by Victor Milán
“’Tis as you said,” he told her. “The less need you have for me, the later I get to stay abed, hein?”
He hoped he used the last expression right, kind of grunting it out through his nose in the manner of this beastly Francés. He might have spoken Spañol with them, a language he was far more fluent in. As every subject of the Empire of Nuevaropa was supposed to be—and as everyone hereabouts was almost certain to be, given that Spaña lay a shortbow-shot away across the river. But Ma Korrigan had beaten courtesy into him with her large and rock-hard fists, along with many behaviors less widely esteemed.
The youths had joined their elders, with only a little foot-dragging and complaining, in dousing the fires they’d just had so much fun starting. They made shift by jumping in the ditch and splashing water on the flames by hand, laughing and hooting and splashing one another as often as burning vegetation. Which made no difference to Rob.
One especially large bush had apparently died for reasons it clearly found good and sufficient, and had begun to dry out. It burned stubbornly when all the other fires had been extinguished. Mounting Little Nell, Rob called the others off and rode up near the bush, where he turned and backed her up toward it, though she tossed her head and rolled her eyes in complaint—she knew full well what the crackle and the heat rising on her tail and broad backside meant.
Largely by accident, Rob had taught Nell to piss on command. That was how he doused the final flames: with a powerful backwards stream. Which smelled worse even than he’d anticipated, the pungent Einiosaurus wee going not at all well with burning weed and pine oil. Rob almost choked at the cloud of noisome brown smoke it raised.
But as he batted at it with his hands, and urged a relieved—in several senses—Little Nell away from the now-doused fire, he heard his audience of peasants burst into wild cheers, whistling, and handclapping. And he realized that by the neatly comic touch he had ensured that what had been, as Sandrine observed, a disappointingly normal and predictable turn of events would be remembered as a great and in some ways almost magical event.
So part of being a noble is being a good showman, he thought. That, at least, I can do.
And smiling and waving to the happy, foot-stomping crowd, he turned Nell and rode her back to the manor house. Where the waiting Bergdahl would undoubtedly try to get him drunk, again, though the sun was barely halfway up the western sky on its climb toward the zenith.
And to that proposition, he thought, I shall make small argument indeed.
Chapter 26
Dieta Imperial, La; Imperial Diet, The—The Empire’s deliberative body, which sits in the People’s Hall in La Majestad. Mandated by Imperial Charter, in the expectation, or anyway hope, that it would provide a check to autocratic tendencies on the parts of Emperors and Empresses. The Diet controls Imperial finances, although it is generally amenable to the Imperial will in that regard, and oversees the everyday administration of the Empire, as well as directly ruling La Majestad. It has three chambers: Superior, Central, and Lower. The Superior consists of the eleven Imperial Electors, who are almost always represented in the Diet by Deputies whom they appoint. The Central is made up of members of the nobility and clergy (or their Deputies). Members of the Lower are popularly elected, and include representatives from the odd free city, such as Laventura. Matters are first debated and voted on by the Lower Chamber. The outcome is then reviewed by the Central. Finally the Superior passes judgment, although it’s considered pro forma, and in general it endorses the Central Chamber’s vote. Their decision goes to the Emperor, who then does what he wants.
—LA GRAN HISTORIA DEL IMPERIO DEL TRONO COLMILLADO
“What’s the matter, Your Highness?” asked María, Condesa Montañazul from Melodía’s left with carelessly feigned solicitude. “You’ve barely touched your salad.”
Melodía realized she was staring at the jumble of fresh greens from the courtyard rooftop gardens—legumes, onions, and radishes—as if expecting to read a mystic augury there.
“If you don’t want it, may I have it?” asked Don Silvio, the current Deputy for the Elector of the Lesser Tower, in the Diet’s Upper Chamber. He was already hovering his fork perilously near her plate from his position across the table and to her right. Though he was tall and his dark-blue-velvet-clad torso was gaunt as a—she made herself think, skeleton, rather than the other thing, which she dreaded thinking about even more than the man who sat directly across from her—he ate ravenously, and apparently his appetite never gave him peace.
