by Victor Milán
She turned to Pilar. “Except you. Of course you’ll come with me. If you’re truly willing, after the way I’ve treated you for so long.”
“Of course, Melodía dear.”
It came to her to ask why. I don’t have time, she thought.
Then she faced the truth. I don’t have the courage. Not yet.
Everyone cried and laughed as she hugged and kissed her sister and friends most thoroughly. Then she mounted Meravellosa. Pilar climbed aboard the white rouncy. And turning their faces away from La Merced, the Corte Imperial, and the lives they had known, the two young women rode north at the best speed their packhorse could sustain.
* * *
“Hey, minstrel-man,” a voice called through the ceaseless rain.
Through mud and downpour the defeated army trudged back toward Providence town. In front of all trudged Rob Korrigan, leading Little Nell by a rope. His slouch hat had slumped until the brim was a sort of sad, sodden skirt around his head. He wore only a linen breechcloth; the downpour had already defeated his best oiled-linen rain cape. He went barefoot because the shin-deep mud would’ve sucked boots or buskins off his feet into oblivion.
He might have ridden the hook-horn, since his baggage was following on a cart. But he felt the need for some sort, any sort, of activity. Despite the bone weariness weighing him down like plate armor made of lead, bizarre energy filled him. It gave his mind no rest, and thus wouldn’t allow his body any. He had to do something, he felt, or burst into flame.
He looked back. Behind Nell a female nosehorn pulled a hemp-canvas-covered wagon full of wounded. A house-soldier who’d picked the badge of allegiance from the front of his sodden tabard with his dirk walked beside it.
The big, blunt, streaming face grinned. “Give us a song.”
A few paces beyond the soldier, Rob spotted Karyl aboard Asal. Karyl’s headaches and nightmares had all but vanished once he began building the militia. Rob—who had forgiven him for abandoning the wounded, having simmered down enough to conceive of the alternative—had feared its shattering defeat would bring them slamming back.
Instead Karyl was more alive than Rob had seen him: constantly here or there without seeming to have moved through the space between, urging along, soothing, scathing, solving problems, and always keeping the army together and moving away from the enemy.
Which, Rob’s scouts informed them, pursued. But at a leisurely pace, to allow the wagonloads of luxuries and whores that Nuevaropan nobles always insisted on dragging on campaign with them to keep up. A brisk pursuit, of course, would have meant that Karyl’s brilliant fight to cover the Providence militia’s retreat had done nothing but defer their destruction. Baron Salvateur, or more likely his master Count Guillaume, held the Providentials in such contempt they thought them unworthy of the exertion.
Rob wouldn’t call Karyl happy. If nothing else the fallen voyvod was far too consummate the military professional ever to be made happy by defeat. But it had clearly energized him.
It’s the very challenge of the thing keeping the man alive, Rob realized. I only hope his craving for a task worthy of his mettle doesn’t get us all killed.
But no, that wasn’t likely and he knew it. Karyl’s pride was woven far too deeply into saving what the town lords’ debacle had left of the army to let him fail. Rob found that altogether reassuring.
Now Karyl caught Rob’s eye. Rob glimpsed a flash of teeth through beard and rain.
It’s also reassuring that himself is mortal enough to descend to inviting me to admire his cleverness, he thought. Or so I suppose. He wondered if Karyl had picked up the sleight of using shills from the town lords, those sleek, perfidious bastards, or had known the thing himself all along.
Others, drovers and soldiers, took up the call: “A song! Give us a song.”
Rob grinned back.
“Very well,” he said.
To give himself a moment to gather his thoughts—and a respite from this fucking mud—he swung aboard Nell’s back. She swung her heavy head, flinging water from her frill, and sighed.
Rob turned around backward. The hook-horn knew how to follow the road as well as he did. He sucked in a deep breath of cool air, from which the downpour had rinsed all smell except its own. He began:
“Now hear me sing,
“Of a wondrous thing,
“When men and women, though their birth was base,
“Nevertheless still dared to face
“The iron knights of Brokenheart,
“That day on Blueflowers field.”
