by Victor Milán
I don’t know.
One thing I do know: he’s sly.
But one other thing: so am I.
* * *
Though her instinctive terror of fire had overwhelmed her training and loyal courage—and Jaume didn’t blame her—Camellia recovered her wits quickly. As did all the other Companions’ duckbills. One of the requirements for candidacy to join Jaume’s Order was to have a fine mount, fully trained for war—and treated almost as a son or daughter.
With quick shouts to one another, they rallied by the mercantile house, then rode back down the main Laventura road to where the flames still visibly billowed. They were not much shorter than the three-story stone house itself.
When Jaume could feel the heat beating on his bare cheeks and Camellia was beginning to toss her round-crested head and roll her eyes, he stopped. The others kept a likewise respectful distance.
“How’d they do that?” Will Oakheart asked. Like the rest, he’d opened his visor. “In this pissing rain, no less?”
“Whatever it is is still going up like a fire in a pine-oil distillery,” Machtigern said.
“We might ride around it,” Machtigern suggested. “We might still catch them.”
“No,” Jaume said, reluctantly. “They’ll shoot us down on the road before we can get close. They’re playing for real now, as Grzegorz found out.”
“But if we can overtake them—” Ramón said.
“Cool your heels, hotspur,” Manuel said. “The Captain’s right. And it’s even worse: they’ll stop from time to time to set up an ambush and slaughter us with those hard-steel chisel-tip arrows if we gallop into it. I’d do that. And I reckon these damned catafractos know their art a lot better than I do.”
Florian had dismounted, leaving Trouble on his white belly in the mud. He cautiously approached the flame.
“Careful—” Jaume said.
But this was Florian. Who stuck his steel-gauntleted hand into the orange flames.
“Els Sants Vuit!” Jaume exclaimed, reverting in shock to his birth-tongue Catalan to invoke the Holy Eight. Only his compatriota Bernat among the present company could understand him, but the others likely got the drift.
But Florian was only frowning.
“Nothing,” he said.
“What do you mean?” Ayaks rumbled.
“I mean, nothing.” Florian withdrew his hand and pulled the gauntlet off. Then he waved his bare hand back and forth through the furnace wall. “It’s not hot. It’s not anything. It doesn’t even interrupt the rain falling, as far as I can tell.”
“What the Old Hell?” Will said.
“That may be where it comes from,” said Owen, making the circle-and-S gesture of the Holy Symbol to ward off evil.
Florian walked through the flames. “No, nothing,” he called from the other side. I can see they form a horseshoe shape, to screen the flanks, maybe ten meters at the widest.”
He reappeared, his beautiful long, wavy golden hair sodden and crinkled—but not so much as scorched.
“Whatever it is, it’s not fire.”
“But the heat!” Ramón exclaimed. “And the sound. And even the smell!”
“It’s all an illusion.”
“How is that possible?” said Machtigern.
Florian shrugged.
“Nothing natural,” Owain said.
“You can’t seriously be suggesting it’s actually magic,” Manuel said. “Magic isn’t real.”
“You might not say that if you’d seen Raguel Himself, riding into battle on a giant King Tyrant conjured from the dust itself,” Owain said.
“I always thought the Grey Angels were metaphors myself, until I saw one,” Jaume said. “And I’m still reluctant to admit magic exists. Well, other magic.”
“It must be a stage sleight,” Manuel said.
Florian cocked a skeptical brow. “When you calculate a way to do that that’s not less plausible than magic, let me know, my friend.”
Manuel sighed gustily. “Fair enough. I can’t, of course.”
“You can blackball me from the Brotherhood for asking this,” Ramón said, “if that’s what it deserves. But I have to. This isn’t the first time this has happened—the Flower Knights escaped as if by magic after their weird, halfhearted ambush in Tres Veces. These Flower Knights serve the Middle Daughter, just the same as we do. What if She’s choosing to use Her powers for them, over us?”
