The Dinosaur Knights (48 page)

Felipe frowned. “I disagree,” he said mildly.

It was as if he'd scuffed up a flier pelt and touched a spark from it to everyone in the room. Felipe the pious, the great friend of Tavares's late patron Pío, contradicting a man of the cloth? A man he himself had seen given the red hat despite the known distaste of Pío's successor for him—had hand-selected as the Imperial Army's chaplain?

It was so unexpected that instead of his usual theatrics Tavares simply blinked at Felipe as if he had spoken in the tongue of far Vareta.

“I have taken counsel,” Felipe went on, voice strengthening as he went along. “Of my prayers, and of course of my faithful and pious confessor, Fray Jerónimo, who as you all know is an exceedingly holy man.”

That sent a certain look scurrying around the table like a mouse.
None of us knows that
, Jaume thought, covering his own skepticism by lifting a goblet of rather sour local wine to his lips. Because so far as I know, no living soul other than His Majesty has ever so much as seen this holy man. Not even his own chief bodyguard.

“Fray Jerónimo has shared with me this wisdom,” Felipe said, eyes shining with eagerness. “As is well known, the Grey Angels exist to maintain the Equilibrium of the World: the smooth and regular turning of the Wheel. A Grey Angel Crusade hasn't got destruction as its end, although it may employ such means. So my confessor asked me, is it not possible that this Crusade is ultimately meant as much as a test as chastisement? To discover whether the Imperio is fit to persist—and I to rule it?”

He paused. The expressions Jaume saw around the long table ranged from blankness to shock to anger-flush growing behind Tavares's surprisingly trim beard—and coating of grime. Jaume hoped his own habitual soft smile hadn't frozen too hard.

Felipe noticed none of the reactions. That was nothing exceptional: he was a man who didn't take hints. Instead he warbled on, happy as a child opening his Creators' Day gifts:

“‘Should the Emperador'—my confessor said—‘confront and defeat the Grey Angel Crusade, that will signify, not blasphemous thwarting of the Creators' will, but rather irrefutable demonstration that he and his dreams of centralizing power unto the Fangèd Throne enjoy the purest favor of the Eight. Win, and you win their imprimatur.'”

Felipe sat back beaming all over his pudgy face. “Now that I know it's all a test of my worthiness—
our
worthiness, my friends!—I await the contest with eagerness!”

You're the only one
. Even as he thought it, Jaume could read the words on several of his fellow-captains' faces as plainly as if they were block-printed there.

He looked to Tavares. The cardinal's face was like a skull without the grin. For once the chaplain could find no words.

With an anything but congenial grin of his own, Jaume leaned forward. He had not beaten the brutal miquelet mountain bandits of his native Catalunya as a child, or won countless duels and battles since, by lacking a matador's instinct for the kill.

“If we wish for signs of our Creators' judgement,” he said, “we need look no further than the plagues that stalk the camp, carrying away hundreds and weakening thousands to the point of uselessness. In very face of the battle, which, as your Majesty says, will determine the fate of the Empire.”

“They are themselves judgements for sin!” Tavares declaimed. At once his narrow jaw clamped shut, and his eyes went wide. For all his obduracy, he wasn't stupid. He knew he'd said too much already.

Jaume smiled sweetly. “For once,” he purred, “I agree with His Eminence. By defying their Creators' explicit commands on cleanliness we have broken Divine law. This hideous pestilence is the very punishment they decree for that crime.”

“The
B
OOKS OF THE
L
AW
are allegorical!” Tavares cried. “To take them literally is to be found wanting. And wanton!”

“Rubbish,” the tall and ice-blond Lady Janice said. “The outbreak proves the literal interpretation's correct—to anyone impious enough to doubt them in the first place.”

Tavares's eyes shot black fire at her. But he said nothing. Like Rurik and Jaume, as leader of an Order Military the Anglesa was a cardinal in the Holy Church. And all three were considerably senior to Tavares.

Felipe nodded. “True, true. What the
B
OOKS
predict is what we're suffering. Falk, my boy: see to it that full compliance with Holy Teaching on cleanliness is promulgated as army regulation, and rigorously enforced.”

