The Dinosaur Princess

by Victor Milán

  “Yes, my lord. I came to inquire whether something might be troubling you? It’s not your practice to rise … so early.”

  “Before the crack of noon, you mean? Well, I never did get to sleep last night. There’s the answer to your riddle.”

  “It wouldn’t have anything to do with your recent trip to visit His Grace, would it?”

  Rob sighed. He realized midgust that he was doing so far too emphatically to make any subsequent demurral believable.

  “Well, yes. Can you keep a secret, Bergdahl?”

  His seneschal stood up straight—he had a tendency to stoop—and raised his chin. Rob somehow managed to swallow his reflexive giggle. He’s just a poor hada trying to do his job, and a thankless one it is. Though not as thankless as shaving that face, unless he’s mastered the trick of doing it without a mirror. But it’s not his fault he was born with a mug not even his mother could love, even if she was like mine, and in no state to be particular.

  “I am the soul of discretion, my lord.”

  “Aye, I reckon Duke Falk gave you plenty to be discreet about. The man’s a noted horn, if camp gossip’s to be believed. Which it isn’t, but why ruin a good story?”

  “Whatever you say, my lord.”

  Rob’s neck bones were beginning to complain, so he straightened and half turned on the cool stone instead. “I can, too, you see. Keep secrets. And now I learn I’m fated to encounter unseen horrors in unlooked-for places and ever after carry the burden of secrets I daren’t share.”

  But you’re coming close to the line as maybe now, boyo, he told himself. And maybe racing ’cross it with your balls hanging out your loincloth, too. It was the wine talking; he had enough experience channeling its voice—and that of ale and harder spirits as well—to know it when it came out of his mouth.

  It had shaken his world and his soul when he peered into the Emperor’s tent the evening of Canterville, all innocent—well, not so innocent, perhaps, but certainly unsuspecting—and learned that the long-held secret of Felipe’s mystery confessor was that Fray Jerónimo was a Grey Angel, in all his corroded majesty.

  And if I saw and heard what I think I saw and heard in Karyl’s study, night before last—it scares me that much to think what that might mean for my friend and for Ma Korrigan’s favorite son. And maybe for the whole wide world beyond.

  Karyl had looked surprised when, at another unwonted early hour of yesterday morning, Rob had appeared before the blazing hearth of the common room all dressed for the road and announced he had decided to head back to his own fief after all. It wasn’t as if Rob had made any great secret of his disappointment that it was the thing Karyl asked him to do instead of staying by his side to serve him yet again as master of scouts and spies, as was only fitting. Yet here he was, saying his farewells in the cool piedmont dark before breakfast! Not that he’d often got to sleep later during his months of association with Karyl Bogomirskiy. But that was the curse of a man who chose to consort with a legendary hero.

  “I have likewise seen many things, known many things, and lived through many things which even I found impolitic to talk about,” Bergdahl said into his reverie.

  “We’ve all seen uncanny things, the last few months. Were you at the Canterville field?”

  “No, my lord. I was carrying out my duties as His Grace Duke Falk’s manservant in his tent in the Imperial cantonment behind the hills. I was ready to defend his belongings against the Horde if necessary, but the Horde didn’t penetrate to there.”

  “So you were spared the sight of Raguel?”

  “I heard and felt things during the battle I never had before, my lord. And which I think no man should feel and hear.”

  “Aye, and that was the great beast himself. Creators’ own Avenger he might be, but his purpose in visiting our land was fell, and I can only think of him as dire himself.”

  “If I may speak freely—”

  “Ah, speak up, and boldly, my man! This is Liberty Hall, and you can spit on the mat and call the cat a bastard. Though, please, no spitting in fact; I’ve a surprisingly delicate stomach where the like’s concerned. And I should get a cat. They’re egg robbers after my own heart, who pick their friends and take no shit from any man. Though like myself, they don’t always choose so wisely…”

  “I have heard certain disquieting rumors,” Bergdahl said, with force behind the words, still courteous and deferential, but as if to push his master back to the subject at hand, “concerning our liege, His Grace, Duke Karyl.”

