by Victor Milán
“Oh, that’s not necessary. For one thing, I’m an outlaw. I may not even be a princess anymore, technically.”
“Of course you are,” he said blandly. “Felipe can’t attainder you without giving up his own lands and titles—including the Fangèd Throne. Welcome to Providence.”
She frowned. This wasn’t going at all the way she anticipated.
She had intended—well, she wasn’t entirely sure. Something involving apology for what her lover had done to him—at her father’s behest, and dutifully, but a terrible injustice. She wanted to assure him Jaume himself knew what the wrong had been, and felt contrition.
And here he was dismissing her like a foolish child. The way her father had rebuffed her efforts to take some active role at Corte Imperial.
“Count Jaume—” she began. Saying the name cost her pain, and caused the anger to flame up inside her. At herself and her beloved.
But Karyl himself stiffened at the name. “I mean,” she said, “we’re betrothed—practically—and, well—”
I’m making a fucking fool of myself, she realized. I’m trying to apologize, here! Why won’t this man listen?
But Karyl’s face had closed like an iron gate. “We prepare for war here, Princess,” he said curtly. “You will excuse me.”
He turned his back on her.
She was left standing rigid, eyes stinging, hands wrapped into fists so tight the backs of them ached. I abased myself to make things right with him and he, he spurned me! He treats me as less than filth. The way Falk did—
The rage made her want to vomit.
Then Bogardus touched her lightly on the arm. “Come on, Melodía,” he said gently. “You and Pilar must be exhausted by your travels. Let’s get you back to the villa.”
She made herself swallow her bile, and her fury, and force a smile at him.
“Yes, of course, Eldest Brother. We need to rest.”
Chapter 9
Hada, the Fae—Also demonio, demon. An individual is called a Faerie. A race of wicked supernatural creatures, who defy the Creators’ will, and seek to tempt humanity into ruin. Fighting together, humankind, the Grey Angels, and the Creators Themselves defeated their attempt to conquer all Paradise during the dreadful Demon War. Notorious for their pranks, which can be cruel, and their fondness for driving bargains with mortal men and women. Which they keep, but seldom as expected.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
Not long past sunset Rob walked the Imperial High Road toward Providence town. It was a beautiful evening. Overhead the clouds had already broken apart to reveal a sky shading from indigo toward black the farther it got from the eastern horizon, where the clouds were lit with fading glows in peach and lilac. The stars shone forth in glory. Late-summer insects trilled competition to the frogs in the ditch and along the riverbank nearby. The air was soft as a maiden’s kiss, and smelled of evening blossoms and distant suppers.
Rob Korrigan swaggered along in his bandy-legged way, his bootsoles crunching the tufa pebbles of the roadway, humming a song to himself. It was a ballad he was composing, a satire on the conduct of the town lords in the Battle of Blueflowers Fields. He did not expect to perform it at the Garden villa anytime soon.
He carried his axe across his shoulders. Its head was uncased. Though the land hereabouts wasn’t as mad-fecund as that lower down, there were few areas outside Nuevaropa’s higher mountains that were hard to get a living from. And Providence prospered at least as much through trade as farming.
But banditry had never, it seemed, been a great problem in Providence—at least, not until its highborn neighbors began to supply it in abundance. The major trade caravans, like those run by the house of Gaétan’s father, Évrard, offered fat prey, true enough—and safeguarded with packs of well-compensated bravos. Indeed the merchant clans grew bravos of their own, as Gaétan himself attested.
So the targets rich enough to draw attention from large, well-organized gangs tended to be too formidable to be worth the game. And the lesser traders, tinkers, and farmers simply weren’t worth the taking, when living was so relatively easy.
That had changed, though, with the refugees swarming to Providence town, especially in the wake of Salvateur’s fire-and-sword sweep. But not that much. Providencers were openhanded folk, if prone to argue the merits of poets and painters ferociously at the drop of a critical remark.
