by Victor Milán
“But they’ll take ship at some point, surely?” Falk asked.
“Yes,” said Jaume, glad to find a point of agreement with his erstwhile enemy. That was long ago; they were comrades-in-arms now. And though Jaume himself was the first to admit he had little skill at intrigue, he disliked being at cross-purposes with comrades. Graciousness—whenever possible—was the Path of Beauty. And that he had consecrated his life to walking, to the glory and love of the Creator Bella, the Middle Daughter.
“Probably somewhere south; they’ll know as well as we that the Dragons can and will stop and inspect every bottom that sails La Canal, from the top of the Tyrant’s Brow to the bottom of his Chin. Even if it’s a rowboat, and obviously leaking.”
“So what can we do?” asked Melodía. She didn’t wail the words. They trilled with the desire to do so.
“I still say war!” Falk said heartily. “This is intolerable! It must be punished!”
“We don’t know whom to punish.”
For a moment Falk looked completely blank. He knew the words: every Nuevaropan, of whatever caste, was supposed to read and understand Spañol; Falk was clearly reasonably well educated even for a grande. Yet it was as if he simply lost the entire tongue momentarily.
Perhaps it’s the speaker, thought Jaume with a smile.
Falk found his words again: “Why—why it’s the Basileia of Trebizon, of course! We know their emissaries committed this foul act. What uncertainty is there?”
“Plenty,” Melodía said firmly. “If the Trebs are known for anything, it’s their own palace intrigues—as intricate as anything the legends of the Byzantines has to offer.”
“I do not know these,” admitted Falk, beneath lowered brows like smears of charcoal dust in heavy oil. But it seemed a sheepish frown rather than an angry one.
“This may be a power play directed more against the throne of Trebizon than the Fangèd one,” she said, ignoring the Alemán.
“Then what can we do?” Falk asked. He directed the question to Felipe; he seemed uncomfortable addressing Melodía on the subject.
For his part Jaume filled with warm, buttery pride in his beloved. She’s really growing up, he thought.
“War’s out, for now,” Felipe said in a tone that told Jaume that his usually malleable mind was no longer so. “But what shall we do?”
“The only thing,” Jaume said. “I’ll take my Companions, go find Montse, and bring her back to you safe. And her pet ferret. We can ride tonight. Give us two hours. One.”
And Felipe shook his head. “No,” he said.
Chapter 7
Los Compañeros de Nuestra Señora del Spejo, The Companions of Our Lady of the Mirror—An Order Military made up of dinosaur knights sworn to serve the Creator Bella, which was founded by its Captain-General, Comte Jaume dels Flors, to serve beauty and justice and aid the oppressed. Their churchly charter restricts them to no more than twenty-four serving members, picked from the most heroic, virtuous, artistically accomplished, and beautiful young men of Nuevaropa and beyond, not all of noble birth. They are encouraged to form lasting romantic pairs among themselves to further cement their bonds. Nuevaropa’s most renowned warriors, led by its foremost living philosopher and poet.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
The word struck Melodía like a falling anvil.
“No?” said every voice in the room but the Emperor’s as one.
“I don’t dare let you go, Jaume,” Felipe said. “I have another daughter to worry about—my heir. Your betrothed, as soon as I get space to make the announcement in proper style. And how can we know we’re not the next targets?”
Melodía and Jaume began talking at once. She had no idea what he even said. She barely heard the words that poured from her own mouth.
* * *
Falk rubbed his chin, feeling the reassuring crispness of his beard, and the solid jaw beneath.
What do I feel? he wondered. What should I feel?
For Jaume to go bouncing off in pursuit of the lost Infanta served his interests. Or at least his mother’s: she it was who insisted the Imperial Champion was his chief rival, through her minion, the unwashed devil Bergdahl.
And thank Chián I’m shut of that terrible creature now, he thought. And by my Mother’s own design!
And Felipe’s desire for Jaume to stay and protect him and Melodía implied the Emperor lacked faith in the Scarlet Tyrants to do the job—hence, lacked faith in Falk.