  Rob felt his brow crumple in a frown. “Have you, now?”

  “Rumors have reached my ears that on a recent visit to the newly installed Comte Laurent de Crève Coeur, a Faerie appeared in the Count’s own throne room and accosted Karyl by name as if familiar with him, and that they briefly conversed.”

  Rob’s head jerked up as if pulled by a noose. Careful of that image, lest you make it so. Your mother often foretold that as your fate …

  “Laurent I know,” he said. “Didn’t I see him brought all trussed up like a Year End scratcher into the Great Hall of the Garden Villa by a woods-runner woman warrior in all her naked glory? Him having been caught by my own scouts, spying and meeting with traitors on behalf of his lord, the blessedly late Guilli? Karyl sat him on Guilli’s own throne after the Crusade was put paid, largely because there weren’t many halfway decent candidates yet. And for all of that, he struck me a fair choice.”

  He waved his hand again. “But I’m distracting myself. I’m drunk, but not too drunk to notice. Say on: how did you hear that?”

  Bergdahl looked reluctant. But only for a moment. It seems I’m not the only one who fancies spilling secrets, Rob thought.

  “Servants’ rumor. We are often overlooked. But our eyes still see, and our ears hear, despite our lowly birth and station. They spread like all other rumors—as fast as if blown on gale winds.”

  There was a time I’d have caught that rumor, Rob thought. Or my scouts would catch it and bring it to me. Ah, well, it’s good that I’ll be doing that again, at least.

  “Frankly, I understand the palace servants were hesitant to speak of what they’d seen and heard,” Bergdahl said. “The penalty for dealing with the Fae is death. As to whether it makes a difference whether the contact is desired or even accidental—well, I’m no student of law, but I understand that the matter’s far from settled in the eyes of Church and Empire.”

  “And you’re to say nothing of it,” Rob said, “to anyone. Even speaking of the Fae is poor policy, if your head likes its resting place atop your neck. And spreading loose talk about Karyl is poorer still.”

  Bergdahl raised his hand bladewise, in a brief and placatory gesture. “I only thought that you should be aware. Do you think it possible that the Fae have … marked our good Duke somehow?”

  Yes.

  “Of course not!”

  “After all he’s been through, he might prove a tempting target for their seductions. And even … susceptible. I merely say this by way of service to my lord, who treats me fairly and has yet to beat me.”

  Rob produced a rumbling low in his throat, like a volcano freshly waked and feeling dyspeptic. Even he wasn’t sure what it meant.

  “Enough of this,” he said pointedly. “Now, I’ve thought of another matter. I gather you’ve seen off certain parties who’ve recently turned up asking to visit me?”

  “Scurrilous persons, of the lowest station and nature. Even woods-runners, who are known and notorious thieves and cutpurses.”

  “So are Travelers, of which I am one, though now the Emperor has granted me the license to do those things freely, if I will. Regardless. They are my friends, as it happens, I suppose I mean. And now they are once again my employees. So should anyone else seek audience with me, no matter the hour of day or night”—And there’s the bad side of being back in the saddle again—“admit them promptly. Pour a bucket of water on my sleepy head if that’s what it takes.”

  “Even the scurrilous—�
�

  “The more scurrilous, the better. Now, please be a good lad and fetch me a bottle of our good Haut-Pays ale. Drinking before noon’s a sin, I’m told, and it’s one I sorely need to get back to wallowing in!”

  Chapter 33

  Nodosaurios Imperiales, Imperial Nodosaurs, Infantería Imperial (Official), Imperial Infantry—Elite armored infantry, backbone of the Empire of Nuevaropa. Their colors are brown, black, and silver. Their basic formation is the tercio, a phalanx of three thousand pikes supported by more lightly armored hamstringers, arbalesters, artillerists, and pioneers. Tercios have died in battle to the last man and woman, but never broken.

  —A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

  “It hurts.”

  “Did you break anything?” Auriana asked, leaning over Melodía where she lay on her back on the hard-packed dirt beside the wide bed of a small stream. The hard, hard-packed dirt. Which was hard.

