by Victor Milán
“Stop, you!” a voice clanged from behind him.
He didn’t know it was possible for his heart to sink lower than his sandal soles. And I should’ve known they weren’t to be deterred at this point from taking their prey.
Inspiration, his inconstant blessing, struck him as he dodged between tables to another aisle. He did stop, to turn around and bellow—
“Assassins! They’ve come to kill the Emperor! Alarm, alarm! ¡Viva Felipe!”
That made everybody look. Specifically, everybody Rob could see in the vast kitchen stopped to stare, first at him and then, as if their heads were somehow joined together at the cheekbones, toward the three black-clad men who stood waving swords in the doorway. Except for the quartet tending the roasting nose-horn, who stuck single-mindedly to their task of not burning a Centrosaurus carcass bound for the Imperial table.
The sicario leader, the one who’d hollered after Rob, advanced. He swung his arming-sword left and right to menace the assembled workers.
“All right, you peasant scum,” he declared as the other two took off running down the aisles flanking Rob to right and left to cut off his escape, “you’d better not interfere with us, or things will go badly for—”
Apparently for him, since the rest of the declamation was lost in demoniac shrieking as the huge chief cook wordlessly picked up the equally imposing kettle off the stove by its wooden handles and upended the boiling contents over the assassin’s black-swathed head.
A blend of scratcher-meat, leeks, and garlic in goat-cream sauce, by the look and smell, thought Rob. Tasty!
The screams cut off when the chef reversed her grip on the black iron cauldron and smote him ringingly over the head with it. He fell down, his legs and hands twitching.
The vexer turned, skipped across the heavy cutting table, and, using the nominal lifting power of its outflung wing-arms, threw its ten or twelve kilos right into a sicario’s face. Its outsized hind claws began to rake at the man’s black-cloth-covered faces as its teeth raked his exposed forehead. Its screeches were only marginally shriller than his.
All around Rob the kitchen staff had taken up whatever potentially damaging implements were at hand: large, scary knives; sharpening steels; stout metal ladles. The assassin moving down the aisle to what was Rob’s right, now that Rob had turned back, slowed and brought up his arming-sword and buckler as a crowd of armed cooks barred his path. A tall youth loomed up behind him and buried a cleaver in his back with a mighty overhand swing.
The head cook turned to Rob. “You!” she said, waving the massive kettle at him with one hand. “Run and spread the alarm. Save His Majesty. We’ll handle these monsters!”
Since all three sicarios had now vanished beneath mobs of yelling, red-faced, hacking, stabbing, and whacking cooks—and one still-infuriated vexer, now ripping at him with a red-stained muzzle—Rob wondered who was being more monstrous.
Not that the fuckers don’t have it coming, he thought.
And, not failing to congratulate himself on his sudden bolt of genius, Rob turned to race on out the way he’d first come in. He only braked long enough to toss his purloined buckler clanging on the tiled floor, and pick up a stout cream pitcher in its place. It was mostly full, going by its heft.
“Now, this is a weapon I understand,” he murmured. “Not quite a beer flagon. But close enough!”
He ran on out, hollering, “Murder! Assassins! They’ve come to kill the Emperor!” at the top of his well-trained lungs.
* * *
Five men in gold armor with scarlet plumes and capes suddenly appeared in the Emperor’s candlelit private dining hall.
And here I thought the meal couldn’t get more uncomfortable, Melodía thought, looking to her father and unavoidably noticing the white bulk of Margrethe von Hornberg at his side. Beside Melodía, Rosamaría calmly continued transferring to her mouth a spoonful of boiled scratcher-flesh in goat-cream sauce, with onions and a few green chilies imported from Tejas—the latest culinary fad to emanate from the great Western port of La Merced—to give it bite.
“Your Majesty,” said the sargento in command of the Scarlet Tyrant puño. He had a complexion like a Spañol’s, but like many Tyrants his accent was that of an Alemán-speaking Riquezo from a mountainous autonomous province in the north that was a nominal fief of Duke Roger of Sansamour. “The alarm has been raised. We got reports that assassins are inside the Corazón. And that they may be seeking to harm you. We’re here to secure you.”
