by Victor Milán
“Isn’t that adorable?” she asked softly, as a tiny tailless flier, not longer than her hand, landed next to the flower-tangle. It showed its full new pelage, bright and even gaudy in scarlet and yellow limned in black, for the rapidly approaching autumn.
“It is,” Pilar said, as the flier commenced to hop about and peck among the lower-lying ferns.
Melodía thought to notice the slight catch in her voice that indicated she’d only just stopped herself from using the honorific Alteza—Highness. She opened her mouth to twit her for it.
From amidst the flowers a tawny head shot out. Tiny-toothed jaws snapped shut on the glorious flier with a crunch of lightweight bones being crushed. The flier squeaked.
Melodía yelped and jumped back in something like terror. Fixing her with a curious topaz eye, the predator raised its head, which was only roughly the same size as its doomed prey, and with a couple of gulps swallowed the faintly struggling pterosaur. With a final toss of its crest of yellow feathers, the head disappeared back into the vines.
“See!” Melodía shrieked. “That’s how he is!”
“How who is?” Pilar said. “It was only a compito. Common as mice, and only doing what compitos do.”
“Don’t you see? He’s like that! A thorn in the rose. An adder in the beauty!”
“A what? I think compitos are kind of cute. They’re predators, sure. But so are kittens. Or Montse’s adorable little ferret friend, Mistral.”
“But don’t you see? It hides among the beauty to kill the beautiful! Like him!”
“Like who?”
“Karyl!” Melodía shook her head in exasperation. It was so clear to her now. All clear. Why was Pilar being so obtuse?
“Who? What?”
“He lurks in the Garden, biding his time before he crushes the beauty from it! He’s what’s wrong here.”
“But I thought it was the raids by Count Guillaume of Crève Coeur that were what was wrong here in Providence,” Pilar said. “Weren’t they what Karyl and his friend Rob were hired to stop?”
“That’s the pretext! They always have a pretext, the men of war. They always have an excuse. And the poison of his militarism is seeping out. It’s why Violette and some of her followers are starting to turn from the soft path of the Garden!”
“Wait—”
“It’s his fault! He’s a violator. Just like Falk!”
Even in her state of angry agitation, she saw her friend’s face, normally even darker than her own, go ashy-pale.
“I don’t think Captain Karyl is anything like Falk … Melodía. He may have his faults. But not even his many enemies ever hinted that he’s a rapist.”
“Men of war. Karyl and Falk. They’re both men of war! Not like—not like Jaume. War isn’t his first choice. Don’t you see?”
Pilar took her hand and squeezed it. “I’m with you, Melodía. No matter what.”
She sensed her friend was humoring her. But the fever was already ebbing.
“Someone has to do … something.”
Pilar nodded and smiled.
Melodía took her friend’s hand in both of hers and squeezed it tight. She lowered her face, and felt tears drop on the back of her right hand: one. Two.
She sighed deeply, raised her head, and let go of Pilar’s hand.
“Let’s get back to the villa,” she said. “I’m hungry. And after lunch Bogardus is speaking in the Garden about the nature of divinity.”
Pilar smiled in a less tentative way than she had been. “I didn’t think you believed in divinity.”
“I don’t necessarily believe what he says. But he says it so beautifully! Let’s go.”
* * *
Next morning Melodía and Pilar were awakened with the dawn, when autumn chill blew sharp down the wind from the passes, and the villa halls bubbled with the word everyone had feared.
Rob Korrigan’s scouts reported that Count Guillaume himself had crossed the Lisette River, at the head of his whole army of vassals and allies, hungry as horrors for rape, plunder, and power.
Melodía wept for what would become of the Garden and the people she had come to love.
But she could not banish the horrifying conviction that the real enemy was among them already.
Chapter 11
Cruzada de los Ángeles Grises, Grey Angel Crusade—The most feared form of divine punishment levied by the Grey Angels, in which one or more Angels raises a horde of human minions to wage wars of extermination against populations who sin too grievously against the Creators’ Law. Grey Angel Crusaders are said to be indifferent to privation, fear, and pain. While Grey Angel Crusades are occasionally reported from elsewhere on Paradise, Nuevaropa has been spared their horrors since the High Holy War.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“Try some of these, your Grace,” said Bergdahl, holding out a waxed-paper bag with sides stained dark by grease.
