by Victor Milán
“Whatever it costs, I will pay.
“So be easy and free,
“When you’re drinking with me,
“I’m a man you don’t meet every day.”
Applause bounced off the vine-painted rafters of the Garden Hall as Rob struck the last chord on his lute.
It was an ancient ballad. Older, some said, than Paraíso itself. It seemed to stir something atavistic within Rob and his hearers alike, at a depth nothing born of this world could touch.
Or maybe that was just the ale he’d drunk to lubricate his vocal cords.
Smiling and nodding he rose from the foot of the dais where the Council table stood, and walked—not any too steadily—back to the chair awaiting him at a table in the front row. Karyl nodded gravely to him as he dropped down into it.
Rob wasn’t sure whether he believed Karyl lacked any appreciation for music or not, despite the way he claimed he had tried to suppress the arts when he was voyvod of the Misty March. But one thing was sure: the man admired a thing well done.
Rob felt a warm glow of more than applause and a bellyful of alcohol. The army marched with the dawn. Which meant he was marching, yet again, and quite irrationally, straight toward danger.
But he wouldn’t be carrying around the dreadful weight of responsibility. At least, not for the quartermaster’s job.
A young man took Rob’s place and began to declaim bad poetry badly. He seemed to have trouble keeping black bangs out of his eyes.
Two days earlier Gaétan’s cousin Élodie had joined the army to take Rob’s place in charge of logistics. Évrard was miffed with Karyl and his son, since Élodie had been his bookkeeper-in-chief up until the point she marched into his office and demanded a leave of absence to join the fight against Crève Coeur in her own special way.
Gaétan said he hadn’t even asked her. He claimed she was outraged when she found out a minstrel was in charge of the militia’s supplies.
I’d take that amiss, Rob thought with amiable muzziness, save for the fact it outraged me most of all. Anyway, being scout-boss as well dinosaur master took as much as he had, if in a far more congenial way.
The poet had grown strident. He appeared to be delivering himself of a polemic against those who spurned the “purity” of the Garden’s vision. Whomever they might be.
It struck Rob as a peculiarly harsh message for a movement devoted to appreciating Beauty. But he’d heard complaints recently that Gardeners were beginning to take undue interest in the everyday doings of citizens of Providence town. And Gaétan said the Council was trying to raise tariffs on certain goods, seemingly not so much to raise revenue as to discourage their importation.
Which struck Rob as poor sense, given the ease of smuggling over the Shield Mountains, formidable as they might be. And which in turn seemed right typical of the Council of Master Gardeners. Excepting Bogardus, of course.
He looked around the hall. It was even more packed than usual for the after-dinner entertainments. Most of the few actual Gardeners who had volunteered for the defense force had come to be seen off by their brothers and sisters.
He didn’t see Pilar. Despite Melodía’s insistence she was no longer a servant, the Garden mostly kept her acting as one. To Rob, she insisted she was happy to do so. He wasn’t so sure. But he couldn’t tell if she were lying or not.
He could usually tell if someone was lying. That presupposed they were less skillful than he. Which he had learned to take all but for granted.
But not this lass. Whether Pilar had learned the skill growing up a servant, eventually at the Imperial Court, or whether it was true what their enemies—which was most folk in Nuevaropa—said, that gitanos had a natural gift for dissimulation, or some combination, he didn’t know. But if she lied about how she felt about the Gardeners treating her as a servant again, he couldn’t tell. She did make clear Melodía insisted on being treated herself as just another acolyte, although if the Delgao chit thought they’d actually do that, she was even more naïve than Rob judged her.
Thoughts of his emerald-eyed witch-girl jabbed Rob most uncomfortably, like a sharp stone to the fundament when he sat to take a rest from tramping some forest trail. He hated to leave the relative comfort of the farm, with its reliable shelter—and reliable lack of dangers, dinosaur and human. Traveling with the army meant less privation than traveling as raw as he and Karyl had done on the journey here, but it was still an uncomfortable business. And danger at some point of the voyage was a certainty, not supposition.