  “Would it do any good to say yes?”

  Having shed her for the tenth time that day, Tormento had trotted to the shade of a cottonwood tree and stood at his ease, gazing at his victim in what seemed to be malicious satisfaction. Half a dozen dinosaur grooms peered warily at the scene from behind the wagon that had brought them and the gear down from the Mesa, drawn by a nosehorn that was currently unhitched and dozing beneath some scrub trees. When Tormento was feeling particularly high-spirited, he liked to give them a shoulder or a playful swat with his tall, narrow tail. Not enough to break anything of consequence. But enough to knock them on their asses. Or even flip them ass over eyeballs. So they refused to get near the sackbut unless duty—meaning the Maestra—demanded they do so.

  “None,” Auriana said. “Unless it’s your back that’s broken. And good luck trying to fake paralysis to your grandmother.”

  “It hurts a lot.” As it did, despite the fact that Melodía wore a well-padded gambeson to absorb the impact. Mostly that seemed to have the effect of making her sweat profusely inside it in the afternoon heat. Its padding did absorb much of the perspiration, causing it to feel as if she were increasingly being laden down with felt blankets soaked in lukewarm water.

  Auriana reached a hand down toward her. Sighing, Melodía took her forearm to forearm and was hauled straightaway to her feet as if she didn’t outweigh the weapons-master by a fair margin. The dinosaur knight was clearly strong from her build, with wide shoulders, tapering upper torso, and no great narrowing at her waist. But it always shocked Melodía all over again when she demonstrated just how strong she was.

  “I respect your accomplishments and proficiency as a fighter, Melodía,” Maestra Auriana said. “You have experienced far more real combat in your brief time on campaign than many we call seasoned veterans. So you know that a warrior can’t let being hurt stop her. You know too well that hurts that aren’t of the body can stay with you longer and worse than physical wounds.”

  “But the physical ones still hurt.”

  “That’s why we call it ‘pain.’ Now: you were trained in grappling previously, particularly at the Firefly Palace?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent. I know Prince Harry’s maestra de las armas, passingly. You were trained to fall properly. Also, you must’ve fallen off horses many times, learning to ride them.”

  “Well … yes. But not from the back of a ten-meter-tall dinosaur!”

  “Nonsense. Tormento’s just nine and a half meters long, beak to tail. Even when he stands, your saddle only rides two and a half meters off the ground. But the principle remains the same as in wrestling. Try to get a shoulder tucked and roll off the impact of landing. And above all, try not to land as flat as a plank of wood, like you did.”

  “Won’t it still hurt?”

  She shrugged. “Eventually, you’ll come not to notice it. Until then, it will serve to remind you that the whole point of this particular drill is not to fall off.”

  A memory came to her that made her shoulders sag, more than the weight of the gambeson, growing evermore waterlogged with each passing moment, did.

  “I’ve seen Jaume and his knights practice falling off their dinosaurs deliberately,” she said glumly. “In their plate armor. For hours at a time.”

  “Of course. The ability to fall safely in full harness and then bounce back up is second only to the ability to stay on one’s mount in the first place in staying alive. In a full battle between dinosaurry formations, to lie on the ground is to die.”

  “I know.” She’d seen the consequences of being stepped on by a beast weighing upward of three tons, given its own bulk and that of its caparison or barding, its saddle, and its rider. The armor just served to direct where the soft parts and juices of you squirted out.

  Still—“Shouldn’t I have armor?”

  “Armor?”

  She indicated her body, which was contained in a white linen blouse, dark trousers, and thigh-high boots. “You know. Plate. Like Jaume and his Companions.”

  She’d been provided with a suit of armor, cobbled together from bits available in the capacious Palace armory. But it hung on a rack over by one low but sheer cutbank of the little valley. Because La Madrota wanted to keep her training a secret, she wouldn’t actually get her own panoply ordered until after she got knighted.

  “Absolutely not,” Auriana said. “It’s actually more dangerous to fall off a duckbill in full harness than normally dressed. Or in leather armor. Or naked, though that tends to scuff.”