She successfully mastered the impulse to stab his long, languid, olive-skinned hand with her fork and instead sought to back him off with an icy glare. Which also succeeded.
“I’ll get to it, Don Silvio,” she said. He was a regular fixture at the semiformal state dinners Melodía and her father customarily attended in the Hall of Hospitality. Mainly because he hardly ever went away. Nuevaropa’s tiny but vocal Taliano minority currently represented the Elector Menor in the Cámara Superior, and they were obsessed with pestering the Emperor to do something to “free” the Taliano city-states of Trebizon, allegedly held in vile servitude by the Basileia.
Since there were limited “somethings” one Empire could do to its rival, he had become a persistent voice for going to war over Montserrat’s abduction. Which meant he caused considerable discomfort to Melodía—who, though her heart was divided, knew for a fact that such a war was almost certain to end in disaster for Nuevaropa and her family. But since his three-year stint as Deputy for the Elector of the Lesser Tower had begun just a few months before, it was unlikely she’d be rid of him anytime soon.
She began to eat her ensalada without tasting it.
“Your daughter is looking peaked, Felipe,” said a recently encountered and already thoroughly unwelcome voice from her father’s right hand at the head of the table. The Dowager Duchess Margrethe, dressed as usual in a long silk gown—this one pale green—gazed at Melodía with a look of almost certainly feigned concern on her pink Northern features. Her long near-white blond hair was wound into buns at either side of her head. “Perhaps the girl is preoccupied by the lack of masculine companionship. Too long an abstinence can be bad for a young person.”
She simpered, laid a hand on Felipe’s arm, and winked at him. “Or old ones, too, for that matter. Right, Your Majesty?”
Felipe blinked slowly and looked grave. Which Melodía knew was generally a cover for being befuddled and not having any idea what to say.
Melodía took up a forkful of food, stuck it in her mouth, and dutifully champed at it. Take your claws off my father! she wanted to scream.
But of course she couldn’t. And not just because decorum forbade it. Her father was a grown man, not her ward—often as she’d thought otherwise, when she was forced to take over managing their duchy of Los Almendros after her mother died giving birth to poor lost Montse, when Melodía was very little older than her sister was now. And, of course, he was the Emperor. Felipe had not stayed celibate after the loss of his beloved Marisol; no one expected that, least of all his adoring Catalana wife. But he had honored his lost love’s memory by refraining from any true emotional romantic connection, instead periodically engaging the services of skilled and beautiful professionals from one of La Merced’s highest class of brothels—located in the affluent hills of Los Altos, not in the tenements of El Abrazo, the dock district. It was all very regular and proper.
And now for this woman, of all people, to be clearly trying to entrap her father … and succeeding, at least to the extent he hadn’t sent her packing … that was intolerable.
And what can I do? she thought. As usual, nothing.
“I’m sure the Princess can find suitable company among the courtiers,” the Countess Bluemountain said. “The older ones, at least. Her time slumming among the peasants hasn’t coarsened her that much.”
Melodía declined to give the woman the satisfaction of glaring at her, though she shot her a quick sidelong glance, packed with as much mali
ce as she could manage. Time had not exactly been kind to the Countess, whose dry skin seemed to be shriveling onto her hatchet features, and whose breasts sagged dispiritedly between the confection of strips of pale blue and white fabric she’d hung over her stooping shoulders. Or being married to the late Count, a thoroughgoing brute by all accounts.
“Surely you’re joking, Gräfin María,” Margrethe said. “The Highness is in the full bloom of young loveliness. Such more mature specimens as ourselves can only gaze in envy upon the smoothness of her face and the ripeness of her breasts.”
Countess Bluemountain shot her the full-on glare of undiluted hate Melodía had been unwilling to visit upon her—upon either woman, truthfully. She almost felt sorry for the Spañola.
“I can only agree that she needs refreshing with the touch of a truly strong man,” Margrethe continued. “And who better than my own son, Duke Falk, who so heroically defended her father our Emperor from the ravening Horde?”