But what he’d miss, more than a feather bed and the free-flowing wines and ales of Providence town, was Pilar. Not just the loving either. She was more than a mere bedmate. He loved her flashing wit and ready laugh—and her understanding nature, which seemed not to tolerate but embrace his foibles, for all that she could see them as clearly as anyone he’d met.
And maybe all that means I should be glad to be setting out with the clouds’ return, he told himself.
But he had learned to make the most of merriment when it came within reach. So he took a jolt of the hefty, chewy ale, and forced his attention back to his surroundings.
His and Karyl’s tablemates were a handful of young Garden men who had recently enlisted. He hadn’t got their names yet. Doubtless Karyl had. Few details of his command escaped his dark dragon eye.
“It’s called ‘opera,’ you see,” said the overly handsome youth called Rolbert. “Comes from Talia, they say. It’s all the rage in Lumière. I heard about if from a Walloon come up the Imperial street looking to trade emeralds from Ruybrasil for spices from Turanistan.”
“So they sing, and tell stories,” said Dugas, who had eyes like currants crowded rather too close for comfort on either side of a long, skinny nose. “What’s special about that?”
“Ballads tell stories,” offered a redheaded man whose name Rob didn’t know.
“Well, but they act it out as they sing, you see,” Rolbert explained. “Kind of. They all play parts, or rather sing them. So it’s like a play, but sung.”
“It’s not new, this opera,” muttered Rob. “It’s only just coming back in vogue, is all. It’s been around for years and years. And blighted every one of ’em.”
The fiery young poet finished declaiming, to fevered clapping from Sister Violette and her cronies and pro forma applause from the rest of the hall. He didn’t get even that much from Rob and Karyl’s table. Not that my lord Karyl would applaud the man who pissed on his pant-leg if it was afire, thought Rob in fond exasperation.
Bogardus—and Melodía, who sat beside him—clapped hard but without evident conviction.
“And what have we here?” Rob said aside to Karyl. “I do believe our little fugitive Princess may have flown from one daddy to find another.”
His companion didn’t deign to glance his way.
The clapping died away. The whole hall seemed to inhale in horrid apprehension that the polemical poet might feel called on to do an encore. The collective exhalation stirred torch-flames like a breeze when instead he dropped his eyes shyly and blundered back to his table.
Bogardus rose. He spread his wide-sleeved arms like white wings in what Rob had come to recognize as his characteristic gesture. It works for the lad, he thought. Why would he change it?
“As most of you know, my friends,” Bogardus said in his roundest tones, “we’re honored to have among us a charming visitor, whom I hope will consent to join our community in whole heart. I am pleased and honored to present to you Melodía Delgao Llobregat, late of La Merced.”
She rose, blushing prettily and thanking the diners for their applause.
“Sister Melodía has graciously agreed to sing a song for us,” Bogardus said. “She’s asked that Rob Korrigan accompany her on his lute. Master Rob, would you be so kind, to her and to us?”
Rob stood up. To cover a sudden attack of nerves he plucked at his beard with both hands, once each, as if trying to pull point to two.
Then he bowed low. “I’d be
a greater churl than even I am, to refuse such a gracious lady.”
He saw Melodía’s pretty face tense up a bit at that. She loves playing up to the Garden’s egalitarianism, he thought, amused. And why not? It’s her own lover taught them to believe in it.
Although perhaps the dashing Count Jaume has himself a rival, now.
As he reclaimed his lute from the rack by the wall and returned to the dais, he noted Violette gazing keenly at the fugitive Princess. Her sharpish pallid features were drawn into a smile, half as if she’d invented Melodía, half of raptor intensity.
And what’s this, then? he wondered, settling his rump comfortably on the edge of the stage.
From Pilar he knew Violette liked playing with Gardener girls as well as boys, which he did not begrudge her. He liked the lasses too. And Melodía was a tasty morsel, no question, although too full of herself for his taste. He also knew from Pilar that Melodía had resisted frequent sexual overtures from some of her ladies-in-waiting. But they were mere girls, and made pests of themselves. Whereas in Sister Violette Rob recognized an accomplished player of the game.
