The Dinosaur Princess

by Victor Milán

  It was exciting. Like when I used to get away from my dueñas at the Firefly Palace and then go watch Maestro Rubbio in the Armory, or visit the dinosaur stables, or even go down the ramp into La Merced and wander around. If I get back home, I’ll never do that again.

  Okay. I probably will. But the thing is, the getting away part was always fun. It was almost more fun than whatever I went on to do after I gave them the slip. And this was fun the same kind of way.

  I should probably become a spy. It sure seems to pay well for the ones the Trebs hire. Though for Nuevaropa, not against it. I’d never do anything to hurt my Daddy or mi familia. Not even La Madrota, who’s, like, 2,000 years old and scary as a slayer. Then again I also want to be a master of siege warfare. Maybe you can do both? I need to look into that when I get home. Someday.

  (I will!)

  It wasn’t very long. I mostly just said I was all right, and roughly where I was, that the Trebs were heading for Laventura, and that we were traveling all over the landscape rather than going right there because they’re super afraid they’ll be caught. Looks as if word’s gone out that they kidnapped me.

  I also warned Jaume to be real careful whom he trusts, because everywhere we go the Trebs seem to know they can find traitors and spies who will help them. This worries me a lot. And not just about what happens to me.

  Anyway, I spent almost as much time writing the instruction on the outside of the sheet of paper when I folded it—that whoever found it should please please please try to find Don Jaume and the Companions and give it to them, and Jaume would give them a Trono. I hope that’s enough?

  I also hope whoever finds it can read it. I drew a little picture of the front of a Trono with my daddy’s face on it to help. It doesn’t look all that much like him. But neither does the gold piece. Anyway, the Mercedes say country people on La Meseta aren’t always good about learning to read, even though the Books of the Law say everybody should know how. How they’re supposed to know what the Books say if they can’t read them, I don’t know. Maybe the priests tell them that at Church?

  Anyways, fingers crossed for luck.

  I hope this works.

  I don’t really believe in the Creators, but—please? Can you help? Maybe I can believe in Bella, just a little—Lady Li, the one Jaume works for.

  Lady—please? Get me and Silver Mistral away from these awful people and back home? I know my family is worried.

  Later—Duh. Of course they’ll know where I was if somebody finds the note and takes it to them. I don’t always think, sometimes.

  * * *

  “Daddy?” she said.

  Though it was late the night of their arrival, and Melodía felt as if she was about to drop from sheer exhaustion—of mind and spirit as well as body—her father was still up, sitting on the Fangèd Throne and reading a book by the pungent light of a pine-oil lamp. With no one around except for a few palace stewards lurking discreetly in the fringes of the throne room in case the Emperor needed something.

  He looked around. “Ah, Melodía! Querida mia, you must be spent! Why aren’t you in bed?”

  “I’m on my way,” she said. “But I wanted to ask your permission to have Fanny and Lupe and my other ladies-in-waiting join us here?” She mentioned those two in particular because her father seemed to favor them most. Princess Francis of Anglaterra was highly respectable, and while Melodía’s cousin Princess Lupe … wasn’t … she was a fairly close kinswoman, by way of Felipe’s mother, who came from Torre Ramírez, the Kingdom of Spaña’s royal family.

  “Oh, that?” He shook his head and laid his book down on the throne’s arm. She saw it was a favorite of his, the romance Los Montadores de Tormenta—The Storm Knights. Supposedly a relic of Old Home, it concerned feats of derring-do by great warriors who traveled a vast plain mounted on magical mechanical contrivances. Inspired silliness, perhaps, but silliness as far as she was concerned. Still, he needs some relaxation, after the day he’s had dealing with the Court and the backed-up business of Empire.

  And the days preceding.

  “I found a message on that very subject awaiting me here this afternoon, when I finally had time to deal with such things. Prince Harry was actually pleading with me to call them here.” Prince Heriberto of the Tyrant’s Jaw was a noted lover of all things Anglés, to such an extent that he actually preferred being referred to by the Anglysh phrase. “Even his own daughter, Josefina Serena. It seems they’re quite demanding. And unrelenting. At least he doesn’t seem miffed with me for marching off to war in Providence anymore, since he lost our beloved Montse and all.”