He paused. Then the ambulance driver, a woman who shared a build and apparent temperament with her stodgily sturdy dray beast, began to clap and cry, “More! More!”
“Don’t stop there, man!” the erstwhile house-shield called.
Behind him, Karyl nodded once. Then was gone, trotting back along the road’s edge, to find the next task that needed doing.
The refrain had come to Rob by then. He sang out lustily:
“And though the field, the knights held at last
“The blood they bled
“Like ours, was red
“That day on Blueflowers field!”
Those in earshot shouted approval. To give himself time to catch more words from Bella’s grace, he used the pretext of unstoppering a water gourd and wetting his throat. Ale would have soothed him better. But so would being dry, and warm, and romping between silken sheets with a lively pair of beauties.
Ah, but those were the spoils of victory. Losers got rain. And mud.
“Wait!” a young man’s voice called from somewhere Rob couldn’t see for the wounded wagon. “Teach us those first words before you go on!”
Rob smiled.
And so, appropriately ass-foremost, Rob Korrigan led the army of Providence in retreat and defiantly singing—
“Although our blood we freely spilt
“Upon those fair blue flowers,
“The blue bloods, though they called themselves,
“Shed blood the same as ours!”
—The whole way back to the outskirts of the town.
Where a squad of Town Guards, bristling with halberds and looking as draggle-tailed in their streaming morions and rain slicks as the men and women who’d actually fought a battle and lost, promptly arrested him and Karyl for treason.
* * *
Falk came onto the tower’s flat roof to find the Emperor of Nuevaropa standing alone, watching the lights of La Merced begin to sparkle like a bowl of jewels below. The twilight air was soft as a kiss. The evening meal roasted aromatically in the cookshacks. A falling star streaked across a growing rift in the clouds above; fireflies danced around the tower as if in emulation.
“They’ve returned, your Majesty,” Falk said, marching up to him. He wore his Tyrant armor and carried his helmet in his elbow’s crook. “The three ladies-in-waiting and the Infanta. I’ve detained them.”
“Well done,” Felipe said. “Now let them go.”
“What do you mean?” Falk said, thunderstruck. “They helped your daughter escape!”
Felipe turned to him. The old man was smiling in his ginger beard. Moisture glistened in his pale-green eyes.
He put a fatherly hand on Falk’s shoulder. “Yes, my boy. Exactly. They helped my daughter escape.”
“But—”
Felipe held up a single finger. Falk shut up. Felipe turned back to the crenellated rampart, to gaze off to where the sun fell through what seemed a layer of blood, to the Channel beyond the great Sea Dragon base on its spur of land.
“I don’t dare alienate the whole gente of Anglaterra,” the Emperor said. “Nor Sansamour, which for all its submission to the Francés crown might as well be a kingdom in itself. Josefina Serena’s father, Prince Harry, is already annoyed with me over the very policies that upset my elder daughter. He’s much too important to anger further by subjecting his heir to indignities. Not to mention the fact that I like it here in the Palace of the Fireflies, and have no
desire to be turned out to return to that drafty Torre Imperial in La Majestad, where every broken-tailed courtier in Nuevaropa waits to bend my ear. Along with the entire Diet.
“And then there’s the small matter of Montserrat. A mere child, as well as my daughter. The only one I have left, it would appear.”
He turned back to his new chief bodyguard.
“Besides, they’ve done us a signal service, these girls.”
“I don’t understand, your Majesty.”
“Whatever Melodía’s said or done, it all springs from a child’s passionate heart—and unformed judgment. Exile would be a possible sentence, even if she were found guilty. Of crimes I know in my heart she never meant, whether she committed them or not.”
He sighed. “This way, my daughter is spared the ordeal of a trial. And not just her: the Imperio and Torre Delgao. And last, and truly least, an old man who’s wearing himself to a specter trying to do what’s best for all. Really, my boy, this is the best outcome possible for a terrible dilemma.”