But ah, he thought, what game does she seek to play with our rogue Princess Imperial? A game of pleasure, or a game of thrones?
* * *
“What’s your pleasure, my lady?” he asked Melodía as she joined him on the terra-cotta tiles in front of the head table. She wore a frock of purple linen, embroidered around the bodice with pink roses on green vines. A modest enough garment in cost and cut, to be sure. But it did little to hide her altogether grown-up charms from Rob’s accomplished eye.
“Melodía, please.” She smiled. “There’s no lord or lady here. It’s one of the reasons I love it.”
“Suit yourself. What song would you like me to play?”
“‘Amor con Fortuna.’”
He nodded. It was a favorite of his, and said to be more ancient still than the tune he’d played earlier.
“Be warned, lass,” he said, “I play it lively. Some there are as play it like a dirge. Which I suppose suits such crabbed souls as deem either love or fortune a thing to lament. Of which there are none here, I trust?”
She laughed. A little wildly, he reckoned, and a little brassily; there was a tint to her cheeks and a glint to her eye.
“That suits me as well, Master Rob,” she said, prettily enough.
I used to think love a subject well-suited for dirges, myself, once upon a day, he thought. But now—
He shook the thought away like a three-horn dislodging a drill-fly from its eyelid. He was only ready to stray so far down that path.
He played the song as promised, fast and merry. To his mild and pleasant surprise Melodía sang not just with a clear lovely voice, but technically quite well.
When they were done he complimented her singing. “It’s not to be remarked on, I suppose,” he added, “given you’re half Catalan. Of which folk I hear it said, if you pinch them, they cry out in pitch.”
Again Melodía laughed. Her face was even more flushed than before.
“I can’t really credit my mother’s heritage for more than the inclination,” she said. “Whatever skill I have, is a gift from my cousin Jaume, my teacher.”
“Teacher of us all,” added Bogardus.
Rob blushed hot to the roots of his beard. Walked into that with eyes open, didn’t you? he jeered at himself. He dreaded going back to sit beside Karyl, who still hated the Imperial Champion for destroying his White River Legion.
But, dismissed, he had to. He replaced the instrument and resumed his seat, studiously not looking at his companion. Who of course said nothing.
But Melodía had stayed where she stood. She swept the hall with an imperious glance.
“Master Rob has given us beautiful music,” she said. The diners clapped. “I wish that was all he gave us.
“By itself, his playing would be a worthy gift indeed for Providence and its Garden. Our Garden, if I may be so bold. But he, and his companion, bring us something far less beautiful: the curse of war.”
Violette and her claque at the Council table applauded briskly. The hall reacted with less enthusiasm. Some applauded. At least as many murmured rebelliously.
Rob’s reaction wasn’t mixed at all. He sat up sharply. The Princess’s preamble washed away his embarrassment at indirectly bringing up Karyl’s nemesis Jaume like a bucket of cold stream-water to the face. Ale-induced fuzzy-headedness went with it.
“I thought it was Count Guilli who brought us the curse of war,” one of their companions said.
Rob ignored him. Seriously pissed and seriously fuming, he now doubly feared to look at Karyl. Then, forcing himself, he met a dark, sardonic eye.
“It would appear our juvenescent Princess has set you up,” Karyl said.
“Like a duck-pin,” Rob admitted sourly.
“Can’t be much dishonor in that,” Dugas said, evidently trying to be helpful. “She was nursed on court intrigue, after all.”
“If she’s so bloody good at intrigue,” Rob muttered, “what’s she doing here?”
“I have treasured the few short weeks I have spent among you,” Melodía was saying. “I hope to pass many more here, and contribute what I can of Beauty.
“And of Truth. And one truth troubles me, though I hesitate to bring it up—”
“Please,” Bogardus said, after only a beat or two. “You’re our sister now. Please speak freely.”
Rob thought he had gone a little grey around the jowls, though he spoke as graciously as ever. He wondered why.
“In just in the short time I’ve passed in the Garden,” Melodía said, “I have noticed a … a hardening. Of hearts and minds. I wish I could say otherwise.”
