by Victor Milán
“Don’t let her bother you,” Karyl said. “She was kidnapped as a baby and raised by bandits; her father, the Pasha—my late mother’s brother—had only just got her back a year or two before I fled to his satrapy. She still resists the civilizing process, I see. How fares my uncle, Daryush Khan?”
“Still on his pins. And still sniffing his Turanian overlords beneath their scaly tails.”
“Why aren’t you guiding your herd through the middle of town?” Karyl had relaxed now. In fact he showed his fiery little cousin a casual air Rob had seldom seen in most of an eight-month year. “You used to never be able to resist a chance to show off.”
“I’ve never been overfond of cities, you might recall. Anyway, Providence town’s getting a bad reputation, up in Turanistan. Their officials want to poke their noses into too many places; seems they forget how much of their cozy prosperity’s always come from smuggling. I hear whispers they’ve even started grilling outlanders about their beliefs, and leaning hard on those who don’t give the right answers. Which is going to start cutting into trade, sooner than later.”
“Tell me about it,” Gaétan said. “My father’s always up before the Garden Council. They treat him like an enemy. People walk the streets with their heads down, and dislike talking where others might overhear. What any of this has to do with ‘Truth’ and ‘Beauty’ is a mystery to me. Even my sister Jeannette, who’s a Gardener herself, has trouble defending them.”
“Sounds as if you’ve got yourself some doubtful employers, cousin,” Tir said.
“They’re all doubtful,” Karyl said. “As long as they pay, and let us do our work, their politics don’t matter much to us. To me.”
“If they’ve taken it into their heads to mind what other people have in theirs,” Tir said, “it’s just a matter of time before they start trying to pry yours open. And I can’t imagine either you or they will enjoy that experience much.”
She shrugged. “None of my concern. Been a strange trip overall, though.”
“How so?” Karyl asked.
Rob was starting to shift weight from boot to boot; he itched all over with desire to go and see his new acquisitions. All six of his three-horns had survived the Hidden Marsh fight; the two badly hurt had mostly recovered. Like men, the beasts tended to heal fast from wounds that didn’t kill them quickly. But as spymaster he wanted to hear Tir’s answer too.
“We saw precious few people between the pass through the Shields and Providence town,” she said. “It was like a land of ghosts.”
“Not that many people live up there, I believe,” Karyl said. He glanced at Rob. “Truth is we’ve been looking hard every way but north. Strange as it is to say it, Ovda’s the one neighbor we’ve not worried about.”
She laughed. “Maybe we’re growing soft. Nothing against you Nuevoeuros, but we can’t let you get too complacent, can we? Anyway, this absence of folk struck me as damned uncanny. And the ones we did encounter were eerie as Fae.”
“See anything threatening?” Gaétan asked.
“Not really. No sign of raids, or fighting, or even pestilence, unlikely as that is. Still, I find myself itching to know just why people are making themselves so scarce before I ride back home.”
She looked around at the audience. “Say, would one of you yokels standing around with nothing better to do than stare at my boobs be so kind as to take a break to fetch a girl a drink?”
Men darted off in all directions to obey. Smiling smugly she turned back to Karyl and the increasingly impatient Rob.
“I did spy some light cavalry practicing up north of your camp.”
“My people,” Rob said, ready to defend his boys and girls against what he was sure would be a barrage of insults. Although if this wild nomad woman chose to draw invidious comparisons between his Providential riders and her own people, she could prove them readily enough.
“Well, they don’t show too badly,” she said, “for lowlanders. “There’s one, at least, who can ride halfway decently, though. Mounts a lovely, lively little grey Arabi mare, who’s not wholly wasted on her. Who might that be?”
“How would I know?” Rob asked. “It’s just a horse.”
Tir’s brows pushed down hard over her eyes. She gave a Rob a look as if he’d just claimed to have walked here from the Moon Invisible. Turning to Karyl, she shot him a look which said, “Cousin, are you sure about this one?” as loudly as a shout.
“Dinosaur master,” Karyl reminded.
“Ah.” She brightened. “Fair enough, then. She’s a tall girl, not enough meat to her bones, but not a gawk like the one who just rode up. Dark like her, though. Hair cropped short, looks almost black, but when the sun hits right shows highlights red as blood.”
