by Victor Milán
Or started to. When she opened her mouth Pilar brought her riding crop down in a whistling-vicious slash. It took Melodía across the crown of her head. It hurt like fuck, despite the cushioning of hat and hair. She flung up both hands protectively.
“How dare you talk back to me?” Pilar yelled. Even in a seethe of pain and indignation it rang uncomfortably familiar in Melodía’s ears. “I’ll teach you to be impertinent.”
And leaning from the saddle she proceeded to thrash Melodía most thoroughly on her upflung arms, and then her back and shoulders, until the Princess collapsed, sobbing helplessly, in the pumice.
“There,” Pilar said in satisfaction.
Looking up through a waterfall of tears Melodía saw her servant straighten in her saddle and let her crop—which she had never used on her actual mount—dangle by a strap.
“She’ll remember that lesson a while, don’t you think, Mor Tristan?” she said, smoothing her hair and white blouse.
Tristan bowed low again. “I shall certainly remember it, Mademoiselle,” he declared, and Melodía could hear unmistakable irony in his voice. “It would be our honor to escort you to the border of our county.”
“Stop sniveling,” Pilar said imperiously. It actually took Melodía a moment to realize she was talking to her. By sheer process of elimination, mostly, at that: she was the only one sniveling after all. “Pick yourself up and get back on your horse. Or I’ll give you something to really whine about—and at the next farm I’ll sell that mare, who’s much too fine for the likes of you, and buy you a bony nag far more in keeping with your station.”
Melodía’s arms and back blazed with unaccustomed pain. Her pride hurt scarcely less. But that pitiless voice sounded as if meant what it said. Feeling older even than la Madrota, the unbelievably ancient Queen Tyrannosaurus of Tower Delgao, she picked herself up, pushed away Meravellosa who was trying to nuzzle her comfortingly, and hauled herself onto the saddle with approximately the same grace as she would have loaded on an equivalent weight of meal in a sack.
The unlikely cavalcade set out again. The “Baronesa” rode knee to knee with the handsome young knight, gossiping with cheerful malice about what Melodía realized were thinly veiled personalities from the Corte Imperial. Having never seen young Tristan’s face at court, Melodía knew he’d have no way of recognizing they weren’t really hangers-on of some bent-centimo magnate of La Meseta.
Young Mor Tristan restricted his contributions to agreeing gallantly with whatever had fallen most recently out of Pilar’s mouth during her infrequent pauses. As Melodía’s pains and passions settled back from the boil she found her perceptions unnaturally keen: the rustle of the broad splayed leaves above them, the smell of the forest and the sweating beasts, the usual chittering debate overhead between toothy birds and furred fliers, the feathery touch of a breeze on her face. Which now felt as if a red-hot iron mask had been clamped over it.
The men riding behind her also spoke, pitching their voices low. “Did you see the rack on that Baroness? Shitfire or not, I’d love to bury my cheeks between them.”
“I’d pay to see you try, Corneille. Me, I’d rather try to screw a red-feathered horror. Safer in the long run.”
“How about the wench, then?” persisted Corneille, who was manifestly hornier than was good for him. “She’s almost as hot.”
Almost? Melodía thought. She carefully kept her shoulders slumped and eyes downcast. But she did wish for soldier ants to bite Corneille most enthusiastically on the genitals at the next stop.
“You’d be almost as great a fool to lay a finger on her,” said the other man. “Me, I’m afraid to touch anything that belongs to that she-spider. Even her shadow.”
Chapter 2
Los Compañeros de Nuestra Señora del Spejo, The Companions of Our Lady of the Mirror—An Order Military made up of dinosaur knights sworn to serve the Creator Bella, which was founded by its Captain-General, Comte Jaume dels Flors, to serve beauty and justice and aid the oppressed. Their churchly charter restricts them to no more than twenty-four serving members, picked from the most heroic, virtuous, artistically accomplished, and beautiful young men of Nuevaropa and beyond, not all of noble birth. They are encouraged to form lasting romantic pairs among themselves to further cement their bonds. Nuevaropa’s most renowned warriors, led by its foremost living philosopher and poet.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“—and in the heat of the Battle of Blueflowers”—the round man’s tenor voice bubbled with outrage—“they held back and did nothing—nothing!—while our beloved brother Sieur Percil was cruelly slain, and the heroic lords Yannic and Longeau suffered the wounds whose marks you see before you!”