Falk's smile reminded Jaume of the Duke's albino war-mount, Snowflake. “It will be a pleasure, Majesty.”

Tavares glared through knife-slit eyes. “Softly, my lord. Softly. We already face the wrath of our Creators.”

“I won't surrender my Empire or my people to destruction, no matter how righteous it's supposed to be!” Felipe said. “I have served the Empire as well as my Creators loyally for all my life. I cannot believe they would damn me for doing what they Created me to do.”

“They don't damn at all,” Jaume said—softly. “As they also make clear in the
B
OOKS OF THE
L
AW
.”

“Lies!” Tavares almost screeched the word. Spittle flew from his mouth. Jaume recoiled. Did the man think that was persuasive?

Ah, no
, he rebuked himself.
The fanatic doesn't seek to persuade. He wants only to punish disbelief
.

The chaplain inflated his narrow chest for another outburst. But Felipe held up his hand.

“Enough,” he said. “I don't have the stomach for theological debate right now. If nothing else, it would seem to be rather after the fact at this point. The hay is in the barn, the Slayer's in the herd, the Grey Angel Crusade has begun.

“I am not asking for
discussion
, gentlemen, ladies. I see a threat to my people and my throne. Wherever it originates I intend to fight it.

“Therefore I command: let anyone who cannot in good conscience fight leave the army at once. Because from this very instant any who resist, sow dissension, or even hang back from the fight once joined, will be hanged forthwith as a mutineer and traitor!”

“You risk your very soul,” Tavares said, his voice now low and deadly as a venomous snake.

“Yes,” Felipe said. “Well. It's my own to risk. And if there's sin, let it be mine alone, as the decision to fight is mine alone.”

“So be it.”

Tavares stood. He turned a mad glare from Felipe to Jaume, who forced himself to meet it with calm. The chaplain spun toward the door in a crimson swirl.

“One moment, Eminence.” The Emperor's quiet words snapped the Cardinal back around. “You were wished upon me by my late friend, Pío. For his sake I've put up with you, though I've found you quite as insufferable as Jaume reported you were with his Army of Correction.

“And now I've done all I can for Pío's blessed memory. If you think yourself exempt from any decree I have made or shall make, you are sadly mistaken. Do you understand me? One word of doubt preached to my warriors, and I will request the captain of my bodyguard to remove your Eminence's head from your shoulders with that pet axe of his. One word.”

Stiffly, Tavares bowed and left.

*   *   *

“What is it you need to tell us, and us alone, your Majesty?” Jaume asked.

Emperor Felipe sat silent a moment in the gilded folding chair he'd had made up in case he ever got to lead the army on campaign, as if to ensure the dismissed conferees had gotten fully out of earshot of the chamber in his sprawling and elaborate pavilion. Then he looked at Jaume and Falk, and the broadness of his grin and the joy in his sea-green eyes startled Jaume almost to the point of shock.

“Gentlemen,” he said. “My good, loyal boys. Maxence brought further news, which he wisely chose to impart to me alone. My daughter escaped the fall of Providence town.”

“Bella!” Jaume exclaimed. He flung himself on one knee beside the Emperor, clung to him, and gave way to heartfelt sobs of relief and joy.

Felipe's arms grasped him clumsily from above. Jaume felt him shake as he cried too. The Emperor pressed his cheek against Jaume's head; Jaume felt hot tears drip hot onto his scalp and run down his cheek.

But Jaume's duty would not permit him to indulge himself too long, even in the pure and simple beauty of his passion. He forced himself back into control and pulled away, blinking his eyes clear.

The Emperor's own eyes still swam, and tear trails glittered down his cheek. Tears dewed his Imperial beard.

“But there's worse news too,” Felipe said in a clotted voice.

“Majesty?” Jaume's own voice was clear.

“She's with Bogomirskiy's rebel army.”

Jaume's soul was a blade red from the forge, plunged into icy water.
I knew the moment His Majesty's words reached my ears, of course. How else could my beloved have escaped the rise of Raguel in Providence town?

“She's safe, at least?” he asked.

The Emperor nodded. Tears dripped from the end of his goatee.

