by Victor Milán
“Well, that’s more luck than we deserve,” the commoner said.
Clutching his feathered assassin to him with his last hand, the man toppled backward into the void.
Part Two
El Palacio de las Luciérnagas
(The Palace of the Fireflies)
Chapter 4
Troodón, Tröodon—Troodon formosus. Pack-predator raptor; 2.5 meters long, 50 kilograms. Sometimes imported to Nuevaropa as pets or hunting beasts. Like ferrets, tröodons are clever, loyal, and given to mischief. Vengeful if abused.
—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES
THE EMPIRE OF NUEVAROPA, SPAÑA, PRINCIPALITY OF THE TYRANT’S JAW, LA MERCED, PALACE OF THE FIREFLIES
“—y con alma tuya, hermano,” the hooded man replied to a hushed greeting from an acolyte he encountered in the gallery that ran along the north wing of the Palacio de las Luciérnagas.
They went their opposite ways. Morning sunlight shone through piercings in fanciful floral shapes carved in the outer wall. On the practice-ground a story below, the Scarlet Tyrants—Imperial bodyguards—contended with a clatter of wooden swords and shields.
The man in the cowl had no name that mattered. He was consecrated to life as a what, not a who. He wasn’t tall. He wasn’t short. He was neither wide nor narrow. The skin on his hands and within his hood’s recesses was sun-browned olive. His eyebrows were black laced with grey, his eyes dark. He looked like many men in Spaña, the southernmost realm of the Tyrant’s Head.
He wore the brown robe of the Kindred of Torrey, with that Creator’s trigram embroidered in yellow on the breast: a solid line with two broken lines beneath it. The current Emperor was well known for piety far beyond what his office required. Men and women of all sects’ cloth were common here.
Altogether, the hooded friar was as unremarkable as craft could make him.
Leaving the loggia, he passed into cool interior and turned into a stairwell. To his right was a nook on whose back wall was painted a fading, peeling scene of black Lanza, the Creator most identified with war, defeating a swarm of misshapen hada during the High Holy War. It concealed a door that opened only in response to a knowing touch.
The cowled man supplied it. He slipped into a narrow way illuminated only by light that filtered from rooms and corridors to either side through slits made to look like ornamentation or even random cracks in the walls. It was part of a network of secret stairs and passageways meant for trusted servants, discreet errands, and persons of high station on low missions.
The Firefly Palace sprawled across a high headland that protected the southern side of Happy Bay, about which stood, leaned, and occasionally rioted La Merced, the Empire’s richest seaport. Yellow-white limestone walls as high as twenty meters and as thick as ten encompassed a square kilometer inside an approximate pentagon. Within lay yards, stables, shops, and barracks. The Palace proper dominated all: an enormous rambling structure well spiked with towers, and courtyard gardens and pools tucked away within.
By arrangement with its owner, Prince Heriberto, the palace currently housed the widowed Emperor, his two young daughters, and the usual gaggle of courtiers. Emperador Felipe liked his comforts, and equally disliked the intrigues and stuffy self-importance of court and Diet in the Imperial capital of La Majestad. Easygoing La Merced was far more to his liking.
But figurehead that he was, the man who sat the Fangèd Throne still attracted intrigue. Especially one who had roiled the waters of state as vigorously as the placid-seeming Felipe.
The hooded man climbed three dim stories. Though he had never been inside the palace in his life, he knew the way well. Nor had he been to the Principado de la Quijada de Tirán. His real order didn’t even serve the Middle Son.
Under most circumstances, this assignment would have been carried out by someone already within the palace, preferably in the Imperial retinue. But none was available. And this commission was urgent as well as of the highest importance.
He peered into a sunlit room through a reaper-feather hanging to confirm it was vacant, then crossed to a door. He had to take great care: the Emperor’s apartments occupied this floor. If he were spotted here, not even his clerical robes would save him from scrutiny he couldn’t risk. The simple fact that he didn’t belong would not escape the attention of men with gazes as sharp as their spears who guarded the Emperor.
