The Dinosaur Princess

by Victor Milán

  We’ll have to account for this maneuver in future, Jaume had time to think in the interval between his saddle and the ground, if the Lady wills I’m spared.

  Except, fast as he thought, the thought got broken off halfway through its final word as Paradise hit him full in his back—and the weight of the heavily armored Treb knight landed on his front.

  The air burst out of him like the guts of a melon stepped on by a Thunder-titan. At least if a duckbill steps on us he may cushion me, Jaume thought as he tried to blink his eyes into focus behind his visor.

  Without conscious intent, he tried to punch his antagonist with the hand that still clutched the Mirror’s hilt. Better prepared for the outcome of the unexpected attack—after all, he launched it—Roshan obviously had kept more of his wits about him than Jaume. He easily intercepted the blow, catching Jaume’s right wrist with his left hand. His skin felt soft, but his grip was steel-hard.

  Is he laughing? Jaume wondered, his wits returning faster than his breath.

  “I learned well from the master,” said the Flower Knight, who was unquestionably laughing.

  “‘Uz—onna—horse,” Jaume managed to wheeze.

  His shield was gone. He launched a left-hand punch for the side of that beautiful brown laughing face. Roshan caught that wrist too and pinned both to the warm wet cobbles. He had taken a low mount position astride Jaume’s plate-armored belly. At least the structural strength of his cuirass prevented the Treb’s weight from interfering with Jaume’s gradually recovering breathing.

  Most dinosaur knights trained in grappling, since it was as integral a part of dismounted combat as sword or knife play. The Companions went even further, taking training from a teacher imported from Ruybrasil, whose masters of the arts were esteemed as highly as any in the world. He’s good, Jaume thought. Lady grant that his Order hasn’t taken its emulation of ours that far.

  He cranked his head from side to side, sallet clattering on the stones, to emphasize his helplessness. Then he relaxed, all at once, trusting his opponent was skilled enough to notice Jaume no longer resisted his wrist-traps.

  Jaume felt, or thought he felt, a complementary relaxation on Roshan’s part. Jaume rolled his hips slightly clockwise, then violently back the other way. He managed to twist his hips beneath Roshan’s weight. He bent his left knee and brought it hard toward his left side. Aided by the steel cuisses that protected both men’s thighs being slick with rain, he broke the leg free. He swung it up to Roshan’s waist, twisting right again. This let him free his right leg.

  And suddenly he had both legs wrapped around Roshan’s waist in the guard position.

  Roshan laughed out loud. “So the master’s still the master,” he said.

  Roshan let go of both Jaume’s wrists at once. Winging his elbows out to stave off Jaume’s reflexive double-handed grab for his throat, he reached down, grabbed Jaume’s visor with both hands, and yanked it open.

  Dropping his face to Jaume’s, he kissed him full on the lips. Or as fully as the bevor that still covered Jaume’s chin allowed.

  The unexpectedness of the act shocked Jaume into immobility for a heartbeat. He was aware of the thunderous falls of hadrosaur feet booming dangerously close.

  Roshan pushed off him. “I wish I could embrace you longer,” he said.

  He reached up. An armored arm came down, and the two gripped each other forearm to forearm. The Flower Knight pulled his captain, armor and all, right off Jaume, leaving the downed Companion with the rain falling on his face.

  Jaume sat up. A small Treb had leaned improbably far down out of the saddle on his halberd’s high back to grab Roshan. Clinging there like a spider, he rode several booming bipedal paces of his mount as Roshan grabbed his saddle skirts and scaled up behind the cantle. The rescuer pulled himself back into the saddle, and they were gone down the sloping street.

  “Much as I love you, I’m not going to do that,” Florian said, riding up on his white-and-yellow sack but, Voici le Trouble. “Mainly because I can’t.”

