by Victor Milán
Rob was knocked down too. The Guards began to kick and stomp him with their heavy hard-soled boots.
“What are you doing, Count Vargas?” he heard the Corythosaurus rider who’d felled Nell shout. “You told us, alive!”
The Guardias left off beating Rob bloody to pin his arms and legs to the limestone flags. He saw the big bearded man had ridden his sackbut almost up to Karyl’s feet and sat grinning unpleasantly down at the captive.
“Alive, the Duchess said,” he agreed. “But she didn’t specify in what condition. You’ve caused us no end of trouble, Duque de la Marca, but that stops now. And I’m going to exact my own form of payment before letting Margrethe dispense hers.”
Count Vargas reared his sackbut until the duckbill was propped by its own tail, then urged it forward. It started to step forward with its left foot, right onto Karyl’s helpless body. Before it crushed his pelvis and thighs, Vargas rocked the beast back again.
“Will you beg for mercy, Duke Karyl? It won’t help, but that usually doesn’t stop anyone.” He rocked the sackbut forward again.
The spearmen and women avoided Shiraa, though she lay still with her head on the flagstones, seemingly no more than semiconscious. Allosaurus had a reputation for cunning almost as great as for stealth. No one wanted to trust that the mighty carnivore was really out of action.
Instead, they surrounded Little Nell, who also lay helpless on her side, breathing heavily. One stabbed her in the shoulder with a spear, tentatively. Then another and another, with increasingly brutal force and glee.
“Leave her alone, you motherless shits!” Rob roared, despite the pain from cracked ribs—and the additional boots that got put in them. “Leave Karyl alone! May the Fae burn you all!”
A strange blue glare, the color of lightning, flooded the scene. Unlike lightning, it persisted.
Someone began to scream.
* * *
Rob smelled burning hair.
A remarkable figure appeared, hovering in the air a meter above the supine Rob. It was a tiny nude man, with wings too absurdly short to uphold even his presumed slight weight. Or would have been too small had he not seemed to be made of living blue fire. His glow illuminated eyes wide and mouths agape in disbelieving horror beneath steel helmet brims.
“As you wish, Master Korrigan,” he said in a sibilant crackle that Rob knew all too well, “so shall it be.”
He darted into the clean-shaven face of a spearman with a big black mole beside his nose. Blue sparks flickered from beneath his helmet. Smoke poured out. With a shriek the man knocked the steel hat from his head to slap at the blue flames dancing in his short, thick hair.
The tiny winged man darted from one Guardia beating Rob to another, kindling each one’s hair in turn. They jumped up, letting Rob go to bat desperately at the stinking flames. Those with weapons in their hands flung them aside.
Rob looked to Little Nell. A swarm of small fire-figures, some with human shape, some distinctly inhuman, some with no perceptible shape at all, had half her tormentors’ hair alight as well. The rest had already run off screaming in mindless terror.
Rob realized the glare that lit the scene came from above, though; it didn’t waver as it would if it were composed of dozens of discrete flame-creatures. He looked up.
Count Vargas had his sackbut rocked back with both feet on the ground. He was yelling at the Guardias to come back. And at his remaining fellow knights—Rob saw they had all run off as well.
But Rob realized the glare came from someplace above the Count.
Vargas’s duckbill realized it too. It raised its triangular, tube-crested head and emitted the highest-pitched noise Rob in all his career had ever heard a dinosaur make. It’s a G7 at the very least, he thought, not without a certain admiration. He had to clap his hands over his ears in hopes of keeping the drums from bursting.
Floating not three meters above the dinosaur’s upturned beak was a thing of living blue-white flame. Its shape was roughly elliptical, narrow at top and bottom. Beyond that it was too eye-hurtingly bright for him to make out more than that whatever shape it had was constantly changing.
He felt heat from it on his face, like an open forge a meter away.
“He is not yours to dispose of, mortal,” came a voice that both flowed like honey and sizzled like frying flesh strips on a hot stove. “He is mine.”
