by Victor Milán
Melodía had always loved horses. She and the young Araba were devoted to each other. And as Melodía felt about horses, Jaume felt about dinosaurs.
To Melodía, Camellia was a large, admittedly gorgeous and friendly, but ultimately rather ungainly beast. Jaume, who would never speak or pen a word in praise of himself, had written an entire volume (albeit a slim one) on the beauties and excellencies of his Corythosaurus. He treated horses kindly—he found kindness beautiful—but to him they were simply animals.
Instead of following his suggestion she turned Meravellosa and let her pick her way back up the ridge they’d ridden over.
“Where are we going?” Jaume asked, though he followed her at once and was elbow to elbow with Melodía by the time he finished the sentence.
“We’re slipping away,” she said firmly. “Just you and me.”
Considering the look he sent her, she was half exasperated and half amused to see that for all his justly famous lightning wit, he didn’t get it.
“I’ve missed you,” she said.
“And I you.”
“I mean, I’ve really missed you.”
“Oh.” His answering smile made warmth trickle all down the center of her. “Lead on, my lady.”
But no sooner had they returned to the clearing where the ruby dragonfly had killed the bouncer than Melodía heard a drumroll of hard-driven hooves approaching. She scowled. Then sighed.
“Your page, Bartomeu, is coming,” she said. “To call you away to the apportioning, no doubt.”
For downing the wild nosehorn the Emperador would claim the best meat for his kitchen. He had earned the frilled, horned head for a trophy as well. But Felipe didn’t care much about such outward trappings of power. He loved the real thing too well.
The best of the remaining meat would go to Prince Harry’s gamekeepers to feed their families. What fair amount remained Heriberto would distribute among the needy. While under normal circumstances only the wretchedest urban poor—or serfs of exceptionally cruel lords—went hungry amidst Nuevaropa’s bounty, fresh flesh was always a welcome visitor to lower-class tables.
“And once again I’m being robbed of the meat I want most,” she muttered.
“Pardon, my love?”
“Nothing.”
Bartomeu came loping from the woods on his white mule with his golden hair blowing behind him like a pennon.
“He’s smitten with you, you know,” said Melodía.
“He’s a beautiful boy and a dutiful squire,” Jaume said. “But remember what I told you. We only permit love between those of the same rank in our order.”
“So long as he’s not getting anything I’m not.”
“¡Mi amor!” Jaume exclaimed. “Don’t even think that. If I had a spare moment, a spare breath, I’d share it with you.”
“I know,” she said sulkily. “Preparing for this war you don’t even believe in consumes your every moment and all your energy. I know.”
She held up a palm to his protest. “I know. Duty comes before mere personal desire. How well I know that.”
Before more could be said—which was probably for the best—Bartomeu reined in the mule with a gratuitously showy curvet.
Show-off, she thought. I could ride rings around you on any mount you care to try.
“My lord,” the boy proclaimed, cheeks flushed and voice bronzed with importance. “His Imperial Majesty sends his fondest regards.”
He reeled in the saddle and had to suck air then. He was so worked up he kept forgetting to breathe.
“He requests your presence at the ceremony of apportionment.”
Melodía wondered if Bartomeu could see, as clearly as she, the rueful twist to her lover’s smile.
“My sword is ever at His Majesty’s service,” Jaume said. He turned in the saddle and bowed to Melodía. “And yours as well, Highness.”
“If only,” Melodía said.
Chapter 15
Cinco Amigos, Five Friends—We have five domestic mammals unlike any others in the world: the horse, the goat, the dog, the cat, and the ferret. Because all are listed in The Bestiary of Old Home, most believe that the Creators brought them to Paradise to serve us.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
“I don’t even know why you’re doing this,” Melodía said to Jaume’s back as he led her down into cool, companionable dimness. “You don’t even believe in this war.”
He glanced back over his shoulder at her. He smiled, but his brows were compressed. “If I don’t get the army ready,” he said, “nobody will.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” she exclaimed. “If you just quit, maybe the whole foolish thing will fall apart.”