  Jaume saw that Camellia still stood patiently by him. Springing to his feet, he whistled and made a downward-patting gesture with his empty left hand. Obediently, the morion dropped her cream-colored belly to the pavement. Feeling more stiffness in his hips from the fall than he’d initially expected, Jaume put a foot in the stirrup and swung up into the saddle as if his full plate harness weighed nothing. It was highest quality, of course, its forty-plus kilos distributed so perfectly that it hardly felt like an encumbrance at all. At least not to a man who routinely practiced acrobatics while wearing it.

  “Pulled your Baron Sándoval trick on you, did he?”

  “I was riding a horse!”

  “They’re copying us—that’s clear.”

  “What’s going on?”

  “They’ve pulled back to the south side of town. The kidnappers seem to be on the road again. We did a quick check of the mercantile house—a nest of snakes that’ll need cleaning out, I’m pretty sure.”

  “Later,” Jaume said. “And not our job.”

  “You may want your shield. They’ve started shooting at us with their hornbows for real. Nailed Grzegorz in the shoulder pretty well at close range.”

  “How is he?”

  “Angry—more at us after Manuel told him he had to stand down and get seen to. Local healer’s got his upper armor off and is looking him over. The squires have joined up; they’ll keep the víboras from trying their chances with a lone, injured Brother. Though I think he’d handle them, bare-chested and one-armed though he is. Good kid; think both he and Rámon will do.”

  “Let’s go,” Jaume said. “You take half around the right. I’ll go left. Try to flank them—at least get as close as possible before showing ourselves. The bows mean we can’t just bypass them; they’ll just shoot us in the back.”

  Florian nodded, spun his mount, and dashed off. Jaume hadn’t needed to tell him whom to take in the rightward sweep. All the Companions had the initiative to grab whoever was most appropriately placed.

  Jaume glanced longingly at his shield again, then dismissed it and nudged Camellia into a trot. He’d take his chances on using the cover of the buildings. As he rode past, he glanced down at the Flower Knight Ayaks had dropped, lying pathetically on his face in a rainwater pool as blood and doughy brains diffused into it from his cleft helmet and head. He felt a pang of pity.

  At first he tried to suppress it—the man was abetting a child abduction, for the Eight’s sakes. But then he saw the more beautiful path and allowed himself to feel.

  They’re serving evil out of some greater duty, he thought. Pity’s the feeling that suits them all best. Especially Prince Roshan.

  The two wings of dinosaur knights converged just south of the big mercantile house. The buildings gave brief way to a clear space, slightly marshy, perhaps thirty meters across, before continuing to straggle down the Laventura road for several hundred more meters. Jaume led his wing out into the open to find Roshan and his ten remaining Flower Knights awaiting them on patient war-dinosaurs. They had bows in hand and arrows nocked but not drawn.

  Another thirty meters separated the tip of Camellia’s beak from a light-colored Lambeosaurus—forked, Jaume saw, by the slight, drooping-moustachioed knight who had rescued Roshan. Twenty or twenty-five separated the Trebs from Florian and his contingent, emerging on the far side.

  Without hesitation, Jaume turned Camellia toward them. His followers did likewise, as did Florian his. They’ll kill some of us, Jaume thought grimly, but then we’ll have them.

  Before his morion had finished taking her second step, a wall of flame shot up in front of her, higher by far than Jaume’s head on her high-arched back and roaring like a pack of angry matadores.

  Squealing in ear-imploding terror, Camellia stopped and shied away from the inexplicable inferno. Jaume could smell its sulfurous breath, feel its heat on his still-bared face.

  His loyal, well-trained, battle-hardened mount did something she
’d never done before: turned tail and fled, despite her rider’s shouts and sawing on the reins. The other Companions’ duckbills did likewise, stampeding back through the town with a sound like a terrified wind-instrument orchestra.

  Chapter 15

  Bestiario del Hogar Viejo, Un; Bestiary of Old Home, A.…—A late first-century book, which describes in words and pictures over a thousand creatures claimed to be native to Home, the world from which humans and their Five Friends (horses, goats, dogs, cats, and ferrets) came to Paradise. Though superstitious people believe it was directly inspired by our Creators, educated folk think that many of the animals in it are imaginary. It does provide a rich source for art and heraldry.