Rob’s pulse spiked in terror. It’s the voice I heard whispering to Karyl! And that light’s the same color!
It’s all true, then! And yet—I was still wrong.
That last scrap of self-knowledge strangely gave him something to cling to, to prevent him slipping away from sanity to drown in howling madness.
Count Vargas finally looked up. At first he simply gaped. The hell-glare descended toward him. He threw up his hands to shield his face from its heat.
Rob saw his leather gloves begin to smoke. Then they burst into flame as the fire-thing elongated and poured itself down on his face like molten iron. His beard caught fire, and the flesh began to melt and slough away.
But he screamed, more loudly than his still-fluting dinosaur.
He felt his mouth fill with vomit. But he couldn’t force himself to look away.
The metal of Vargas’s breastplate glowed red as the light seemed to pour itself down into his armor through the neck hole. The enamel blistered and burned away.
The awful glow shone out the armholes, then, and consumed Count Vargas’s arms. The sackbut leaned forward over Karyl and snapped upright, shedding his burning master, and ran off.
What hit the plaza’s yellow limestone pavement was already a shrunken black mummy of vaguely human shape. The cuirass flexed at the impact, then held that flattened shape, like wet clay thrown hard on a potter’s table.
Vargas’s shrieks continued for a dozen intolerable pounds of Rob Korrigan’s heart. When they stopped, the glare went out.
The fires died away as well. Rob fought painfully to his feet. He started toward Karyl, but the man sat up and waved him away.
“Go, see to Nell,” Karyl said. The sight of blood trickling from his mouth gave Rob a turn. But he saw it ran from Karyl’s nose, bloodied by a spear-butt to the face.
As Rob lurched toward his wounded hook-horn, she rocked herself and then, getting a foot under her, fought her way to her feet. She shook her head. Dark drops flew from it. That almost stopped Rob’s heart, but he saw the blood flowed from a pair of gashes to her frill and her snout. As with Karyl, nothing life-imperiling.
Nell stood panting, but let him gingerly run hands over her. She had at least a score of bleeding wounds, but none were deep.
“Will she carry you?” he heard Karyl call.
“I reckon she’ll do,” he said, turning. “There’s a reason they make armor out of hornface hide, it seems.”
He was about to ask after Shiraa. But she was already standing up with Karyl on her back. She looked none the worse for wear. Getting slammed to the flagstones by the sackbut had only knocked the wind from her, Rob judged.
“Shiraa and I are fit to flee,” Karyl said, replacing his sword in the staff that served as concealment and scabbard. “Which we need to do at once, before reinforcements arrive, from city or Palace.”
Rob glanced back across the bridge to the Wall. He saw great green fires blazing there, and lesser, yellow ones scattered about. He couldn’t see what was burning to cause those. Given what he’d just witnessed, he was just as glad.
“They’ll be a while chasing us from the Heart, at least,” he said. He took Nell’s reins, pressed down on the saddle with his hand. She flinched slightly, then seemed to stiffen, as if resolved. Which she probably was—she had a will of her own, did Nell, and it was no feebler than the rest of her.
He mounted. She swayed slightly, but held up under him.
“I agree as to the need for speed,” he called to his friend. “Though Nell and I were never built for much of it, even when we’re not both beat to shit.”
&nb
sp; “Then follow me.” Karyl turned Shiraa and set off at an angle across the plaza, south, away from Via Imperial.
Nell needed surprisingly little urging to follow the big carnivore. She seemed as eager to put this ghastly place behind her as Rob was.
“Was that—” Rob said.
“The Fae,” Karyl said without turning.
“They’ve torn it for us, good and proper. Whatever you were doing in the Palace—”
“Trying to prevent an unnecessary war with Trebizon. Which looked likely to escalate to an even more pointless and lethal one against High Ovda.”
“Maia and Maris! Well, your friends have burned that to ash.”
“Whatever they are, they’re no friends of mine.”
“Be that as it may, we’re outlaws again for sure, the both of us. For good this time, most like.”