For his part, Falk regretted the prompt suicide of the officer he’d left in charge of the rump detail remaining in the Palace. He’d have liked to look into the man’s dark eyes—they had conspicuously long lashes, Falk had noticed—as he throttled the life from him. Or let Snowflake take his head for a morsel, as he had that of Felipe’s Chief Minister, Mondragón.
But if he doubts, he doubts, he told himself. Whether or not he sends Jaume or keeps him.
And Falk felt a strong personal inclination to see Jaume let off the leash and well away. And his pretty boys, what the meat grinder of Raguel’s Horde had left of them. The fact was, Jaume’s presence made him uncomfortable. And not just because of his near conviction that the Catalan was the better man.
His eyes ran down Jaume’s lean and sculpted nakedness—thoughtless, as if unaware of the shame—and then up again. Yes. His presence was … disturbing.
And yet. And yet. Somehow I feel the urge to see his desires thwarted, he thought, simply because he is still the Emperor’s favorite. And always seems to get his way.
As I never seem to get mine. Because no sooner do I learn that Bergdahl’s been removed from my neck than that an even greater burden’s about to land on it.
He sighed. Surreptitiously—a thing he had long practice in doing. From earliest childhood, in fact, when the old Duke his father was alive.
Especially then.
Mother wills it, he knew. And Mother knows what’s best for me.
Mother always knows best.
And he opened his mouth to add his own voice to those of the Champion and his cinnamon-skinned strumpet, urging Felipe to let Jaume go.
* * *
For a moment, Melodía actually wavered.
But what if? The thought whispered in her skull like an unlooked-for traitor’s voice.
What if Daddy doesn’t let Jaume go? He and I will be together. Forever!
A picture followed the words into her mind: the face of her little sister, more gold than her own pink-olive, round rather than oval, with a nose snubbed rather than narrow (and somewhat long, in Melodía’s self-critical eye), grinning vastly, impishly framed by dreadlocks of dark blond hair that seemed powdered in gold dust, and the black-masked silver face of Silver Mistral peering with loving and myopic mischief from right beneath her chin.
Montserrat. She was gone. Melodía wanted her back more than anything. Ever. More than she had wanted to flee the rotting beauty and horrible power of Raguel in the Garden Hall. More than she wanted not to feel the toothed yellow muzzles of Count Guillaume’s Horrors, already streaked with Pilar’s blood, razoring into her flesh. More than she had wanted Falk’s cock to stop plunging like a horrible giant iron turd into her bowels, there in the cell in which he had her thrown.
“Daddy!” she cried. She threw herself to her knees before his bare feet. “Please let Jaume bring her home!”
She felt his hand on her head, gentle yet surprisingly strong. The blisters left by swinging a longsword into Hordeling faces and necks had popped and not yet healed; they caught and tugged slightly at her hair.
“Sweetheart, sweetheart,” he said, gazing into her eyes with his own, like pale green jade. And she felt a spring of hope: he’s going to give in!
“I can’t,” he said. “I’ve let one of my girls down. I let you down, too, sweetest—I know that, too.
“And I’m not about to lose you again along with Montse.”
She collapsed in a sobbing heap. She hated herself. She could not he
lp herself.
She heard her father cluck in sorrow. “I know,” he said.
Then resolute, and sounding as if he had raised his head: “We’ll get her back. Safe and sound. I swear to you all on my life and honor, as Emperador and as a Delgao. But I simply cannot let you go right now, Prince Jaume.
“I just can’t risk it.”
* * *
“Beloved Brothers,” Jaume said to the dark forms who waited in the camp of his Companions. “There’s something I must tell you. Quickly.”
A figure stepped up to take him in a hug. He knew, from the silhouette with its hair like a kinky pyramid to his shoulders, who it was before he smelled his distinctive scent and felt his unmistakable embrace. Florian, the Francés guttersnipe who had fought and painted his way into the most select Order in Nuevaropa. His closest friend, now, with beloved Pere gone down a sea-monster’s terrible mouth. His right-hand man as well, with Manfredo left and Jacques dead.