  Her heart jumped. “And?”

  He shook his head. “I told him no, of course. Wise Fray Jerónimo pointed out the folly of exposing them to the dangers of the road, when there are threats abroad in our Empire and in this very Kingdom. We cannot risk the children of such powerful families, least of all in a crisis like this. They’re far safer in Firefly Palace.”

  She felt as if her spine had fractured like porcelain and was collapsing inside her. “But that’s where Montse was kidnapped from!”

  Her father shrugged. “And it’s the one place in all the Imperio we know the kidnappers are not. I hope Heriberto isn’t being so extreme in his measures to secure his own Palace that We have to take official notice of it. Mercedes are sadly known for losing sight of the Creators’ Law when serious injuries have been done to them.”

  She sagged. It took a positive exercise of will to keep from collapsing in a puddle on the gold-veined black marble floor of the throne room. An exercise she wasn’t sure was even worth it.

  She knew his tone, seeming casual and even jovial, all too well. He’s made up his mind, she thought. And I might as well try to argue a thirsty Thunder-titan into turning away from water as argue with him.

  She turned and fled. She’d cried enough in front of him the last few days. She wouldn’t do so again.

  She held out until she reached her apartment on an upper story of the Palace, the highest level with external windows. Dismissing her body-servants—strangers all—with a wave, she rushed to her bed, threw herself on the red-and-gold silk coverlet, and sank into a stormy sea of tears.

  * * *

  “I found someone,” called Machtigern.

  Jaume looked up and around. He stood barefoot and shin deep in a chuckling stream, in the shade of a small copse of broadleaf trees in a little valley like a saddle between two hills, savoring the coolness of the water as well as its smell, after the hot Meseta dust they’d been eating all day. Beside him Camellia had her big round-crested head down and her beak in the water, lapping noisily with her tongue. Upstream and down, his other Companions did the same—except for the Brother they had left on watch.

  The Alemán knight stood in some scrub oak on the edge of the stand of trees. A woman stood beside him. She was middle-aged and weathered—clearly a peasant, by the rude woven-straw hat and shoulder-covering she wore. Otherwise, she wore nothing but loincloth and breast-band.

  “Señores,” she said. “I beg your pardon for disturbing you.”

  “How did you find us?” asked Florian in alarm. He was sitting in the water while his sackbut Here Comes Trouble drank. Leaves above dappled the duckbill’s striking calico coloration in white, gold, black, and brown, creating a curious counterpoint.

  “Why, the whole countryside is abuzz with it!” the woman exclaimed. “What else can one expect when Don Jaume himself and his noble Companions ride through on their great beasts?”

  “What indeed?” Manuel asked. He stood in tall weeds by the bank, rubbing the bridge of his morion Consuelo’s green-and-gold nose. “City boy.”

  Florian shrugged as the others laughed. What can I say? I’m an alley rat born and bred.”

  “What’s your name, Señorita?” Jaume asked.

  “Oh, Señora, my lord. Three times over.”

  “You are twice widowed?” Grzegorz asked. “How sad.”

  “Oh, no. I have three husbands.
And I am Desideria.”

  “Evidently,” murmured Will.

  “What brings you to us, Señora Desideria?” Jaume asked.

  “This.” She held out a folded piece of paper. It had writing on it. He accepted it with a frown of curiosity.

  “Praise the Lady!” he exclaimed after a glance. “It says it’s from Montserrat! And it’s definitely her handwriting.”

  “What?” Machtigern said. “How can that be?”

  “It also says, if you will forgive my saying so, that you will give me one Trono if I deliver it to your hand,” the woman said.

  “It does indeed. A moment—”

  “I’ve got it,” Manuel said. He dug in the purse he wore on the sword-belt buckled around his bleached linen tunic. He tossed a coin at her in an arc that glittered sporadic yellow as it spun through alternating shadow and light.

  She caught it, peered at it, then grinned around happily. “Thank you noble gentlemen so much!”