To believe in power, Falk reminded himself, is to obey the man who has it. Anything else is anarchy.
He drew a breath down deep, tamped down the black rage in his belly, and bowed his head.
“Yes, my lord,” he said.
“Once again,” Felipe said, brightening visibly, “Fray Jerónimo’s wisdom is approved by events. He told me it was best this way, even as my heart longed to believe.”
His smile saddened. “He said I should approve allowing you to duel poor, loyal Duval for command of the Tyrants too, did you know?”
Falk’s skin prickled as if it had been left too long unprotected in high mountain sun. I thought I’d have his ear alone, he thought. But another’s there as well.
He felt a certain grim amusement. Didn’t count on this mystery confessor, did you, Mother? Bergdahl? You’re not infallible after all.
Yet triumph swelled inside him, displacing anger and disappointment at his most precious prey’s escape. Though Jaume, absent, remained the Emperor’s right hand, Falk was now undoubtedly his left. That was power.
And now change would come to Nuevaropa. Falk would see to that.
“Come on, my boy,” the Emperor said. “Our dinners await. I’m famished.”
Epilogue
La Conversación
(The Conversation)
Ángeles Grises, Grey Angels, the Seven—The Creators’ supernatural servitors: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Remiel, Zerachiel, and Raguel. They have the task of maintaining the Creators’ Sacred Equilibrium on Paradise. They possess remarkable powers and mystic weapons, and when they walk out in the world, they often take on a terrifying appearance. They are not humane, and regard all things as straw dogs.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
LA PALACIO DE LAS LUCIÉRNAGAS. IN THE SEWERS DEEP BENEATH THE ROOTS OF ADELINA’S FROWN, THE SHEER LIMESTONE CLIFFS ON WHICH THE PALACE OF THE FIREFLIES RESTS.
IT IS PITCH-BLACK. THE PLAYERS NEED NO LIGHT TO PERCEIVE EACH OTHER PERFECTLY. LIKEWISE THEY PERCEIVE THE FEEL AND SMELL OF THE RAW SEWAGE FLOWING PAST THEIR BARE LEGS IN ABUNDANT DETAIL. IT BOTHERS THEM NOT AT ALL.
RAGUEL: Equilibrium.
URIEL: Our service, in perpetuity. What have you been up to, brother?
RAGUEL: Walking to and fro in the world, and going up and down in it.
URIEL: That joke was ancient before we were Created.
RAGUEL: One seeks small amusements where one can.
URIEL: That was a deft job you did, managing the story of your Emergence. It happened almost a year ago, by surface reckoning. How’d you contrive to have it arrive here at such a useful time?
RAGUEL: The usual sleights. Shadowed some mortal minds so that the herd-boy who saw me wasn’t believed—and not wholly disbelieved either. When the time came, I sent dreams to reawaken fears. Count Guillaume did the rest, in his eagerness to win approval for his depredations on his neighbors, sending a messenger off to warn the court.
URIEL: Where he’s caused quite a stir.
RAGUEL: That pleases me to hear.
URIEL: I’ve been out of the loop for quite some time. Where is our eldest brother? What’s he up to now?
RAGUEL: The usual: leading a fight to drive the damned Anomalies deeper into the depths. To the Abyss of Holofernes and down, if he can. The abominations have been active of late. Even on the surface.
URIEL: And His strong right hand?
RAGUEL: At his side, of course. Our sister was never one to hold back from a fight. Especially against the demons after they held her captive so long. I believe the plan is to drive them so far down into the Core they’ll be swallowed irretrievably by the Entropy from which they sprang.
URIEL: Will it work?
RAGUEL: Probably not. If we’ve not extirpated the demons in five Outerworld centuries, why should we expect to do so now? Not without some brilliant new scheme, anyway. Madness, it’s said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But still, it gives the brethren something to while away the cycles.
URIEL: What of Her?
RAGUEL: She walks beneath the sun as well.
URIEL: She’s taken Herself a body?
RAGUEL: No. That’s not Her way; you know that.
