The Dinosaur Knights (61 page)

Felipe raised a brow. “So? Well, you're Baron Korrigan now, lad, so stand up straight. There're eyes upon you. And if you're near the greatest rogue among my vassals I'll eat a dung-wagon, cargo, tongue, and tires.”

Rob stared at him with what resembled scratcher eggs with green-hazel eyes painted on the narrow ends. He stood up straighter.

“Understand, my friends, that your accomplishments this day have earned you any reward it's within my and the Empire's power to bestow,” Felipe said. “Please also understand that it is necessity as well as justice that impels my largesse. For as things stand I have to reward you all—or hang every one of you for the blackest blasphemy imaginable. And myself right alongside.

“So go. Clean yourselves up. Drink something, for Maia's sake. And tonight at the great feast of thanksgiving for our deliverance I'll proclaim your elevations. And we'll all celebrate until we're too drunk to stand. What say you?”

A hefty clatter told Melodía that Falk had gone to his knees. Beside Jaume. She hunched her head down between shoulders drawn unbearably tight against her body.

Don't let them see it
, she ordered herself.

He had violated her in a terrible and secret way. Had destroyed her life and falsely accused her of treason, although those seemed petty things next to his great crime. She had longed for months for the moment when she'd face him again.

Preferably looking into those deep-blue eyes as she drove her talwar slowly into his belly.

And yet here he was, a hero of the day. And she couldn't doubt he had done heroic things. She'd heard the surviving Scarlet Tyrants' awestruck whispering as Companions-Ordinary escorted her and the other Fugitive Legion captains up the round hill. He'd saved her father's life, again and again, they said, though her father fought well.

So I'll kill him quickly, then
. She burned to point at the bastard and scream,
He raped me! He's a monster!

But she could do no such thing. For the Empire's sake. For her family's sake.

She could no more accuse him, here and now, than she could stab him here in front of her father and the entire Imperial Army. Her accusations would be dismissed as the delirious ravings of a mind temporarily unhinged by more of horror and exhaustion than any human being should endure, anyway.

I have to hang on
, she told herself.
Have to swallow my pride and anger. For now.

Because she saw her duty clearly now. To herself, to her family, to the Empire. She must root out the rot that allowed a cancer like Falk to take hold so near the very heart of power. And she would have her vengeance on Falk von Hornberg.

How, she had no idea. But she swore to herself she'd find a way.

Karyl had taught her that: until you're dead, there's always a way.

Baron Côme knelt next, his smile even wrier than usual. Then Luc Garamond, and Gaétan, looking bemused. And Rob, who looked as if he'd been hit in the head with the haft of his own axe.

Melodía wondered if Karyl would bend the knee, even now, to the man who had ordered his betrayal and his outlawry. And what her father might do to him—even to Raguel's conqueror—if he refused.

Karyl Bogomirskiy did not bend the knee to El Emperador de Nuevaropa.

He fainted and fell on his face.

*   *   *

Falk von Hornberg felt his head yanked rudely up away from the bucket he'd been puking in by the hair on the front of his head.

“D'you think you could stop now, your Grace?” his servant, Bergdahl, asked, his goblin face hanging centimeters above Falk's own like a misshapen moon. “It's a good job you ate hours ago and not bloody much. Still, best get control of yourself, unless you crave seeing the color of your own lungs in there with the slop.”

Falk gagged. Then he fought down the urge to throw up more emptiness. He nodded despite the tight clutch on his hair. The motion stung his scalp.

Despite the servant's wiry strength, he'd never have been able to haul his master's head up against the strength of Falk's neck the way he had when Falk was a child, if Falk hadn't been so utterly spent from exertion. And vomiting.

Bergdahl let him go. Falk's head lolled forward toward the wooden bucket, which fortunately wasn't very full, before he managed to stop it.

“And when did you grow such a fine sense of squeamishness, my lord? Slaughter's seldom troubled you before. Either as participant or spectator.”

“I've never seen that scale of slaughter before,” Falk said, his voice hoarse from corrosive bile. “Much less killed so many at one time.”