  “My pleasure,” Manuel said.

  “And mine as well,” Jaume said. “Now, if you’ll excuse us—”

  Desideria dipped a curtsy, then turned and took up off the slope like a springer with a horror pack in pursuit.

  “She acts as if she’s afraid we will think better of it,” Ayaks said.

  “It’s a princely sum,” said Machtigern. “She could buy a good sword for that much gold. I wonder if the child knows the value of money?”

  “Probably,” Jaume said, unfolding the paper. “Montse’s a very practical child. Much given to poking and prying into how things are done.”

  Leaving their mounts—who were both too well trained and too attached to their riders to wander—the nine men crowded around their leader, gawking like schoolchildren.

  “I can’t read it,” Ramón said. “It’s not Spañol. It’s like it. But it’s not.”

  Blond Bernat laughed. “It’s català,” he said. “The language of Jaume’s homeland and mine. And also the girl’s late mother’s. I didn’t know she could write that!”

  “Neither did I,” Jaume said, reading. “It seems she’s full of surprises. She says this is her third note. It’s dated yesterday—morning, she says. She warns us to be careful whom we trust. The kidnappers spend each night in a house owned by a Treb spy or sympathizer.”

  “The Empire’s that riddled with corruption?” asked Will.

  “It can’t be!” Ramón said.

  “If it weren’t for corruption in the Empire, we wouldn’t have jobs rooting it out,” Florian said. “But I have to admit this shocks me a little.”

  “She writes that she spent the last night nearby—she’s not sure where, but she scratched her initials into the walls and on the table of the room where she and Mistral were kept.”

  “Mistral?” asked Ayaks.

  “Her pet ferret. Clever little beast, loyal and most engaging. They’re inseparable. As witnessed by the fact that her abductors didn’t manage to separate them.”

  “If the householders suborned, won’t anybody who finds the marks she leaves be as well?” Manuel asked. “Or at least too afraid of their master to say anything to the authorities?”

  Jaume laughed. “She’s smart beyond her years, and resourceful—clearly. But she’s still only sixteen. Let’s give her until at least puberty to develop a tactical genius to rival yours, my friend.”

  Manuel grinned back. “Fair enough. She might give me a run, at that.”

  “We’ll have a way to do some of that corruption rooting-out, at least,” Machtigern said. “All we need to do is look for her marks, and we’ll know we’ve found a traitor.”

  “We’ll leave that for whomever His Majesty sees fit to send to investigate,” Jaume said. He folded the paper neatly back along the precise creases Montse had put in it, raised it to his lips for a quick kiss, and slipped it into his tunic. He’d transfer it to his panniers directly; it was valuable evidence. As well as a link to someone very dear to him—very dear.

  “Now, my friends—we know we’re on the right track. So we’d best be after it.”

  Chapter 13

  Cazador Jorobado, Hunchbacked Hunter, Jorobado, Hunchback.…—Concavenator corcovatus. Medium-sized bipedal, carnivorous dinosaur; most notable for the dorsal fin which stands just in front of its hips, and long quills on the arms. Grows to 6 meters long, 1.7 meters at shoulder, 1200 kilograms. Fierce out of proportion to its modest size. Native to Ruybrasil; a popular import for Nuevaropan zoos, by reason of its exotic appearance.

  —THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

  Sometime later she came back to herself, raising her head from her arms and the sodden silk with a gasp like a drowning person breaking water.

  She shook her head. Then, turning, she sat and poured water from a gilded flask placed on a small table by the bed and drank it, holding the cup with both hands. Her head was slumped. Her hair, which had grown out several centimeters from the severe bob she’d worn it in during her first days as captain of Karyl’s light riders, clung to the sides of her face like a needy lover’s arms.

  Into the grey blankness of her mind spiked red. Anger.

  “I’m alone,” she said aloud. “All right. So I am. But I’m not helpless.”

  She let the anger fill her, suffuse her like the welcome warmth of a campfire when the winds blew chill down into Providence from the ice-sheathed peaks of the Shield Range.