He was also perhaps the most beautiful of all the Companions, themselves selected for physical beauty as well as the beauty of their natures, and for their multiple excellences, including battle. Feeling his smooth skin over his hard-packed, flat-muscled frame made Jaume regret more keenly than usual that Florian, alone among current Brothers-Companion, declined to make love to men.
He regretted it even more keenly when Florian, for the first time ever, kissed him briefly on the lips. Unworthy though Jaume knew it was when things stood as they did, Jaume felt a brief breath of arousal.
How I’ll miss you, my Brother, my friend, he thought, fighting to hold in tears. How I’ll miss you all.
Then Jaume felt his strong hands grasp both his own biceps hard and himself thrust back to arm’s length.
“We know, Captain,” Florian said.
Jaume blinked. “You know?”
“Our squires are like that with the Imperial servants,” Florian said, grinning and holding up crossed, slim fingers. “We heard every word, scarcely after you did.”
Jaume shook his head. Despite the fact his heart was so full of sorrow that he was surprised it wasn’t leaking—out the very pores of his skin—he smiled back.
“Florian,” he said, stroking the man’s lean cheek. To his surprise, he felt not even the fine blond down that should’ve grown there by this time of night. Florian had shaved recently. “You never cease to surprise me.”
“One thing,” Florian said, uncharacteristically serious. “Are you sure about this, Captain? Even for the Imperial Champion and Constable of all the Empire’s armies, it’s a grave matter to disobey a direct order from the Emperor—your uncle. Maybe the worse, considering.”
Jaume sucked a breath in sharply. “You knew that too? It’s not as if I breathed a word of it to Felipe.”
“We know you, Jaume,” said Machtigern. As his eyes got used to the starlight and the faint shine of Eris at half phase, partially obscured by a dark patch of cloud, he could see the Alemán knight was fully dressed in traveling tunic, with his trademark war-hammer propped across scaffold-wide shoulders. “And allow me to contradict the Captain-General: we won’t be ready to ride in an hour, less two. The beasts are ready now. We’ve amblers mounted to ride, and the hadrosaurs ready to follow on their leads.”
“You’re not going anywhere! The Emperor—”
“Has the Scarlet Tyrants to guard him, as usual,” Florian said. “Plus the Brothers-Ordinary will stay and help. And the 3rd Nodosaurs, of course. Not to mention the rest of the Imperial Army, what hasn’t already broken away back to their homes. Though they’re mostly just bucketheads and peasant levies, granted.”
“But the Princess—”
Florian laughed. “That cacafuego? I don’t doubt she’d protect her father as well as Falk and all his gold and scarlet boys. You wouldn’t believe the stories we’ve heard about her since the battle!”
“Yes,” Jaume said. “I would.”
Florian laughed and clapped his arm. “And so do we. The Nodosaurs saw her fight a dinosaur knight on a sackbut. And they’d rather eat their own boot-tacks than praise a noble, even the Emp’s own daughter.”
“She’d make a worthy Companion herself, Jaume,” said Bernat, Jaume’s blunt-faced blond fellow countryman and the group’s chronicler.
“Why that look, Captain?” Florian asked in sudden concern.
Jaume shook his head. “Nothing. I—well, it’s past now. And so is this. I love you all—more than ever before, if that’s even possible. But no. You can’t come with me. It’s out of the question.”
“Oh, nosehorn shit,” Machtigern said.
Jaume stared at him as if he’d sprouted a massive horn from his own broad, well-broken nose.
“If you think you can ride away alone and leave the rest of us behind, you’re a total fool,” the Alemán said. “Since our vanity won’t abide us believing we’ve followed a fool through Hell—through an entire Grey Angel Crusade, side to side, not once but twice—let’s have an end to all this crazy talk.”
“Shut your mouth and get ready to ride, Companion,” said Florian, for once without his usual bantering tone.
He flung something against Jaume’s bare chest. Jaume caught it. He knew what it was by feel and the smell of nosehorn leather before he glanced at it. It was his own baldric, on which he customarily carried Beauty’s Mirror.