He started when Machtigern, whose brown-stripes-on-buff morion, Tiger, happened to be standing next to his red-and-white sackbut, Luisa, clapped him on the shoulder.
“When a Brother needs to guard his tongue among Brothers,” he said, “there is no brotherhood. Don’t worry.”
“It’s a good question,” Jaume said. “And a wise one. But I have an answer, I think. We’re served the Lady and Beauty for twenty years, we Companions. We’ve lost more Brothers killed than our Charter allows to serve at any one time. I can’t claim perfection for me or any of us. But I can’t believe the Lady Li would spurn our sacrifices, of tears and blood and lives, to favor anyone over us. Especially not a newly minted Order.”
“And especially not one that’s guarding child abductors,” Will said, “whatever excuse they have.”
“Where does it come from, then, Captain?” asked Bernat.
Jaume could only shake his head.
“More to the point,” Manuel said, “what do we do now?”
“We go collect the squires and see if Grzegorz is fit to ride. Then we follow at a deliberate pace, using squires on horseback to scout. We know where they’re going.”
“They should be in Laventura tomorrow evening at the latest, unless they break down again,” Manuel said.
“We’ll have to hope we can get a chance to stop the carriages before they get there,” Jaume said. “We need to keep in mind the Flower Knights aren’t our targets. Only obstacles.”
“What about the merchant and his traitors?” Will asked.
“We’ll leave them to the local authorities.”
“Your resourceful little cousin has warned us that they’re not always to be relied upon,” said Florian. “And I’d say that’s clearly the case here.”
“You hold the High Justice, Jaume,” Machtigern said. “You can try, condemn, and hang them if they’re guilty.”
“It would be appropriate,” Jaume said, “though I don’t like to do so.” He seldom exercised that power, preferring to execute Imperial warrants. The first men he’d tried and ordered hanged in a long time were a pair of rapist knights with the Army of Correction marching on the Redlands.
The flames went out. It was as if they were a single candle, snuffed by giant fingers.
“Neat sleight,” Florian said.
“Enough,” Jaume said. Manuel could be a bit of a hothead, and Florian was no stranger to taking a joke too far. Even with his Brothers.
But the Francés knight shook his head. “No. I mean, whatever it was, that’s a pretty good trick.”
“So we admit it was magic?” said Machtigern, looking as if he’d just discovered he’d bitten into a dog turd by accident.
“As Brother Goldenhair says,” Manuel said, “if you can come up with some other explanation, we’d all love to hear it.”
The Alemán could only morosely shake his head.
“This is bad,” Ayaks said.
“It is, Big Brother,” said Jaume. “And there’s a lot here which needs to be investigated in depth. Including how these Trebs have done the impossible to thwart us—once for sure, and likely twice.”
“They’ll have more such tricks awaiting us in Laventura,” Owain said.
“Then we deal with them when we run into them. But for now, none of that matters in comparison to saving a little girl, before those monsters get her out of the country and onto the sea.”
Chapter 16
Año Paraíso, AP—Literally, “Paradise Year.” 192 days, each of twenty-four hours (reputedly longer than Home days). Divided into 8 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 Spada (Swordsday), 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
“That Duke Falk!” Mor Patricio said, languidly trailing his dark brown fingers through the cool water of the rooftop garden’s pond. “He’s getting tiresome, frankly.”
Melodía looked up sharply. She sat on a rosy granite banco in the shade of a feather parasol near the pond. Though the apartment building stood in an especially desirable location near the northwestern side of the Bulwark, near its juncture with the cliff, the sound of Heart’s Leap was no more than a pleasant susurration, like the buzzing of the thumb-size bees dancing around the flowers.
