by Victor Milán
The gap between rail and shore was visibly increasing anyway. She knew they couldn’t have made it. Well, I can swim and so can Mistral!
She tensed to dash forward and throw herself overboard. A hand seized one arm from behind. She knew the touch of Paraskeve’s hated claw. Tears of frustration scalded her eyes.
Through the wall of flame leapt a figure all in armor of steel plate, whose white enamel and red Mirror were scorched by the horrid heat. Its armored fingers caught the rail and clung.
Jaume! Montse knew. I’m saved!
* * *
The wave of dirt and stones dropped suddenly to the ground. Jaume saw the wild-haired woman toppling backward off the ship’s rail. He caught a glimpse of the white-and-red fletching that was all that was visible of the arrow that had buried itself in her sternum.
As the air cleared, he saw a small Flower Knight, one of the last two remaining mounted, holding an empty bow and reaching for an arrow from his quiver. Machtigern appeared beside him on Tiger, his black-striped gold morion bull, and struck a blow with his long-handled war-hammer that knocked the knight’s spired helmet askew and crushed his skull.
Camellia was sidestepping and tossing her head violently on her powerful neck, rolling her eyes in alarm. Jaume patted her neck and spoke quick, soothing words, and she calmed down.
The last Flower Knight, a man almost as big as Ayaks with dark moustaches that swept straight out to either side of his dark face, was standing off three Companions with a straight-bladed arming-sword from the back of what Jaume thought was a deep purple Parasaurolophus. It looked black as brutal black storm clouds gathered like an angry mob, seemingly just above the ship’s mastheads, and blotted out the sun. The rider didn’t concern Jaume. He wasn’t the target.
“Make way!” he yelled at the Sea Dragons, who had closed in on the Shore Patrol when the stone-and-soil rain subsided. What seemed the gleeful fury with which the Marines engaged them confirmed the hatred in Herrera’s voice when he’d said they might well have to fight some. It wasn’t just rivalry between the Imperial elite and city guards, either; the Shore Patrol were notorious, even among Laventura’s notorious Guardia Civil, for corruption and brutality.
“They don’t even stay bribed,” Herrera had said, in a tone suggesting that was ultimate condemnation. And perhaps it was.
The Treb sailors, men and women more heavily dressed than the nearly nude Laventura dockers, were hastily trying to cast off and get their big vessel under way. Jaume could see that a many-oared harbor tug was already roped to them and waiting to pull it away from the dock. The Sea Dragons had sent patrol boats into the harbor in hopes of interdicting the Trebs should they get away from land. Even as they prepared to light the smoke-carts for the final push, Herrera had informed Jaume that the boats—small galleys like the one that had brought him and his companions on their fateful voyage south after the Princes’ War—were having trouble negotiating what seemed unusually heavy traffic of medium and small craft, even for the ever-busy harbor.
Herrera had grimly said they couldn’t count on the patrol catching them before they got the day’s seaward breeze—imperceptible from the waterfront, but Jaume believed that it was blowing today—in their sails and simply outran the rowed dromons.
So Jaume was fully prepared to ride down Sea Dragons as well as Shore Patrolmen, and pay pensions to the wounded or the estates of any he killed from his own pocket. He urged Camellia to get her bulk moving.
A new figure appeared in the gap at the top of the ramp: a Treb priest, visibly slight despite his plain black robes and a black cylindrical hat that was unusually tall even for the Treb clergy. He held his palms out before him.
He rapped out sharp commands. Jaume knew only a few words of Griego, learned from Timaeos, another Companion lost at Canterville. He did recognize phōtiá—fire.
“That trick won’t work twice on us!” Jaume yelled as Camellia neared the shouting, flailing scrum. It pleased him to see the Marines had responded to his warning and were trying to move to both sides.
A sheet of flame roared up from the bare mud from which the crazy magic woman had chucked the paving stones at them. As before, they reached to twice Camellia’s height or more, with the heat and stink of a live lava flow. As before, Camellia shied.
He saw that a number of Sea Dragons and Civil Guards were caught within the wall of fire. And realized that the screaming wasn’t mere fear.
