The Dinosaur Lords (25 page)

He roared like a tyrant bull as his release joined hers.

*   *   *

Afterward they lay gently tangled on her bed, barely conscious of moving to it, in the shared soft glow of pleasure and amber lamplight.

“I’m surprised your guardian matadora allowed us this time alone,” he said.

“She’s sleeping soundly in her chambers down the hall,” Melod
í
a said. “I’m surprised you don’t hear. She snores like an old nosehorn bull.”

“Is that what that sound is? I thought it
was
an old nosehorn on the palace grounds somewhere. Maybe dozing at his capstan.”

He raised a questioning brow. Her eyes tried to drink him all in. She actually blessed the dimness in the room: it made it easier for her mind to gloss over the bruises, already turning a dark rainbow of blue and green and yellow and black, that mottled his hip and thigh and arm as merely shadows.

“She’s got a taste for wine,” Melod
í
a said. “Maybe too much. She resists it with her usual steel will. Mostly. Tonight her fellow due
ñ
as encouraged her to drink as freely as she wished.”

“Did they, now?” He grinned like a schoolboy to her earlier schoolgirl. “So we’ve got them to thank?”

Melod
í
a nodded. “Uh-huh. They tease her, mercilessly sometimes, that if everyone believed as she does, the race would die off from failure to reproduce.”

“Ah. So she’s a follower of La Vida-que-Viene, then?”

“I’m afraid so. It’s a frightful bore.”

“How sad for her. I can’t see the attraction of the Life-to-Come sect’s doctrines, myself. I’d never deny their right to believe what they wish: there’s nothing uglier than trying to punish people for their thoughts. Still—I can’t help but see the irony that they whisper the loudest that the Garden of Beauty and Truth in Providence is heretical, when it’s their beliefs that contradict
The Books of the Law
.”

“They also criticize you. Old P
í
o is one of them, though he can’t admit the heterodoxy.”

“I know too well. He hates my order. He’d revoke our charter in a heartbeat if your father would let him.”

“I’m glad Daddy won’t. I don’t know why my father pays attention to him, Pope or not.”

“Because P
í
o tells him what he wants to hear. If you’ll forgive my talking that way about your father.”

“It’s only true. An understatement, really.”

She peered intently into his face. “Is that what’s been bothering you?”

“What do you mean?”

“Since you’ve been back—it’s as if there’s some kind of barrier between us. We’ve always talked freely. It’s why I fell in love with you. Well—one reason among many.”

His brow furrowed. She pressed a finger to his lips.

“No. Please don’t try to tell me it’s just how preoccupied you’ve been with readying the army to march out. Please.”

“Forgive me, my love. There are things I’ve been reluctant to burden you with.”

“Do you think not trusting me hurts less than hearing what you don’t want to tell me would? Aren’t we betrothed? Well—nearly?”

He took her hand in both of his. “Of course I trust you, my love. And of course we’re betrothed—in spirit at least. I wanted to spare you pain.”

“If I wanted to be spared pain,” she said, “would I have let myself fall in love with the Imperial Champion?”

He laughed. “I never could outflank you mentally. Very well. You remember my glorious victory that capped the Princes’ War? My defeat of the renegade mercenary?”

“Karyl Bogomirskiy? The Slavo who commanded the White River Legion? The servants tell me people are still singing about that in every tavern in the city.”

“It’s all a lie. Down to the punctuation.”

It felt as if a ball of cold wet ash had materialized inside her stomach. “What do you mean?”

“In the months I spent in Alemania after the war,” he said, “I investigated Voyvod Karyl as thoroughly as I could. I found many things not to admire about him. He was a harsh man. I heard reports, well attested, that he was trying to squeeze pleasure itself out of his domain.”

“You’re joking!”

“I’m not. Crazy as it seems, he hated all passion with a passion. He blamed
emotion
for the sum of human misery. So he tried to enforce a grey uniformity on the Misty March, and force all its energy toward creating and sustaining his mercenary war machine.”

“But that’s monstrous. Shouldn’t you have destroyed him for that alone?”

