The Dinosaur Princess

by Victor Milán

  Then, sipping a cup—by the current fad, heavy ceramic of blue-and-green-washed ceramic, thankfully, without a hint of gold—of still-hot xocolatl imported from far Tejas, its bitterness cut and richness enhanced by a healthy dollop of honey, she took up a strider-feather quill pen, dipped its tip in the inkpot, and began to write.

  My beloved friends …

  She paused. Should I write each of them individually? she wondered. To ask herself the question was almost to answer it. Her ladies-in-waiting got on remarkably well with one another. They teased and squabbled, of course, but there was none of the nasty gossiping and backbiting Melodía found so prevalent and distancing in other grande circles, male and female alike. Well, gossiping, sure—but about outsiders. Because they were nominally hostages, and Melodía’s father treated her basically like a precious objeto de arte, taken out occasionally to be admired and adored, then stashed back out of sight and ignored, they had formed a sort of us-against-the-world common bond.

  Whose depth and strength had surprised her—as did her ladies’—when they hastily banded together to co-conspire with Montse and a cadre of Firefly Palace servants to liberate her after she was falsely accused and imprisoned. By Falk, of course.

  The problem was that certain of them did have a predisposition to paranoia. Mostly that was Lupe and Llurdis, incorrigibly overdramatic lovers and enemies who both fought and fucked with equal abandon, not to mention unpredictably and with lack of concern for bystanders. And they mostly liked to accuse each of plotting against the other, as part of their drama.

  But Melodía reposed faith particularly in the ability of one of her friends to help her, and the problem was, this person wasn’t only a known intriguer, she was a well-trained expert at it, despite her tender years—she was only a year older than Melodía herself, though that made her the oldest among their circle. Which was hardly surprising, because Abigail Thélème was the daughter of Arch-Duke Roger of Sansamour, a principality and Electorate nominally tributary to the crown of Francia. Though rumor had it that the truth was closer to the other way round. Roger rejoiced—literally, or so Abi said—in the soubriquet “the Spider,” for weaving webs of intrigue whose intricacy and deadliness rivaled those for which Trebizon was so notorious. Abi was surprisingly frank about her father carefully training his heir to succeed him in every way. But then again, public knowledge of the fact seemed only to sharpen the fangs of her intrigues, like Roger’s, rather than dull them.

  If there was anyone among her friends who could carry out the task she was about to request her friends to carry out for her back in La Merced and El Palacio de las Luciérnagas, it was the tall, lean, coolly blond Sansamora, who bore the title Countess Silvertree in her own right.

  If there was anyone among her friends whom the others would automatically view with suspicion if they all got letters individually requesting them to do Secret Things, it was Abi.

  “No,” she said aloud. “I don’t want to tempt Fortuna here any more than I have to.”

  And so she wrote:

  My beloved friends,

  I have an important favor to ask of you all. I know that it may seem vain and frivolous to pursue my own concerns in the wake of my sister’s kidnapping. And perhaps it is. But to my sorrow and anger the matter lies as far beyond my grasp as the Moon Invisible.

  Though I already owe you, and others, a debt I can never repay, I nonetheless beg you, once again, to help me …

  Chapter 17

  Creadores, Los, The Creators, Los Ocho, The Eight.…—The gods who made Paradise, and all things that live upon it: Chián, Father Sky or the King; Maia, the Mother Land or Queen; Adán, the Oldest Son; Telar, the Oldest Daughter; Spada, the Middle Son; Bella, the Middle Daughter; Torre, the Youngest Son; and Maris, the Youngest Daughter. Each has a standard appearance and attributes, yet also has manifestations of the opposite gender—and opposite attributes. Each has a Trigram, three solid or broken lines drawn one above the other, which together comprise what is called Bagua in the Creators’ own speech, the Heavenly Language. Served by seven Grey Angels of nearly divine power and often terrifying aspect. Our faith tells us that They once walked Paradise Themselves, and even waged the High Holy War, vulgarly called the Demon War, against their arch-enemies, the Fae. Since no one has seen one for centuries, many now believe that’s mere myth. Some believe the Creators are too. But quietly, for belief in and worship of the Eight is the universal law of Paradise.