Margrethe von Hornberg sat bolt upright. Her blue eyes were wide in alarm. It could have been for the safety of her lover and her Emperor. Or for something else.
Could you look more guilty? Melodía wondered, gazing surreptitiously at the Dowager Duchess’s pale face. But what does it matter? You know as well as I do that what my father thinks is the only thing that matters. And he sees no harm in anything you do, or you’d be out on your broad Alemana ass already!
But the Duchess recovered quickly. “It’s that Karyl behind it! It must be. I told you he was a snake, Felipe. You never should’ve pardoned his outlawry.”
“He pardoned his daughter, too, Your Grace,” Rosamaría said sharply. “And for the same reasons. Your son as well, for that matter, after the Princes’ War. For reasons far less clear to me.”
Felipe held up a hand. “Let it be, Grandmother. I doubt Karyl would turn on me. But I promise, I’m taking nothing for granted.”
Rosamaría craned to put her lips near Melodía’s ear. “Go, girl. Go and do what needs to be done.”
“But my father—” she began out the side of her mouth. Her heart was racing so fast it almost tripped her words.
“Now she’s fucking him, he’s much more valuable to her alive than dead,” Rosamaría said. “For now. ¡Vete!”
Melodía stood. “I’m going to see what’s happening, Father.”
Felipe’s brow creased in concern. At least he’s been more aware of my existence since welcoming me back into the fold, she thought. Not that it’s mattered. But it feels better, anyway.
“Are you sure, daughter? These men and the Heart’s Defenders are here to protect you, too.”
“I’ve fought for you before. I’ll do it now if I have to.”
It clanged in her own ears as she said it like the pure bombast it was. Being her father, and part Alemán himself, Felipe ate it up. He showed his teeth in a proud and brilliant smile and nodded vigorously.
“Brave girl! Go. Whatever happens, you’ll win more glory for La Torre Delgao.”
Felipe stood. “Gentlemen, escort me to the throne room, if you please.”
The sergeant’s dark face went ashen. “Your Majesty, you’re safe here. The throne room is the first place assassins would look for you!”
“And like this room, it has only two entrances,” Felipe said. That anyone knows about but us, Melodía thought. “My good bodyguards can defend me there as readily as here, ¿qué no?”
“Sí,” the sergeant reluctantly replied.
“Splendid. If I am to die tonight, I prefer to do it defending the Fangèd Throne and my family’s honor, not cowering in a refectory like a frightened child. Let’s go.”
He thrust his elbow at the Duchess. “Margrethe, my dear.”
The Dowager Duchess stood up so hastily she knocked the well-cushioned chair over with her well-cushioned behind.
“Your Majesty, there’s something urgent I must attend to,” she said. “I’ll join you as soon as I can.”
She pecked him on the cheek and hustled out the front entryway with a speed that surprised Melodía.
Her father frowned in annoyance when, at a furious nod from their commander, the five Tyrants formed a diamond around the Emperor. Arming-sword drawn, the Riquezo sergeant unceremoniously led off out the servant’s entrance. It was not his business to respect anybody’s dignity in case of threats against the Imperial person. Least of all that of the man whose body he’d pledged his life to guard.
Melodía gl
anced at La Madrota. If this was not mere mad rumor but real and some scheme of Margrethe’s—and Melodía knew her forebear didn’t doubt that any more than she did—Rosamaría Delgao would seem the most logical target.
But the ancient woman nodded. Her thin and wrinkled lips were curved in what Melodía could only think of as the smile of a woman who knew secrets.
Which of course she did—a million more than Melodía could guess at. Either she didn’t care if she lived or died now, which was unlikely, or she felt confident she could handle any threat. Given how old she is …
Without further thought for her mentor’s welfare, Melodía went briskly out the back way as well, trailing by a dozen steps the extra Tyrant guarding her father. He was walking backward as a rear guard, with his own sword out. Since he knew the Princess posed no threat, his green eyes slid over her without seeing, as if she were a wandering house cat.