He wasn’t afraid of torture. His death would mean little; when he swore the oaths, he had accepted that he would die serving the Mother. The Brotherhood had blessed him with its confidence to carry out this task. He could endure anything but failure.
He slipped into a corridor with milky morning sunlight streaming through pointed-arched windows at either end. He saw no one, but heard prayers murmured behind closed doors. Incense thickened the air.
Silently he strode down the hallway. Despite fanatical training and years of meditation, his pulse raced. So much lay on this single cast.…
And here. The door.
Inside the room a figure garbed the Father’s grey sat in gloom. His back was to the door, his hood bowed in contemplation.
The intruder slipped his right hand inside his capacious left sleeve. His fingers closed around the cool familiar hardness of his dagger hilt.
Carefully he extended his right foot, laid the whole sandaled sole at once on maroon tiles. He would have sworn he made no sound—he would have staked his life.
The grey hood turned. The man looked upon the visage within.
“Your Radiance!” he exclaimed, but softly, softly. He dropped to his knees. His hand slipped from his sleeve, holding his now-forgotten weapon.
“Forgive me,” he said as the figure rose to towering height and approached. “Forgive me, Radiant One! I didn’t know. How could I know?”
“You are forgiven, my son,” replied a voice soft and dry and grey as ash. Its owner reached for him as if to confer benediction.
* * *
Naked and still damp from her afternoon bath, the Imperial Princess Melodía Estrella Delgao Llobregat sat on her stool while her maidservant brushed out her long hair, listening to the deep tones her best friend drew from the springer-gut strings of her vihuela del arco.
She enjoyed the way the music flowed, sweet and dark as Ruybrasil molasses, across the sitting room’s blond-and-dark-wood parquetry floor. She also enjoyed how easy they made it to ignore the girl who sat sobbing in buttery sunset light beneath a window facing out on La Canal.
“You’ve finally got something big and hard between those white-bread thighs of yours, Fanny,” said another of Melodía’s five ladies-in-waiting, “and all you can do is sit there and scratch it.”
Melodía’s cousin Guadalupe was Princess of Spaña, lean, dark, and rather fierce-looking. Also rather fierce.
“Old joke,” said Abigail Thélème. Only child of the Archduke-Elector of Sansamour, she was taller even than Melodía, slim and pale and cool as a blade.
Frances Martyn, Princess of Anglaterra, reddened to the roots of her curly gold hair. She kept on playing. Beautifully. She was used to jokes about her alleged prudery. Unlike the rest of Melodía’s retinue, who wore silken loincloths and a few feathers in the late-autumn tropic heat, the short, well-rounded Princess was dressed demurely in a sleeveless blouse and skirt of foam-green silk that left only her belly bare between thigh and throat.
Melodía’s dueña, Doña Carlota—stout, devout, and moustached like a bandit—sniffed loudly from the stool where she sat discreetly with her fellows beneath a wall hanging woven of bright dinosaur feathers. Following the general custom that older folk wore more clothes than young, the other dueñas had on light cloth gowns; Doña Carlota was so swaddled from chin to instep in heavy blouse, mantilla, and thick dark skirts that Melodía found it a wonder she didn’t pass out.
“Some highborn young ladies don’t know how to act according to their station,” Doña Carlota said sternly. Her fellow dueñas sniggered subversively.
The sturdily built young woma
n on the banco stopped sniveling. A dark eye peeked over the handkerchief she held to her face. She offered a particularly soulful sob.
“All right, Fina,” Melodía said, “what are you emoting about now?”
It came out sharper than she intended. Especially to the adored daughter of their host, or landlord, Heriberto, who liked to be called Prince Harry in Anglés style. The Principe was a good friend of Melodía’s father, but there was no point in pushing things.
Besides, Josefina Serena was a good friend to Melodía, within her limits. She could be a fearful pill, what with her weeping and vapors and passions, as fierce as summer Channel squalls and usually as brief.
“It’s terrible,” Fina moaned, “how the nobles treat their peasants.”
“And you’re just now finding this out?” Abi Thélème said. “It’s what they do, as dung beetles eat dung.”
