by Victor Milán
“The people who live above the outlet can’t be best pleased.”
“It’s mostly a warehouse district. The tanners at the base of the hill are happy enough with the arrangement.”
Rob snapped his fingers. “Wait. Wait, now. How to get dinosaurs out of a city with only one way in or out—that implies you can get them into it the same way. That’s a smuggler’s route, that is, and not another thing. You’re a noble born. I’m a scoundrel, a Traveler and a minstrel, if that’s not multiply redundant. I know how I’d know whom to ask and how to learn such clandestine things. But how did you?”
“You forget I spent years as a penniless wanderer, with nothing to sell but my own paltry skills at fighting—and the much more substantial skills of my mount. Not all the jobs I took on during that time were savory. You wrote songs on that very subject, I believe.”
“That I did. Those Guardia dung beetles beat what poor wits I’ve got right out of me, I guess.”
The two dinosaurs limped on for a spell, with no more noise than the crunch of dry vegetation and the odd piece of gravel underfoot, and their labored breathing.
“So I suppose we’ll be parting ways, once we reach the bottom,” Rob said at last.
“If you so choose.”
“What? You mean you don’t so choose?”
“No.”
“Far be it from me to argue with what’s still unquestionably the deadliest man on Paradise.”
“It’s never stopped you before.”
“But why? Why wouldn’t you want to see the last of me? I did a terrible thing, a terrible wrong. I betrayed you, Karyl. Sure, I did it for what I thought was your own good. And mine, and that of all the world. And I was that terrified of what you were dabbling in, that my suspicious nature never so much as twitched its nose hairs at the machination of that witch Margrethe.”
He frowned. “Then again, she saw to it that I was drunk, drugged, and drowning in pussy my whole time in town, before tonight. And that goblin-visaged seneschal of mine, he’s in it to the eyebrows, too! Why else did the Duke so kindly volunteer to lend the wretch to me? Great rogues, the lot of ’em! If Bergdahl knows what’s good for him, he’ll not be hanging about the manor house when I get home. Anyway—that still doesn’t excuse what I did. I won’t ask your forgiveness.”
“Which is part of why I choose to give it to you,” Karyl said. “I don’t have enough friends to be eager to lose any of them. Any more of them. We’ve been through a lot together, you and I. You fought by my side tonight.”
“As if I’d a choice, other than to let those masked heathens murder me!”
“You got Shiraa ready for me to ride out, when you could have gone on with a fair chance of getting away clean.”
Rob sighed. “It’s a fair cop. Very well. If you’re too big a fool to discard me, the wretched Rob Korrigan, then I’ll follow you to the ends of Paradise, Karyl. But there is one thing I have to say.”
“I suspect I know what that is, too. The Fae.”
“Aye,” said Rob. “I told you so.”
Chapter 51
Dragón Largovuelo, Long-Flying Dragon.…—Quetzalcoatlus northropi. The largest, mightiest, and farthest-ranging of the giant predatory pterosaurs called dragons or Azhdarchids. Up to 11 meters long, weighing as much as 250 kg, these majestic monsters get their names because they can cross the oceans of Paradise on wings which also span 11 meters. While it is a myth that Quetzalcoatlus or any dragon can fly away with a normal-sized adult human—reports exist of them carrying off small children, and they definitely make away with small livestock such as Fatties—they pose a very terrible danger to people and animals. Though unwieldy on land, they stand as tall as a reared-up Tyrannosaurus rex, and take their prey by stabbing it with two-meter beaks like spear-heads.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“The larger fires—the green ones—seem to have been illusory,” Jaume said to Melodía and the Emperor. He’d just returned from making inquiries on the Majestad side of the Bridge, where acolytes of the various sects housed in the city’s great temple, La Casa de Cielo y Terra, tended to the injured, while the mothers and fathers of the Church stood around in their fine ceremonial gowns of silk and feathers and looked important. “Like the first magical firewall we encountered in the village of La Bajada. The only real fires appear to have been set to things that catch light readily, like wooden-framed crossbows, or hair. The only deaths those caused were of people who panicked and fell into the Moat. It appears four Heart’s Defenders died that way. Actual burns were mostly minor, I take it?”