“I’ve fought monsters my whole life,
mi amor
. But so far as I could ascertain, ruthless though Karyl was, he was never cruel. The mother of the man who usurped his throne, now, she was a monster, by all accounts. She murdered Karyl’s father and his friends, and tortured people for sport. But when he reconquered his March, he simply had her beheaded. The usurper himself, his own half brother, he allowed to go unharmed into exile. No, in his own way, Karyl was forbearing. Even merciful.”

Melod
í
a made a skeptical sound deep in her throat.

“He was a remarkable field captain,” Jaume said. “Probably the best in Nuevaropa.”

She frowned. “But that’s you!”

“No. I have some grasp of tactics, which is more than most of my brother and sister nobles can boast. They think there’s nothing more to war than charging straight ahead and striking hard blows. Our victories are really won by the courage of my men, my Knights-Brother and Ordinaries. They’re the heroes the bards should sing about.”

“You are too! I won’t let you deny yourself credit.”

“Well—maybe. But while we Companions have a gift for derring-do, Voyvod Karyl mastered war in every aspect. He took good care of his troops, and gave good value to his employers. In short: he won battles.”

He grimaced.

“Until the last. When we attacked his already-disordered Legion from behind.”

“But if he was a traitor—”

“He wasn’t.”

Jaume sat up. He smoothed his hair back from his face and did not look at her.

“That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” he said. “Before his Legion crossed the frontier from Slavia into Alemania, the war was lost.
We’d
lost. His living fortresses’ horns turned the Wheel toward us.”

“
Three-horns,
” Melod
í
a breathed.

Even in one as indifferent to dinosaurs as she normally was, Triceratops horridus awoke awe. She knew the giant hornfaces existed, on the Ovdan plateau and eastward across vast Aphrodite Terra. Yet to Nuevaropa they seemed to belong in Faerie tales—as wonderful and terrifying as the hada themselves.

“Yes,” Jaume said. “With them, Karyl won us time to bolster Prinz Eugen’s army with the Companions and a regiment of Nodosaur infantry. We were poised to crush the Princes’ forces on the Hassling.”

“But what about Karyl plotting to betray the Empire? Didn’t he mean to seize the Fang
è
d Throne itself?”

“As hard as I looked,” Jaume said, “I never found the slightest scrap of evidence he intended anything but perfect faith. And believe me, I wanted to.”

“Then why did you attack him?” she asked.

“Orders. When the White River Legion rode into the midst of the stream and was fully engaged with von Augenfelsen’s men, we couched our lances and charged Karyl’s monsters. From behind. Fearsome as they are, those horns and the neck-frills face forward. They never had a chance.”

“So it was Prinz Eugen?” she asked, eager to believe ill of a distant cousin she had never met, rather than … anyone she knew and cared for. “He ordered this, this treacherous attack?”

“No,” Jaume said relentlessly. “Him I might have disobeyed. And taken the consequences, however stark.”

She stared at him. The strange separation was back, stronger than before. They might as well have been fully clothed; there was no longer intimacy between them. She mourned that loss.

But she couldn’t let go. “Why
didn’t
you disobey? The Creators themselves tell us to defy wicked or unlawful commands. Not that I believe in them, of course. But it’s in the Books, plain as day.”

He raised an eyebrow at her. They had few arguments, and her determined atheism had caused most of them. She knew she was right. But as the head of a religious order and a Prince of the Church, he had no choice but to disagree.

“You’re right,” he said. “I’m bound by law and honor alike to disobey wrongful orders. But I’ve sworn loyalty to the Fang
è
d Throne. And to the man who occupies it, my Emperor and my uncle.”

She felt sick. “You can’t be saying—”

“Yes. The scroll the Prince-Marshal sent was addressed to me personally, quite explicit, and sealed with the Tyrant’s Head.”

“
But why?
”

“The Princes offered peace. With a price: Karyl’s head. Many in our camp would have happily paid. Some out of jealousy at his success, some fearful of the power he was amassing, with this terrifying new means of waging war and the wealth it showered on his little March. It seems the same sentiments found voice at court. And were whispered again and again in the palace corridors until someone with your father’s ear—poured poison in it.”