As usual, she held her long blue eyes half-closed. On another it would be silly affectation; Abi made it sinister. Melodía thought her quite the most striking girl in the room, with her finely chiseled features and silver-blond hair hanging to the small of her back.
Lupe scowled, which her single brow equipped her well to do. No one would call her pretty, exactly; she was handsome in an intense way, like a well-made quirt. Her skin was dark olive. Her blue-black hair, wound into tight pigtails that failed utterly to make her look innocent, came to a widow’s peak. A purple and yellow tröodon-feather gorget partially obscured her small breasts.
“How can you talk that way?” she said. “You’re highborn yourself.”
“How keen of you to notice, Lupita,” Abi said. Lupe’s face turned the color of well-cured nosehorn leather.
Sensing attention slipping away, Fina sniffed more loudly than before.
“Oh, very well,” Abi said. “Out with it, before you snort your face inside out.”
Fina glared, but recounted a recent holiday up-country with her father at his vassal barony of Lago Bravo.
“It was the way Baron Ludovico treated his peasants,” she said. “He was most frightfully cruel. He had them whipped for the slightest misdeed. I even saw one poor young man—a handsome, strapping fellow—branded on both cheeks for impertinence!”
“You’re right,” Melodía said, wincing. “That is awful. It’s not right for lords to treat their people cruelly. Even serfs.”
At least Fina’s found something more interesting than palace gossip to cry about, she thought. She briefly thanked the Creators, in whom she didn’t really believe, for distracting her companions from their earlier chatter about the latest fashions from Lumière, a subject that bored Melodía stupid.
“My father would’ve had them roasted alive over a slow fire,” Abi said brightly.
“Which?” Fanny asked. “Lords or serfs?”
Abigail Thélème smiled.
“Why don’t you do something, Día?” asked Llurdis.
That was another cousin: the Princess of Catalunya, which although subject to Spaña was nominally a kingdom. It was unlike Llurdis to be last into any conversation. Melodía guessed she’d just been waiting for a chance to stir things up.
“What on Paradise am I supposed to do?” Melodía snapped. At once she regretted letting her cousin get under her skin. It only encouraged her.
“You’re the Emperor’s daughter,” Llurdis said. “Not me.”
She was large and powerfully built, with breasts so large Melodía wondered she didn’t have a constant backache. Her hair was black, as coarse and untamable as she. Her features were too emphatic to be considered pretty, any more than Lupe’s could. Like the Spañola, Llurdis more than made up for it with flamboyant passions, and a tireless appetite for sex and other dramas.
Melodía tossed her head in irritation. Pilar was trying to tease out a recalcitrant snag. The movement made the captive lock yank painfully at Melodía’s scalp. She grimaced and turned, slapping her maid’s hand away.
“Be careful, Pilar! That hurt. What’s the matter with you?”
Pilar’s dark cheeks tightened, and her green eyes narrowed. She bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Highness. Please forgive my clumsiness.”
Ignoring her, Melodía turned her glare back on her cousin where it belonged.
“What good does being Princess do me?” she demanded. “My father’s position is mostly ceremonial, as you never tire of reminding me, Llurdi, thank you so much. And it’s not as if he pays attention to me.”
“He loves you, dear,” Fanny said, switching to a lively galliard to lighten the mood.
“Yes, yes,” said Melodía, not about to let herself be mollified, or otherwise deflected from a good rant. “He loves both his daughters. When he remembers he has them. But he never listens to me. ‘Yes, dear,’ he says, and nods. Then he goes back to what really interests him: plotting his next hunt or war, whatever. And then there’s that creepy confessor of his. Fray Jerónimo. He’s been with Father three years and I haven’t even seen him.”
“No one has,” Fanny said. “I hear he’s under a vow of seclusion.”
“I hear he’s hideously deformed,” Fina said in a voice that quivered between titillation and sympathy.
“Imperial law says I can’t inherit the Throne,” Melodía said. “Fine. And my father’s got the rest of the family so pissed off with his military adventures I’m never going to get elected on my own. Fine. Who wants to be Empress anyway? It’s just a pain in the ass.”
“Young lady!” Doña Carlota said briskly. “Language.”