She was sure he didn’t miss the fact that she ducked hastily down the first side passage that opened to her left. But that didn’t matter.
Even as La Madrota had assumed—or more likely, deduced—she realized with sudden pride that she did know what to do now.
Several things, in fact.
* * *
Falk sat upright from between the comforting warmth of his bedmates as the door to his chamber slammed open.
“Get up, you great dunderheaded titan!” his mother commanded. “We’ve got a dire emergency.”
“But, Mother, I thought you said you had it all taken care—”
“Halt’s Maul!”
He obediently shut up.
“The serving-slut can go in the Moat with the other trash, easily enough,” Dowager Duchess Margrethe continued in Alemán. She spoke as assuredly as if she knew neither of Falk’s lovers of the evening spoke their native language. Knowing her, she did. “The Countess Rincón might prove a touch more difficult to dispose of. I trust she’s here of her own free will, at least? Unlike the brainless chit you fucked by force in her father’s own home last year, Teresa’s got the intrigue skills to hurt you.”
He nodded. “Both. They—they wanted to.”
“Good. We don’t need more complications right now. Things are going rapidly to shit as it is. Now quit fucking around and get your armor on. There’s finally something useful for you to do!”
Chapter 44
Eris, La Luna Visible, the Moon Visible—The moon we see at night when the clouds clear. As distinct from La Luna Invisible, the Moon Invisible, where pious girls and boys know the Creators lived when they made Paradise out of Old Hell. It of course cannot be seen, but nevertheless, it is there.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
Opening the door of the small mud-brick storage shed, Karyl peered into the courtyard of La Corazón Imperial. The immediate vicinity, here where the curtain wall surrounding the big ledge met the steep face of Monte de Gloria, was quiet and dark. Eris, the Moon Visible, had been up but had set already, he knew. The warm night breeze blew into his face from the arid land to the north.
He had no doubt he could find a way up and over the wall against which the shed was built and that formed one wall of it. He had a certain knack for escaping tight situations. He’d done it before. But he couldn’t now.
Mostly because he couldn’t bear to be parted from his lifelong companion, as he had ridden Shiraa to La Majestad. Jaume’s ambler mare hadn’t been best pleased, but her rider understood Karyl’s reluctance to leave his matadora behind at Séverin Farm. The Conde dels Flors was famous for having a similarly close bond to his Corythosaurus war-mount, Camellia.
To keep Karyl’s arrival before the Fangèd Throne a secret, a week ago, Jaume had needed to find accommodations for Shiraa. She couldn’t be kept near duckbill war-mounts; though they were trained to face giant meat-eating dinosaurs, almost invariably marauding wild ones, they couldn’t stand being in constant close proximity with a full-grown Allosaurus. Falk’s Tyrannosaurus, Snowflake—small for a Tirán but bigger than Shiraa—had already been placed in solitary quarters in the Palace yard. As Shiraa’s rage-fired breakout at Canterville had shown, she and the albino monster she regarded as her mortal enemy couldn’t be stabled near each other, either.
But notwithstanding whatever shade under which Jaume had left the Court weeks before, he had returned as he left: still an Imperial Prince, still Marshal of the Armies and Condestable of all His Majesty’s fighting forces, sea and land, and still the unofficial but universally recognized Imperial Champion. He had already made covert preparations for Shiraa to be safely, quietly, and well housed during her master’s stay in the Imperial Heart.
Unfortunately, that safe, secure, quiet place lay at the Patio’s far extent, across the main boulevard and the large open space before the Palace entrance. Though the rather random huddle of apartments and storage buildings blocked his view, he could hear great commotion from that direction, including the bleating of annoyed hadrosaurs.
Motion caught the corner of his eye. He saw a pair of black-clad and masked sicarios, arming-swords out, skulking down a passageway to his left, toward the Moat and the Plateau-top city beyond.