Duke Falk von Hornberg hoisted a skeptical brow. “What is it? Not fried squid suckers again?”
Whitewashed walls and the stones of the street three stories below concentrated midday heat on the little balcony. It was still cooler than the young Alemán was accustomed to in his Equatorial homeland at the Tyrant’s Head’s north end. He wore a splendid royal-blue feather cloak thrown to shade his shoulders, a loincloth of matching silk, and buskins with leather thongs wound up his calves. A black hornface-leather belt supported scabbarded arming-sword, dagger, and a purse lined with mail to foil thieves.
“No, no,” said his tall and lank-haired servant, working his long jaws around a mouthful of whatever the bag contained. He had on a greasy loincloth, sandals, and a shoulder-yoke of feathers as drab and bedraggled as the rest of him. His wide, conical straw hat leaned against the wall beside his master’s much finer headgear of silk stretched on a framework of pterosaur wing-finger bones. “It’s fried bouncer-skin. Tejano delicacy.”
He gestured vaguely with his bag. “I got it from a booth on the edge of the plaza.”
Noisy Mercedes thronged the vast square two blocks away. A semicircle of Papal guards in silver-inlaid blue morions and cuirasses held them clear of the wall of Creators’ House, the public temple that jutted from the east wall of the enormous Channel-side fortress which was the Papal stronghold. At the stroke of noon his Holiness, Pope Pío, was scheduled to speak from the ceremonial balcony. Like this one it was railed with spikes of verdigris-covered bronze—a testimony to the tenacity and athleticism of La Merced’s burglars.
The inhabitants of La Merced weren’t famed for their piety, unless one meant their lack of it. But they were renowned for their love of spectacle. And criers and handbills had assured them for the last two weeks solid that today Pío would deliver his most important sermon ever.
Of course no one Falk had talked to, in the Palace or this strange, undisciplined southern city, could recall his Holiness doing or saying anything memorable at all, ever. But rumors had got their hopes up today. Rumors that had largely emanated from Bergdahl, his local network of spies and hirelings, and a distressing number of silver pesetas from Falk’s war-chest. To such effect that Falk had been compelled to shell out a whole good gold trono to rent a balcony the size of a modest bed to watch the proceedings.
“Well—all right,” Falk said.
He dug tentatively into the bag, not best pleased by the prospect of eating food that Bergdahl had been picking over with his perpetually grubby fingers.
But the crisp, curled, squarish morsels certainly smelled enticing. Falk picked up a couple in his big thick fingers, popped them into his mouth, and chewed.
And chewed. At first the skins crunched most satisfactorily, like fresh celery. But they just kept chewing.
Then the flavor hit him, and his stomach declared open opposition.
“Well, your Grace? How do you like them?”
Falk turned a watering and displeased gaze on him.
“The Tejanos eat them with hot-pepper powder sprinkle
d on them, I hear,” Bergdahl said defensively. “These plain ones were all I could find.”
“On the whole,” Falk said, still chewing, “they appear to have the flavor and consistency of a nosehorn-driver’s loincloth, boiled and fried in stale Protoceratops lard.”
He spat the skins, which as far as he could tell remained intact, over the green metal railings.
“Your Grace would know best, I’m sure,” said Bergdahl with a smirk.
Falk sighed theatrically.
“I don’t know why I put up with your impertinence, Bergdahl,” he said.
“I do,” Bergdahl said smugly. “Send to your Dowager Mum and ask, if you’re hazy on the concept.”
Falk scowled. You might as well cut my balls off and brandish them in the palm of your hand, he thought. He didn’t say so. It would only make it—well, more so.
“If I’m supposed to be advancing the principle of the strong ruler,” he said, “why won’t Mother give me more leeway to actually act on my own?”
