The Dinosaur Lords

by Victor Milán

  “This way, Señor Ministro, if you will,” the cabo said, stepping to the fore as his men surrounded Mondragón. The corporal’s voice was gruffer even than usual. A Scarlet Tyrant had to be no respecter of persons other than those of the Emperor and his immediate family. But it wasn’t every day they were called upon to arrest the Emperor’s Chief Minister and best friend for treason.

  As expected Mondragón fell into step behind as the cabo led off along the corridor. Out of courtesy Falk didn’t order him bound. In turn the minister made no undignified and ultimately futile resistance or attempts to escape. They were both professionals, after all.

  One more arrest, thought Falk with a thrill of dread as well as anticipation. The most important and risky of all.

  But he’d take no direct part in that. As Bergdahl had advised him not to.

  Instead he followed the puño and their prisoner at a brisk pace through the Imperial apartments. It was appropriate that the Tyrants’ commander oversee the interrogation of such an important prisoner. Even though whatever Mondragón said or did not had as little bearing on what was going to happen as it did on whether or not Eris would rise in the West tonight.

  * * *

  Melodía sat naked on the edge of the bathing pool in her quarters. Serving girls daubed her with sponges soaked in infusions of flower petals. She had opted not to take another full bath before retiring. The day’s cataclysmic turn of events had drained her. She just wanted to sleep as soon as possible.

  From outside came a crash, and an angry shout from Pilar. “You can’t come in! These are the Princess’s rooms!”

  Melodía stood up, scowling as her servants shrank back. Five Imperial guardsmen burst in. As always they were gorgeous in their scarlet cloaks and golden armor. Their brash masculine presence was still a profanation.

  Armed and armored, trained and strong, the five men still quailed before the Princess’s wrath. Invading a hidalga’s private bath was a serious matter. And when that hidalga was the Emperor’s favorite daughter and heir.…

  “What in the name of the Old Hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.

  One of them, she saw, was trying to fend off Pilar, who was kicking and punching at him like a furious horror.

  “Pilar,” she said, putting s snap to her voice. “Stop.”

  Her maidservant dropped her arms and stood back. Her black hair was a crazy tangle. Pink spots shone high on olive cheekbones. They almost matched one coming into being beneath the right eye of the guard who’d battled with her. She’d caught him a smart one with her fist.

  “You can’t help me, querida,” Melodía said. “Thank you.”

  Pilar slumped. She sighed, hung her head, and stepped back. Her erstwhile opponent rearranged himself, looking like a man trying to hide relief.

  “Your Highness,” the cabo said, “we have come to arrest you on suspicion of conspiring against the Emperor.”

  “Against my father? Are you insane?”

  “Those are our orders. Which we follow to the death.”

  “How melodramatic.”

  A Tyrant approached holding a robe of white silk. She raised a hand to halt him. “If I’m fit to be arrested in this state,” she said with a haughty chin lift, “I’m fit to walk to my fate in it.”

  The cabo’s brow furrowed. He rubbed his thick jaw, causing a furtive sound like mouse claws in the wainscoting, from what she guessed was permanent stubble.

  Public nudity could be used to show sincerity, and as a protest. Melodía meant both. Though he didn’t seem an unduly subtle man, the Tyrant under-officer clearly understood it.

  His four men could have forcibly robed the naked Princess. Eventually. He glanced at his man who’d grappled with Pilar, who was developing a prize black eye.

  The cabo waved the robe away. “Alteza,” he said, gesturing toward the door.

  Melodía drew in a deep breath, well aware her captors couldn’t keep their eyes off her still-moist breasts riding up her ribs. “When my father hears of this—”

  She faltered. Stopped. For the first time she felt the needle of fear through her chest.

  If my father didn’t know, she thought in horror, how would they dare arrest me?

  Her knees threatened to give way. Feelings of anger and betrayal and confusion—and lost, lost sorrow—engulfed her as though a star-strike in the Channel had caused a vast wave to inundate the palace.

  By a wrench of will she made her face a mask. Squaring her shoulders, drawing her head up high, she swept past the men and out of the bath chamber without another word.