Though Rob sat under guard at the back of the villa’s banquet hall, he could clearly see Yannic, seated up front near the Council dais. The nobleman’s narrow head was wrapped in bandages that left only eyes, mouth, and nostrils uncovered. Rob reckoned whatever lay beneath could hardly help being an improvement on what Yannic had started with.
He did find it an interesting commentary on the current balance of power in Providence, or at least the town, that the only town lord privileged to sit at the high table was Longeau, himself a Council member.
“As for our country brethren, Baron Ismaël of Fond-Étang was captured and carried back to Crève Coeur to be held for ransom. Baron Travise, sorely wounded, barely escaped the fray. His squire and servants carried him back to the Glades to recuperate.”
The speaker himself was unwounded in his well-filled robes of green and gold. “Melchor, you fat, treacherous bastard,” Rob muttered to Karyl, who sat beside him on the bench built out from the hall’s rear wall. “I thought he was the most reasonable of the lot. And here he was working to undermine us all the time.”
Karyl returned the slightest of shrugs. “No doubt you’re right.”
Rob glared at him. “Isn’t that something of a cavalier attitude when we’re on trial for our lives?”
“The play’s only begun,” Karyl said. “Providentials like their drama. This production will be long drawn out. Let’s wait to see the climax, shall we?”
“As long as it fails to involve a black hood, an axe, and Rob Korrigan’s young neck.”
Karyl laid his head back against the wall and closed his eyes. Rob scowled even more furiously. Which did him as much good as you’d expect any face made, to appearances, at a sleeping man.
Karyl wore his usual mendicant-monk outfit, and cradled his blackwood walking-stick against one shoulder like a child its stuffed toy. The instant the town guards had stepped up to arrest them on the rainy Western Road, Karyl had spontaneously developed a grievous limp. Whether they thought he’d been hurt in the rout at Blueflowers, or an old campaign injury was acting up, the guardsmen hadn’t interfered when Karyl asked an archer to bring his stick from the farm. Nor had anyone bothered to inspect it.
“What of our Brother Cuget, who set aside his dislike for violence to put himself in the path of those who despoil our Garden?” Sister Violette’s voice rang like a malicious bell.
Melchor’s head-shake made his sideburned jowls jiggle portentously. “Dead, Sister Violette. Dead and abandoned on the battlefield by those cowards there.”
He thrust a theatrical arm like a spear at Karyl and Rob. Heads turned. Faces flushed with fury or furrowed with interest or hung slack with incomprehension.
Rob stood up and took a bow.
Violette nodded her head of long, silver hair, done up in a complicated bun at the back of her fine head. Her eyes, which matched her name, flashed with passion and triumph.
“Allow me to sum up the indictments against you,” she declaimed to Rob and Karyl. “The terrible raids by Count Guillaume of Crève Coeur’s knights forced us, in violation of our principles, to hire you to defend us. Yet when the time came to face a Brokenheart invasion in the field, you hung back. And so because of your cowardice—to call it plainly what it was—disaster be
fell our nobles, and our people.”
“That’s a lie!” a voice shouted from the crowd.
It was the old farmer Pierre. Mud still caked his face and streaked his raptor-scarred leg. A rag whose bloodstains barely stood out against the filth encircled his head. A knot of his fellow peasants stood around him at the hall’s left front.
Violette’s face became a mask of almost insane rage. But only Rob, it seemed, was looking at her.
“The captain tried to stop a foolish attack,” Pierre said. “He ordered us to stand fast. We—I disobeyed. To my bitter cost. My eldest son lies in that field. Raptors rip his limbs, and fliers are pecking the eyes from the head I used to tousle when he was small. It was the lords who did it, and Karyl and his lieutenant who tried to stop it.”
If Melchor could have incinerated the old man with his eyes, he would have. But he left it to Violette to reply.
“Who’s most to be believed? A man of gentle birth, or some rude farmer who brings his dirt with him into our hall?”