“Don’t whine,” Bergdahl said, stuffing a whole fistful of the nauseating chips in his mouth and chewing. Little fragments sprayed from his mouth like brick-dust from a wall hit by a trebuchet stone. “It’s unseemly in one so large.”
Why do I let him talk to me like that? Falk thought, retreating into sullen silence from a fight he knew he’d never win. I’m a man of consequence here: a man of Power. I command the Imperial bodyguard. All the young courtiers and favor-seekers flock to me. And I’ve the ear of the Emperor himself. I’m his favorite, I might even say, what with his pretty-boy nephew off subduing some wretched hedge-knight or another.
So why do I have to let myself be treated with contempt by a lowborn lout with shit under his fingernails?
He knew why. Far too well to need to articulate it to himself again.
The crowd bellowed sudden anticipation, like a tyrant menagerie at feeding time. Gaudy flocks of feeding fliers took flight, with booming wings and brisk complaint. Falk felt gratitude for the occasion for his eyes to look outward again.
The Pope had stepped onto his projecting balcony. Shrugging off the hands of a bevy of red-gowned cardinals he tottered forward on his own. He was over two hundred and looked it: like a white silk bag of sticks, topped with a miter-crowned nosehorn’s egg.
That was ancient, even by Paradise standards. Although people could live indefinitely barring misadventure, the world had a knack of providing such misadventures. Pío’s accomplishment in getting so old was made more remarkable by the fact that, as Pope of the rich and powerful Nuevaropan branch of the universal Church of the Creators, he arguably disposed of more actual power than the Emperor himself.
The Pope reached the rail. The crowd cheered. Falk wondered whether it was genuine approval or mere hope he’d topple over.
“They’re in a particularly receptive mood,” Bergdahl said, stuffing the last of the bouncer-hide chips in his face, wadding the bag and tossing it over the rail. Unseen below them one of the Scarlet Tyrants who secured the building—mostly Riquezos with necks wider than their heads—cursed as it bounced off his horsehair-plumed helmet. “An hour ago a dwarf-titan ran amok, kicked free of its wine-cart, and trampled half a dozen bystanders.”
“Aren’t the Merced rabble notoriously softhearted?” Falk said. “They certainly acted sullen when Snowflake and I had the head off that tiresome old rogue of a Mondragón.”
“Oh, they’re compassionate enough, as rabble go, your Grace. But they love a good show. And this was an accident.” As if that explained things. Or made sense.
Pío raised quavering hands and began to orate. Miraculously the crowd fell quiet. Not that Falk could hear his words, across two blocks of flat roofs and a good two hundred meters of mob.
He didn’t need to. He knew perfectly well what the Pope was saying: he preached fire and steel against the Garden of Beauty and Truth. He was doing nothing less than demanding his hearers take up arms and march to destroy the heretics in Providence before their evil ways brought a Grey Angel Crusade down on the Imperio.
Falk and his servant had worked hard the last few weeks to stack the wood and pile on the tinder. Bergdahl was a wonder at getting things done, Falk had to admit. He continued to perform his Palace-servant duties while expanding his network of spies and informants—and utilizing them to stoke terror over the Grey Angel Emergence reported in Providence in every level of society.
But getting people excited wasn’t the same as getting them to act. Much as they loved sensation, Mercedes’s feet were firmly planted on the ground of everyday business. They had their fun and got back to work.
“He’ll never pull it off,” Falk muttered, gripping the railing between ornate green spikes. “He can barely stand up without help, he has a voice like a moribund frog, and all the personality of his morning bowl of gruel.”
“Ahh, but you overlook one thing, your Grace,” Bergdahl said. To Falk’s astonishment he produced a small dead fish from his pouch and casually bit off the head. “He believes in his cause with a passion that consumes him utterly.”
He munched. Scales spilled over his grey underlip.
“Some say such total surrender to passion can lend a man greater than normal powers,” the servant went on.
“I’d think you’d say it would make him a fool.”
“Perhaps. But what’s more useful than fools?”
Bergdahl tipped his head to look sidelong at his nominal master. Falk knew that look, and hated it.
“After all, His Majesty’s proving most useful indeed.”