“That much was guaranteed as soon as we escaped the Dowager Duchess’s little deathtrap. Your friend Margrethe’s got half the Palace believing it was all a plot by you and me to assassinate the Emperor by now, count on it.”
“True enough. But whatever she is, she’s no friend of mine.”
“Touché.”
“Where are we going, then?” Rob asked. They were following a lane between dark, windowless buildings near the cliff. It was neither particularly broad nor particularly straight. “The guards are surely well alerted now. Singing merry songs as we ride blithely out the gates like a pair of drunken revelers isn’t going to answer. Much as I wish I were a drunken reveler right now. Or at least drunk.”
“We’re going away from this place,” said Karyl. “I know a way down.”
“Really?” Rob cocked a brow, though Karyl couldn’t have seen it here in the gloom even if he’d looked back. Which he didn’t. “And how do you know that little thing, Your Grace, you who’ve been here less than a week?”
Karyl’s answer was the same as it always was when he judged a question not worth answering: he kept on going with never a backward glance, leaving Rob and Nell to stay or follow as Rob chose.
“Well, it seems I’ve small choice but to trust the man and blindly follow,” he muttered to Nell, patting her neck and wincing at the tacky half-dried blood that was left on his palm.
He sighed. Theatrically. He and Nell were always his best audience.
“Again.”
Chapter 50
Rank and Title—Social rank in the Empire of Nuevaropa roughly follows the shape of a pyramid, from the lone Emperor or Empress down to the mass of peasants. The ranks are: Emperor, Prince, Archduke, Duke, Count, Baron, Knight, and peasant. One of the eleven Electors is a prince, and called a Prince-Elector. Variations are many; for example, the count of a contested border province, or march, is sometimes known as a Margrave, Marquis, or Voyvod. All owe fealty: those below, service and obedience to those above; those above, protection and care of their lessers. As a rule, the higher the title, the larger the land-holding. However, the system as it has evolved has led to baronies the size of duchies, and archduchies as small as counties. Moreover, it is not unheard of for a count, for example, to hold a certain fief as a vassal to a baron. Needless to say, this complexity leads to resentment and friction, and hence, frequently, to conflict.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“The Fae! The Fae! Creators protect us, it’s the Fae!” The scream rose from half a dozen throats into the clouding-over night sky.
With a kind of horrified resignation, Melodía watched blazing shapes like T-cross meteors plunge downward into the Courtyard from the Wall. A Defensor del Corazón, hair ablaze, overbalanced and plunged downward to Melodía’s left as she stood with Jaume, her arm about his waist, his around her shoulders, and her father among the protective block of Scarlet Tyrants on the Entrance steps.
She heard a softer murmur from nearby: “Faerie fire! It’s just what the Champion described! He was telling the truth all along!”
Yes, you damned fools. Of course he was. Then she felt sicker, for remembering she’d been as big a fool as any—and only her father, it seemed, had faith in his Constable.
* * *
From the window high overhead Margrethe continued to bellow for the Defenders to shoot down the escaping pair. But even as her voice grew hoarse, it was obvious that none of them were obeying her.
What wasn’t obvious to Melodía was that anybody could obey her. While some of the Palace guards were running away from the big, bright green fires that blazed up from apparently random points along the ramparts’ top, some had their hair ablaze for true. And as far she could see, every arbalest on the wall was burning like a torch.
And her father the Emperor acted as if his mind was settled by emergency—as she’d been told he had, by those who witnessed him on La Boule during the battle with the Horde.
“Is that what you saw in Laventura, boy?” Felipe asked Jaume quietly.
She felt her lover nod. “Similar, at least. From what we saw, and learned from our investigation afterward, the green blazes may be illusion. But they can also set real fires, as well.”
Felipe shook his head sadly. “I never believed in the Fae. Not before you told us what happened in Laventura that stopped you from saving my daughter. And even then—I found it hard to adjust my thoughts.”
“All of us did, Father,” Melodía said. It felt as if the words were blades, coming up through her throat.
Jaume hugged her tighter.
She turned to him and tapped his bare chest with her fingertip. He looked down. She nodded back toward the Entrada.