“It’s real, Jaume!” Florian shouted, as the last Flower Knight went down. “Get back!”
Instead, Jaume turned Camellia and walked the skittish dinosaur several paces back away from the horrifically real flame barrier. The Sea Dragons who weren’t shrieking and flapping their limbs like fire wings as they burned had pulled back; the Shore Patrol who hadn’t been caught fled, some throwing themselves into the reeking harbor water in their terror.
Jaume dropped Camellia to her belly on the quay, where the paving stones still lay undisturbed by unaccountable magic. Sheathing the Lady’s Mirror, he dropped to the ground.
And sprinted straight for the bellowing furnace.
Alarmed cries from his Companions, Sea Dragons, and even onlookers followed him. He ignored them. Instead, he crossed his armored forearms before his eyes and sprang forward through the flames.
The metal seemed to flash heat to a forging point in an instant. The pain was intense. Jaume smelled his own hair smoldering within his sallet.
Then he was through. He felt scalded all over, and he could feel the heat beating inward from the curved steel of his visor. But he still could move.
He still could run. He did, right up the ramp, as the crew pushed the carrack vigorously off from the dock with long poles, and the rowers on the tugs began to bend their backs, and the sails rippled down from the yards.
Jaume flung himself forward off the ramp’s end. Three meters of green-brown water, whipped up into grey froth-crowned chop as if by a coming gale, passed below him. Then his stinging forearms slapped the ship’s rail and gauntleted fingers hooked over the stout wood.
For a moment he hung there. He kicked the pointy tips of his steel shoes hard against the creaking, shifting planks of the hull for purchase and heaved himself up and over onto the deck.
Just like when Pere and I stormed the pirate cog by ourselves in the Channel, he thought. He refused to think how that adventure ended.
He reached over his right shoulder for his longsword’s hilt. The small priest stepped up to confront him.
“Not so fast, my young friend,” he said in accented but excellent Spañol. His blade-thin features reminded Jaume unpleasantly of the late Papal Legate, then Cardinal, Tavares, whose uncompromising and unwashed fanaticism had cost him so dearly on the march to Providence. So did the obsidian fire in his eyes.
“The Fae send their regards,” he said softly as Jaume’s steel began to slide upward from its scabbard. He held an open palm toward Jaume.
A fat spark cracked across four fingers of bare air from Jaume’s palm to his white-enameled breastplate.
Agony worse than anything he had ever known or even conceived seized his limbs and his entire body. It was worse even than the searing flash of pain from the magical inferno. It seemed as if his muscles could do nothing but wind themselves tighter and tighter in pain. He couldn’t move.
“You lose,” the priest said. He put his palm against Jaume’s cuirass and pushed.
Helpless, Jaume fell back over the rail and straight down into the bay.
The terror paralysis ended with the sudden splash and envelopment by cool water. Jaume’s own wiry weight of bone and muscle, and his kilograms of plate, plunged him down and down. Water shot in through the eye slit of his helmet.
He began to kick and beat his arms powerfully. He didn’t have much experience with ships or sailing, but, like all his Companions, he was a strong swimmer.
Somehow, between the air in his lungs and that trapped in his suit of armor and his own strong, not quite frantic e
fforts, Jaume managed to bob his head clear of the rank, greasy surface.
Exhaling explosively, he tore open his visor. In time to lock eyes with Montse, who stood in the high sterncastle of the Treb carrack, a priestess’s hand clutching her arm and a tall, grey-bearded man’s holding her shoulder. Cradling Silver Mistral against her chest, Montse stared hopelessly back as home and freedom receded.
A squall of such sudden savagery as to not seem natural swallowed the lumbering three-master. Lightning lashed the water and the docks with a monstrous rippling crack.
His strength draining suddenly from him, Jaume sank almost gratefully back beneath the increasing violent waves of Golden Venture Bay.