“Hold your shit-encrusted tongue!” Falk hissed in Alemán.
“Why? You fear spies? My lord, to whom do you think they’d report, if not to you?”
“We both know better,” Falk said, knowing for once he had the right of it. “I’ve tipped over too many kiosks on the way to where I am. There are plenty at court who think I’ve come too far, too fast for a foreign upstart. And former rebel, at that.”
He shook his head. “I honor Power above all things. It’s what separates us from beasts, who have only muscles and teeth. But sometimes it’s like water: the harder I try to grasp it, the faster it squirts through my fingers.”
“Perhaps my lord could learn the patience to cup his hands.”
“You know what I mean! Anyway, Felipe understands power. He intends to really rule. Perhaps it’s the iron in his good Alemán blood.”
Instead of coming back sarcastically Bergdahl stiffened. He leaned forward, like a raptor tipping forward and raising its counterbalancing tail to spring to the chase.
“What?” Falk demanded.
“Something.”
“That’s no answer. Tell me plainly—”
Bergdahl raised a peremptory hand. “Hush.”
The Pope’s voice had risen to surprising volume and clarity. The crowd actually quit shuffling its collective feet and stilled. For the first time the old man’s words reached to the balcony.
“—divine retribution hanging over us!” he was crying. “We must prove ourselves worthy of the Creators’ mercy! Our only reprieve from the Grey Angels’ soul-reapers is to leave them no work to do! Our only hope, to cut down the foul shoots of heresy ourselves, trample them into the dust, and burn the remains! Providence must be—”
He clutched his sunken chest and reeled back from the rail. Cardinals rushed forward to his aid.
He lunged away from them to lean far out toward the crowd.
“—destroyed!” he screamed.
His body jerked. His head snapped up. Then he pitched forward over the railing to plummet ten meters to the yellow limestone flagstones below.
For a moment the crowd stayed still as stone. Then with a single many-voice roar it surged forward, pressing the halberdiers back upon the body of their fallen master.
“Outstanding,” Bergdahl breathed.
Falk’s stomach lurched. A moan escaped his lips.
“What’s the matter, Lord?” demanded Bergdahl, who’d
already turned to enter the apartment behind. “You look as if you’d seen the Old Duke’s shade.”
“Oh, Chián, King of All Thrones, protect us,” Falk all but sobbed. “We’re well and truly fucked.”
Bergdahl arched a brow. “You really think so?”
“What else can I think? The loudest voice in favor of our enterprise just cut off with a croak and fell on its head. Those weak sisters in the College of Cardinals despise Pío’s militancy. They’ll stumble all over themselves in their haste to elect someone who’ll disavow our Providence Crusade and everything to do with it. Don’t you see, you fool? It’s over. We’ve lost!”
Bergdahl put his head back and cawed with laughter, like a harvester-of-eyes flier perched above a battlefield of dead stares.
“Your Grace, you know so much, yet understand so little! Do you truly not see? We haven’t lost. We’ve won it all!
“All I need do now is to scatter a handful of silver into the right pockets, a few words in the proper ears, and by sundown all of La Merced will know it’s just witnessed a miracle. And know for a fact the Creators Themselves endorsed the Pope’s last wish.”
He shook his head in something akin to admiration.
“To think the ineffectual old Fae-spawn did most of our work himself. By somehow contriving to martyr himself!”
Chapter 12
Año Paraíso, AP, Paradise Year—A year contains 192 days each of twenty-four hours (reputedly longer than those of Old Home). The year is divided into eight months named for the Creators’ domains: Cielo (Heaven), Viento (Wind), Agua (Water), Montaña (Mountain), Mundo (World), Trueno (Thunder), Fuego (Fire), and Lago (Lake). Each month consists of three weeks of eight days, each named for a Creator: Día del Rey (Kingsday), Día de Lanza (Lanceday), Día de Torre (Towersday), Día de Adán (Adamsday), Día de Telar (Telarsday), Día de Bella (Bellesday), Día de Maia (Mayasday), and Día de Maris (Marisday).
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“So come fill up your glasses
“With brandy and wine.