“He’s always been tiresome,” Doña Sonia said. She wore her dark brown hair cut in a sort of cap. She sat with a thin red-and-gold silk cushion protecting the bare olive skin of her behind from the sun-hot flagstones that rimmed the pond. Days were relatively cool up here on Mount Glory, and the daytime clouds were as constant as they were everywhere on Paradise, but the sun was intense. Though it was midmorning, the sandstone slabs that paved this section of the rooftop garden in the outer palace grounds would scorch unprotected soles. Which was why Melodía and the other three wore sandals, if nothing else.
“He’s gotten more tiresome now that his great Alemana duckbill-sow of a mother’s arrived,” Mor Patricio said. Unlike the other two, he was a newcomer to the Imperial City and Palace.
“He’s a fucking rebel,” Don Máximo said heatedly. He was already pacing beside the pond. “I don’t know why the Emperor coddles him the way he does.”
“Well, he did save the Emperor’s life at Canterville,” Sonia said dryly. “That might have earned him a little indulgence.”
“He’s a traitor,” Máximo persisted. “All that heroic shit he did in the recent battle should bring him no more than to zero, I say.”
“I’m not quite that blithe about dismissing heroism,” Patricio growled. Also unlike the other two, he was a veteran fighter, who had earned his knighthood in border skirmishes with rival grandes and bandit hunting in his home county southwest of La Majestad. Almost all the horde of hangers-on, minor nobles, and influence seekers who infested the court here far more thickly than they ever had in La Merced—Melodía had no idea who most of these fucking people were—claimed they had wanted nothing more than to join the Emperor in his recent great Crusade. As far as she could tell, though, Patricio was telling the truth: his liege had taken her time releasing him to join the Imperial Army on the march. He’d barely gotten past La Majestad when he learned of the Emperor’s victory—and that the Emperor had dismissed most of his Army and headed back to the capital. So Mor Patricio had come here to wait.
Don Máximo held up placating hands. He was handsome enough, too, though pale for a Spañol—and a trifle pudgy to boot. “No offense, brother. I respect you knights. Someday I’ll win my belt and spurs as well. I just—”
“This is beginning to bore me,” Doña Sonia said, putting her sandals on and gracefully rising to her full lean height, a good five centimeters taller than Melodía’s own 176. She stretched languidly, making her small dark-nippled breasts rise up her rib cage. Then she dropped her arms and scratched absently at the dense black bush between her thighs.
The casualness with which she did so reaffirmed Melodía’s suspicion she was actually nobly born—a jumped-up commoner would at the least have turned away in embarrassment. Melodía knew the woman held a manor and estate of some description near La Barbilla, the Chin, at the extreme southwestern tip of Spaña—and, by extension, the Tyrant’s Head. She was attractive enough for an old woman, if you went for those above sixty. She was certainly well preserved, and kept herself in top fitness through her love of a variety of vigorous pastimes, including dance and combat arts. Particularly grappling, so Melodía heard—of both the martial and erotic varieties.
“His Grace, though that term seems extreme in connection with such unwieldy Alemán bulk, is certainly in demand among the ladies of the court, I understand.”
Melodía’s stomach knotted with nausea. She clamped her jaw firmly shut. I’m not going to puke, she commanded herself. It would only detract from my chances.
Patricio cocked a brow. “You?”
She laughed. “Not my type. I prefer my men smaller, younger, and far less full of themselves. Anyway, the ladies of my acquaintance who have made his claim that, while he might have a nosehorn’s size and strength, he lacks their endurance at pulling the cart.”
“The boys all want him, too,” Máximo said. “He just rebuffs … them.” He, as well as Melodía’s other two male companions of the moment, was openly bisexual. It was fashionable this season. He had also made a few attempts at gallantries with her, with the same result he’d obviously gotten from her nemesis.
“So,” Melodía said, in a tone she hoped didn’t sound as sly as she was trying to be, “he’s resented, is he?”
“I resent him,” Patricio said, sipping wine from a gilded goblet. “Even I’ll admit he’s been jumped up too far too fast—for, yes, a recent rebel. And he’s overbearing.”