From the fuss out in front of the entrance, he knew the alarm had been raised in the Palace. He had to assume at least some of those responding were hunting him—either in good faith, because he also knew the Dowager Duchess was canny and quick enough to claim he was behind the threat to the very heart of the Empire, or because they were in on the plot. Or, likely, both.
Karyl stood in the deepest available shadow as a matter of habit. The assassins moved out of sight beyond a three-story dormitory with no sign of noticing him. He did not assume that meant they hadn’t actually seen him. They were professional sneaks and tricksters.
They were also trained escapers. He was not. They’d be far more skilled than he was at running rooftops, for example.
So he looked for a narrow space between tall structures and ducked into it. Tucking his blackwood staff into the back of his belt, he stretched out his arms, satisfied he could exert sufficient pressure on both walls. Spreading both legs in a split, he put boot soles to brick and began to chimney-climb upwards.
He reached the top. To his left was a three-story warehouse, which, despite being made of humble bricks of stabilized local mud, sported a lush vegetable garden on its roof. On his right was the gutter of a pitched roof that had wooden planter boxes terraced up its steep slate sides.
“He’s up there!” he heard from down the alley.
He latched on to the warehouse roof with his left hand, which was the master hand, and stronger—Aphrodite’s insane magic had truly made it grow back as good as new. He yanked himself up onto its parapet and hauled himself over. It offered him a chance to increase separation from his immediate pursuers while he plotted an escape course. He could scramble up the terraced roof slope fairly quickly—but there it would pit the sicarios’ presumed but likely roof-running skills against his paltry ones. Whereas he doubted they could sprint faster.
He did so, dodging around or vaulting the three-meter-square planting boxes. The cliff face of Mount Glory, and by extension its Patio, faced southwest. He had emerged from the underground passage in the far northeast. His destination lay at almost the farthest possible extent—by the point where the wall once again met the cliff face, three hundred meters northwest. His present course took him toward the great gate, almost due west. It was the direction his hunters would expect him to go, since it offered the fastest way out—through the gate, across the drawbridge, and into the huddle of La Majestad. Where even such as he stood a strong chance of eluding such as they.
For now, that suited him. During his chimney climb, he’d had time to think. That meant he had a plan.
Most of the Porch’s pathways had grown up any which way over the centuries. Like La Majestad itself, and most of the Empire’s other great cities, really. Only newer ones, or cities like La Merced that had been rebuilt after a thorough razing, sho
wed anything resembling a neat grid. Here the only area to do so was that surrounding El Gran Patio, since those buildings’ construction had been planned by the Heart’s architect, Martina la Negra. And even during her lengthy lifetime, ancillary buildings such as equipment sheds and laborer’s housing had begun to spring up wherever someone found it convenient to put them. For all her legendary foresight, Martina had never realized they’d mostly grow into larger, more permanent structures over time.
Ahead and to his left, Karyl saw that the end of a two-story building, the line of its peaked roof angled perpendicular to his route, butted almost against the roof he was on. Left of that, at its roofline’s far end, stood another three-story building with a flat roof. He veered toward it, gained the nearer roof at a leap, ran along the peak without even looking down, and jumped to the next structure. He may not have had experience at scrambling over rooftops, but he had extremely good balance.
This building seemed to be an apartment, since the brick was finer, fired stuff, and blossoms fragrant despite being shut for the night seemed to be all around. Crickets sang here, as if to enhance the greater sense of luxury. He glanced back. The first two pursuers had just reached the top of the building he’d first climbed. But another pair came sliding toward him down the slope of building to his right. The glow of torchlight from the still-distant Patio skittered along the blades of the arming-swords in their hands.
Karyl turned his head wildly left and right, as if casting for a way to run. Just when he expected them to, the sicarios reached the gutter that ran along the pitched roof’s bottom edge and gathered themselves to jump across a four-meter gap.
He darted toward them. He reached the parapet just before the black-clad man to his right landed on it. With his right hand he thrust the tip of his blackwood staff into the assassin’s sternum. Knocked off-balance backward, the man hit the edge of the parapet with the soles of his felt boots. With a cry more of surprise than fear, he dropped from view toward the stone surface twelve meters below.