  —A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

  Even as his eyes snapped open to his tent’s darkness, Jaume knew something was wrong. Dagger in hand, he rolled off his pallet to the right—away from the tent entrance and toward the Lady’s Mirror in her scabbard.

  “I’m not a threat,” a soft voice said.

  “Roshan?” Jaume felt far more curious than afraid. Curiosity formed a far greater component of his nature than fearfulness. Also, he felt confident of his chances in a fight, even against a fighter as skilled as the Flower Knight Captain-General had proved to be, no matter how his opponent might be armed.

  “Yes. Don’t make a light, please. I’m not armed.”

  He opened the tent flap to allow the wan light of Eris to spill in between the branches of the cypress trees that surrounded the Companion encampment. It silvered his long, unbound hair and the bare skin of his right side.

  “What are you doing here?” Jaume asked. He rose. He wasn’t prepared to trust any uninvited midnight intruder to his tent, much less the chief of his enemies’ fighting force. Still, his heart and gut told him he could.

  He was a man who trusted both. But he had learned long ago not to trust them with unfettered control. He would heed his reasoning mind and reserve judgment. Until the time came to strike. Or—whatever else.

  He struck spark to the wick of a pine-oil lantern. The tent filled with mellow gold light. Roshan’s body was well muscled, with a little layer of softness about the middle. His straight black hair hung past his shoulders. His cock was small yet shapely.

  “I took a liberty with you today, Don Jaume. I want to make amends. And to offer a warning.”

  “You did,” Jaume said. He was still surprised and somewhat puzzled by how strongly unsettled he felt about Roshan’s unasked kiss. Not the kiss itself: that it was done without his permission. There was a trail of those who had taken liberties with the Conde dels Flors in the past, or tried to. There was also an unbroken trail of their graves.

  “The warning first, then.”

  “You will come upon our … masters … in Laventura tomorrow. Even if we wanted to try to stop you on your way, they have forbidden us. They want us protecting them until they depart.”

  “You defied their orders to come here?”

  Roshan let the tent flap fall. Enough moon and star shine filtered in through the tent—workmanlike waterproofed canvas, not silk—for Jaume to see his teeth show in a smile.

  “Not strictly speaking,” he said. “The rest of my knights attend them. And none of them know I’ve even gone, much less where.”

  “And?”

  Roshan’s smile vanished, and the tips of his hair brushed his broad shoulders as he shook his head. “We cannot in honor hold back any longer. When we meet you, we must try our best to kill you.”

  “Fair enough,” Jaume said. “Was that all you came for?”

  Roshan smiled in a way that stirred Jaume strangely. “Not at all.”

  He approached. Jaume kept himself relaxed. He doubted his nocturnal visitor meant him any harm. But if he did, tension in the muscles slowed one’s responses.

  Roshan padded to within an arm’s reach of him, held out his hand. Jaume, uncertain, put out his own. Roshan took it, gently, and raised it to his lips.

  “I told you, my lord,” he said, and kissed the back of the hand and then the fingertips, lightly, “I came here to make amends. With your permission?”

  Without being certain what he was assenting to—beyond that it wasn’t going to
compromise his men or mission—Jaume said, “Yes, but I thought your warning would be enough of—”

  Releasing Jaume’s hand, Roshan dropped to his knees and took Jaume’s cock in his hand. That startled Jaume into immobility. He barely had time to register that he was already halfway erect when Roshan leaned forward and closed his lips behind the head.

  He began to suck, gently at first, then more intently. Jaume drew in a deep breath. He became intensely aware of his surroundings as pleasure flowed out of his groin to suffuse his body: the strong sharp smell of pine oil burning, and the scent of the sweat of light exertion on a recently bathed male body from Roshan, overlaid by a hint of rose-attar; the trilling of crickets and the croak of some big night-hunting flier; the subtly shifting balance between light and shadow inside his small, plain tent. The expert play of Roshan’s moist, strong tongue on the underside of his cock.

  He grasped the sides of Roshan’s head as it began to work back and forth. He tensed as he felt an electric tension at the base of his penis.