“That’d be Melodía Delgao,” Rob said. “A new recruit to Rob Korrigan’s Highly Irregular Light-Horse.”
He could no more repress a grin as he said the name than he could refrain from saying it; he’d coined it himself, on the spur of the moment, when the Delgao girl had finally convinced a skeptical Karyl—and a Rob who teetered on the edge of active hostility—that she was serious about enlisting, and serious about subordinating herself to Karyl and such officers as he chose.
“And an uncommon promising one, honesty compels me to admit,” Rob added.
“That a first for you, that honesty thing?” Tir asked with a sidelong smirk.
“I strive to be unpredictable, ever and always.”
“The child’s a skilled rider,” Karyl said. “Not unexpected, given her class and family. She shows a fair grasp of tactics, and flashes of a touch for leadership.”
Tir nodded. “If you say that, and I say she’s a decent horsewoman, she’s a prize indeed. And speaking of family—isn’t Delgao what you swamplanders call your Imperial family?”
“Yes,” Karyl said.
“And Melodía—isn’t she the fugitive Princess who was caught trying to poison her father?”
“She was falsely accused of intriguing against her father, the Emperor,” Karyl said. “At least, so she claims.”
“She hardly seems the sort for it,” Rob said.
Then he faltered, unable to continue for remembering he’d gotten his impression of Melodía—as a sweet, intelligent girl who was spoiled and uncertain as to who she was, but had great potential when she got things sorted out—from her serving-maid Pilar.
“More’s the pity, then,” Tir said. “If she tried to put an end to an Emperor she’d definitely have the spirit of a horse-nomad. As it is she shows enough potential I should probably provide her some proper horse-warrior kit. No doubt I can scare her up a proper talwar and peaked helmet. And I think I’ve got a child’s bow in my baggage she might learn to bend with practice. It’ll still hit harder than the trash they shoot down here. I swear, if all you lowlanders had dicks as short and weak as your bows, I wouldn’t cross the passes for gold!”
“And speaking of gold,” said Rob, covering a moment’s lapse into honest emotion with impudence, “what will this largesse cost us, Mademoiselle Arrow?”
“Call it a throw-in.” she said, “given what I look to clear on this dinosaur-flesh deal. But if this strapping lad here wants to discuss additional payment, I’m open to private negotiations.”
Gaétan’s usual cheerful confidence had deserted him, leaving him opening and closing his mouth like a carp.
Rob hoped Stéphanie wasn’t the jealous type. He had frankly no idea whether the woods-runners shared the common relaxed Southlander views on sexual fidelity. He did know not everybody happened to feel the way their tribe or nation told them to. Even people with less … potentially alarming … personalities than Stéphanie.
“You were saying something about us lowlanders and the size of … bows,” Rob was unable to keep himself from saying.
Tir grinned and hooked her arm through Gaétan’s elbow. “This one has strength enough,” she said, squeezing a firm biceps. “I think he’s worth a trial regardless of the size of his staff!”
The look Gaétan turned over his shoulder as she led him toward the farmhouse was almost pleading.
“Right,” Rob said. “That’s him seen to, then. Let’s go look at our brand-new dinosaurs!”
Chapter 25
Los Libros de la Ley, THE BOOKS OF THE LAW—The Creators’ Own Law. Popularly attributed to Torrey, the Youngest Son, who stands for Order. They are largely filled with explanation and annotation, since the actual laws are few and simple: for example, establishing worship of the Creators as the worldwide faith, although allowing it to take many forms; enjoining people to actively enjoy life; abjuring eternal punishment; mandating proper hygiene; and forbidding slavery and torture.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“It’s a shame what you did to your hair, child,” Sister Violette said. Smiling in the light of dozens of candles on the little table around which she, Bogardus, and Melodía sat nude, and in alcoves around Bogardus’s chambers, she reached up to run a hand through the brush that remained on Melodía’s scalp. “It was so long and beautiful before.”
Melodía fought the urge to pull away. You didn’t flinch away from her touch in bed a few minutes ago, she told herself. Why now?