Bergdahl began wiping Falk's mouth and beard roughly with a rag. “I know even the truly manly can find themselves unmanned after the fighting-fury's abandoned them, at the end of the day. But I've never seen you react in this particular weak way.”

As Falk began to grow aware once more of something beyond the wracking nausea and the terror yammering inside his own skull, he heard ladles clanging in pots, soldiers on patrol exchanging banter with servants preparing the evening's impending feast, a woman's voice singing beautifully in Francés, and other random sounds of work around the Imperial tent cluster atop Le Boule. It seemed jarringly commonplace, after a day like today.

“And did you fail to notice the Princess herself going into the Emperor's big tent?” Falk asked, sitting up straighter on his camp stool. “Or did you just not recognize her with short hair and blood splashed all over her light-horse armor?”

Bergdahl laughed his corpse-tearer caw of a laugh. “Your wits aren't that addled, that you'd really believe I'd miss any such thing.”

“Don't you see, you damned fool? She could expose me at any time. What would that do to my mother's precious plans? Much less her only living child?”

“If the Dowager Duchess were here, your Grace, she'd remind you that you are the hero of the hour, since you and that red-eyed white nightmare of yours very publicly butchered a truly exemplary number of unwashed lunatics whilst carrying out your duty to preserve the Emperor's saggy ass.”

He picked up the puke bucket, glanced inside, gave his master a cocked-eyebrow look. Then he shrugged.

“The little quim's cleverer than I gave her credit for, that much is clear. Or she wouldn't be here now playing at soldiers. But she's still a grande bred and brought up. She knows full well there's not a thing she can do or say right now without causing a crisis when the Empire and her precious family can least afford it. Since her daddy and all the rest of you just thwarted the Creators' own Will made flesh, and all. And that's if her wild tale's even believed. Which it won't be.”

Falk wiped his mouth. “By the same token,” he said, aware of the fact the hada's gibes had indeed shocked him back into a measure of self-control, and burning with humiliation over that fact, “she's grown up with intrigue. She'll bend every effort to give us the full Triceratops horn with pointed steel cap and all behind the scenes, first chance she gets.”

Bergdahl spat in the puke-bucket, which made his master's stomach turn over anew.

“If she was so fucking good at intrigue, she'd never have gotten her ass locked up so you were in a position to fuck it, your Grace.”

“She strikes me as the sort who learns fast. Remember how her father pays the most attention to whoever talked to him last. She'll have plenty of opportunities to get in the last word. All it takes is him to sniff the truth. And then even you can't hope to escape the impaling stake.”

“What about the Creators' precious Law forbidding our rulers creative pastimes like that?”

Falk grunted. “Even with that two-legged dung beetle Tavares sent to Old Hell by his hordeling friends, don't forget all the atrocities he talked the army into on the march here. Without Felipe saying him nay, mind. I'm guessing that's all broken Creators' Law on the subject comprehensively enough for His Majesty to lose precious little sleep about overlooking its niceties in paying us off for his daughter.”

“I was born to be hanged, my mother always said,” Bergdahl said dismissively. “And she wouldn't lie to me. That once, at least.

“But you do have a point for once, in spite of fatigue and fear addling your brain more than usual. We are in the shit for a very fact, and it's clearly closing over even my head.”

Falk glared at him through matter-crusted lids.

“You're not—”

“Oh, yes, your Grace,” Bergdahl said with a horror smirk, “I am. I'm calling in your lady mother.”

“You wouldn't. Not so soon.”

Bergdahl croaked another laugh. “You think I like it any more than you do? She's a less unsettling master by far when I'm at least out of the immediate reach of her arm.”

“You sound as if you're afraid of her.”

“Only a fool doesn't fear your mother. She's like the Fae in that.”

“There's no such thing as the Fae.”

“There was no such thing as a Grey Angel to you either, before you found yourself staring one in the face. But enjoy your comforting disbelief a while longer, boy; for once your ignorance isn't likely to cost us much of value.”