“Does our Garden value birth over worth?” asked Bogardus. “Haven’t you always been among our most insistent, Sister Violette, that each shoot be allowed to grow as high as it can, without regard to antecedents?”
Her face pinched like a sea-scorpion’s claws. “Melchor’s a man of education.”
“Undoubtedly. Does that make him infallible?”
“You saw what happened,” Pierre called to the town craftsmen who had fought in the battle. Cleaner and more neatly dressed for visits to their own homes before coming here, they mostly stood clumped at the other side of the room. “You were there. Tell them.”
They looked to Reyn the carpenter. After a moment, he grimaced and nodded.
“It’s true. Captain Karyl told us to set up a strong defense and wait. The lords rode out in front and ordered us to charge.”
He shrugged big shoulders. “We obeyed. Betrayed by habit, I guess. We all lost friends and kin too, thanks to the lords. Or no thanks to them!”
“You’ll pay for this!” Yannic hissed through his head-swaddling. “I’ll have your ears for this!”
“I’m no serf of yours, Yannic. City air is free air. And what about the Garden and egalité?”
That set off a clamor like a harrier-pack screeching at the Moon Visible. Longeau’s tenor rang above the racket.
“All this to the side, no one disputes the foreign mercenaries held back, instead of joining us at the forefront of battle. What’s that, if not cowardice? Do you call that beauty, Eldest Brother?”
Rob looked to Karyl. His companion had his head tipped back against the mural that was his dead protégé’s only monument. His eyes were shut, his bearded lips slightly parted, as if he soundly slept.
“You know the truth!” Rob raged at him. Out loud: he could have screamed it without being heard anybody farther away. “You’ve got to tell them! Why won’t you defend yourself, man?”
As if that were his cue Bogardus raised his hands outward from his sides, unfurling his robe’s wide sleeves like wings. Once again he worked his magic and stilled the crowd.
“Perhaps we should let our captains tell their story,” he said. “Brother Karyl, if you please?”
Karyl opened his eyes and stood up briskly. He didn’t act like a man who’d been dozing an eyeblink before. Rob doubted he had, in fact. But he also knew Karyl could wake from the deepest sleep in an instant. When the nightmares let him sleep deeply.
“The facts are as you’ve heard them, Eldest Brother. If our actions don’t speak loudly enough on our behalf, what can words do? We’d proclaim ourselves in the right whether we were or not.”
And he sat. Rob stared at him in horror.
“You’ve killed us, man,” he said, in Anglés thick with Traveler accent.
“It’s only the second act,” Karyl answered him in Francés. “Wait for the finale.”
“That’s what I’m afraid of,” he said. “Specifically, mine.”
Yet Karyl had it right: the show was far from over. If these mad Providentials loved one thing more than art, it was arguing. Preferably at the top of their lungs, faces red and spittle flying like Ovdan horse-nomad arrows. Which they duly fell to now, with a will.
Clearly Bogardus believed Karyl—perhaps because he hired the outsiders in the first place, and badly wanted to. At least he seemed to listen as attentively when the lowborn spoke as the high, which was more than most of the Council did. Or for that matter most Gardeners. Rob couldn’t help thinking of the softness of their hands, and how notably toil hadn’t stained their simple yet costly garb. Only the raw acolytes did anything useful—even tend the namesake gardens.
“Why won’t Bogardus speak up for us?” Rob muttered. He wasn’t sure what was actually being said: plucking out words like treachery and dismemberment from the general tumult had made him shut his ears. Instead he tried to track the collective passion. Which seemed to go up and down like a seesaw. “He carries the whole damn town in the palms of his hands.”
“He wants this settled once and for all,” Karyl said. “If he imposes a solution, it’ll be like face-paint over a festering boil. Maggots would breed beneath.”
And sometimes Himself shows quite the streak of poetry, Rob thought. He sighed. For once he decided to keep his tongue on a short rein. He’d already mentioned headsmen and nooses as often as good taste allowed, in any event.
An urchin slipped in the doorway to Rob’s left, past the guardsman, who frowned officiously but made no move to stop him. Or her. Rob could never tell. But he instantly recognized the shock of ragged black hair, snub-nosed face, the shapeless grey sack of frock.