After that first time she realized she had let Violette seduce her after resisting her friends Lupe and Llurdis’s incessant attempts because she was more mature, skilled, and—Melodía reckoned—lacking the drama those two brought to sex.
Perhaps she was more irritated now than she wanted to admit to herself by the way the Councilor kept trying to feed her tidbits of cheese and fruit. When Melodía had arrived late that afternoon on an increasingly rare visit to the château, the three had promptly fallen into a protracted lovemaking session. After they exhausted each other, Bogardus had called for acolytes to bring the table, and stools, and food and wine. Now the window stood open to black that shimmered with stars, admitting a breath of cool air that smelled of mountain heights and perpetual snow.
“I wanted to make a … break with my earlier life,” she said. “Also, it’s easier to manage now that I don’t—don’t have someone to care for it for me.”
Don’t cry.
“It becomes you,” Bogardus said, sipping wine from a pottery cup. “Lovely as your hair was when it was long, this brings forward a different aspect to your beauty.”
“I’ve been elected troop leader,” she said, eager despite herself. “I’ll have thirty light-horse under my guidance.”
“Not command?” Violette asked.
“The jinetes don’t take well to command,” she said. “I’ve earned their respect. They let me lead them. By example, as much as anything.”
“‘Jinetes’?” Bogardus asked.
“That’s what we call mounted skirmishers. Ah, my mother’s people, that is, Catalans. What you might call gentours, I think.” She paused. “We can’t call ourselves ‘light-horse’ anymore, since some of us ride striders.”
He nodded. “You sound proud,” he said.
His smile seemed but a shadow of what it had been. Maybe it’s the lamplight, she reassured herself.
“What’s that dour stick Karyl think of it?” Violette asked, stretching like a cat so that her small pink-tipped breasts rode up her ribs.
That irked Melodía. Although not at her.
“He hasn’t got anything to do with it,” she said. “Master Rob approved my election. Karyl pays little attention to how his lieutenants handle things.”
And none at all to her, although everybody else was starry-eyed that an actual princess—the Princesa Imperial, no less—served alongside them, notwithstanding her present legal difficulties. Yet it was Melodía’s own ability and charisma that led them to elevate her. That excited her more than almost anything she’d known.
My father rules the Tyrant’s Head, she thought, and I’m thrilled as a schoolgirl at being given command of a handful of commoners who act, moreover, basically like bandits. And she was, and she would be, and that was all there was to it. So there.
“Master Rob and Karyl want me to lead a patrol east, to sweep our side of the Laughing Water for Castañero raiders. They’re getting bolder. Karyl believes they’re probing to see if they can get away with a full-fledged invasion, while Métairie Brulée sits by, like a vexer watching horrors feed on a dead duckbill.”
She looked anxiously from one face to the other, seeking approval—or its absence. To her surprise it was Bogardus who looked vaguely troubled. Violette smiled and hugged her.
“We’re proud of you, Melodía,” she said.
“But—I thought you’d be opposed,” she said. “You’ve always stood for a return to the Garden ideal of pacifism.”
“And I’ve realized,” Violette said, “we’ve realized that our ideals are simply that: ideal. Goals to strive toward. As long as we keep those ideals pure in our hearts we’re sure of doing the right thing.”
“I don’t understand.”
“Your example helped us see the true way to grow. Your experiences, bad as well as good. You rested your hopes on the branch of idealism—and it broke beneath the weight.”
Melodía looked down at her plate. She tried not to see dead eyes looking back from among the crumbs.
“The modern world is corrupt,” Violette said. “It’s too poisonous to nurture the tender shoots of idealism. So we must prepare the soil. Until that’s done, we must put aside ideals like pacifism, the pure pursuit of beauty and pleasure, the liberty of actions and desires. Even the indulgence of thoughts at variance with the common good.
“When we have purified our Garden, those ideals can bloom forth once more in all their glorious profusion. Until then, we’ve got to bind and weed and prune.”
Melodía frowned slightly at that. Bind and prune. Why does that sound sinister? Especially since she smiles so happily as she says it.
Violette turned to Bogardus. “I think she’s ready.”