“We have a child to save,” Florian said. He smiled. “That’s what we do. We’re fucking heroes.”
Chapter 8
Cinco Amigos, Five Friends.…—We have five domestic mammals unlike any others in the world: the horse, the goat, the dog, the cat, and the ferret. Because all are listed in The Bestiary of Old Home, most believe that the Creators brought them to Paradise to serve us.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“Please don’t make me part from you, master.”
Rob looked beseechingly at Karyl through a curtain of water, both free-falling from angry nighttime skies and falling like a curtain from the front brim of his hat, sadly sagging.
A body could wish for a slouch hat with less slouch to it, he thought, despite the pain he felt inside.
Rob and Karyl stood in front of the manor’s door. It was late afternoon or early evening, three days after their arrival. Not that you could tell in this pissing rain. Helped by hired local peasants, the party of volunteers Karyl had brought with them from his chosen ducal seat at Séverin Farm had worked wonders cleaning the foulness out of the main house.
Behind Karyl Shiraa stood saddled, head down and patient. Mora Selena sat her bay ambler ten meters from the huge predator. The horse still shifted its weight and rolled its eyes in agitation. Selena’s hat-brim held up fine.
“I’m not your master,” Karyl said. His head was bare. The water streamed down his hollow-cheeked face and soaked his cloak. “Please don’t call me that.”
“Ah, but see, now—the Emp has gone and said you are, my liege,” Rob said.
“I’m still your friend.”
“Yes. But you’re going away, anyway. And making me stay.”
“Yes. I need men and women I can trust to help me put this land back together. Just the way I needed you to serve as my eyes and ears before. Do you want a different fief? This seems like a decent enough place, or what Raguel’s slaves left of it. Better off than most of the Marca.”
“True,” Rob said.
The devastation they’d seen on the ride back east had shaken both men to the core. And they’d seen far too much of it happen, firsthand. The one, slight grace was that the Horde had seldom stayed still in one place for any length of time—no longer than it took to drive out, absorb, and kill the people who lived there.
If they’d been more persistent, they’d have left nothing but blank desolation behind, like a lava flow covering once-prosperous villages and farms.
“We’ll only be thirty kilometers or so apart,” Karyl said.
“It won’t be the same,” Rob said. “We work so well as a team,
mast—Karyl.”
“Yes. And we’ll continue to. But my work is at the farm. I need you here.”
“And that’s where I—I’m lost,” Rob said, shaking his head and trying to squeeze back tears with cheeks and eyelids. “I’ve no idea how to be a Baron.”
“You’ve got your seneschal to help you,” Karyl said. “He seems to be steady enough. And I’ll help you and give you advice whenever you want.”
“But—responsibility.”
“You took on all kinds of responsibility when we built the army in Providence,” Karyl said. “And later when we had to flee and fight for our lives against Raguel’s Crusade. You did a fine job as spymaster and chief of scouts. Even quartermaster, until Gaétan enlisted his cousin Élodie to do the job.”
“The job which I loathed and despised.”
“Yet you did it. It’s not so different from the work of a dinosaur master. Which you also performed excellently for us.”
“But that was all spy games and dinosaurs,” Rob said. Thunder rumbled off across the L’Eau Riant River. “Even the quartermaster stuff was little more than rounding up fodder and drink, just as I would for monsters under my care. As you yourself told me. But this is different. There’s people in it.”
“Well, at worst, you won’t be the first lord to neglect your vassals, if you chose to do nothing more than sit in your castle all day and play the lute. Probably do less damage than most that way, in fact. Most of your real task is keeping the inevitable bandits off the people’s backs as they do the necessary. The same as mine.”
I can’t! Rob thought. I’m not meant to be a noble! It isn’t natural.
Karyl laid a dripping hand on Rob’s bare shoulder. His palm felt hot after the rain’s chill.
“You’ll do fine, once you’ve picked a task and started on it,” he said.
Rob didn’t meet his eye.
Damn him, he thought. Damn him for his certainty! He always knows just what to do.