“But can’t I at least do something worthwhile? All the court and my family want to do is push me into the background like—like an ugly piece of furniture!”
“You could run away and become a mercenary,” Abi Thélème suggested.
“Or a pirate,” said Fanny. Anglaterra was still called Pirate Island, in commemoration of the national pastime that had gotten it conquered and annexed by the Imperio in the first place.
“Why not join your boyfriend’s private army?” asked Lupe. “Oh, that’s right. It’s boys only.”
“But such beautiful boys,” Llurdis said.
“Who mostly like boys,” said Lupe.
“That doesn’t matter,” Melodía said, thinking Lupe was a fine one to talk, given her open, if sporadic and occasionally violent, affair with Llurdis. “So long as Jaume likes me best. And he does. He loves me. I love him. I’ll marry him, as soon as my father gives him enough breathing space from fighting to ask me.”
“If I were you, Día, I’d worry about that black-haired lieutenant of his,” Fina said earnestly. She said everything earnestly. Unless she sobbed it.
“He’s a pretty one too,” Lupe said.
“Jaume and Pere have been friends since childhood,” Melodía said. “And he’s Jaume’s best knight.”
“And Pere’s been doing him since they were striplings,” Llurdis said. “Haven’t you noticed how Pere looks at you? ¡Ai, caray! Daggers.”
“Oh, don’t be absurd. I’ve known him since I was a child! Anyway, he knows Jaume and I sleep together.”
“Don’t talk that way, Princess!” Doña Carlota said. “¡Escandalosa!”
“Oh, don’t be a ninny,” said Lupe’s dueña. “Let girls be girls. If you weren’t a superstitious old baggage, you’d do your duty and teach her how to have fun and not get pregnant.”
“I already know that,” Melodía said indignantly, to titters from her friends. Except for Fanny, who as always blushed when sex was discussed.
“It’s the clear word of the Creators that we’re meant to enjoy the bodies They gave us,” Fanny’s dueña told Melodía’s, “despite the gabble of those crazy preachers you listen to.”
“Poor Carlota never had many volunteer to help her enjoy hers,” said Abi’s dueña in her smoky Slava accent.
Doña Carlota scowled and muttered something about hada wickedness. Melodía rolled her eyes. She didn’t believe in demons—in the Fae. Much less the bizarre asceticism of the Life-to-Come sect to w
hich Doña Carlota so inconveniently belonged. She was always interfering in Melodía’s love life.
Not that that had kept the woman busy of late.
As if reading her mind, Llurdis said, “See, that’s your problem, Día. You just need to get fucked.”
Melodía crossed her arms tightly beneath her breasts. “Don’t I know it.”
“It’s nobody’s fault but your own,” said Lupe. “You won’t so much as look at even the handsomest stableboy.”
“I don’t like boys at all.”
“There are plenty of young knights and lords at court who’d be more than happy to take the edge off for you,” Abi said.
“Courtiers.” Melodía shook her head. She felt Pilar let go of her hair to avoid pulling it again. “Nosehorn-flies, the lot of them.”
Lupe said, “You could always—”
“No. Not you, not Llurdi, not both of you at once. I don’t have the energy for the dramas that would cause.”
“Well, it’s not as if Jaume’s rushed back to you,” Llurdis said. “The Princes’ War ended four months ago. He’s been cooling his heels in Alemania a whole half year!”
“He isn’t ‘cooling his heels.’ He was making sure there was no more trouble up North. With peace secured he’s coming back to La Merced to report.”
“And that’s why you’re so testy,” said Abi. “Horniness, plain and simple.”
“You’ll dry up like your dueña if all you do is read about war and politics,” Lupe said.
“I’ll make my mark on one or the other,” Melodía said. “Someday.”
“I wonder where your sister is, Princesa,” Doña Carlota said pointedly. If she knitted her vegetable-wool any more furiously Melodía thought it would catch fire.
“No doubt she’s down in the hornface stables,” Llurdis said, “squatting on her heels and peering like a sea-skimmer at the grooms and monsters.”
“Best watch her close, Doña Carlota,” Lupe said with a crooked smirk, “or she’ll wind up carrying a stable hand’s chick.”