The woods-runners now gave vast respect to Karyl, and scarcely less to Rob, whose mounted scouts had helped them chase the hated Rangers back into Crève Coeur. They proved willing to let go of their traditional distaste and distrust for the Seated Folk enough to help the dispossessed. At least those who showed goodwill. Those who didn’t vanished; and Rob for one, wasted scarce thought on them, and less pity.
So Rob expected no trouble of this fine evening. But he hadn’t survived the life Fate had led him through by taking his own safety for granted. So often did he run the craziest risks that, when chance allowed, he took extra care.
When the shadowy figure emerged from the weeds at the causeway’s side he raised the axe-haft from his shoulder.
“Master Korrigan,” a female voice said. “You have an unmistakable silhouette.”
“Pilar?” he said, frowning into the gloom. “Why are you lurking in the weeds, then, lass?”
He saw her smile gleam white in starlight literally before the rest of her began to resolve as if materializing from the gloom. “For the same reason you carry your axe with naked head.”
He laughed. “Sensible girl.”
“What brings you out on the highway by night?” she asked. Her accent was strongly spiced with Spañola—and something else whose familiarity spooked him.
No, he told himself, leave off. That cannot be. It’s starting at phantoms you are, me lad.
“I’m, ahh—on my way to the Gardeners’ villa,” he said. “They set a better table than our mess, I fear. Even if there’s, um, no meat to be had.”
“Is that so?” Her tone and the glitter of starlight in green eyes challenged him. “Well, I was coming to see you, Master Korrigan.”
“Rob,” he said. “Just Rob. Er—you were?”
“Come now,” she said with a laugh. “I’m not drawn to bashful men. Nor does bashfulness seem to come naturally to the likes of you, Just Rob.”
“Don’t call me that either, for I’m not just at all,” he said.
But it was mere flippantry, reflexive as catching an apple tossed at his face. He wondered himself at his bashfulness. It wasn’t his style, for a fact.
“Since you wanted supper,” she said, smiling, “would you like to come back to the villa with me?”
“It seems I was headed that way anyway. So, certainly.”
They fell into step side by side. Eris, the Moon Visible, rose in the west, her silvery face lopsided from having just passed half-full. She flung their shadows against some trees beside the road, through whose pallid trunks Rob glimpsed fields beyond.
He suspected Pilar was adjusting her stride to match his. She had to be; her legs were as long as his were short. She was, he had no trouble admitting to himself, a devilish well-set-up young woman, with a face to make the Lady Bella herself smile in approval, that blue-black hair, big jade-green eyes, and big round breasts to set them off proper.
Under normal circumstances he’d charm her with words that might have been penned in honey with a silver nib. Then, a tickle of the titties, bend her over, whip her skirt up above her waist, grab a handful of bum, and Bob’s your uncle.
It wasn’t that he didn’t want to do that. He did, more fervently than he could remember since he was a lad and bursting at the seams with horniness. And that despite that he’d hardly been going without in Providence. And especially not since they’d seen off Salvateur and his thugs in the pelting rain.
But … there was something more. Something that tightened his throat as much as lust tightened his scrotum, and tickled his belly much as his imaginati
on would have her tickling the underside of his cock.
“Why so quiet?” she asked.
“It’s your sauciness, as Torrey’s my witness,” he said. “Confound you, woman. You’re unexpected.”
She laughed. It was a full and throaty laugh. He could but approve.
“Oh, I’m glad you won’t curse me,” she said. “Cursing by the Korrigan has power.”
“Now, why would you say a thing like that?”
It was all he could do not to slap himself immediately on the forehead. It’s my own witling self I should curse, for letting that roll out my mouth! he thought fiercely. Ah, and why didn’t Ma Korrigan do a better job of beating it into me, not to ask questions I didn’t want answered?
She was looking at him, those green eyes disconcertingly keen, as if they were focused past the skin and muscle and bone of his face onto the thoughts behind—those traitor, seething thoughts.
“Do you really think you can play coy with me?” she asked.
“Hmm. No,” he said. “Evidently not.”