Melodía put both hands on her bare thighs beneath the table and gripped them so hard her short nails almost pierced the skin.
Her placement halfway down the table was nothing unusual, but a common family convention—to spread the wealth of the Imperial family, as it were. And to serve as something of a social consolation prize for those who weren’t privileged to be positioned at either of the Emperor’s elbows. Or indeed close enough to get his ear without shouting in a most unseemly manner.
But it had pitfalls beyond exposing her to the short-range spite of Condesa Montañazul, or Don Silvio’s greedy guts. Directly across from her, he sat: Margrethe’s son. She could barely stand to think his name, and yet she had to let her eyes at least slide regularly over the space he occupied, or that would be snatched up by the avid eyes of the dozen or so courtiers and deputies sharing the Imperial dinner table.
“What a fine idea!” Countess María said. “Nothing like the touch of a real man to touch up the appetite.”
“Count Jaume is a hero of the Empire as well, Dama Margrethe,” Felipe said. “He remains my Champion—and my Constable. He enjoys my full faith. And he enjoys my daughter’s favor.”
“Despite losing your other daughter?” Countess Bluemountain asked.
Felipe’s face darkened. “Let’s not speak of that,” he said. “That wound’s too recent, too great. And we know now that he told the truth of his defeat, after all.”
“If you believe the words of mere peasants,” Countess María said. But under her breath—although Melodía heard her clearly.
And then again maybe she deserved a vile, violent Horror like the dead Count Roberto, after all, Melodía thought. It struck her that the Countess had a certain interest in discounting accounts from veterans of recent actions. The Emperor had felt compelled to cover up the actions of certain of his highest-ranking clerics and grandes at Canterville, as part of his campaign to put as pleasant as possible a face on what remained arguably an act of outrageous blasphemy on his own part and on that of his whole army. But as word of Melodía’s exploits had returned to the Imperial Heart, so inevitably had whispers of the Count’s joining Cardinal Tavares in a shocking betrayal of his Empire, his Emperor, and his own kind.
“Here, now,” Falk boomed. “Jaume is a hero, and I won’t hear a word to the contrary! He proved himself a hundred times before the Battle of Canterville—in which we fought as comrades in arms. I might hope to prove as worthy.”
Margrethe smiled. “Ah, my son. Ever so loyal and honorable! Still, you can’t blame your old mother for putting a word in for her dear, downy chick, can you?”
“And after all, Melodía dear,” her father said absently, “surely there’s no harm in considering all options, is there?”
She slammed her hands on the table. The silver salad plate flipped and dumped its contents on the wooden surface. She shot to her feet.
“I’d think you of all people would remember how entertaining suits for my hand that were never going to be accepted turned out,” she said, “for the Empire and our family, Father.”
He blinked at her like a puzzled horse.
“I find myself fatigued,” she snapped. “I’m going to bed.”
She turned and marched out. But not before catching a glimpse of what she took for a glint of triumph in the blue eyes of the Dowager Duchess Margrethe.
* * *
In her apartment Melodía stood nude before the espejo lucero, holding a hank of her hair in her hand and gazing at her full-length image as if looking for an augury.
A warm night breeze through the open window brought the sounds of merriment and commerce from the great courtyard, as well as hints of song and a distinct aroma of baking bread from the city beyond the Moat. Unfortunately, it also brought the odor of the town dump.
But that suited her mood perfectly.
The finery she’d worn to dinner lay discarded by her feet: the discreet gold circlet buried by the gold and dark-green feather gorget and the brief emerald silk trunks with tea-green chiffon side panels, all crumpled upon her gilt sandals.
Look at yourself, she thought. She saw a tall young woman, trim, full-breasted, with hints of hard muscle underlying soft contours, especially in stomach and limbs. It was nothing extraordinary for a woman of her age and station; grandes of all sexes customarily trained in combat arts of various kinds. If anything, she was a trifle gaunt from the hardships of campaigning first with the Militia of Providence and then being hunted by both Horde and Empire as Karyl’s Fugitive Legion. Although the life of ease—and despair—was filling her out and softening those wiry muscles.