Chapter 21
Guerra Altasanta, La; High Holy War, The, La Guerra de Demonios, Demon War.… —177 to 210 AP. A global war waged between the Creators, their servitors the Grey Angels, and their human faithful against their archenemies, the hada—or Fae—and their allies. It culminated in Nuevaropa’s last Grey Angel Crusade to extirpate Fae-worship. Now widely considered to be a mythic account of the Years of Trouble, from the dawn of human civilization on Paradise in Year Zero to 210 AP, which led to the formation of the Nuevaropan Empire.
—LA GRAN HISTORIA DEL IMPERIO DEL TRONO COLMILLADO
“And so—Majesty, Highness—we were defeated in our attempts to rescue the Princess Montserrat.”
As a multiply-throated gasp ran around the walls of the Throne Room, which was crowded with seemingly every courtier in La Majestad if not the entire Empire, Jaume dropped to one knee on the cold marble floor before the Fangèd Throne.
“I failed. I can only beg you both to please forgive me.”
Though his head was lowered, he looked up from beneath his brows. His Emperor only stroked his brief red beard and looked extremely grave, though Jaume could see the agony in his liege and kinsman’s eyes. Melodía—
He had watched the color fade from his beloved’s face by slow degrees as he had offered his account of the pursuit, the battles, and the Treb kidnappers’ eventual escape with Montse, until her normal lovely cinnamon skin had gone the color of parchment. Now her features reddened in fury and tears began to leak from glaring dark-amber eyes.
“‘Magic’?” a voice asked incredulously from behind his bowed bare back; he had presented himself before his Emperor ritually nude, to emphasize not reproof but abject submission.
He recognized the voice of María, Condesa Montañazul, widow of a man whom Jaume had bested in a joust for command of the Army of Correction, who had been a consistent thorn in his side on the following campaign and who had died upon defecting with the then Cardinal Tavares to Raguel’s Horde at the Battle of Canterville. It rang with delightful silver contempt.
“He says he failed because of magic?”
She laughed. And one by one, voice by voice, a hundred other courtiers joined in.
* * *
“Your Highness! Wait!”
She stopped and spun back. She had been so crushed—and angry—that she had stamped out of the throne room without asking permission. A severe breach of protocol, but she suspected the Emperor would forgive her. Not that it matters that much now, she thought. My sister’s lost and my status is shit.
Jaume strode toward her down the lesser passageway that led to the back stairs and the Imperial apartments. A gaggle of courtiers fluttered behind the naked Champion, twittering like gaudy birds.
She pointed past him. “You,” she told the gaudy hangers-on. “Leave.”
They left. Much as they might disparage, or pretend to doubt, her fighting contribution to victory over Raguel’s Horde, none of them felt like pressing their luck.
She glared around. The Palace servants who had been busy bustling up and down the corridor were nowhere to be seen.
“Melodía—” Jaume said, stopping a polite distance away.
“How dare you come back without my sister?” she raged at him before she could help herself. “Then tell some—some fairy story about magic.”
“I wish I had a choice. I have spent at least half my moments, since the Sea Dragons and Will Oakheart fished me out of that filthy harbor, wishing they had never done so. And yes, I felt the same way about magic at first, too. And the Fae.”
The word made her go cold. She recalled Pilar’s last words, before Count Guillaume of Crève Coeur’s pet horrors took her: “The Fae sent me to watch over you, Princess. I’ve failed. May they protect you now.”
Could there be something other than mere excuse behind Jaume’s words? she wondered.
“Have I ever made excuses for failure before?”
“Have you ever failed before? On this scale, I mean.”
His long turquoise eyes looked devastated. “No. Not since I went out bandit hunting as a boy.”
She felt a touch of pity for him. It quickly died. I’m not interested in being placated just right now. I’m being mad.
“But let me put it to you this way, my love—and still my love, regardless. You know I loved Montse, as your sister and my friend.”
She nodded tautly. “You did. She always said you were the only person who treated her as an equal. An adult.”
“And she loved and trusted me, as you and your father did. My Companions to a man followed me to save her despite the Emperor’s forbidding it. Two of them died fighting to get your sister back. Do you think I or any of us would have come back without Montse had it not been impossible to rescue her?”
