by Victor Milán
“He’s having trouble remembering Margrethe’s coaching,” Rosamaría murmured behind her fan. “Odious little prick.”
“I did,” Karyl said. “I’m not proud of that now. But that was a lifetime ago, Your Grace. I consider myself a different man than that one.”
“So what do you have to say about your mysterious change of heart?”
“I neither denounce nor defend those earlier actions. My perspective has changed. Are you proposing to hire me to plan and carry out this expedition?”
Both catcalls and genuine approval greeted that. Melodía recoiled on her bench.
“What’s he doing,” she whispered urgently to La Madrota, “selling us out?”
Then she saw La Madrota grinning hugely behind her gold-and-scarlet Horror-feather fan.
Antoine looked around, then back to Karyl. “Why not? My money’s in!”
“And mine!” Vargas boomed in a matador voice.
“And mine!” Margrethe added. “You talk big. Let’s see how you deliver.”
“Very well,” Karyl said with a precise nod. “I decline. I make it a professional principle to accept no commission that has no chance of succeeding under any circumstances.”
He bowed deeply to the Fangèd Throne.
“Your Majesty, I am done. I thank you for granting me the chance to speak. With your permission?”
Felipe’s already prominent eyes were standing out of his head, and his face had gone blotchy and partly purple. Margrethe clutched his arm in alarm.
You don’t really know him after all, you overstuffed Alemana sausage, Melodía thought with fierce delight. That’s the face my father makes when he’s trying not to laugh out loud, and barely succeeding.
Felipe made a shooing gesture. Karyl turned and marched out.
The audience chamber erupted in wild cheers and whistles, which quickly overwhelmed the few boos.
Rosamaría nodded, folded her fan, and put it away.
“We won that round,” she said in Melodía’s ear. “Let’s go. I believe you have a reconciliation to attend to, my dear.”
Chapter 38
Caracuerno, Hornface.…—Ceratopsian: a large, far-flung group of herbivorous quadrupedal dinosaurs, with toothed beaks and frilled, horned heads. (Although Protoceratops—the ubiquitous barnyard Fatty—lacks horns.) Mostly large, formidable herd-beasts, of which the largest and most formidable is the Ovdan Three-horn, Triceratops horridus. Nuevaropa’s most common wild and domestic Hornface is the Nosehorn.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“Mother!” Falk almost wailed. “What are we going to do?”
“Sniveling isn’t it.”
In the hubbub following Karyl’s surprise appearance before the Fangèd Throne they had retreated to Falk’s apartment on the floor below the Imperial penthouse. The lamps were low on oil. Their light flickered orange, casting uneasy shadows across the feather tapestries depicting Manuel’s epic fight on sackbut-back against the fabulous Tyrannosaurus imperator.
“But you heard him! You saw them! They lapped up everything he said, like hungry fatties when you pour maize-mush in their trough. Everything we’ve worked for—gone, just like that!”
“All is not as hopeless as your cowardice tells you,” she said with icy calm. “We still have our adherents. And not all of them down to payments and threats—both of which remain in full effect.”
Falk deflated in a gusty sigh.
“I just thought, now that you had finally gotten into Felipe’s bed, that we could settle this once and for all.”
She slapped his cheek. Though he had grown into a powerfully built man, with a neck like a hornface bull’s, she could still rock his head around on it. He blinked at the sting of her palm.
“Never question my actions! Haven’t you learned that by now?”
He put fingers to his bearded cheek and looked at her.
“You’re not here to think. Why do you suppose I came to this arid wasteland? You are here to look big and beautiful and impressive and constantly remind these Southern weaklings what a real man and a real hero looks like.”
“Yes, Mother.”
Her face, which had gone bright red, softened and began to resume its normal complexion. She took his face in her hands.
“Oh, Falki, Falki, my little love. Haven’t you learned yet that everything I do is for you?”
He couldn’t meet her eye. “I know,” he said, not loudly. “But I just don’t see how we can—how we can rescue our plans now.”