He frowned slightly. “Are you sure, Sister? It’s a grave step.”
“Don’t I know it?” Violette acted chipper, almost giddy. Her lavender eyes were fever-bright. “But you see how receptive the child is. And she’ll be going away for who knows how long? Why deny her access to inner Beauty for so long?”
Bogardus sighed. “If you feel so strongly.…”
It was Melodía’s turn to frown at him. His subdued manner was starting to worry her. His face had a grey cast, and the skin hung slightly loose on his strong bones. He seemed to have declined somehow since her last visit.
This afternoon he had been as thoughtful and proficient a lover as always. Yet Melodía sensed his heart wasn’t in it. He seemed vague. Maybe even not as clean as he might be; she had thought to catch just the faintest whiff of decay when Bogardus and Violette squired her into the room. She’d been horny enough to overlook it, after her recent vigorous activity and prolonged abstinence. When he embraced her he smelled fine—faintly of his usual lilac soap, in fact.
But his skin had a curious texture to her touch, partly gritty, partly greasy. Is he unwell? she wondered. The thought didn’t comfort.
Violette sprang up, sprightly as a child. The candlelight splashed her narrow bare back and backside in yellow shading to burnt orange as she walked for the blue curtain across the doorway at the back of the room.
“We’ve been discussing this,” Violette said excitedly. “We both agree your spiritual development has reached the point where you’re ready to ascend.”
“‘Ascend’?” Melodía said faintly. Her earlier excitement—and later afterglow—had faded. Now she noticed once again that, like Bogardus himself, his bedchamber had changed.
And like Bogardus himself, not for the better. Gone was the brilliant decoration that had enlivened it the first time he brought her here. The cunningly executed paintings were missing from the walls, the sculptures from their stands and niches. The bedclothes were still rich and soft, but their colors were drab.
Most of all she missed the flower
s that once filled the room with colors and perfume. There remained nothing living or which had ever been alive between bare whitewashed walls, save for food, furnishings, and themselves. It was as if the Garden’s guiding aesthetic was no longer Beauty, but austerity.
The deep blue of silk curtain screening the doorway was the sole touch of color that remained. Violette reached for it. Posing dramatically she looked over her shoulder at Melodía.
“You’ve heard us speak of Inner Mysteries,” the silver-haired woman said, paused with her hand on the curtain. “Now behold the sweetest mystery. Meet our guiding Angel!”
She whipped the curtain open. In the small room beyond Melodía saw what she took for a statue of a seated man. By the candles’ faint glow Melodía could make out hints of detail: features and limbs beyond exquisite, curly golden hair. Its face was lowered so that shadows hid the eyes. Even seated, the idol’s head rose higher than Bogardus’s.
The sculpted beauty seared her soul with its perfection. It exalted and disturbed. Is this what they’ve been hiding? Melodía thought, as her heart hammered at her ribs. The most perfect work of art ever wrought by human hands?
The figure raised its head.
It looked at Melodía with pools of blackness for eyes. Slowly it reached a hand toward her. The flesh on the fingers was mottled with discoloration.
The stench of corruption, faint before, now struck her like a breath from a freshly opened grave.
The greatest terror Melodía had ever known seized her. Panic blazed sunlike inside her. She turned and fled, heedless and naked, down echoing corridors and out into the cool autumn night.
* * *
“What in the name of the Old Hell is this?” Mor Florian exclaimed, reining in his cream and yellow sackbut atop a stony ridge in the Meseta uplands of western Spaña.
Comte Jaume dels Flors drew Camellia to a halt beside his Companion. He led his fifteen surviving and present Companions to the rendezvous Felipe had ordered them to make. Close behind them followed their squires and their Brothers-Ordinary men-at-arms. Next, strung out behind them, marched and rode the rest of the Ejército Corregidor, the lesser nobles and knights and their retinues, still grumbling about the plunder and rape and slaughter they’d been denied at Ojonegro. Then came the baggage train, and last tramped the Nodosaurs. They were probably no less disgruntled at missing the fruits of an intaking, but so great had their contempt for the bucketheads become that they wouldn’t deign to show it as their supposed betters did, but made sure to keep it among their browned-iron ranks.