“Yes,” Melodía said.
She stood with her father, Jaume, and some key Palace personnel to one side of La Entrada. The Scarlet Tyrants and Heart’s Defenders had tactfully but firmly kept the Emperor cooling his heels in the Patio while they scoured Palace and Porch. She’d spent most of the last hour helping tend to the injured. So far, they reported finding nothing but the corpses of a shocking number of sicarios, all dead of extreme violence.
If you go against Karyl, what else can you expect? Melodía thought. She herself was exhausted, but grateful her recent ministrations had given her something to do besides think of the shambles the night had made of all they’d worked for. And what the future might hold accordingly.
“The worst injuries we found were a few broken limbs from falling off the wall onto El Porche, and burns on Defensores’ hands from trying to beat out the flames. A lot got some singeing on their scalps, but nothing terribly serious.”
“Except for one,” Jaume said, his beautiful face troubled. “Count Vargas was burned beyond recognition, and his breastplate and back were melted to his corpse, as if he’d been thrown in a smelting furnace.”
“Similar to what happened on the dock in Laventura,” Felipe said.
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“It seems as if it’s hard for whoever it was who did this—we might as well call them the Fae as anything—to work magic,” Melodía said. “I mean, the wall of fire you ran into, and the bigger fires we saw on the wall tonight—those were just illusions. Almost all the real ones set fire to wood and hair but didn’t burn anybody up.”
“Living flesh is hard to kindle and keep alight,” Jaume said. “It’s too wet.”
“Right.” She swallowed. It wasn’t a pleasant thing to know, really. “So in Laventura the real Faerie fire, the fatal kind, was saved for the key moment. As it was here, I take it?”
Jaume nodded. “Witnesses said the dinosaur knight had managed to knock Shiraa to the ground. The Majesty’s Guards had Karyl pinned to the pavement. Vargas was toying with him, apparently preparing to have his sackbut step on him and crush him. Incinerating him saved the Duke of the Borderlands’ life. Which the … entity who did it must have reckoned important enough to expend the effort to do.”
Melodía shuddered. It was hard to think of anyone deserving so frightful a fate. Yet the Conde de Vargas had a reputation for cruelty to his serfs and others—just the sort of scofflaw grande her father might have sent Jaume and the Army of Correction off to sort out, if Raguel hadn’t let word of his Emergence slip, so that the Pope declared Crusade against the Garden of Beauty and Truth in Providence. But what he was trying to do to Karyl was no kinder, she thought. And that’s one loud voice for war that’s been silenced, anyway.
Not that it would matter now, of course. She was half proud, half shaken to realize that La Madrota’s way of thinking had taken root in her.
“What about the dinosaurs?” asked Felipe.
“There’s a curious thing,” Jaume said. “We couldn’t find a single scorched scale on any of them. Shiraa killed Mor Francisco de Ávila’s sackbut in the Majestad plaza and injured him severely. Mora Antonia López’s morion, Redentora, had her shoulder broken when Little Nell slammed her against the Bridge’s rail.”
“Don Placido, our Palace dinosaur master, has sedated the animal with herbs and examined her,” Felipe said. “He’s a dinosaur chirurgeon of famo
us skill; he believes he’ll be able to heal her, though right now he’s trying to figure out a way to transport her safely into the city to treat her and clear the Bridge. Mora Antonia remains missing after her fall into the Moat. We have search parties down there now, but we can only surmise she drowned in the Río Rabioso, if the fall didn’t kill her.”
“I told you, Your Majesty,” declared Dowager Duchess Margrethe loudly, as she emerged from the Entrada with her son in tow. “Karyl Bogomirskiy was never to be trusted. Now you can see I’m right. He maimed my poor son, who saved your life in battle, and his pet monster savagely scarred Snowflake’s beautiful white face. “
A light rain began to drizzle from the now-dense clouds above. Appropriate, Melodía thought, her stomach souring.
Though he still hulked over his already-large mother, the Duke von Hornberg looked oddly deflated, with his mouth stuffed full of bandages. Poor baby, Melodía exulted. But why didn’t Karyl kill you?
