The Dinosaur Knights (29 page)

“I've heard the phrase before,” Karyl said.

“I fought today, sure,” said Rob. “But that was purely self-defense. I'm not insane. Which you bloody have to be to tackle bloody knights, even hit and run.”

It struck him—as usual, too late—that this was not a tactful thing to say to a man who had fought a famous dinosaur knight while tricked out as a light-horseman and riding an ill-tempered mare little larger than a pony. And killed him. Indeed, Rob intended to furiously scribble songs about all Karyl's exploits here at the Marais Caché first chance he got, not just his defeat of Salvateur.

Karyl just laughed and clapped Rob's shoulder. “That's neither your gift nor your temperament, my friend. You serve us best as what you've been: the Master Spider at the center of his web. Whose fangs are deadly, when the prey comes to him. That's the greater part of command, really, finding the right worker for the job. As I've done with you, and you do well in turn.

“Now: I need you to lend me some of your riders. Twenty should do the trick. Plus by your leave I'll take a few woods-runners, if they'll go.”

The woods-runners would march through glowing lava if you asked them
, Rob thought.
Like pretty much everyone else in the army
.

“What? Lend them to you? For what?”

“I'm off as fast as we can ride, to negotiate the surrender of County Crève Coeur.”

“Surrender?” Rob almost stammered the word. “But we don't have siege engines.”

“Don't need them. Guillaume died without issue. I'm going to make faces at his court. Believe me, that'll be enough, arriving on the heels of news of this day's doings.”

Rob sucked in a deep breath.

“I see that,” he said slowly. “Count Guillaume brought an army bigger than yours, better in every way. Now it's dead or scattered or become your own personal property, and Guilli's gone to take his chances on the Wheel.”

He uttered a corpse-tearer laugh. “They'll think you're a Faerie yourself.”

Karyl's face went ever so slightly pale beneath the orange dance of firelight. His eyes narrowed briefly. Rob reeled, appalled by what he'd said.

At least he'd recovered enough wit not to make things worse by apologizing.

But what Karyl Bogomirskiy didn't kill you for, he got over quickly.
Come to that, if he killed you, he got over that pretty quickly too
.

“We'll ride as soon as I can get some provisions ready,” Karyl said. “We need to move fast, though.”

“What about me?”

“You'll lead the army back to Providence town,” Karyl said. “They need their rest tonight, but get them rolling as soon after dawn as you can.”

“Why me? I mean—why not Baron Côme? Or Copper. Or even Gaétan.”

“You're my lieutenant,” Karyl said. “My second in command. They'll do what you tell them; they swore to do so when they joined. Anyway, literally all you have to do is tell them; they know what to do. And then ride east as fast as the foot can follow.”

“So why the rush, then?”

“Don't forget Count Guillaume wasn't the only threat. Métairie Brulée and Castaña have mostly sat things out so far. No doubt they were hoping to help rend the carcass after Crève Coeur killed us.

“Some of Guillaume's scattered knights will no doubt have crossed the Lisette into Métairie Brulée by now. What they have to tell Comtesse Célestine will paralyze her, for the moment. We don't want Don Raúl de Castaña thinking he sniffs opportunity, though. Providence town's a central location. However things break, the sooner you get the army back there, the less likely we are to see rapid trouble.”

Karyl started to walk away, briskly as if just risen from a sound night's sleep. But now Rob felt something else sitting in his stomach like a plateful of broken glass.

“How much of it did you contrive?” he called to Karyl's back.

Karyl turned. “How much of which?”

Rob held out an open hand, palm up. “All of it. Since we got to the bloody place, perhaps. The downs as well as the ups. Even the Blueflowers goat-fuck, and our trial for our lives.” He shook his head. “All your wizard swordplay and your fine tactics can blind a man to the fact that you're the master strategist, above all. So, my legendary hero—how much did you plan?”

“We've been luckier than any human has a right to expect,” Karyl said, “and far luckier than we deserve. On the whole—far less than all, but something over half. That's fair to say.”

Rob felt his stomach clench. “Why?”

“I was hired to do a job,” Karyl said. “Is it any different for dinosaur masters? Our employers are in many ways a more difficult opponent than the enemy.”

“Oh, aye,” Rob said, laughing harshly despite the ache. “Your boss you have with you always.”

“Precisely. They hire us to perform certain tasks. At some point we inevitably have to choose whether to carry out those tasks, or try to please them.”

“True enough. So then?”

“We were brought in to get Providence to defend itself despite itself. We've done so. I have given it the best chance of success it's within my power to. As have you.”

Rob stared. The edges of the broken glass stayed sharp.

“If it consoles you at all,” Karyl said, “I had no inkling the Princess would do act as she did. A mind like hers, brilliant but driven by naïve idealism and untrammeled by sense, is far less predictable than the shrewdest strategist. That makes for a dangerous foe. And a worse ally.”

“So you didn't—truly, you didn't—?”

Karyl met his furnace-vent gaze squarely. “I never foresaw the harm that would come to your woman. Nor the rest of the lot. I sacrifice no life unless I have to. Not even annoying Garden Councilors. I was hired to protect them all.”

Rob winched his lips back in something passably a smile. “
We
were hired to protect.”

“We were. And that's one of the harshest lessons to learn: you can't protect everyone. No matter how good you are. No matter how hard you try.”

To Rob's amazement his voice clotted, as if from emotion. Karyl dropped his gaze.

“No matter how hard I try,” he said softly, “everyone who trusts me, dies of it.”

Rob gripped his shoulder. “It's only because of you any of us is alive right now.”

Karyl lifted his head. He looked at Rob with almost the eyes of a child, glittering with tears.