  She sighed and wagged her head in theatrical despair. “To think, you spent so much time in the presence of the finest pure dinosaur knights in all of Nuevaropa, and you never bothered to learn thing one about their craft.”

  “It didn’t occur to me it was a skill I’d need. Like carpentry. Or forging the metal bits for siege engines.”

  She recalled how avid Montserrat always was to watch the blacksmiths, or Maestro Rubbio the armorer in the Palacio de las Luciérnagas, at their work. It gave her a multiple pang: of missing her adored baby sister; of fear for the lost child; and of something akin to jealousy at how much she would’ve learned already that Melodía hadn’t in fourteen more years of life. The little monster loved dinosaurs, too.

  She had often wished, in the endless hours and days and weeks since news of Montse’s abduction, that she could have exchanged places with her younger sister. Never before for such selfish reasons, though.

  “Besides,” Melodía said, “what about Karyl? He’s a dinosaur knight too, you know.”

  “Oh, to be sure. And a great master he clearly is, as well. But riding a meat-eater?” She shook her head. “Hardly an orthodox technique. Which is why I specified pure dinosaur knight.”

  A mischievous impulse overcame Melodía. “Do you think you could take him? In single combat?”

  “What? Who?”

  “Karyl Bogomirskiy. Uh, Duke Karyl, I guess I need to call him now.”

  Auriana’s brown face went pale. Her eyes rounded with cold fury.

  “Don’t mock me, Princess,” she said in a deadly low voice.

  “I wasn’t! I—” Auriana’s response shocked whatever explanation Melodía might have given for her jape right out of her head. She’d been trying to tease her teacher gently—but only now did it occur to her that could be construed as mockery—“I meant no harm.”

  The maestra turned away. “I am your master. And I know mine. I’m good; I’m reckoned one of the best. Karyl’s skill stands as far above mine as mine does yours. It is transcendent.”

  She spun back to face the still-shaken Melodía. “I wish I could have been there, fought on the field of Canterville. I did not join the original Crusade against Providence, because I had no taste to step on the necks of some folk for their silly and probably harmless interpretation of Count Jaume’s philosophy.”

  Melodía looked down at the sand that floored the arena. “It turned out not to be so harmless.”

  “True. Nonetheless the evidence wasn’t there. I held back—and by the time
I knew your father’d be facing a far different kind of Crusade, with everything at stake, it was too late. And I’d gladly have died there had I just lived to see Karyl Bogomirskiy lay blade on a Grey Angel. It was the act of a hero for the ages!”

  She grinned, in that sometimes disarmingly girlish way she had. Almost disarming. Melodía had learned better by now.

  “But enough of my schoolgirl admiration. The key, I guess, is that being second to Karyl at the arts of combat is no bad thing at all. Like being second as poet-philosopher to Count Jaume…”

  Melodía squinted at her in sudden suspicion. Was that a wistful hint in her voice, normally so businesslike? A dreamy look in those eyes, normally of the same softness as well as the hue of the steel breastplates that gave the Brown Nodosaurs their name?

  My goddess Lady Li, she thought. She wants him!

  That tempted her to crack a smile—something she also knew better than to do during her lessons. Why wouldn’t she want him? What woman wouldn’t want to take the beautiful and heroic Jaume into her bed and body, given that she liked men at all?

  She’d find her master there, quickly enough, she thought with satisfaction.

  She noticed that Auriana’s eyes had narrowed. She had no way of knowing the exact nature of Melodía’s thoughts. Melodía was pretty sure. But seasoned teacher that she was, she did know the signs of when a student was thinking rebellious thoughts …

  “Good news,” she said. “I think you’re done with your dinosaur-riding lessons for today!”

  “Wonderful!” Melodía almost went dizzy with delighted relief.

  And then she came as close to blurting out, “Oh, fuck, you caught me again!” Because Maestra Auriana’s raptor smile was back, as gleefully malicious as ever.

  “Speaking of your spending hours in the presence of great masters of their craft, tell me again: you never did think to seek instruction in the martial arts from your commander, Karyl?”