  It had been several days for Jaume since the last bout of lovemaking with Melodía in the wake of the Canterville battle. He had no lovers among the Companions anymore, since his adored Pere had been swept into the depths by a bocaterrible sea-monster in the Channel the year before. Nor would he again, given the Order’s rule that Companions could only take lovers of equal status—and while all Brothers-Companion were equal, he was the Captain-General. He exerted power over his fellow Knights-Brother because they acceded to it, not because both Church and Empire accorded him a high degree of it; but there it was.

  Which is to say, he came hard and fast. And copiously.

  Roshan drank it all down eagerly. He continued to suck until Jaume’s balls ran dry.

  “You’re skilled in many crafts, it seems.” Jaume said, stroking Roshan’s glossy hair and delighting in the feel. “Such as how you got past both our squires and the Brother on sentry duty. Bernat, I believe. I’ll have to have a word with him.”

  Roshan smiled up at him, his eyes glistening with moisture. “Don’t judge them harshly, my lord. As you’ve guessed, we emulate your Order in every way we can, because it’s held in the highest esteem even in Trebizon. There are no others like you in western Aphrodite—and we wanted to come as close to your magnificence as we could. And we know you are adroit at the arts of stealth.”

  Jaume stroked his cheek. “And how may I—”

  Roshan shook his head, making his hair rustle faintly on the smooth skin of his back. “No. Please. I told you, I was here to make amends for taking a liberty with you today, and kissing you without permission.”

  “I admit, I’m still not sure how I feel about it. It wasn’t unpleasurable, I can tell you.”

  “But it was still a violation. I know. I couldn’t help myself—chose not to, given what soon must be. I know what I did doesn’t atone for it. But consider it a fine of sorts—though I did enjoy paying it.”

  He looked up to show a shy smile.

  Jaume took him by the shoulders and urged him to his feet. The man was shorter by a centimeter or two than his hundred and eighty. He kissed him on the lips—then more deeply when they opened to his. His savored the salty sweetness of his own come.

  Then, “Sit with me, at least,” he said, seating himself on his straw-stuffed linen mattress.

  Roshan did. He put his arm around Jaume’s waist and laid his head on his shoulder.

  “You travel in such spare style,” he said. “Your tent’s without ornamentation of any sort. We try to do the same, though we come from—different traditions than you.”

  “We’ve had Brothers from many traditions—including Parsos. One of us is Ruso, as I suspect several of your knights are, and we lost another in our most recent battle. And believe me—ostentation and weighing oneself down with tons of useless baggage on campaign are far from alien to the Nuevaropan grande nature, more’s the pity.”

  Roshan laughed softly.

  “I cannot stay long,” he said. “I have to get back before our masters miss me. If they suspected where I’ve gone, my family would suffer.”

  Jaume clamped his teeth together in dismay. He knew that the Basileus, or ruler of Trebizon—or his underlings, or her, depending—had a reputation for a casual attitude toward the Creators’ proscription of torture in their Books of the Law.

  “I suspected that was the whip held over you.”

  “It’s not the only one,” Roshan said. “They use magic, these priests. Some of it quite—unnerving.”

  Jaume forced a small laugh. “So we were forced to conclude,” he said. “Reluctantly.”

  “Believe me, we felt the same. When we could no longer deny the evidence of our own eyes.”

  “My question is, whose magic? Not the Lady’s, surely.”

  “Oh, no. If anything, she would intervene against us, on your behalf. We don’t know. We know they’ve used it directly against you, twice—once to cover our escape from Tres Veces, and once today, of a more potent kind. Also, they received some kind of magical warning of your approach this afternoon. Otherwise you’d have taken us unaware and … ended this sorry tale. For what we both know would’ve been the best.”

  “I won’t deny it.”

  “We cannot hold back any longer when we face you tomorrow in Laventura, as we must. We’ll have to try our best to kill you. At that point, honor will require it of us, as well as the other—penalties our masters hold over our heads.”