  —A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

  Something funny happened this afternoon after we had to run away from La Bajada.

  We didn’t go straight to Laventura, even though I heard Diego and Elfego saying we could make it there on a straight run by nightfall. Instead, we stopped in this shallow arroyo that this local guide Elfego—he’s the one with bangs—found. A bunch of ginkgo trees hid us there. They seem to always be able to find traitors to help them, although I think maybe this woman was just slow-witted and eager to make money.

  Anyway, they had to argue, because that’s what it seems Trebs really do. Akakios seemed all scared about immediate pursuit—even with those Flower Knights to stand off Jaume and his men. Paraskeve wanted to go on. Charalampos, who’s a nervous fat man who always acts like he’s got a secret he’s afraid you’re about to find out (aren’t all Trebs supposed to be that way?), wanted to hide the way Akakios did. Paraskeve got real mad, the way she always does, and shouted that they were just cowards. But Vlasis, the little skinny intense guy, said something to her in Griego, and she got real pissy but agreed to go to ground for the night.

  So they found this manor a few kilometers off the main road in a kind of nice little river valley and hid out there. The owner, a small-time war-hadrosaur breeder, made enough money to buy a minor patent. He’s fat and has greasy black hair and beards all down his chins. It’s gross.

  After dinner, which was a pretty good roast haunch of a young halberd that I guess didn’t make the cut to be a war-mount and some beans and ensalada, we all wound up in the sitting room. And Akakios, the boss priest with the fanciest hat, started losing his mind in buckets.

  They were talking a mix of both Spañol and Griego. I was sitting in a corner by a bookshelf. I was mad because they wouldn’t let me read any, even though some were on raising and training duckbills for war and I really wanted to see them. But they did let me sit there and play with Mistral.

  She’s been real good. She mostly hopped and beeped and rolled over when I waved my finger around. I think she understands we’re in trouble, and we need each other more than ever. Even though it’s always been kind of us against the world. Or the adults, anyway. Most of them. A lot goes on in that little head. She has no common sense, but that’s ferrets. She is pretty smart. Like me.

  Dragos sat in a chair near me reading a book of poetry in some language I didn’t recognize—I guess it’s from the Basileia. They got a lot of different kingdoms there with different languages, just like we do. Although I think they call them something else.

  But what he was mostly doing was quietly translating the parts I didn’t get. I caught a few words, like “fire.” He’s been teaching me a bit of Griego, and I’ve been picking up a little on my own. Not much, but I think everything helps.

  The others weren’t paying any mind to either of us, as usual. I’m just a little girl to them, which makes me stupid. I’m used to that from adults. It can be real useful. People who underestimate you are easy to fool.

  They ignore Dragos as much as they can because they never like what he has to say. He is pretty sarcastic about them, even to their faces. And they can’t do anything about it, which really chafes their beards. I think there’s more to it—like whoever they’re really working for would do mean things to them if anything happened to him, and I guess the stories about the Trebs being really cruel and good at it too do have something to them. These ones are sure scared. But also when they need something practical done, it seems like Dragos is always the only one who can really do it. And they’re at least smart enough to figure that out.

  Oh—one thing I better put down here. It doesn’t seem like they’re working for Mikael. I mean, that’s what I thought this whole thing was supposed to be about: that they were trying to get my father to promise them Melodía’s hand in marriage to their Crown Prince, Mikael—that’s really how they talk: they say things like “give her hand in marriage.” Like my sister’s hand is a nice piece of sculpture or an old painting or something. Melodía was never going to agree to any such thing, even if she didn’t love Jaume and plan to marry him—they had a fight, I guess, before we had to help her escape, but I don’t think that’ll last. Also, Prince Mikael supposedly weighs 200 kilos and never bathes, so gross.

  So Akakios was claiming that magic was used to keep the Companions from chasing after the Flower Knights. He seemed even more upset about that than the fact that one of the Flower Knights got killed—good!—but none of Jaume’s Companions did. He said it’d damn all their souls.

