, and all thoughts of vileness—the stench of tens of thousands of decaying corpses, the stench of Falk’s nearness, far worse—fell out of her mind. She would not let them spoil her enjoyment of her friend and lover’s receiving the honor he had so richly earned.
I’ll even pretend that annoying meat-eating dinosaur bellowing behind the hill is celebrating what is to come for my Jaume.
* * *
“What’s wrong with that beast?” said a female knight standing near Rob amid the Imperial retinue somewhat down the side of La Boule from Felipe and his shade. Though she wore plate enameled in intricate patterns of silver on blue, the very fact the paint job was pristine showed she was one of the late arrivals.
The man she questioned in response to the roars, which he recognized as Shiraa’s, was a Baron So-and-So whose name Rob hadn’t caught and didn’t care to learn. He laughed.
“It smells the feast laid out for it and its kind.”
And isn’t that a buckethead to the life? Rob thought. Your life depends on your war-hadrosaur, and yet you know nothing of dinosaurs.
True enough it was that meat-eaters, including Nuevaropa’s largest native predators, matadores like Karyl’s mount, were waiting in cover to share the carcass bounty when armed guards quit blocking them from joining the winged scavengers, the Eye-takers and Corpse-tearers and toothed crows already feeding.
But his master’s beloved lifelong companion was well fed, certainly, and she so recently rejoined to Karyl. And fortuitously—enough so to prickle the back of Rob’s neck with suspicions of supernatural interference.
Though Rob knew little of the art of tending to big meat-eating dinosaurs—the rarest beasts on the battlefield, for reasons obvious and other—he knew his dinosaur roars. He wasn’t hearing a hungry slayer.
He was hearing an angry one.
And unless Rob missed his guess, as he knew he didn’t, it wasn’t the scent of any notional rival matadores lurking in wood or scrub who had so righteously enraged her. It was the Tyrannosaurus who had attacked her from behind at Gunters Moll, as his rider had Karyl, and treacherously torn a strip from her shoulder.
Creators, please see the palisade we made to hold her stands, if this goes on much longer, he silently prayed. And that the Fae don’t work their tricks.
At which he felt the superstitious shiver he got whenever he mentioned the Faerie Folk. Even inside his own head.
And then he heard the sound he feared even more than the Fae.
* * *
Falk’s heart still hammered his rib cage from inside. Now I’m a Duque Imperial, and not just Graf von Hornberg!
His new rank, being mostly symbolic, brought little by way of additional power and a stipend he didn’t care much about. But it was an enormous boost in precedence. That was what made him giddy with triumph.
Not bad for a man who, merely two years before, had been the most successful field commander of the Alemán Princes’ Party rebellion against the very Emperor whose body he had protected with his own.
For his elevation he wore his own royal-blue plate he had brought with him from the tiny north-coast Duchy of Hornberg, rather than the gilt and scarlet panoply of the Scarlet Tyrant commander. It was the armor he’d worn to battle yesterday, and its dents and gouges bore testimony that he and Snowflake—his one true friend in all the world—had fought the Horde as well as any. Indeed, better than most.
His manservant, Bergdahl, told him that bards were already composing songs to praise his exploits alongside those two great darlings of ballad and romance, Jaume and Karyl. Not even his servant’s sneers had been able to quell his elation at that.
I wonder if that’s enough to make my Mother think well of me at last?
His stomach turned over. He knew the answer to that.
But still. He had done what she had told him to—and so much more. He had risen high.
And I will rise higher still. On my honor, I shall!
After endless heraldic blather, Jaume was finally kneeling to receive his own reward from the Emperor. Falk’s smile felt as if it fit strangely on his mouth. I wonder how he’d feel if he knew I fucked his beloved little Princess in the ass?
Yet he was glad the Imperial Champion didn’t know. Not because he feared him—although the time they faced each other on the tourney field Jaume had beaten him fair and square, regardless of the lies to the contrary that Bergdahl spread as a matter of policy—or because if the fact were known it would cost him all his rank and repute (and, if he were very lucky indeed, just his head). But because even a man as famously devout as Felipe might violate Creators’ law for such a crime against his own child.
In the end, what made Falk most glad that Jaume didn’t know was … Jaume. Yes, he was a rival for Imperial favor. And for all the work Falk had done, the pain he had given, Jaume still stood higher than he in Felipe’s eyes.
Yet Jaume was a hero. A real, genuine, honest-to-Lanza hero. Falk knew that as surely as he knew his own name.
Falk had been raised to revere strength. For all his wispy manner and languid grace, Count Jaume of the Flowers was the strongest man Falk had ever met. Falk had come south to do his best to make sure the Empire had the strongest possible hand gripping the hilt of Rule. Through the rightful Emperor, of course—especially since Felipe had shown Falk his own brand of strength.
Falk was no longer sure that the strongest hand belonged to him.
With feelings that warred against one another like the black-and-white halves of the taijitu symbol of Holy Equilibrium, Falk watched Jaume step up to receive the last and highest honor of the day.
At least I’ll soon be relieved of Bergdahl’s presence, he thought. My servant. My master. My mother’s spy.
And that was a triumph sweeter than any.
* * *
Melodía’s heart almost exploded with joy as she watched her love rise up from her father’s feet, as a newly created Prince of the Empire.
Karyl’s new title brought with it a fief: the counties of Crève Coeur, Providence, and Castaña—Melodía was concerned that her former commander might get trouble along with it, since her father had punished Duke Eric of Haut-Pays for refusing to join the Imperial Army facing Raguel by stripping him of the first two counties, on the grounds th
at he had abandoned them to the Horde. Duke Eric was not known as an accommodating man. Although he could not act directly in defiance of Imperial decree, especially after hanging back from the Battle of Canterville.
Unlike Karyl’s earlier grant of Imperial Dukedom, but like that of her enemy’s, Jaume’s shiny new title was mostly ornamental. As was her own designation as Imperial Princess, for that matter, since of course she couldn’t inherit the Fangèd Throne. And Jaume remained behind her in courtly precedence, though that didn’t matter to her.
What did matter was that at last he had noble rank to befit his true position. Though the Emperor called him his Imperial Champion, that wasn’t an official title. Neither his rank of Marshal in command of the Army nor as Constable over all the Imperial armed forces, including the Sea Dragons and the Nodosaurs, gave him any more standing among the nobility than his hereditary title of mere Conde dels Flors. Although as Captain-General of the Orden Militar he was a de facto Cardinal, which conferred Imperial rank as a Duke, that didn’t really count among the arrogant grandes of Nuevaropa, either.
Now her beloved stood not just tall and beautiful in his hero’s armor but higher in rank than any except her sister, herself, the Pope-Metropolitan, and her own father. Even a full King of one of the Cinco Gentes had to acknowledge him as peer.
And, coldly, she knew that also meant he at last had unequivocal preference over the rapist bastard from Alemania.
Felipe took his nephew into a hearty abrazo and lightly kissed both his cheeks. Then, beaming so wide it seemed his moon face might split, he stepped back.
Jaume raised his eyes to Melodía’s. His blue-green gaze struck through her like a spear.
But she hesitated.
“Go on, girl,” her father said. “What are you waiting for? Step up and kiss your man.”
So she did.