Like a ferret, Petit Pigeon never took a direct route across the open unless there was no choice. Sidling up to Rob, the child-spy whispered in his ear. As Rob listened his eyebrows slowly rose toward the shock of bronze-tawny hair he knew was standing up all awry from running anguished fingers through it.
“Good work,” he said when Little Pigeon finished. He dug in his pouch and gave the child a copper centime. Little Pigeon grinned, showing startling-white teeth, and slipped quickly back out between the town guards at the door.
Not five breaths later Emeric strode in. His face showed grim and rough-hewn humor. The sentries made as if to stop him. A narrowing of forest-green eyes snapped them back into their places like spring-mounted toys.
The woods-runner took his turn whispering in Rob’s not so shell-like ear. Fighting back a laugh that threatened to boil over like water from an unwatched pot, Rob thanked him. Emeric went out, flicking the guardsmen with a glance like spit.
Rob leaned his head near Karyl’s. “I’ve just had two pieces of information drop into my lap,” he said. “Together they make the most remarkable whole.”
Circumstance overriding his own rhapsodic nature, Rob gave Karyl a succinct account. Then he leaned back, no longer fighting a beard-splitting grin, inviting his friend to admire his news.
Karyl cocked a skeptical brow. “Convenient, that one comes on the heels of the other.”
“Not really,” Rob said, shifting his butt on the hard bench with impatient energy. “The events they report happened close together. And for all Little Pigeon’s guile and Emeric’s gift for intimidation it took them a while to get past the guards.”
“Well. They’ve done a splendid job.” And unbelievably Karyl made to settle back into his nap.
“What the Old Hell’s wrong with you?” Rob hissed. “This proves our case!”
“Not necessarily,” Karyl said. “It doesn’t exculpate us, only spreads the guilt around. At best, it might deflect attention from us briefly.”
“But the debate’s going against us! A little less attention might be just what we need. For instance, to make a quick nocturnal dash for the frontier.…”
Karyl opened one eye. “Worried?”
“Shouldn’t you be?” Rob asked.
Karyl smiled slightly. Then he laid his head back against the cool painted wall and to all appe
arance dozed peacefully off.
I hope you’ve got some bloody plan in that dented, nightmare-haunted skull of yours, Rob thought savagely, and aren’t just sinking back into the cold-comfort muck of fatalism.
But Rob’s psychic powers failed him. Which was small surprise, since despite his heritage he had none. Which was just as well, or he’d likely be held in thrall by some bloody banking-house, Creators’ Law against slavery be hanged.
Which on reflection didn’t look so bad a place to be, just now. Bogardus clearly favored the men he’d hired. So did the commoners, peasants and townsfolk alike, who had fought at the blueflower field. But sentiment among the townsfolk who had crowded in to watch, and more to the point, among the surviving Council members, ran strongly against them.
Despite the tension, and sleeping from the time they’d been locked into villa rooms in lieu of cells—not very restfully, for some reason—until summoned for trial, Rob dozed off.
As he discovered when a voice blaring like a trumpet too close to his left ear jarred him awake.
“Can I be heard?”
* * *
In the darkness the horse whickered and tossed its head as Jaume cinched the saddle on top of the pad. He ignored the beast. It might have a name; he didn’t know or much care. To him it was a mode of transport—a living being to be treated with kindness, of course, because that was the Lady’s way, as well as his natural inclination. But it meant nothing special to him, not the way a good dinosaur did. Certainly not like his beloved Corythosaurus Camellia. In that he was the opposite of his estranged lover, who cared little for dinosaurs but doted on horses, especially her mare Meravellosa.
Melodía. The name tolled like a funeral bell in his mind, and left a taste of ashes on his tongue.
The orange glow that danced suddenly upon the polished leather of the saddle told him the horse wasn’t in fact reacting to this unaccustomed nocturnal activity, but to the approach of living beings.
He turned. His first reaction was to frown. The torch was held up by the trembling hand of none other than his arming-squire, Bartomeu. It illuminated the glum faces of five Companions.