Oh, well. We can’t have everything. At least you’re suffering.
“I for one don’t pretend to have any idea what really happened here tonight,” Felipe said.
“But it’s plain as the peak above our heads, Your Majesty!” Margrethe exclaimed. “Karyl turned traitor, not just to yourself and the Fangèd Throne, but the whole human race! He colluded with the Evil Ones—I will not pollute my tongue with their name—”
At the word “tongue,” her son squinted and made unhappy muffled noises.
“—as well as hired a band of murderers, in a blatantly obvious scheme to overthrow you!”
Felipe held up a hand. “Enough,” he said, so forcefully the Dowager Duchess blinked.
You’re not used to being spoken to that way, are you? Melodía thought. Well, you may have snared my father with your concha, but he’s still the Emperor, and you’re still the back-country relict of a famously bad man.
“I am far from satisfied as to what really happened here tonight,” Felipe continued in a stern tone that was almost utterly unfamiliar to his elder daughter and heir. “Much less am I convinced that I played the total fool by elevating Karyl Bogomirskiy in rank. It could be so. But there’s too much mystery here for me to conclude anything before a most thoroughgoing investigation is carried out. Which I shall supervise myself.”
Margrethe’s pale-blue eyes blazed briefly. Then she dropped them. “Yes, Your Majesty. I apologize if I gave offense.”
“Oddly enough,” Jaume said across the uncomfortable silence that ensued, “all the injuries to war-hadrosaurs in the Patio seem to have been a result of Her Highness’s commendably zealous efforts to lead the pursuit of the fugitives.”
He knows too! Melodía realized, from the way he smiled as he said it. As of course he would; he was still the most renowned dinosaur knight in all the Empire of Nuevaropa, because he was still the best.
Rosamaría stepped from the shadows into the light that spilled from inside the Heart. Which was such an utterly La Madrota thing to do that Melodía couldn’t completely hide her smile. Melodía had noticed her ancestress and mentor standing silently by when she rejoined her father, in part, no doubt, because the ancient woman intended she should. But she had hung back, observing. As she had done for centuries.
“Felipe,” she said. “Your daughter has learned the important skill of riding a war-dinosaur, if clearly still in somewhat … embryonic form. You will find, I think, that if it’s not time to knight her, it will be soon.”
She’s thinking ahead, Melodía thought. Past tonight’s disaster to what she can do to undo or contain the damage. Pride filled her at recognizing that—and then she had to blink away tears as pride at her own achievement overcame her. At her performance on Tormento, whose near-perfect success astonished her. At the equally astonishing rapport she’d felt with, yes, a war-dinosaur. He’d never supplant Meravellosa in her heart—no one and nothing could—but she now considered him a partner in a way she’d never conceived she could.
And she could never reveal what she’d really done. That she’d deliberately inflicted humiliation on so many important grandes would cause irreparable breaches within the Empire if it came out. But Auriana, Rosamaría, and Jaume knew. And that was almost enough.
To cover her sudden and probably disproportionate joy she flung her arms around her father’s neck. “I’ve been training for weeks, Daddy! La Madrota arranged for it.”
She began crying openly at seeing his eyes and face light up with sudden pleasure.
“In secret?” he asked, amused.
“It was supposed to be a surprise. But—I don’t think it’s anywhere near time to speak of knighthood.” Saying that gave her an odd sense of relief. She rationalized it by thinking the way she thought La Madrota would: that to dub her so quickly would cause resentment that her father didn’t need, now of all times.
The fact is, it scares me.
“Let me remind you, my boy,” Rosamaría said, “that your daughter rode a hadrosaur in defense of you and the Fangèd Throne.”
“Not very damned well,” grumbled Archiduc Antoine, who was being helped into the Heart by several retainers. The Palace healer, a peasant-born woman called Maestra Inés, who shaved her head and whose age was unguessable, had smilingly browbeaten the fiery Francés noble into lying flat on his back for the whole last hour while she made certain he hadn’t suffered injury to his spine. With luck, his body would ache for days from being chucked into a brick wall by a two-ton dinosaur.