She smiled. “But I do.” She pinched his cheek. “It all comes down to Mutti once more, doesn’t it? Well, fortunately, Mutti is here to fix this. Honestly, mein Schatz, I don’t know what you’d do without me.”
Maybe be happy, at least some of the time? he wished he had the courage to flare back at her.
But the truth was, he wondered that as well.
* * *
“So you found your way to the apartments of Mor Patricio,” Melodía said.
“With the help of the Palace servant you thoughtfully sent to fetch me, Highness,” said Jaume with a small, lopsided smile. She could see flame highlights in his eyes, from the torches set around the corners of the small roof garden near the northern wall of the Palace ledge. “I know his family, somewhat. They have produced some distinguished playwrights.”
“Mor Patricio aspires to more martial renown,” she said, toying with a plate of grapes on the low stone-and-iron table beside the divan where she lay on her left side. “He wasn’t able to join the Imperial Army in time for the Battle of Canterville. It still vexes him.”
“He needs to talk to more of us who fought there,” Jaume said somberly. “I’d call it an excellent thing to miss.”
“He’s not stupid, as such. But he does show me why you and your Companions are inclined to call your fellow knights bucketheads.”
He stepped up beside the divan, took her free hand in his, and knelt with head deeply bowed.
“My deepest apologies for losing your sister, Melodía, my love,” he said. “I pray that you can forgive my failure. Though I cannot.”
She squeezed the hand tightly, then pressed it to her cheek.
“I forgive you—my love. You didn’t lose her. You never had her. As for failing—you never had a chance, either. If you and your Companions couldn’t rescue her, no mortal could. I see that now. I apologize to you for not seeing it then—when you first reported it to the Court.”
“I knew it was an unlikely-sounding tale. But I owed your father, and you, the truth.”
I knew it then, I think, she thought miserably. I was just too childish and petulant to want to admit it. She felt tears leave her eyes, blaze hot trails down her cheek to run down the back of his hand.
She turned her face and kissed his palm. “Get off your knee. The stone’s hard. Come, sit down.”
“Thank you.”
He rose—only far enough to sit back down where he was on the red sandstone flags facing her. He pulled his knees up before him and encircled them with his arms.
“There are things called chairs, you,” she said. “They’re reputed to be quite comfortable. And look, there are two on either side of you!”
He grinned. “I’m fine here, Alteza.”
Though he had appeared before the Fangèd Throne tonight wearing the cream-colored tabard with the Lady’s Mirror in orange on the left breast over the white silk blouse and orange leggings that served his Order as a variety of formal attire, he had conceded to the night’s unusual warmth by changing to a simple flapped loincloth and sandals—differing only in detail from what she wore. It left his muscle and scar-ribbed torso and long, exquisitely molded legs bare. Does he mean to tantalize me? she thought, eyeing the place where the flap met stone. Because it’s working.
“One thing I have to ask,” she said, because there were matters she felt even more keenly than missing him. “I never quite understood: why didn’t the Sea Dragons pursue the Treb ship at sea?”
&nbs
p; “I ordered such a pursuit. The company commander with me talked me out of it. There was a Treb war-squadron patrolling outside the harbor—out of sight across the horizon, to avoid giving provocation. But the patrol boats spotted them, of course, and were shadowing them. I didn’t want to provoke a war right then and there—especially since even the Dragons candidly admitted they’d lose, at least with any force they could deploy in a timely way.”
“But doesn’t that prove the Basileus was behind Montse’s kidnapping?”
Jaume shook his head. “Trebizon’s bureaucracy shames an onion with its layers and an ant nest for its subterranean intricacy. The treason could have crept in at any of a dozen points, from the Court down to the squadron commander.”
She sat up and wept freely for several minutes. He sat silent, comforting with his nearness.
“Which side of the line does Mor Patricio fall on?” he asked, when she cleared her eyes and raised her head.
“For war. He’s really eager to recoup his lost chance at glory.”