  Chapter 44

  Hada, the Fae—also Demonio, Demon. An individual is called a Faerie. A race of wicked supernatural creatures who defy the Creators’ will and seek to tempt humanity into ruin. Fighting together, humankind, the Grey Angels, and the Creators Themselves defeated their attempt to conquer all Paradise during the dreadful Demon War. Notorious for their pranks, which can be cruel, and their fondness for driving bargains with mortal men and women. Which they keep, but seldom as expected.

  —A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

  “What have I done?”

  His despairing words chased each other through the low, torchlit passageway, part of a labyrinth of retreats and storage rooms below the Firefly Palace, like Fae voices mocking. He slammed a fist into niter-crusted stone. White powder drifted down and made him blink and sneeze.

  Arms crossed over his chest, Bergdahl leaned coolly against a wall. “Why, I think your Grace has pulled off a remarkable coup, progressing from rebel scum to master of the Imperial bodyguard in a matter of months. That, and gotten dripping drunk.”

  Falk turned and blinked at him. His vision remained blurry though the niter-powder’s sting had subsided.

  It must be the wine, he thought. I’m not weak enough to cry.

  “Easy for you to be flip about this damned game you’ve got me playing,” he growled. “It’s not your neck between the tyrant’s jaws.”

  Bergdahl showed crooked brown teeth. “No. I’m for the wheel—all my limbs broken and braided through the spokes. When it comes to servants who displease the nobility, the Creators’ rules against torture fly out the window like pretty blue little birds.”

  “You don’t understand,” Falk half sobbed. “I’ve just arrested the Emperor’s best friend and Chief Minister on false evidence. That you concocted, and I planted. On even worse grounds I’ve taken the Emperor’s own daughter and heir into custody and thrown her into secret confinement. Without a scrap of authority for any of it!”

  “An admirable summation,” said Bergdahl. “But don’t neglect the deft way you murdered those poor, inconvenient bastards you pretended to conspire with. Even I admire that one. And you came up with it all on your own.”

  “But what if someone finds out?”

  Bergdahl sneered. “Your lady mother’s right about you. Sometimes you’re a dull boy indeed.”

  Falk raised ham-hock fists to smash that great beak of a nose and hada face past repair or recognition, to batter this impudent peasant until his eyes rolled in ruined sockets and he choked on a soup of his own blood and teeth.

  Instead he dropped them to his sides. “Why am I doing this? Why do I listen to you?”

  “You listen to me because your lady mother told you to. You listen to me because you know I have your best interests at heart. And you listen to me because I’m right.”

  He paused. “Just as your mother and I were right about your father. Remember, your Grace?”

  Mention of his father brought a stab of remembered pain through his bowels. But he can’t hurt me anymore, he reminded himself. Not since I pushed him down the stairs.

  As Mother wanted me to. As Bergdahl showed me how.

  He swayed. He blinked at Bergdahl. Not for the first time he felt as if those grey eyes could read his thoughts right through his own.

  “But why was it necessary that I do these things?”

  “For a
higher cause. As you’d recall if you stopped wallowing in self-pity for a moment, and took control of yourself long enough to think.”

  “What ‘higher cause,’ Bergdahl? What?”

  “The Empire,” the servant who was in so many ways his master said. “The Empire needs strong hands to guide it—as you yourself helped prove, when you rose against it. Now you’ve chosen to serve the Fangèd Throne. For that you must serve this Emperor, in spite of himself if that must be.

  “And, of course, you did these things because it is your mother’s will. She only wants what’s best for you. And for the Empire, of course.”

  Falk sighed heavily. “Of course,” he said sarcastically. He was starting to return to sobriety. It wasn’t a pleasant place to be.

  Bergdahl’s crooked half smile never flickered. He shed sarcasm like a carrack-bird’s ass.

  “And the Emperor’s daughter?” Falk asked. “What about that little detail?”