She buried her face in her hands. Hot tears streamed between her fingers.

“It may sound like the same justification the Princes’ Party used to cover treason. But it’s true: someone gave your father bad advice. And this same person or persons might be leading His Majesty toward disaster. I’m terribly afraid the war we’re about to begin will have the opposite effect from what Felipe intends: that far from dousing the flames of rebellion, it will spread them across Nuevaropa.”

Melod
í
a jumped to her feet, unthinkingly snatching her hand from his.

“But this is just awful,” she said, pacing around the room.

“I agree,” he said.

“I wish I could doubt what you’re telling me. But I can’t. My father would never do anything but what he deeply felt was right. The trouble is, once he
feels
something, he doesn’t think about it anymore. He doesn’t question himself.”

Jaume smiled without joy. “Not to second-guess oneself can be a gift.”

“But now it may curse us all.”

She drew a deep breath.

“One thing’s clear,” she said. “You mustn’t lead the expeditionary force out the gates tomorrow.”

He blinked as if she’d slapped him. “How do you reckon that?”

“Isn’t it obvious? You don’t believe in it. We both know it will cause political instability—not to mention the suffering and loss of life. It’s
war
. And now you tell me my father compromised your honor and your conscience. How can you serve him in this, when you know it’s wrong?”

“Because he’s my Emperor.”

She whirled on him. “But what about your duty to the Lady? To truth? Of course my father’s been led astray. He always listens to the last person to tell him what he wants to hear. And this new confessor of his, this Fray Jer
ó
nimo no one knows anything about, even the Church—I’ll bet he’s behind it all!”

She came back to the bed and knelt before her lover. She took his right hand. She felt its strength, and the calluses of countless hours plying lute, sword, and lance.

“You can stop this, Jaume,” she said. She felt as if she was a little girl again, begging a favor from her dashing older cousin. “Please.”

“But I can’t.”

“But you
can
. You’re not just the marshal leading the expedition. You’re Condestable Imperial now, ruler of all Nuevaropa’s forces. My father declared you both, right there on the lists.”

“That’s true,” he said.

“So order the army to stand down. Send the glory seekers and greedy grandes packing. March the Nodosaurs back to their barracks in the Barrelmakers’ District. Put an end to the madness.”

“If I gave such orders, your father would simply sack me.”

“He wouldn’t dare! You’re his champion!”

Jaume shook his head. “We both know Felipe better than that. He’s stubborn as an old nosehorn bull when he’s set his heart to something.”

“Then let him sack you! So what?”

She was truly angry now.
How can he keep arguing with me, when his heart knows I’m right?

“Then the Ej
é
rcito Corregir will march out of the Firefly Palace’s Imperial Gate with a different
mariscal
at its head. Tomorrow, or at the latest, the day after.”

“Then let it. At least you’ll spare yourself having to … to do more evil on my father’s account.”

Jaume put his free hand over hers.

“Would you rather see the Duke von Hornberg command the expedition?”

She might have pointed out that Falk’s broken arm had led the Emperor to release him from his oath, and even forbid him outright to ride with the army. But she had spun beyond
objection
. Fury rose up to possess her as completely as lust had so short a time before. The sense of betrayal burned like hot oil on her skin
. How does he dare?
I don’t
want
him doing this!

“Yes!” she shouted through tears. “Anything but see you do it!”

“I must. It’s my duty.”

She jumped from the bed and turned away. Snatching her gown from the chair back where he had tossed it, she swept it imperiously around her shoulders.

“Then we are done here,” she said to the wall. “I see that my efforts are wasted. I trust my lord Count will see himself out.”

She stood, not moving, not seeing, now scarcely even feeling as he rose, gathered his clothes, and walked naked into the hall.

He closed the door as softly as he might kiss her closed eyelids.

Melod
í
a threw herself facedown on the bed and cried until it felt as if her ribs had cracked.