“You know I can’t do that, mi amor.”
She made a frustrated sound. I feel like a smitten schoolgirl, trailing foolishly after a handsome knight, she thought. Maybe because I am?
One of the few fleeting moments Jaume had been able to snatch to spend with her in the increasingly frenetic weeks since his return, and all she could do was argue with him. Yet she couldn’t seem to stop herself. Which made her even madder.
She also couldn’t help thinking, with a dash of added bitterness, that she was getting long in the tooth for a schoolgirl. Most grandes my age are taking their places in the world, starting families or assuming important places in familial enterprises.
And here I am, no practical use to anyone, another gaudy bangle in the Imperial crown.
Up the broad cement ramp from the armory storehouse, a pair of fatties trudged, a pair of casks strapped across each back, containing the Oldest Daughter knew what metal oddments. Two urchins, sexless and bare-legged in rough smocks, switched them toward the bright but cloud-filtered sunlight of a late-winter morning.
The Firefly Palace grounds were vast, but they showed only part of the picture. Following the Rape of La Merced in 376 AP, the Iron Duchess Adelina had finished her fortress before she rebuilt her city. Intending that it serve as refuge for the great port’s inhabitants against future onslaughts by Anglaterrano and Gallego corsairs as well as a stronghold, she dug a network of passageways and chambers deep into the white limestone of the bluffs at Bahía Alegre’s east end. Cisterns, storerooms, even stables and dormitories supposedly extended clear to natural caverns beneath the promontory’s roots. Palace servants whispered breathless tales of people who had lost themselves deep in the Duchess’s Anthill, never to be seen again.
The ramp ended in a great bay with oak doors flung wide. The air from inside smelled of cool stone, oil, and nose-wrinkling turpentine. A gaggle of apprentices clad in scorched and scarred nosehorn-hide aprons and little else labored at stout worktables by the shine of a light-shaft above and lanterns on the walls. Using spirits of resin, they cleaned metal objects of the hornface tallow in which they’d been packed to preserve them from damp. Brass goggles with lenses of glass ground thick to keep sparks and metal splinters away from vulnerable eyeballs turned their faces into weird human-insect hybrids.
Beyond what she could see and smell, Melodía knew nothing about what they were up to. And cared rather less.
Several journeymen stood by supervising. One harrumphed loudly as Jaume strode in. The armory workers looked up, then bowed. Aside from his being a high noble and great hero, anyplace Jaume set foot became a stage belonging to him alone. Taking note of the Princesa a step behind, they bowed again deeper.
He smiled and nodded acknowledgment. With a happy squeal a small ballista bolt hit him midthigh and clung with both arms.
“Cousin Jaume!”
“Montserrat!” Laughing, he tousled the girl’s dark-gold dreadlocks. He knelt to pick her up with both hands. Straightening, he tucked her into the crook of an arm as if she were an infant.
Which was no minor feat. Though not fat by any means, Melodía’s baby sister was a sturdy little nosehorn calf. She was heavier than she looked, as Melodía well knew from the odd sisterly wrestling match. Stronger, too—lik
e Melodía herself.
“Montse,” Melodía said, in a cooler tone. “What are you doing down here?—¡ay, chingao!”
The last was an involuntary exclamation squeezed out of her by a cold nose poking one ankle where the gilt buskin-thongs winding up her calves left it bare. She knelt to scoop up the creature that had greeted her so.
Montserrat’s familiar curled into a soft fur pool in Melodía’s palms. Obsidian-bead eyes peered at Melodía from a pointed silver face.
“Silver Mistral,” Melodía said, bringing own her face near the ferret’s black bandit-mask. “I suppose the question is what you’re doing here, other than getting underfoot and making it difficult for these people to work.”
Mistral stretched out to bump the Princess’s nose with her own. Laughing despite herself, Melodía kissed the ferret back and set her on the stone floor. She scampered promptly over to hop and beep for Jaume’s attention.
“I’m here watching Maestro Rubbio do stuff,” Montse explained solemnly from the crook of Jaume’s arm. “Mistral’s helping me.”