URIEL: Indeed. Still, instead of wasting their time chasing mice into the cellar, I wish our eldest brother—and who is like him?—would lead the kindred in a hunt through the Core for the place She keeps Her corpus aetherium. While Her intention strays out under the clouds, we could put an end to Her meddling once and for all.
RAGUEL: But that would end all, Uriel. It would destroy the world.
URIEL: Is that so different from what you and the Command and Sister Strength intend, brother?
RAGUEL: Yes! All the difference in the world. We only intend to excise a cancer, and heal the world’s hurt. Not to unmake everything we ourselves were made to preserve!
URIEL: We were made to preserve all Paradise, Raguel, my friend.
RAGUEL: Sometimes a gangrenous limb must be amputated to save the body, Uriel.
URIEL: You mix metaphors with a large spoon. Still, I grasp the argument that what you’d have us do is no more than something we’ve found need to do before. Only on a more … comprehensive scale. But we are bound to preserve what we can.
RAGUEL: Then what of your mad plan to destroy the World-Soul?
URIEL: Not plan so much as desire. Or idle fancy, if you prefer. Still, we could hold things together ourselves, we Seven; we are not so different from Her.
RAGUEL: And if we could not?
URIEL: Then things would, as always, seek and find a new Equilibrium. Without us, or the need for us.
RAGUEL: Your sojourn here among the cancer cells has given you a morbid turn of mind, Fire.
URIEL: Perhaps it has, Friend. Perhaps it has. Yet it is all my aim to preserve—as much as can be preserved.
RAGUEL (LAUGHS): That’s our aim as Purifiers as well. We simply have a different appreciation of what can be preserved.
URIEL: “Should” is not the same as “can.” We were not made to make such judgments, only to carry them out.
RAGUEL: But who shall make such judgments, then?
URIEL: None, perhaps. The Eight have told us what we’re to do. They made us to carry out Their Design and nothing else. If They want us to change what we do, They can tell us.
RAGUEL: A thing most unlikely to occur, as well you know.
URIEL: Then we carry on as we have, obedient to our eternal duty.
RAGUEL: Ah, Fundamentalism. As good a refuge as any, I suppose, should reasoned debate fail.
URIEL: Call me Fundamentalist if you will. And what’s wrong with that? This world was Created by the Eight, and us with it. Why complicate things?
RAGUEL: Faugh. You’re as bad as the Affable One. Far too forbearing. Especially of the apes.
URIEL: That is my nature. Unlike some, I’m content to follow the Path I was Created to take.
RAGUEL: Daoism warmed over! I looked for better from you.
URIEL: Then you don’t know me as well as you might, ice-spirit.
RAGUEL: Judgment is also part of your nature.
URIEL: I have judged. You simply disagree.
RAGUEL: You’re far away from ice and snow here, good friend.
URIEL: I will return to them when I’ve succeeded. I’ve much to do before then. I wish you all success. (pause) You know the colors of the flames of my soul, Raguel! You know I mean it. We all serve the same end.
RAGUEL: True. Mind you remember it yourself.
URIEL: Always.
RAGUEL: I’ll be back to it, then. Who knows what the apes’ve contrived to get up to in my absence?
URIEL: Farewell to thee, God-Friend. I leave you with the sign of Equilibrium, the taiji-tu.
RAGUEL: And mayest thou fare also well, God’s Fire. I look forward to the day when all Seven act again as one.
URIEL: I wonder, will that bring the end of humankind? Or of us?
About the Author
Victor Milán, best known for his award-winning novel Cybernetic Samurai, starts his sprawling epic fantasy series with The Dinosaur Lords. In previous worlds, he’s been a cowboy and Albuquerque’s most popular all-night prog-rock DJ. He’s never outgrown his childhood love of dinosaurs … and hopes you haven’t, either. You can sign up for email updates here.
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CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
Acknowledgments
Author’s Note
Map: La Merced
Epigraph
Prologue: Pastoral/Aparecimiento (Pastorale/Emergence)
Part One: La Batalla Última (The Last Battle)