“So there are cracks in his edifice?” she asked. “People might be willing to listen to some … unpleasant things about him?”
The others all stared at her. I overplayed my hand, she thought with a sinking feeling. She almost threw up all over again.
“By you?” Sonia laughed, musically but not seeming to be malicious. “Highness, you’re not in a good position to go attacking war heroes.”
“Not one who was heroically defending the Emperor from the ravening Horde while you were … notably absent,” Máximo said, his full lips quivering on the edge of an all-out sneer.
“What the Old Hell do you mean?” She managed not to scream the words. “I was fighting the fucking Horde long before the Imp—perials knew they even existed!”
She had barely caught herself on the cusp of blurting “Impies.” Which she’d realized at the last moment was not the most diplomatic thing for the Emperor’s daughter and heir to say. Although she couldn’t inherit the Throne any more than anyone else could: it was Electoral, not hereditary, though always occupied by a member of Torre Delgao.
“‘Fighting’?” Máximo said with a toss of his long brown hair. “Alongside mere light cavalry? Slumming with the peasants is more like it. It may be dramatic charging around on a horse with rabble who oughtn’t be permitted the nobility of riding. But it’s hardly fighting.”
“I’ve run into a few of these light horse and dinosaur riders before.” Patricio drained his cup. “Or over them, to be more precise. They’re not real warriors, any more than peasant rabble afoot with pointed sticks they think are pikes are. Just rabble who get in the way of the real fighters. And not even that for long.”
“And at that,” Máximo said, clearly relishing this all too much, “His Grace was marching to war against the very place you’d bolted off to like a frightened bouncer—the place where all this recent trouble started!”
“I myself am not so sure your accomplishments can be so easily dismissed, Alteza,” Sonia said. “But the majority of the grandes at court don’t seem to share my doubt. Sorry.”
She didn’t seem to be trying to ingratiate herself, Melodía thought—she was clutching at such scraps of controlled thinking as she could muster, in an attempt to prevent herself being swept down by a maelstrom of betrayal and despair. She seemed to be one of the few hangers-on at the Imperial Court who weren’t angling for influence and advancement. She seemed simply to enjoy the atmosphere, the quality of life, and the attentions of the beautiful young men and women who flocked there.
“You—will excuse—me,” Melodía said through gritted teeth, sounding to herself as mechanical as a windup doll.
She turned and practically ran off through the flowering lilac bushes that separated the pond and the decorative part of the garden from the part that grew vegetables for the Palace tables.
She just made it to a point where she dared hope they couldn’t hear her and vomited violently between some square-framed containers of half-grown bean plants.
* * *
Sunlight streaming in the wide, tall window of Melodía’s bedchamber wakened her like a lover’s soft kiss on her cheek.
She sat up in bed and stretched. Her room was spare—just the bed, a small table beside it, a large wardrobe of oak whose front was carved with a battle between knights on sackbut back, a writing desk, and three chairs beneath the window. The walls lacked paintings, tapestries, or embroidery to relieve the yellow-grey, slightly rough stone. But what was there was luxurious and fine, like the scratcher-feather bed and cushions and the satin-covered upholstery on the chairs. The lack of ostentation was itself almost ostentatious, but comfort was key.
She padded to the attached water closet, a privilege of the Imperial apartments of which this was one. When she was done, she rang a gilded bell from the bedside table—they could maybe have shown a bit more restraint with the dorado everything while they were avoiding overt show, even though it was one of the colors of both Empire and La Familia—for her servants and requested a small breakfast and writing material.
The first whiff of bread freshly baked in the Palace kitchens awoke her appetite. It had lain dormant since the … news about Montserrat broke. She wouldn’t let herself think about that too directly, as it would only interfere with doing what she had to do. Once awakened, her appetite proved a ravenous matadora indeed, and she made short, savage work of the plate (gilded, of course) of fruit, bread, sausage, and cheese that was brought.