Then he stopped literally in his tracks. She hadn’t spoken Francés, or Spañol, or even Anglysh. She had spoken the secret tongue, the forbidden tongue, known by many names, even to its own speakers, but known to his own folk as rromani ćhib.
“I should curse you, for trapping me so, lass,” he said. In Anglysh.
She laughed. “Why bother?” she asked in the same gitano tongue she’d just used. “Would any gadji know the language well enough to say that?”
“No.” He looked furtively side to side.
“You think we might be overheard, out on the road after dark like this? And would you care if someone skulking in the weeds learned the secret you seem to cherish, that you are rom?”
Actually, it might be entirely in character for Petit Pigeon to lurk along the road and spy on her boss. His boss. Would be, he corrected. She thought he was on good terms with his androgynous chief spy in the town. But ah, that’s the thing with spies, he thought. You cannot trust the goblins.
“Besides,” she said, “why worry if someone did find out? Do you fear these Providencers will think you a great rogue, because you’re gitano?”
“They know I’m a great rogue already,” he said. “But it can be dangerous for others to know that other thing, nevertheless. As well you know, lass. I’ll bet you didn’t advertise your lineage in the fine castle at La Merced!”
She shrugged. “Melodía knows. So does her father, of course. Anyway, what does that matter? We’re all outlaws together, here in the foothills of the Shields. And who here is likely to know your surname means ‘touched by the Fae’?”
He scowled. “You’ve scarcely met me,” he said, the aggrieved tones only half-feigned, “and here you’ve winkled out all my deepest darkest secrets!”
“Not all of them, I’m sure,” she said.
“Now how do I keep them secret, then?”
She laughed. “I grew up as maidservant to a scion of Torre Delgao. I know how to keep secrets. So what of your Colonel, then—Karyl? Does he know your secrets?”
After Karyl’s and Rob’s acquittals at trial Bogardus had ramrodded a promotion for the army’s commander through the Council. Violette was right pissed, which tickled Rob no end. He seemed more excited about the new rank than Karyl, though.
Now it was Rob’s turn to laugh. “Child, I’ve told him a hundred tales of my past. None of them true. And all.”
She nodded as if that made perfect sense. Clear it is she really is a gitana, then, he thought. Is it possible she’s one of my countrywoman as well?
Regretfully he let go the notion. Romani from his Ayrish homeland tended to have similar coloration to his own. By her looks her clan had lived in Spaña for generations, maybe centuries.
“And if my very life depended on the teeniest, tiniest little speck escaping those dragon eyes of his,” he said, suddenly sober as if he’d never known the taste of ale, “I’d count it lost.”
“You think he knows what your name means, even?”
“Not that. Though if any man has been touched by the Fae, it’s him.”
She nodded. They walked a while in silence.
When he began to fear he’d overplayed his hand and shut a door between them she shot him a glance, sly and sidelong.
“It may be,” she said, “that I feel unusually loquacious tonight.”
“Your education’s not suffered for growing up the Princess’s maid, and that’s a fact.”
“We’ll be eating soon—I’m ravenous, aren’t you? But afterward, perhaps we can go to the garden and you can find some other way to occupy my mouth than spilling all your precious secrets?”
And she took his hand and practically towed him toward the villa.
Chapter 10
Compito—Compsognathus longipes. A small, fuzzy-feathered, meat-eating dinosaur; 1 kilogram, 1 meter long. Native to Alemania, but common throughout the Empire, and indeed on many continents of Paradise, apparently introduced by traders and travelers, as pets or simply stowaways. Sly and shy, it feeds on tiny animals such as lizards, frogs, and mice.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
“I’m happy here,” Melodía said.
She walked with Pilar beneath ash trees, beside a stream which meandered between fields of ripening beans and grapevines on stakes south of the Garden villa to the River Bonté that ran through Providence town. It was a placid late-summer morning. The birds and fliers were still in the early heat. The drowsy buzz of insects mostly drowned the rustle of leaves in the light breeze. The sun shone hot through a thin covering of clouds when they passed from shade to light.
“Oh, yes,” Pilar said. “I’ve found certain satisfactions here as well.”