“But bringing her together with Felipe?” Falk shook his head. Which was a mistake. It made him so dizzy he almost pitched over sideways. “That sounds like a recipe for trouble.”

“Oh, it is,” said Bergdahl. “But if we get better than we deserve, it'll bring more trouble to others than to us. If it makes you feel any better, that's been her plan all along. For now, what's important is that if anyone can pitchfork us out of the latrine, it's her. She can deal with that vengeful little slut of a princess.

“And her whole high-and-mighty family!”

*   *   *

Maids she didn't know had bathed her, anointed her in scented oils, dressed her in soft silks. Soft,
clean
silks.

Someday soon Melodía would learn their names. Who they were, who their families were. Whom they loved and what they desired from life. She wouldn't take servants for granted again. Not after Pilar. Or what the servants in the Palace of the Fireflies had done and risked for her.

But that was for later. Right now she was all but overwhelmed by the sheer existential joy of no longer being blood-sticky and smelling like seven kinds of shit. Literally.

Anointed with oils whose delicious aromas almost didn't make sense to her in her present state, gown clinging to her still-damp body, she started from the tent's bathing chamber.

And stopped dead. She sensed a presence looming in the main room. A tall and distinctly masculine presence.

She stopped dead just short of the curtain across the doorway. Her eyes cast frantically about. No weapon lay to hand. She pressed her lips together hard, thinking of her talwar waiting in its sheath in the other room. It might as well be in La Merced.

Then: “Melodía? Beloved?”

The voice was music, the words honeyed wine. She pushed through the silken curtain. He had bathed and changed to a fresh silk blouse and trousers of white and butterscotch. A thin circlet of braided gold held his fine orange hair back from his dear, perfectly sculpted face.

As she flowed into his arms she could feel the way exhaustion slackened his normally taut muscles. It didn't matter. All that mattered in all the world was that he was here.

“My love,” she whispered. “Jaume.” And tipped back her head so that her still-wet hair cascaded down the back of her gown.

Their mouths met in a kiss like that first long drink of water at battle's end. And if he still carried a hint of the smell of death about him … so did she.

Melodía wriggled herself free enough in his arms to shed her robe. He was pulling off his clothes as well, still holding her. Then she forgot everything but him, and the two-souled and single-minded worship of Beauty and the Lady.

*   *   *

“Welcome, Duke Karyl of the Empire of the Fangèd Throne. I salute you.”

Karyl's sword slid from its walking-stick sheath. That voice haunted with familiarity.

Then he caught it. “Aphrodite?”

It was the sorceress—so-called and, he supposed, proven. The woman had hired him and Rob Korrigan to take the road to Providence, so many lives ago.

Who gave me back my sword hand.

He still wore battle-garb and the attendant coating of battle-filth. He had been out seeing as best he could to the needs of the people and animals he'd led into the fight before he'd consent to bathing and changing clothes. The toll on them weighed on his soul like mountains.

Gloom filled the tent assigned him. It had been pitched on the west slope of the round hill the Imperials called Le Boule. The sun had descended far enough to throw it into shade.

Aphrodite stepped into a shaft of residue light that fell through a mesh patch high up in the tent. Motes swam in it. Karyl's sword, which had begun to droop as weariness won out again, snapped up to guard.

The sorceress wore a dark brown robe and cowl. Karyl frowned.

“Wait,” he said hesitantly. “Why do you look just like the Witness?”

She drew back her cowl, revealing hair that fell like living lava down her back.

“Because I am the Witness, Karyl.”

“But you're young,” he said. “The Witness is old as the world. She told me.”

“Silly boy,” the uninvited guest said, “I am the world.”

“You're a monster!” he screamed. He slashed at her.

The sword cut only air. Dust danced. He overbalanced and fell flat on his belly.

“What evil magic's this?” he cried, coming desperately back to one knee.

“I'm not here,” she said. “This is only my likeness. A projection.”

“A what?”

“An illusion, then. You can hear me and see me. But I'm not here. Or rather, I am—I'm everywhere. But not in any form you'd recognize.”