“Mistress Montse!” a voice roared. “I told you not to let that beast run around loose.”
A curious figure emerged from a passage leading deeper into the palace netherworld. He had the face of an angry god, red and handsome, with goggles pushed up onto red-gold curls crowning his large head. He was powerfully built, but the bare muscle-knotted arms and legs that emerged from a thick leather tunic dotted with burn spots were half the length of a normal person’s, and the top of his head barely came to Melodía’s breastbone. He was an enano, born with a rare condition.
The dwarf stamped bare feet theatrically at Mistral, who arched her long back into a hoop and bounced sideways, beeping furiously. His behavior alarmed Melodía. The ferret could be an awful pill, but though full of mischief, she had no malice in her. She and Montse doted on each other.
But Montse only laughed. “Don’t mind Maestro Rubbio,” she said. “He won’t really hurt her. He’s just a big phony.”
“Do not take me for granted, Infanta!” the Master blustered.
He spoke with the accent of Talia, a nation subject to Trebizon. Though she’d never met him before, Melodía knew his reputation. He was an internationally renowned armorer whom her father had imported to his service when he moved full-time to La Merced, after Melodía and Montse’s mother, Marisol, died.
“I’m sorry, Maestro,” Montse said as Jaume lowered her to the floor. “I got so excited when I saw Jaume, I forgot and put her down.”
She gathered up the still-hopping ferret and tucked the animal against the front of her oil-stained smock.
“You must be the Princesa Melodía,” Rubbio said, sticking out a stubby, black-nailed hand. After the briefest hesitation Melodía took it. To her surprise he raised her hand to his lips and kissed it reverently. “It is an honor to meet you at last. Great songs have been written of your beauty, but they still do you no justice.”
She laughed. “I never thought I’d find a courtier in surroundings such as these.”
“Never underestimate an artisan, Princess! We are men and women of parts.”
He turned. “And this is the fine Count Jaume, at last deigning to visit us humble metalworkers! You are overdue, my lord. Metal is strength. Metal gives the Empire its bones, its spine. Metal encases your blue-blooded body when you ride to battle. Yet you take it for granted, and those who shape it to your needs, you nobles, you!”
Jaume smiled. “I assure you, Maestro, I don’t take it for granted at all. My order celebrates skill in all kinds of making. I have nothing but admiration for you and the work you do.”
The armorer raised his brows. His eyes were gold-amber and large, with long lashes. “You do?”
“My Companions Mor Ayaks and Mor Pedro Luna practice smithing and armoring as their excellences, as well as for the most practical purposes.” The boyish enthusiasm in his voice thrilled Melodía. “Mor Florian is a goldsmith and metal-sculptor of great skill. They would all be honored to visit and make your acquaintance.” He frowned. “If only our war preparations didn’t eat up all our time.”
“So, what is it I owe the honor of your presence to?” asked Rubbio.
“I’m told you’re readying our siege train, Maestro. I wanted to see what we’ll need to transport.”
“You are in luck, my lord and ladies!” Rubbio turned and, putting two fingers in his mouth, emitted a piercing whistle. “We are just now bringing forth key pieces of your great engines of war.”
Melodía didn’t feel lucky. She was only here because it gave her a pretext to steal a few moments with her love. Still, she found herself intrigued by the leather bag that two pairs of apprentices carried in, hanging from a long pole held between them like a trophy from the hunt. The first two apprentices maneuvered around a large vacant table, and all four squatted. The bag settled onto the wood with a stifled clank.
While their master stood by watching critically, a big-shouldered journeywoman stepped forward to open the bag. It revealed a double green-metal triangle with sides almost as long as Rubbio himself was tall, and rounded points. A thirty-centimeter hole pierced the middle. Melodía realized it was an enormous bracket.
“Green?” she said.
“Bronze, Princess,” the master smith declared. “It resists our wet coastal climate far better than iron or steel. The color’s mere verdigris; it’ll polish away nicely.”