“The last anyone has heard. But Maxence also says that his Grace the Duke of Haut-Pays has heard claims from refugees that she serves him, riding with his scout cavalry.”

Which, given that Voyvod Karyl was engaged to fight for our declared enemies in Providence
 …

He stood.

“What will you do?” Felipe asked him, almost beseechingly.

“What my Emperor directs,” Jaume replied. “As always. Majesty?”

He could not trust his self-control anymore. Barely waiting for Felipe's answering nod he spun to the door-flap.

To find himself looking into Duke Falk's sapphire eyes. Being who he was, Jaume could not help but feel a flash of admiration for the masculine beauty of the powerfully built young man.

But it was more elusive beauty than usual. Because the taut alabaster skin of Falk's face had gone an unhealthy grey and sagged most alarmingly, and those long-lashed, lovely eyes were wide as a startled matador's.

He's as stricken by the cruelty of His Majesty's dilemma as I am!
Jaume thought.

“Your Grace,” he managed not to mumble, and fled back to his encampment and his private grief with as much dignity as he could.

*   *   *

As the silken flap swished shut behind the departed Condestable Imperial, Falk turned to follow. His face and chest burned with shame at having witnessed the spectacle of two men—important men,
leaders
—weeping openly. He already felt ambivalent about Jaume. But he could afford no such confusion with regard to his liege the Emperor. Could he?

“Your Grace,” Felipe said from behind. His voice still trembled unmanfully. Falk gritted his jaw, then composed himself and turned.

He bowed, both to show respect—
I must respect the Emperor!
—and to hide the last of scrubbing his face of emotion.

“How may I serve your Majesty?” he asked.

He meant it.
All my life,
he thought,
I've been groomed to serve Chian, and his principle of power. I admit I've wondered whether Felipe truly was the strong man the Empire needs. He shown my doubts were pointless.

“I thought I—I thought we'd saved Melodía by getting her away from La Merced,” Felipe said haltingly. “Now she seems likely to be crushed like a grain of millet between the millstones of our armies and Raguel's Crusade. Events both vast and unforeseeable.”

Not altogether unforeseeable
, Falk allowed himself to think sardonically.
Not to me
.

But I must admit I never foresaw an actual Grey Angel Crusade
. He was a believer in the True Faith of the Creators, as mandated for all human inhabitants of Paradise. But he had not expected the tenets of his religion to manifest in quite such concrete ways. To say nothing of such appalling ones.

The Emperor hung and shook his head. “I don't see what better I could have done. Yet I feel that I've failed her.”

For an agonizing moment Falk sat frozen.
Does he know? Is this a test? Some subtle torture, before he summons my own men to hale me off to the more overt kind?

But Felipe simply sat, head down, shoulders slumped, looking prematurely aged by care. He didn't have much guile in him in any event. Witness the ease with which Falk had persuaded him that allowing Melodía's escape was the Emperor's own idea, weeks before.

“I cannot call her back,” Felipe said in a way that showed how he fought to keep the tears from surging back. “Not after all … all that's happened. Nor can I treat this unexpected revenant Karyl or his host as anything but enemies. Since, ultimately, they're the enemy we marched out on Crusade against.”

“I see your Majesty's dilemma.”

“What am I to do, boy?” Felipe blinked rapidly at Falk. “What am I to do for my poor baby girl?”

Inspiration came. “Wouldn't Fray Jerónimo tell you to bide? Wouldn't he say that all things happen for a purpose? Be patient, he'd say. And rest easy about your daughter's fate.”

The clever devil's managed to keep his true identity and even his face secret from me, the chief of the Scarlet Tyrants. And more than that, from Bergdahl's best efforts, at
the Palace of the Fireflies
and on the march. I might as well at least have use of him
.

Felipe's head snapped up. His eyes glittered so sharply Falk feared he'd overplayed his hand.

But the Emperor just sighed and subsided back in his chair. “Melodía's fate rests in the Creators' hands,” he said. “As do all our fates. You're right.”

He reached out to take Falk's huge hand, white scarred with lighter white, with his own. It was soft as a baby's. The pikeman's calluses he'd earned in youth had long since worn away.