  “I’m amazed you did so for so long. Even when we killed one of your brothers. Whom I know you must have loved as deeply as I do mine.” He didn’t dishonor Roshan by pointing out that had been a necessity. Nor that the killing was, by any accounting, justified. That would be unkind; and Jaume doubted unkindness was beautiful in the Lady’s eyes.

  Roshan hugged him tightly. “Don’t grieve, my Lord,” he said. “We don’t. You did dear Omid a favor: releasing him with honor from the curse his life had become. You gave him a beautiful death, and we are deeply grateful on his behalf.”

  I don’t know how beautiful it is, shitting your brains into the street from your broken head, Jaume couldn’t help thinking. But Roshan sounded sincere—joyously sincere. Am I naive that I believe he is? I’m no intriguer, that’s for sure.

  He knew he couldn’t always trust his heart; a man that cold, as to be able always to do so, would probably never seek to become a Companion. Even Manfredo hadn’t done so because he was cold: he had broken with the Order rather than rejoin the Imperial Army as commanded by the Emperor, after witnessing the horrors that army had committed on its march. He had chosen then and there to give up his service to Lady Li of Fire’s Beauty and transfer it to Gen of the Mountain’s Order—to the Creator most men called Torre, or whatever their word for Tower was. It was the very intensity of his compassion—his passion—that led him to break their fellowship and take Mor Wouter with him. As it was Jaume’s passion for loyalty, not just to the Fangèd Throne but to his kinsman and friend who sat upon it, which had led him to proceed despite his own soul-blackening horror at what the Emperor had permitted to be done in his name.

  But Jaume was not without judgment. His gut told him Roshan was honest. And he had long since learned to trust that.

  “We can’t hold back either,” he said.

  “I know.”

  Roshan stood up quickly, turned, and bent to kiss Jaume lightly on the lips. “One last time. I’ve got to go.”

  Thank you for doing me the courtesy of not asking if I’d try to restrain you, Jaume thought. From what Roshan had said, and what he and his Companions had seen, it would confer slight advantage, if any, in the upcoming fight—and bring a hideous fate to Roshan’s loved ones. Such an act on Jaume’s part would not be beautiful.

  Although if forced to it, he would choose his duty, Montserrat and the Empire, over beauty. As Manfredo had learned, and could not in the end accept.

  “You look so stern,” Roshan said with another laugh. “Don’t.”
/>
  “What you must do is kill us all, Captain, my love. And then you must prevent this crime. For the sake of mighty empires and tens of thousands of innocent lives. But mostly for the sake of one innocent young girl.”

  Chapter 18

  Laventura Grandísima de la Creación, Creation’s Thrice Grandest Venture, Laventura—The Empire’s most populous city and largest seaport, located on the Océano Aino on the southern coast of the Tyrant’s Head. As such, it is the main focus of the fabulously lucrative trade with Trebizon, Vareta, and Chánguo. Bitter rival to the Channel port of La Merced, Laventura is an autonomous city-state, by a coterie of contentious nobles who act like bandits, and gang leaders who act like nobles. Its populace is heavily politicized as well as factionalized, and prone to civil strife and insurrection, of a much more violent nature than La Merced’s frequent riots. Trebizonian spies and intrigues are common here, as well as troublemakers from much farther away.

  —A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS

  “They’re at the wharf our info said they’d be, right enough.”

  It was early morning in the busy waterfront district. Jaume had dismounted in a narrow side street to stand beside Capitán Herrera, in command of the hundred-twenty-strong manípulo that had been all that the huge Sea Dragon base beside Laventura had been able to deploy on such crash notice. Bartomeu held the reins of the ever-patient Camellia—more patient by far than her master, whose heart was hammering as if it meant to break out through ribs and steel breastplate alike. The other Companions sat on their war-dinosaurs behind.

  “The Treb priests seem to be arguing with the Treb ship’s captain.” The speaker was a young woman wearing a simple loincloth, a tight breast-band, and mostly sweat-streaked grime in the heat. Her square build and enormous shoulders would’ve fit the dockwalloper she seemed to be but came from pulling an oar in a powerful oceanic galleass. The local Sea Dragons, well acquainted with the Trebizon-style intrigue that apparently suffused the giant port, had sent in spies to scout ahead.