My hair. She had cropped it to a brush when she and Meravellosa joined the army as a jinete, a light rider, scout, and skirmisher. When her abilities won her promotion, to command of a squadron and then all the jinetes, that had won her the nickname of Short-Haired Horse Captain.
Once Raguel revealed himself in His full beauty and horror at the Great Hall of the Garden villa—and the terrible memories of her first encounter with the Grey Angel, which He had stolen even as she fled in terror—and the Crusade struck the Militia camp at Séverin Farm like a volcano’s glowing cloud, she had had no time to trim her hair. Or even pay attention to her appearance, when sheer survival was a full-time occupation.
And after the war was over, and the elation and exhaustion were replaced by the outrage and helplessness of the news of Montse’s kidnapping—and with everything that had happened since—her dark red hair had continued to grow, as hair does, so that it now hung down to her jaw and neck. The body servants assigned her from the Palace staff—obsequious nonentities who seemed deliberately to evade her efforts to put names and characters to their faces—had kept her hair trimmed neatly, as impersonally and mechanically as they bathed her and laid out and put away her clothes. She wouldn’t let them dress or undress her.
The Short-Haired Horse Captain. The first time I earned anything in my life. Except maybe opprobrium and scorn after my foolishness got my friends and my beloved Pilar torn to pieces by Count Guillaume’s Horrors. Which I never received.
And now, look at yourself. The dashing Light Horse Captain, doer of daring and needful deeds, melts slowly back into Melodía Estrella Delgao Llobregat, Princesa Imperial y Marquesa del Duque Los Almendros: ornamental, useless, and apparently helpless.
I am once more becoming everything I fought not to be. It was all in vain.
And I don’t know how to stop it.
She tugged savagely on her hair, feeling pain from the roots in her scalp.
“I could chop it all off again,” she said out loud. “I could shave my head bald, like a nun from Chánguo.”
She shook her head, feeling pain on her scalp all over again, and welcoming it as a sort of penance. Or maybe simply stimulation—a sign that she could feel anything but sinking, black, and cold despair.
“What good would that do? I’d still be here, and trapped, and helpless.”
Tears flooded her vision. Strength abandoned her body. She collapsed
like a discarded rag doll atop her discarded princess finery, and wept in defeated hopelessness.
* * *
The third time Melodía woke with a start as her chin almost reached her bare clavicle, she decided, Enough!
It was an unseasonably warm day for up here in the heights—enough for even Margrethe to doff her inevitable gown and go about clad the way the rest were, in a mere loincloth or trunks at most. Except for the courtiers, who had to swelter in overabundant court dress. And serves them right, she thought.
But she knew it wasn’t the stifling heat in the throne room that was making her nod off. Or not only that.
“Father,” she said, rising from her chair to the left of Felipe on his outsize golden Tyrant’s Head throne. “I must ask leave to withdraw.”
The Finance Minister, a curious little bread-loaf of a man whom she had interrupted in the midst of reading some list of Imperial expenses that stretched almost to the floor of the audience chamber, blinked his beady brown eyes through his round spectacles at her in molish outrage that she had interrupted him. It’s not as if I had a choice, you creepy little man, she thought. It’s not as if you ever pause to take a breath.
Margrethe poked her head around from her own lavishly becushioned stool on the far side of the Fangèd Throne. “Are you unwell, Your Highness?” she asked.
Yes, she wanted to say. You make me sick. And your son’s a rapist. But she couldn’t say the former thing any more than the latter. Especially since the Dowager Duchess of Hornberg seemed an irremovable fixture on her father’s arm these days. Which contributed to her ever-growing burden of despair. But at least her vile son wasn’t haunting the hall; he had no more appetite for boring minutiae of Imperial administration than she, and, unlike her, no reason at all to sit through recitations of them.
“I have a headache,” she said. Which while technically not true was certainly going to come true if she stayed here a moment longer.