His pride would ache considerably longer.
“Nonetheless,” Rosamaría said. For her part, Melodía successfully resisted the impulse to give him el dado.
“If I might interject, Your Majesty,” Jaume said, “the Princess Melodía amply demonstrated both her heroism and her skill in battle—ultimately, in service of the Throne—time and again in the fight against the Grey Angel Horde. As is more than amply attested to by numerous eyewitnesses, of noble birth as well as common.”
Felipe beamed. “So you did, daughter my dear! And so it shall be. But—I think it’s got to wait for a happier occasion.”
“I agree,” Melodía said, her heart in her throat from pride, trepidation, and relief at once. La Madrota nodded—openly, this time, though Melodía knew the gesture was aimed at her.
At least I’m spared for now. She couldn’t really stay mad at Jaume for having thrust her to a place she really didn’t want to be. But she did have an idea how she’d insist he make it up to her, later that night when they were alone …
“I so decree,” Felipe said, looking around the now sizable group clustered outside the entrance to the Imperial Heart. His head was high and his gaze and voice were firm. Melodía saw that he was relishing acting altogether Imperial and firm—something he seldom got to do. Of course, the last time he did that, it ended in disaster, she thought. But he looks so happy in spite of everything that’s happened that I don’t have the heart to even try to bring his feet back down to Paradise.
He’s not the best Emperor, she thought. He’s not even the best father. But he’s my father, and he loves me, and Montse, and we love him. Wherever my poor sister is now, may the Creators who I now know are real keep her safe! He’s in his glory, and good for him.
“Let’s all go inside,” the Emperor said, “enjoy some nice mulled wine or heated cider, and then sleep as soundly as we can. This bodrio probably won’t look any prettier by morning light, but at least if we’re well rested, cleaning it up won’t seem quite as insurmountable.”
“But Your Majesty!” exclaimed Centurión Lugo von Necker, the highest-ranked surviving Tyrant who wasn’t their commander. “There may still be some intruders hiding in the Palace! It’s the very nature of assassins to be stealthy.”
“But it has never been my nature to hide, Centurión,” Felipe said gently. “I trust the diligence of your men, as well as Los Defensores. Come inside with me, all of you. No point standing out here getting wet—”
“Look!” someone shouted. “Up above us!”
Melodía did. As did everybody else.
Through the clouds directly over their heads shone an intense golden light. As Melodía watched, it grew larger and more intense, until her eyes began to prickle and water, as if she stared too long into the sun.
A noise like a million trumpets blasting at once split the sky. Literally, or next to it: the dense clouds rippled away from the dazzling light like water from a thrown stone.
In the middle of the hole, in the middle of refulgence intense as the heart of a lightning bolt, the figure of a woman hung in the sky, suspended by a pair of wings as vast as a Quetzalcoatlus’s. In one hand she held a naked longsword; in the other, a huge, curled post-horn.
Chapter 52
Equilibrio Sagrado, Sacred Equilibrium—The Great Ultimate Principle of the Creators and their worldwide faith, called taiji in the Language of Heaven, which is spoken in Chánguo: dynamic balance among all things, characterized as opposing yet constantly interacting principles of feminine yin and masculine yang. Its symbol is the taiji tu: a circle containing a dark side and a light side separated by an S-curve.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“It’s better than I dared hope,” Rob said, squatting and gingerly examining the last spear wound he could find on Little Nell with a burning pine splinter in one hand and a wet rag in the other. “The deepest wounds only go into muscle, and those look as if they’ll heal quick enough. No damage to her innards at all, so far as I can tell.”
“Humans and dinosaurs have a lining around their stomach cavities,” said Karyl, who was similarly engaged with Shiraa across the little fire they’d built on the side of the ridge they’d chosen to camp on. “It’s tough to penetrate. Far tougher than most realize.”
“Oh, aye,” Rob said.
He straightened. The motion reminded him of his own cracked ribs. At least no jagged ends seemed to be poking him in the lungs; and aside from a stray finger or two and his nose, no bones broken. Nothing he hadn’t had before. Especially the nose.