“A lot of young hotspurs who missed the fight are,” Jaume said. “Plenty of not-so-young ones, too.”
“Until tonight, that is.”
“So Karyl’s eloquence swayed him? It’s what I hoped for. Though I hope it wasn’t just him.”
“You were there. I wasn’t. Though I’d call what Karyl used more a calm confidence of knowledge and reason. That was what the audience found most persuasive, I believe.”
“He is rather eloquent, though.”
“He is. Though he won’t believe the fact. He likes to think he has no skill dealing with people, though in fact he’s good at it. It’s a kind of negative vanity somehow.”
“Sometimes that’s the greatest vanity of all.”
“Maybe.” She tipped her head toward her right shoulder. “He didn’t kill you, I see. Not that I’m not glad.”
“No. Though I feared he would. He’d have had justice on his side.”
“You, afraid?”
“There are few folk against whom I don’t at least fancy my chances against in a fight. He’s one. The only one I can call to mind, actually. And yes. I greatly feared he’d strike me down before at least hearing my plea.”
He caught her eye with his and smiled. She felt a tingling beyond her belly.
“I gather I’ve got you to thank for that?”
She shrugged. “I told him what you told me after you came back to La Merced: how reluctant you were to attack your own ally, though you felt honor-bound to follow my father’s orders regardless.”
The last came out a bit tarter than she intended. Do I still blame him for leading the Army of Correction against Terraroja, in spite of his misgivings? She found that she did. But only slightly.
“I also told him how you’d investigated the charges laid against him that led my father to do what he did and found them baseless.”
“So he believed you.”
“Passably. You’re alive, after all.”
She paused a moment to think. “I know you are the most courageous man alive,” she said, measuring each word carefully. “But I know you don’t believe in throwing your life away, either. What made you take the risk?”
“I had destroyed my own credibility at court,” he said. “And in the process yours, I fear. So I needed to recruit another voice to speak on the side of reason. Because if we don’t stop the war with Trebizon, it will cost the Empire incalculable loss and suffering. It might destroy us. If I gave my life to stop that from happening—even trying and failing—I’d consider it a fair exchange.”
She let out a long breath. “So it’s that bad.”
“You heard Karyl. You know. You know already. You knew before you ever experienced it firsthand that war’s a thing to be undertaken only at the direst need.”
“Yes. Although—”
She pressed her lips shut. I don’t want to confess this to the man I love, she thought. But if I want to hope he still loves me, despite my faithlessness in casting him out, not once, but twice—if I want to earn that love, I need to tell him the truth.
“I’ve had my doubts. I almost hate myself for saying it. But—I miss my sister. It hurts so much to think of what she’s going through. The fear, the growing sense of despair.”
“Don’t underestimate her. She’s scared. She’d be foolish not to be. But she’s resolute and resourceful—I told the Court how she smuggled messages to us, and gave us a lot of useful and even necessary information. She’s the last person on Paradise to give in to despair. And is probably too busy scheming how to get loose and get back home to feel tempted by it.”
She actually smiled. “Yes. That’s Montse. But it wasn’t just my desire to rescue my sister that made me wonder whether war was the answer. I had selfish reasons—selfish and weak.”
She reached out and took one of his hands in both of hers.
“The Lady help me, I miss it! I miss the easy camaraderie of my jinetes. I miss the certainty and sense of power that war confers.”
“Don’t forget the doubt and uncertainty you also felt.”
“You don’t feel those things, surely?”
“I do. I’d be the crown prince of bucketheads if I didn’t. And would have gotten myself and my men killed long since.”
His face twisted in brief agony.
“Well—gotten more of them killed than I have.”
“You didn’t get them killed. You didn’t waste their lives. They died fighting for the right. If they thought you were wasting their lives, they’d refuse to follow you, not flock from all over Nuevaropa and even Ovda and Trebizon to try to join you!”
“Well—I suppose I shouldn’t underestimate them either. They’re none of them fools—not a buckethead among ’em.”