He walked up to pat the bracket paternally. “Bronze is a stout metal. It will serve you well, Imperial Champion, and never let you down, never the once!”
“So,” Jaume said, “what is it, exactly?”
“Part of a trebuchet,” Montse announced.
Rubbio nodded and smiled at her as if she were a favorite pupil. “Precisely so! It is the pivot that serves as fulcrum for the counterweighted throwing arm.”
“So this is part of an engine like the ones on the palace’s seaward ramparts?” Melodía asked.
“Correct! You are perhaps an aficionada of siege equipment, Highness?”
“Not really.”
The big wall-mounted trebuchets had attracted her notice because they were, after all, instruments of war, a subject that fascinated her. But she lacked interest in siegecraft. She craved action.
“So what does the army need to carry to Terraroja?” Jaume asked.
“Mainly these beauties,” Rubbio said, patting the bracket like a pet vexer. “Also the various bolts and nuts needed to hold the machines together. Once you reach your objective, lord, you need merely set your pioneers to fell and dress the appropriate trees, and fit it all together. With your great nosehorn dinosaurs to fetch and carry, a matter of hours, days at the most. And then, ché meraviglia, you shall batter down the evildoer’s walls.”
Frowning, Melodía turned to Jaume. “Why do you need to do that?”
“To pry Redland out of his castle, of course.”
Rubbio laughed. “This will crack his shell for him, no matter how stout he thinks it is!”
“But why bother?” Melodía said. “It’s not as if he won’t come out of his own free will.”
“What do you mean?” Jaume asked. He had his chin down and was frowning at the big green bracket, as if trying to compose a sonnet about it and not finding the proper words.
“I met him a few years ago when he visited La Merced,” she said. “He’s middle-aged, but still your basic buckethead who’s never grown up.”
Her cheeks went hot. “Oh! Sorry for calling them that.”
Jaume laughed. “Don’t worry. We use the word ourselves, though not where our fellow nobles can hear. I promise you, we have no bucketheads among my Companions.”
“You know that when your army turns up in his domain, Terraroja’s going to feel his honor’s been challenged. He’s going to call up all his allies and vassals and rush right out to fight with you. You won’t need your big clanking metal bits.”
Jaume didn’t bother to reply. He just stood staring at t
he great ugly green thing.
He was ignoring her. As if her words were nothing more than housefly buzz. She felt warmth spread throughout her body. Not a comforting kind.
She spun and walked quickly out of the shop, toward the hot light of day.
* * *
Jaume was lost in his own head again. He wasn’t wandering familiar pleasant bowers of poetry and song, nor the flame-lit pathways of military plans. Instead it was a labyrinth of grey: organization, detail, paperwork, dispiriting as it was confusing. Recent weeks had forced him to spend more and more time trying to negotiate it. It defied his best efforts to reduce it to comprehension.
Decidedly not helping was a mounting lack of sleep. So many things clamored for his attention, his energy, his time.…
As if awakening he blinked to the realization there was a hole in the cool underground air where the dear, bright warmth of Melodía had been a moment before.
“Omm,” Montserrat said. “Someone’s in trouble.”
At first her words struck him as a complete non sequitur. Belatedly it came to him to ask, “Did I do something wrong?”
A long and echoing silence answered him. The apprentices and journeyfolk, who had been standing by watching the unusual highborn visitors with fascination, suddenly turned away and got busy again.
Montse squinted at the green-patinaed bracket. “There’s something written on it,” she said. “What’s it say?”
Jaume walked close and bent over the bracket. “El último razonamiento del Imperio,” he read the raised inscription aloud. “The Empire’s final argument.”
Montse wrinkled her snub nose. “That’s disgusting,” she said.
“Little Mistress,” Rubbio said, “the truth so often is.”
* * *
Vague disquiet accompanied Jaume the rest of his day. But endless demands on his attention kept it at the back of his mind. Now that most of his Companions had rejoined him, he had Mor Jacques, the order’s chief administrator, to help with the unaccustomed task of organizing and provisioning a large, disparate army.