Even Violette frowned at that one. Rob smiled bitterly. Ah, youth, he thought, frisky as a filly—and heedless as a fifty-tonne titan ambling through a village. If the silver-haired Sister thought she could control Melodía, she had a better think coming.
“You have hired hard men to protect you,” she said. “I understand that. You face a cruel enemy.
“But can you really defeat cruelty with cruelty? I’ve studied war—in books, and at the feet of a man who’s mastered it along with many gentler arts. And that’s what war is: cruelty.
“The Garden preaches nonviolence. Jaume doesn’t; you know that. Bogardus, who brought my good cousin’s teachings here, has never hid the fact. As he himself says, Jaume has planted the seeds, he has cultivated them, and the flowers have grown in their own ways. Beautiful ways.”
She paused a moment, her lovely face troubled. Whether it was show or not, Rob had to nod. The girl performed masterfully at more than singing.
“But—perhaps the edges of the flower wilt. Poisoned soil can’t long nurture Beauty, can it? And by bringing the practice of war into our Garden, do we not risk poisoning our own soil?”
Violette’s violet eyes positively lit. She made to clap like a mad thing. Yet Bogardus, who played a crowd like Rob his lute, raised his right hand. It was a slight gesture—but it froze Violette.
“What can we do, Melodía?” he asked. “The threat is real. If it wasn’t, we—I—would never have risked breaching our doctrine to bring these men here to teach, and practice, war.”
“But where’s the greatest danger? War is seductive, my friends.”
She waved a hand at the rafters and the muraled walls. Rob cringed. He saw it coming, like a trebuchet-flung boulder tumbling lazily toward the bridge of his nose.
“Didn’t you lose the incredibly gifted artist who brought these flowers and forests to life all around us, because he followed Karyl to war?”
The grumbling that had answered her question about the greatest danger turned into a sort of moan of shared pain. These Gardeners had no way of knowing Lucas’s death had wounded Karyl more deeply than any of them.
Still—“Credit where it’s due,” Rob said, “the lass has a positive gift for denunciation, and no mistake. Hearing her I’d be after condemning my
self, if I hadn’t long since forgiven myself worse.”
He glanced at Karyl. His face looked more like that of a marble statue than normal. The scar down his forehead was bright white on ivory. Rob used humor like a shield. But it wouldn’t protect them both.
Doesn’t do me that well, truth to tell, he thought sourly, and tossed back the last of the ale in his stoneware mug. It had gone stale. It figured.
“What would you have us do,” a man’s voice shouted from the hall, “lie back and let Guilli have his way with us?”
Melodía froze, and her dark eyes went wide in her cinnamon face.
“Be still!” snapped Councilor Absolon at the unidentified questioner.
That brought Melodía smartly ’round. “Wait,” she said. “I’m a guest here. Please correct me if I misunderstand: doesn’t everyone have an equal voice here? I thought that, in the Garden, there was no such thing as high and low?”
“It’s a Council matter,” the lank-haired Absolon blustered. “We’re the Master Gardeners. We’re in charge of keeping the Garden clear of weeds.”
“Is asking a fair question a weed, then?” Melodía challenged.
“Faith, she has sincerity,” Rob said quietly aside. “Once a body can fake that, now, the rest is gravy.”
Absolon blinked and looked for support to Violette. She kept staring at Melodía.
“Melodía has the floor,” Bogardus murmured. “Courtesy is a beautiful thing.”
“To answer your question,” Melodía told the man who’d challenged her, “I don’t know. I don’t pretend to have the answer. I only know—meeting violence with violence can’t be the only answer!”
Her eyes misted, and in a clouded voice she said, “If, in the end, Beauty and Truth can’t enough to survive on their own, what does it say about the world? What does it say about us?”
She lowered her face and slumped her shoulders, clearly finished. Violette leapt to her feet, shouting “Brava!” and clapping furiously.
An eyeblink later her surviving Council allies jumped up. They put Rob in mind of a toy he’d seen offered for sale by a Traveler band his own wayward group had encountered in his childhood. You turned a crank and small painted wood dolls, the size of clothespins—which they probably were—bobbed up and down through holes in a board.