“I do remember the uncertainty and doubt and all-consuming fear, as well,” she said. She shrugged. “In my present surroundings, those seem … remote.”
“I understand. You’ve been isolated here. Stymied. But you have Doña Rosamaría as an ally now.”
“As an iron task mistress! You know her?”
“I certainly knew of her—I’m kin, after all. And you don’t serve the Fangèd Throne the way I have without learning about the ageless La Madrota. We corresponded—she wanted to make sure I was approximately what your father thought I was.”
“I hope she decided you were!”
“Adequately so, or so it would appear. After I took myself into exile, she wrote me to ask my help—another reason I decided to tug the tail of the King tyrant Karyl in his own den.”
“Really?”
“Yes.”
“She seems to stern and … self-sufficient.”
“But she hasn’t done what she’s done without finding help when she thought she needed it. Keep that in mind. And that she loves you, very much.”
“I guess so.”
She lowered her face to the flagstone. But she looked at him sidelong.
Love. The word pricked her like a thorn.
Because I love you, Jaume Llobregat, she thought. Do I dare hope you still love me, despite my faithlessness in casting you out not once, but twice?
As scared as she had ever been in battle, Melodía chose to find out. She stood and held out her hands to him, smiling. At least I’ve learned to keep fear off my face.
“Come here, my love, and say hello properly.”
He rose straightaway and crushed her to his bare, hard-muscled chest with his strong arms. He lowered his face to hers. They kissed, deeply and long.
She felt his hand kneading the left cheek of her rump. His cock behind silk felt hot and hard as an iron bar against the skin of her lower belly. She felt her nipples grow hard, pressed into her breasts flattened between them. Her knees grew loose with the need to take him inside her.
He broke away, raised his head to smile down at her. Torchlight glimmers played in his long, low-lidded eyes.
“Do we have privacy here?” he asked.
She grinned. “Yes. Mor Pa
tricio assured me even servants will stay away unless we call for them.”
“He’d do that for you, even though you’re on opposite sides about the war? Or were until tonight.”
“He fancies his chances with me, as Fanny would say. Not that he has many, since he’s too callow and eager to prove himself. Mostly, I think he just likes the cachet of being known to be in with la Princesa Imperial. Even if she’s not held in the best regard at Court.”
Jaume shook his head. “Which is absurd. Well, enough of this—and fretting over the mystery of why such a doomed venture appeals to the ambitious Dowager Duchess, much less a knight as seasoned as her son Falk.”
She went rigid. Desire died. Feeling died. She was left feeling clammy and empty.
Jaume instantly raised his hands to grasp her by the shoulder and moved a half step back.
“I’ve done something to hurt you,” he said. “I apologize.”
No, my love, she thought. Not you. It was hearing the man I love—and fully intended to fuck until I couldn’t anymore—say that name.
She opened her mouth to tell him what Falk had done to her. And—couldn’t. She could not force her lips to shape the words, nor her throat to pass the sounds.
Why can’t I tell him? she asked herself. No answer came. It wasn’t even the cold fact that Falk was still the hero who saved her father at Canterville, while Jaume remained barely rehabilitated, thus politically poison.
I just can’t bring myself to tell him. Him, of all people. Because if I did, it would feel as if … that man violated me all over again.
It was a brutal choice between allowing her enemy to deny her the pleasure of full reconciliation with the man she’d loved so long—and defiling their lovemaking with his touch. But it was not a hard one to make.
She put a hand on his chest and pushed herself away, gently but definitely.
“I’m sorry, mi amor,” she said. “I—I find I can’t, much as I want to. I tried to rediscover my center in sex in Providence, and that didn’t turn out well.”
Which was true—as far as it went, which was only halfway. She knew, intellectually, that hadn’t been the fault of the fucking, per se. It was that it had set her up for betrayal. Although in the end everyone was betrayed by those they trusted most, including Bogardus, whom Melodía mostly pitied now, and even the frightful Violette.