“For now, my friend,” he said. “For now.”

After a moment he blinked. His eyes cleared; his shoulders squared.

“And now,” he said, almost gaily, “I've got to ride. I've an entire county to intimidate, after all.”

Rob watched him stride away until full night swallowed his slight but now-erect figure. He shook his head.

“Who's madder, then?” Rob asked, of the wind and the dead. “Himself? Or me, for following him?”

Chapter 23

Brincador
, Bouncer
—
Psittacosaurus ordosensis
. Bipedal plant-eating dinosaur, 1.5 meters, 14 kilograms, with a short, powerful beak. Distinguished by quill-like plumes. Common Nuevaropan garden pest.

—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

Providence town's central square bloomed with colors, motions, musics, in early afternoon sunlight gently screened by the clouds. Banners flapped like strips torn from rainbows. Flower petals in lavender, chrome yellow, powder blue, skittered and swirled up around the feet of townsfolk as if joining in their dance. Several competing ensembles performed lively tunes in competition. Though the day was warm the autumn breeze down from the Shield passes hinted with its smell and slight edge of early snow on the cloud-threatening crags.

In the shade of a gaudy temporary awning, Melodía sat by the fountain. Beside her sat Bogardus on the one hand, and Violette on the other. Annoyance pinched the Councilor's fine features into the aspect of a dried fig.

“—should have consulted us first, I tell you,” she was saying to Bogardus across Melodía as if the younger woman wasn't there. “Does the Council rule in Providence, or does it not?”

Bogardus smiled placatingly. “We advise, surely,” he said. “Guide with a gardener's loving hand.”

Melodía wasn't sure why she was here being feted by the crowd.
All I did was bring disaster to these people
, she thought,
and get my best friend killed
. She still alternated bouts of numbness and disconsolate weeping. Right now she felt numb. Mostly. But the other was always there, quivering inside, ready to break forth with neither warning nor apparent provocation.

“Perhaps it's time for our hands to grow more active,” Violette said. “Time to shape the unruly growth. And prune away the unsightly.”

Something about that tasted bad on the back of Melodía's tongue. Violette's faction already seemed too active to her. But the sensation passed with no more than cursory notice. Her thoughts were too active for ready distraction.

“Karyl removed the greatest threat to our people and our Garden,” Bogardus said. “He won a great victory, after all. One that will be commemorated for ages, if the songs sung in the taverns are any indication.”

Rob Korrigan had seen to that already, however much Violette sniffed and harrumphed at such vulgarity pretending to be music. To celebrate his bringing the army home he'd got roaringly drunk crawling the town's handful of taverns. Although he'd stayed at the farm—and stayed drunk, Melodía heard—the several days since, he'd been furiously writing songs about the miraculous victory of the Hidden Marsh. Other members of the victorious army had carried them into town, where they became instant sensations.

He deals with grief in the ways he knows best
, Melodía thought.
Why don't I have solace like that?

But she despised the lack of control drunkenness or herbal overindulgence brought. And despite the tutelage of one of the greatest musicians the modern epoch had produced, she never showed sign of musical aptitude aside from a pleasing singing voice. And there was only so much singing she could do. Especially with her throat worn raw from weeping.

The thought of her lost lover—
Did I throw him away as irrevocably as I did Pilar?
—jabbed her like a pin and threatened to set off a fresh sobbing fit. She reined herself viciously in:
I am a Delgao, a noblewoman, a
grande
in my own right. I will not disgrace my family and my title by public weakness
.

“In fact,” Bogardus said, with a smile that if Melodía hadn't known him better she would've thought was impish, “I believe this latest group is singing one of Master Korrigan's compositions.”

Glad of the distraction, Melodía paid attention to the words as a gaily costumed group of 'prentices march past with arms linked: “On that field was Hope reborn/And tyrant Guilli got the horn.…”

Violette sniffed more loudly.

“And we oughtn't forget,” Bogardus said, “that he won substantial treasure when he browbeat Crève Coeur's heirs and surviving barons into submission. The coffers we've depleted to pay for the army and its upkeep overflow with silver once more. Our brave warriors enjoyed a reward, the wounded and the families of the fallen are seen to. Karyl's even provided relief for those dispossessed by Count Guillaume's depredations.”

He shook his head. “I greatly admire his resourcefulness as well as his nerve. On top of the plunder gained from the baggage train, to auction off the Countship to the highest bidder? And as a condition of the sale compel the winner, Baroness Antoinette, to agree to pay massive reparations?”

Violette cast her gaze sidelong at Melodía. “Perhaps your father might have something to say about that?”

Mention of the Emperor was like a body punch, in Melodía's present state. Words became too curdled in her throat for any to get out.

“The Empire prefers to allow matters of vassalage and succession to sort themselves out on the local level,” Bogardus said smoothly. He seemed to sense the question's impact on Melodía. He also had long since shown acquaintance with high-level courts. Although Melodía had never seen him at the Imperial one. She would remember, she was sure.

Violette arched a finely lucked brow. “Wasn't meddling in succession what provoked that nasty little brouhaha in the North, a year or two ago?”

“That involved an Elector,” Bogardus said, “not a mere border count. The Princes' Party rebelled because they feared the Emperor choosing one of the very people who'd Elect his successor would grant him too much power.”

“But Emperors are always Elected from Torre Delgao. What difference does it make? And who could be so crass as to object if Felipe chose our delightful Melodía to be Empress after him?”

“Offspring can't succeed a parent directly on the Fangèd Throne,” said Melodía, momentarily roused from her self-pity. For which she felt a twinge of gratitude to the purple-eyed woman. “Anyway, we're a large familia. It matters to some which branch ascends to the gold and red.”