  “The whore? She’s the biggest prize of all! Her arrest lends credence to the whole bag of maggots. It proves your case: if you’re willing to arrest the Emperor’s own daughter, how certain must you be you’re right?”

  “But it’s not true, Bergdahl. She was never involved.” For some reason Falk found it difficult to utter his star prisoner’s name. “Those pathetic schemers, Gonzalo and the rest, never talked about her without complaining that she wouldn’t give them the time of day.”

  “Nonsense. Your new pet songbird, Manorquín—won’t he swear she was up to her tits in it? If you haven’t persuaded him to already?”

  “Yes.” Sullenly.

  “And there you have it, your Grace. People just have to be made to believe. If the right people believe it, it is true, in the only way that matters.”

  Falk shook his head. The crackling and spitting of the tarred-rush torches, the blood-roar in his brain, the dull throb at his temples, the slosh of wine in his stomach made him feel dizzy and disoriented.

  “What about justice?” he asked.

  “What’s ‘just’ is just what those with power say it is. Like truth. No more, no less. Now you have the power. The Emperor trusts you, more than ever. You’ve uncovered a heinous plot against him, and broken its back as if you were stamping on a viper. Even though it meant imprisoning his daughter.”

  Bergdahl stopped, cocked his villainous round head and squinted an eye at Falk.

  “Has that bitch cut your balls off, then?”

  “What?” Falk roared. His voice seemed to raise the round stone ceiling.

  “She’s done nothing but dangle you by your dick. Like a toy on a string.”

  “How dare you—”

  “She wags that apple ass of hers under your nose. I saw her do it at that dance. And if you tried for a nibble, what would’ve happened?”

  Falk deflated into a sulk.

  “Yes. The Scarlet Tyrants would’ve drubbed you soundly and pitched you in the dinosaur-stable dung heap.”

  Falk felt something stir inside him. Somewhere deep.

  “Yet you can bet the bitch gives that ass up freely to that orange-haired half man of hers.”

  “Watch your stinking mouth!” Emotions Falk couldn’t name, much less control, were slurring his speech as much as the wine was now. “Jaume’s a great champion. The greatest fighter in Nuevaropa. He beat me, don’t forget, little man.”

  Only a man as huge as Falk could call the gallows-pole peasant “little.” But Bergdahl scoffed.

  “You threw the fight. Or has hiding your face in wine-barrels made you forget that too?”

  “He had me beaten,” Falk said. “You’re talking about warrior matters here. A churl like you wouldn’t understand.”

  “As you like. But I ask you, your Grace: who commands the Scarlet Tyrants now?”

  “I—” Falk paused. The conversation’s quick turn had scrambled his wits again. “I do.”

  “So what’s to prevent you taking what should be yours by right? Taking what she happily gives up to Jaume—who in turn rejoices in giving it up to those pretty boys of his?”

  What had begun as a smolder within Falk was sparking into flame. Still, he scowled at his servant.

  “What are you saying?”

  “You have the power. Use it. Or are you unworthy? Is it possible you’re afraid of the little cunt?”

  “No!” Falk bellowed. The anger flamed up to embrace his brain in red.

  Bergdahl smirked. “Then go. And do what you want.” He chuckled. “She’ll likely thank you for it, once the pain subsides.”

  * * *

  When she paused for breath in her bawling, Montserrat heard a voice, soft but insistent, say, “Please, Highness. Listen to me.”

  She lay facedown on the absurdly pink silk comforter on her bed, her head buried in her arms.

  “Go away, Pilar,” she sniffled.

  “You don’t mean that, Highness. You want to help your sister.”

  Montse took a ragged breath. She felt a sneaking relief at having been sucked out of her crying fit. She turned her head and opened one eye.

  The gitana maidservant sat on a stool beside the bed. Her face, which Montse thought was almost as pretty as her sister’s, was filled with concern.

  Pilar wasn’t a stupid person. No matter how Melodía sometimes treated her. Sometimes even Melodía acted stupid. And by not being stupid, Pilar set herself apart from most servants and almost all the grandes of the court.

  She always treated Montse with respect, instead of as if she were stupid. Just as cousin Jaume treated her.