He nodded in return. It was clear there was no danger to them they’d be retreating from. And even more clear that there was utterly nothing they could do but watch.
“That’s it, isn’t it?” she said softly, when they’d drawn a few paces back. The cordoning Scarlet Tyrants had moved aside to let them pass with barely a glance at them. Though Melodía was a secondary object of their attention, their focus was on their Emperor. And being farther inside the walls of the Palace within a mountain behind them could hardly make her less secure. To say nothing of the tall, nearly nude man who had one arm around her and the other holding a totally naked longsword …
“It’s the end of our peace faction.”
“It’s a nasty blow,” Jaume said. “This ends Duke Karyl’s influence, at any rate. I can’t believe he’s really dealing with the Fae.”
“I don’t believe it!” she said, with a protective fierceness she hadn’t expected to feel toward her former commander. “He’d never betray us. The Empire and … everybody.”
“You know him better than I do, mi amor. And I’m reluctant to believe it, given what he’s done for the Empire and us all. But this is Faerie magic, and none of us can pretend it isn’t anymore. We can’t not believe anymore. I never believed in them, Prince of the Church or not, even though they’re canon!”
“Do you think he had anything to do with the demonios preventing you from rescuing Montse?”
“I don’t see how he could have. He might cut an enemy down in front of that enemy’s family without a thought—and then protect that family with his own life. He wouldn’t wage war on Montserrat, even if he were working with the Fae.”
She nodded. “That’s the man I served for months, yes. Don’t you see what’s happening? The Fae want this war! That’s why they sabotaged you and your Companions in Laventura—and why they’re sabotaging Karyl and Rob.”
“You may be right, Princess. Now I ask you: who will ever believe us?”
She could only shake her head. And burst into tears.
* * *
“So naturally your escape route had to entail a sewer,” Rob said, glancing back up and diagonally across the slope they were riding down at the yawning black mouth in the Plateau’s sloped side and the noisome torrent gushing from it. He was trying to breathe shallowly, through his mouth. It wasn’t helping.
The sky was rapidly growing more crowded with clouds. I don’t know whet
her to hope it doesn’t rain, he thought, or that it does.
“They frequently make good escape routes,” Karyl said. “I doubt this was the first time you’ve used one for that.”
Little Nell’s wounds still trickled blood. But she seemed steady enough. His heart ached for her, as well as for Shiraa. But with the best will in Paradise there was nothing either man could do for either dinosaur until they were safely away from the city.
Then again, they couldn’t do much for their own hurts, either.
“No,” Rob said. “It was not. Which, strangely, makes me all the more reluctant to undergo the experience again! Why couldn’t you have found us something more in a nice, clean storm drain?”
“Those are a separate system. They all lead to catchment tanks dug into the soil beneath the city. Similar to the cistern in which you set up our little appointment this evening.”
Rob cringed at the reminder. But he was still supercharged with emotional and mental energy from the night’s bizarre and horrifying adventures, despite the fatigue that weighed him down like a leaden cloak.
“And why would a sewer have an entrance large enough to lead a dinosaur down? I know why the main line would be big enough to pass a brontosaurus, but not that other thing.”
“Maintenance, I suspect. A blockage or collapse could call for the application of substantial dinosaur muscle power.”
“How do you know all these things?” he demanded.
“I asked questions, during my stay. Basic reconnaissance of possible engagement grounds. You’re familiar with the concept, I believe.”
Rob scowled. He’d served as master of scouts as well as spies for the Army of Providence, and the Fugitive Legion it was transformed into by the glowing-cloud advent of the Grey Angel Crusade. As Karyl well knew, since he’d given Rob the job.
“Then why doesn’t the conduit extend all the way down, Lord Knowall?”
“Funding ran out, likely. The Diet is known for its arbitrary bouts of parsimony. Be thankful for their stinginess; otherwise, we’d still be struggling down a steep, wet pipe clear to the sewage farm. Not to mention that we’d end up in the middle of the sewage farm.”