  (I don’t really understand that part. I don’t pay much attention to religion, but I have to sit through a lot of Church services, when I can’t get away, because Daddy’s the Emperor and really believes that stuff. But when they talk about you dying, they say you just get reborn, or if you’re really good you can choose to become one with the Creators. Or maybe even something else. But it’s supposed to be good. Anyway, these Trebs seem to think when you die you can get punished. How you get punished if you’re all dead and don’t have a body, I don’t know. The Vida-se-Viene cult people say similar stuff, but we know they’re crazy. Even if Daddy’s pal, who was the Pope but died, was kind of one.)

  Also, he seemed scared because it was magic. I don’t believe in magic, because it’s dumb. But—they were all awful positive.

  Paraskeve kept telling him to calm down. Tasoula sat in the corner pulling strands of her dirty crazy hair away from her head with her fingers and staring at them as if she could, like, read something in them. She was muttering about the voices and the spirits. It’s like she believes in Fae or something. But I really don’t buy that fairy-tale garbage. It’s silly superstition. Not important superstition, like the Church and Creators and all that.

  Funny thing, there—it was like Don Alfonso, the traitor duckbill-breeder, only wanted to talk to her, for some reason. As if he could get any sense out of her. But he hung back by her the whole time as if he felt safer near her. Or at least less scared than the others.

  Charalampos said that Akakios needed to calm down, that their cause was righteous. He might have been more convincing if he wasn’t sweating so heavily—it was actually pretty cool inside the sala, with a breeze blowing in from the sea, even, and smelling like the flowers in the garden on the patio outside. And if he didn’t keep looking everywhere as if he expected a horror to jump out of a secret panel and eat his face.

  That’d be sweet if that happened.

  Akakios kept saying it was too dangerous to mess with magic. Finally Vlasis spoke up in that tight-assed, hissing way of his and said that clearly they had the Creators’ favor. If Akakios, a High Priest and Megaduke (which sounds even fancier than a Grand Duke, but Dragos told me it just meant an equerry) doubted that he was worthy of the Creators’ obvious intervention on his behalf, perhaps the Magistroi needed to have a word with him when they got back home. That caused all the color to drain out of Akakios’s big square face, but it did shut him up.

  Vlasis told the others that was clearly what was happening: the Creators were helping them in person. And They’d help even more, should the heretics (he meant my cousin Jaume and his friends who are trying to save me, the bastard!) catch up with them. Paraskeve actually got all pious and made the Sign of the Grand Harmonious P
rinciple. So that ended that.

  Except Anastasia just stared for a moment and then laughed and laughed. The host made some kind of quick weird finger gesture and went out.

  After that Dragos took me to my cell for the night. It was just an unused pantry dug into the ground near the kitchen. But it was clean and cool and had a pretty decent straw mattress without too many piojos in it. As we went I asked him why he kept helping me.

  He said, “You’re a brave girl, and a very capable one. I approve of the former when it’s coupled with the latter. I hope you remember these talks when you get—out of this.”

  I didn’t say anything. For a moment I got real excited because it was like he was implying I wouldn’t just survive this awful mess but get home and see Melodía and my daddy again. Then I made myself calm down because maybe he’s fooling me, just to keep me from making trouble. That’s how he got the others to go along with giving me stuff to write with. And letting me keep Misti with me.

  (Akakios has been complaining about the amount of money they spend getting me fresh papers, pens, and ink. He’s really obsessed with how much silver this is all costing, and Paraskeve again told him not to be such a cheese-parer about it, to give me what I needed because it was a small price to keep me quiet, so he should be quiet. She might not feel quite that way if she knew I was using half the paper to write those notes I drop off every time I have to go off in the woods to take a poo.)

  Or maybe Dragos is fooling the others. I guess I’m sure he’s doing that. And don’t know what he’s really doing with me. Except trying to suck up. But that’s kind of working, because he’s the only one who even talks to me except to boss me around or scold me, much less treat me with respect. Maybe only Jaume ever treated me with more respect, like I was a real person instead of some kind of—I don’t know, animated doll.