  Montse felt soft impacts and heard insistent beeping from her springer-down pillow, just past her head. She looked toward it. Tear-soaked dreadlocks flopped in her face like dead octopus tentacles. Through them she saw Silver Mistral doing the All-Purpose Ferret Dance, which served as war dance, celebration, and in this case commiseration: back arched and hopping up and down in place.

  Montse sighed.

  “All right,” she said, sitting up. Though watery snot ran freely down her upper lip, she spoke in a tone whose normality surprised even her. She gathered the jumping ferret into her arms. Mistral gave off beeping at once and even allowed Montse to cradle her on her back in her arms like a human baby, which normally affronted Mistral’s dignity.

  Painfully Montse became aware of what un-Montserrat-like behavior she’d been indulging in. She hated being out of control of herself. Even though sometimes she just had to cry, it didn’t fix anything.

  Smiling, Pilar smoothed errant dreads from the girl’s face. Montse usually hated having people fuss over her. Somehow this didn’t bother her.

  “Why do you want to help Melodía?” she asked.

  Pilar pulled her head back and blinked as if the girl had slapped her. “What do you mean? I’m her maidservant.”

  “But she’s mean to you sometimes,” Montse said.

  “You’re blunt, Princess,” Pilar said with a smile.

  “Yes, I am. Please call me by my name, Pilar.”

  “Montse, then. It’s … unusual for someone in your position to say ‘please’ to a person in mine.”

  “I try to be nice to everybody.” Montse left unspoken the unless they piss me off. She took that for a given.

  Pilar pressed her lips down hard on what Montse suspected was another smile. She noticed that the woman’s green eyes were as puffy as her own must be.

  “To answer your question,” Pilar said, “I love Melodía as if she were my sister too. We were raised together, did you know? We played together constantly. Much the way you do with the servant children.”

  “What happened?” Montse asked.

  “We grew up.”

  Montse scowled. That struck her as a typical adult nonanswer.

  “We each found ourselves forced to … play our roles,” Pilar said. “She’s the Princesa Imperial, after all.”

  “But she won’t inherit the Fangèd Throne. Nobody can do that.”

  “The title’s still important. Very ceremon
ial. Some people put a lot of stock in that.”

  Some people are stupid, Montse thought.

  “Melodía’s very independent. But—” Pilar shrugged. “She has to act the way she’s expected to. As most people do.”

  “I’ll never understand,” Montse growled. “If growing up means having to treat your friends like, like pieces of furniture, I don’t ever want to do it!”

  Pilar laughed. “Your sister’s strong-minded,” she said, “but she can’t come close to you, little one. If anybody can force the world and Torre Delgao to let her grow up on her own terms, it’s you. But we’ve got lots to talk about, and not much time. Do you see now why I want to help Melodía?”

  Montse nodded. Then she bit her lip.

  “I heard servants whispering that Melodía might be put to death. Daddy wouldn’t let that happen. Ever!” She felt tears threatening her eyes again. “Would he?”

  Pilar took a deep breath. “He might not have a choice.”

  “But he’s the Emperor!”

  “Even the Emperor has to be obey the Empire’s laws.”

  “But it’s wrong! Melodía hasn’t done anything bad!”

  “You’re right. But she has said things that wicked people have twisted to mean what they want them to. She’s caught in a web of things she doesn’t understand. Me neither, for that matter.”

  “So what can we do? I’m just a child. People always point that out. And you’re just a servant.”

  Uncharacteristically, Montse regretted words that had left her mouth, as soon as they had. Servants were her playmates, her friends. She was the last person in the world ever to mean, just a servant—in the sense customary to her class, meaning, instead of a person.

  “Don’t worry,” Pilar said, “I know what you mean. And that’s the thing: you know how people overlook children … and servants?”

  Guardedly, Montse nodded. It was like asking if she knew about breathing.

  “Well, that’s how we’ll save Melodía.”

  Montse thought about that for a moment. She hugged Mistral up against her chin. Her friend’s soft warmth reassured her.