  “I’ve let myself feel helpless before. And that made me helpless. Well, fuck that!”

  She ended head up and shouting at the walls of her plain chamber.

  The first fury of anger subsided. But the warmth remained.

  So warmed, her thoughts proceeded.

  There are things I can do, she realized. So I will. I’ll fight this fight by myself if I have to.

  She thought of Pilar, the friend she had so long dismissed as just a servant, defying custom and the social order on the road to exile from La Merced to tell the Princesa Imperial that she had to brace up and stop feeling sorry for herself now, or all the risks and sacrifices by her sister and friends—even ones she didn’t know she had—to smuggle her out of her cell and the Firefly Palace would be pissed away. Pilar, who had given her life for love of her. Claudia, who had died futilely trying to protect her sister. And Montserrat, kidnapped by cruel strangers as part of some incomprehensible game.

  No, she thought. They didn’t do all that for me just so I can give up now. When, what? My little playmates can’t come play?

  “Fuck that,” she said again, but softly. Her new servants might be strangers, but they were also blameless. No point frightening them—or giving them fuel for gossip, either.

  “I’m going to destroy you,” she said to a person who wasn’t there in the flesh, but never far, and whose name she didn’t like to say. “I’m going to destroy you, and you and your great blond nosehorn-sow of a mother can’t stop me. I don’t care what it takes!”

  Oh my, she thought. I’m shouting again. Oh well. Fuck that too, while we’re handing out fuckings.

  “I don’t know how,” she admitted out loud, calm once again. “Yet. But I’ll think of something.”

  And without calling for an undoubtedly well-spooked serving maid to come turn down her bed for her—a ritual that seemed entirely pointless and silly, after spending weeks sleeping in forest and field on campaign—she slid beneath the coverlet and fell asleep with the lamp still lit.

  She slept soundly through the night for the first time since the horrible news arrived.

  * * *

  “I see the carriages, Captain,” Will Oakheart of Oakheart called over his shoulder to Jaume as he slithered back from the scrub-feathered ridgetop.

  His white breastplate was smeared in yellow mud, obscuring the orange circle-and-cross of Lady’s Mirror symbol, as well as his own ensign of an acorn proper, meaning brown, on a field of gold. The Companions, all in full harness like the Anglés and with arming-squires holding their dinosaurs downslope by a stream, clustered behind the rise. As ant
icipated, the squires, war-beasts, and harness had caught them up at the Lambent Lambeosaur a couple of days before. Now they were just a few days’ ride from the great pelagic port of Laventura, descending from the dry central massif of the Kingdom of Spaña into the wet Aino littoral.

  “Going to start raining again at any time,” Grzegorz said, his bare, close-cropped blond head tipped to the thickening and greying sky. “It will turn slippery mud into sinking mud.”

  “The life of a campaigner,” Florian said.

  “I know. But I do not have to like it.” He laughed.

  “Our information’s solid this time,” Will said, collapsing his telescoping brass spyglass. “They’re parked in the yard behind a three-story limestone mercantile house on the far side of the Plaza. They’ve tried to disguise themselves under canvas, but their shapes’re still too distinctive.”

  “I trust the source,” Jaume said with a grin.

  “It’s a good job we’re about to take them,” Machtigern said, rubbing condensation from the steel head of his long-hafted rider’s hammer with a rag. It didn’t do any actual good, since the day was so humid. But it gave his hands something to do. “The little princess’s scheme is working almost too well. The nobles are complaining about the expense.”

  Montserrat’s habit of dropping crumpled pieces of writing paper and scratching pleas for help into every available surface where they stopped had resulted in a flood of reports as to her abductors’ progress. The promise of a gold Trono reward for carrying the message to the authorities was proving effective.

  “You’d think the grandes would be pleased,” Florian said, “given that we give them two Tronos back for every one they can prove they spent on rewards.”

  “I know,” Machtigern said, leaving off his futile drying and taking up his other pet pre-battle tic of tipping back his war-hammer and tapping its steel shanks against the flared pauldron that protected his right shoulder. “But our reserves are running dry.”