Her smile—and now that she let herself notice, or bothered to, Melodía had discovered her friend had a lovely smile—had an oddly dreamlike quality to it.
“I’m so glad to hear that, Pilar.”
Actually Melodía felt that some of the Gardeners still tended to treat Pilar as a servant. Not through malice, she thought. But perhaps through habit. Then again, the younger newer acolytes did tend to wind up with most of the scut work of keeping the Garden vibrant and growing. Even if Melodía herself seldom found herself performing arduous or unpleasant tasks unless she herself sought them out.
“Bogardus is more than I’d even hoped,” Melodía went on, “strong and patient and wise. A good teacher. And while I’m not sure I agree with his extrapolations from—from my cousin’s philosophies, he does make a persistent case for them.”
She was undergoing a protracted spell of reluctance to say Jaume’s name. It stirred up so many contradictory feelings. Not least was how she longed for intimacy—but shied away from it as well, in the wake of what had been done to her, a handful of weeks before.
“Sister Violette—I don’t really know what to make of her.”
“She treats you well,” Pilar said. “She seems to like you. And I think, defer to you more than the other acolytes.”
“True. But I’m not sure how. I don’t think I’m ready for everything she seems to offer me. Nor am I altogether sure yet whether she also somehow regards me as an interloper. A rival for Bogardus’s affections, which is absurd, of course. Or—something else. Which I can’t quite pin down with my finger.”
Pilar made encouraging noises. Melodía, still smarting at the way she had somehow in her mind transformed her best friend and playmate into a mere servant during her transition from girlhood, realized she had a great deal of practice doing that, and was made uncomfortable in a whole different way. But with rueful amusement—at least I can still do that!—she recognized her friends at court had often done it to. As she had to them.
She missed her friends terribly: cool Abi, scion of Sansamour; her current best friend Princess Fanny of Anglaterra; her bumptious cousins Lupe and Llurdis from the courts of Spaña and Catalunya. Even weepy Josefina, daughter of their host in La Merced, Prince Heriberto. They were nominally ladi
es-in-waiting, ostensibly hostages for their ruling mothers’ and fathers’ good behavior—by tradition more than practical purpose, for most of the Empire’s history—and her closest friends. Even more she missed her baby sister, Montserrat, solemn and playful and oddly practical, brown-skinned with a mop of dark-golden dreadlocks. Though half Melodía’s age she and Pilar had been the ones who roused the others, as well as the Firefly Palace servant-staff—in honesty, more out of love for Montse than her less approachable elder sister—in an unlikely plot to free Melodía from her unjust and absurd imprisonment.
Melodía missed her father, the Emperor Felipe, too. But she couldn’t bring herself to think of him too much either. He must have signed off on her arrest on charges of treason apparently trumped up by his new chief bodyguard, Falk. Although he could not have had any inkling of what the Northern nobleman had done to his daughter and heir when she was in his custody.
Could he? She shivered in the warmth. No. Of course not. He loves you. When he remembers you, of course.
Hold on to that thought.
The last came to her in the manner of a drowning woman clutching a plank in a tempest.
She shook her head. The Garden’s teachings—and Jaume’s—were right that Beauty held healing powers, at least. Although, confirmed agnostic as she was, she doubted that the Creator Bella, the Middle Daughter, functionally goddess of Beauty in Paradise’s official eight-person pantheon, existed to help make it so, as fervently as Jaume and Bogardus believed she did.
Instead she admired a tangle of wildflower vines in a clear space between the pale-trunked ashes, some purple with yellow hearts, some an orange-red not too dissimilar to that of Jaume’s own heraldic colors. Intertwined amidst a deeper green than the leaves of the trees, their disparate colors somehow failed to clash, but found curious harmony. Gazing at them soothed the conflicts in Melodía’s heart and mind.
She stopped to soak the serenity in. Pilar paused beside her. Her silence now had the quality of the comfortable silences between friends, not the half-respectful, half-fearful types of a servant not spoken to by her grande mistress. Or so Melodía hoped and believed.