“I don’t understand why the Sea Dragons didn’t stop the ship,” she said, aware that she was weakening her own grievance against Jaume by pointing out that at least he hadn’t failed alone. Though he was still El Condestable Imperial and nominally responsible for lapses of those under his command. “Why their patrol boats couldn’t stop it in the harbor. Or their galleys intercept it before it got too far from port.”
“The Sea Dragons did send boats. They found their way blocked by hordes of uncooperative small craft—fishing vessels, dories, and the like. That sort of thing is far from uncommon. But not usually as pervasive as it was. The local commander suspects Trebizon sympathizers—and Trebizon gold. But neither aspect is practical to pursue. Golden Venture Bay is choked with traffic at the best of times. There’s no identifying who was out on the water at that time, much less which weren’t honest and merely in the way.”
He pressed his lips together and frowned as if to muster his thoughts.
“If you don’t believe in magic, then let’s say the kidnappers had the Creators’ own luck in the sudden strong wind blowing offshore—and the surprisingly violent squall which swallowed the fleeing cog from view almost at once. And when larger naval vessels—biremes—reached the area, they found a strong squadron of Trebizon Navy galleasses cruising back and just outside the harbor’s mouth. The Sea Dragon squadron commander sent back for instructions; the Admiral replied that they were not to risk war by running afoul of a Trebizonés fleet. And I, as Constable of the Empire’s forces, backed him in that. And still do.”
The Sea Dragons would probably have lost had they tangled with the Trebs, anyway, Melodía knew. She was an avid student of Imperial history, especially its warfare. The Imperial navy was elite and proud—but the Treb navy was universally reckoned the best of all Aphrodite Terra, and possibly the world. The Sea Dragons were excellent. The Trebs were better. It wouldn’t have stopped the Sea Dragons from taking them on, she knew. But—their admiral, and Jaume, were right. Much as I hate to admit it to myself.
Her eyes abruptly filled with tears. At the loss of her sister. At the loss of faith in her lover—her hero. At the unjustness of it all. “But don’t you see? Your coming back with empty hands, and this, this ridiculous tale—it sounds that way, think of how it sounds, never mind what did or didn’t happen. That destroys your credibility at court. And because I’m your betrothed, in all but name, it destroys mine.”
“You’re the Emperor’s daughter!”
“Do you think the court’s impressed with m
ere Imperial royalty? Many of them have seen Emperors and Empresses come and go. How much of what prestige my father even has with them rubs off on me? I can’t even inherit the Throne; you know it doesn’t work that way. And so I have to scratch and claw to get anyone to listen to me about—”
She stopped. It was as if she’d fallen out of a warm bed into a frigid Shield Mountains foothill stream. I can’t tell him no one will listen to me about Falk. He doesn’t know what Falk did to me, either.
And I can’t tell him. He might challenge Falk on the spot, and that—that would make my father look bad, whatever happens. Worse than he does already.
Or, worst of all—he might not believe me, either.
I. Just. Can’t.
“About stopping the war,” she all but stammered. “This war everybody—Falk and his frightful matadora mother—keeps trying to talk my father into. Against Trebizon, for my sister’s kidnapping.”
“I am so sorry, Melodía. That war must never happen. I can’t believe the Basileus is behind this crime, nor even his son and heir, on whose behalf it was supposedly committed. The Trebs are famous for their plots, and that’s not wrong. And I think the Basileus is as much a target of this one as Montse—or your father.”
That made more sense to her than she cared for at the moment. “Evidence?” she asked.
“None I can act upon, much less present before your father.” He shook his head, and she saw something in his eyes and face she had never seen before, or ever thought to. And now wished she never had: desperation.
“It might be better if I went away from Court for a time,” he said. “This war must be stopped. It would be a disaster for the Empire, and for your father. And we’ve just suffered one, and averted a worse. I’m afraid I’d do more harm to your cause of trying to head it off by staying than help you.”
She nodded. “You should go, in any event. And as for my cause of stopping the war—right now, after what the Trebs have done to my sister, I’m not even sure I want to!”
And she turned and walked quickly away before she said another word.