The Dinosaur Lords (10 page)

Long turquoise eyes met Melod
í
a’s. Thin lips smiled ever so slightly.

Things had
evolved
between them, since she was a child and he a lad. She thought now, as she always did, that he was the most beautiful man she had ever seen. Or would see.

His famous longsword, the Lady’s Mirror, rode in a baldric of pale brown strider leather over his right shoulder. It had been a shocking gaffe on someone’s part to allow Falk—a recent rebel as well as a stranger—near the Emperor armed. But to their bodyguards’ despair, it had long been the custom for Emperors to allow those who bore arms in their names to carry them into their presence. What sense, Felipe argued, did it make to have a champion who couldn’t actually defend you in person?

Jaume knelt before his sovereign.
No nonsense about him juggling his blade
, Melod
í
a noted with a spiteful glance at Falk.

Beaming, Felipe stood. “Arise,
mi Campe
ó
n Imperial,
” he said, “and let me embrace my beloved nephew.”

This time the hall rang with applause as Felipe hugged Jaume. Melod
í
a knew most of it was unfeigned. As the foremost poet of the day, and perhaps its greatest knight, Jaume was popular throughout Nuevaropa, and nowhere more than here in the South.

Of course, there were a few less admiring looks turned his way as well. She chose not to notice them.

“You have brought me a great victory,” Felipe said, stepping back with a last fond pat on Jaume’s shoulder and resuming his seat.

“With respect, your Majesty, I had little enough to do with winning it. The Princes’ War was almost over by the time my Companions and I arrived.”

His eyes flicked left to Falk. Melod
í
a thought he was a bit surprised to see his recent foeman standing there ahead of him.

“Your reports were admirably complete,” Felipe said. “I hope to hear the whole story from your lips as soon as may be.”

“At your service, Majesty.”

He bowed again and turned to his right. Bowing once more, gravely, he said, “Infanta Montserrat. You’ve gotten taller since I saw you last.”

“You don’t need to bow to me, Jaume,” she said. “You’re my friend.”

“Always, Infanta. But we’re at court, now, where other concerns take precedence.”

“How can anything be more important than being friends?” Montserrat piped. One of her minders stepped forward to shush her.

“How, indeed?” Jaume murmured, smiling. He turned a few degrees more.

“Alteza,” he said. “My lady Melod
í
a. You’ve grown so beautiful I fear it surpasses my gifts to describe.”

“I doubt that,” she said.

She thought she saw a shadow flit behind his eyes and regretted teasing him.
Almost
. But she knew that if anything was bothering her friend and lover, it certainly wasn’t that. They’d been teasing each other since almost the day they met.

She took his hands. As always their wiry strength thrilled her.

“I never flatter, Highness,” he said. “You of all people should know that.”

She blushed, feeling utterly naked in her gold-and-jewel encrustation of state. Although to be fair, it left a lot of her bare, as was common on formal occasions. Jaume raised her hands toward his lips.

Metal clashed on metal. Startled, Melod
í
a and Jaume turned to look at the great door. A palace steward stood beyond Tyrant halberds crossed to bar his entry.

“Your Majesty!” he cried, face flushed and sweat-shiny in amber lamplight. “An intruder has been found in your apartments.”

“He’s been taken into custody, I trust,” Felipe said.

“No, se
ñ
or,” the steward said. “He’s been murdered!”

Chapter
7

P
á
jaro carraca,
Carrack-bird
—
Hesperornis
. A common type of flightless aquatic bird with a toothed lower beak; 1.5 meters long, 8 kilograms. Eats mostly fish, but also small amphibians and other animals. Elegant in water, clumsy on land; prone to truculence.

—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

“Hold up there, mute,” said one of the three. Their backs were to Rob. They showed no awareness he was in the alley behind them. They carried clubs. “We want a word with you.”

“If he can hear it,” a second said.

Evidently the busker could. He stopped and turned. By a yellow gleam straying out of window shutters Rob saw his face. It looked composed, almost serene.

Rob wondered at his sanity.

“We represent the Bonnechance County Entertainer’s Guild,” the first man said. He was long and lean, with a prominent Adam’s apple. “You’ve been performing publicly without a Guild license.”

The man Rob believed—hoped, anyway—to be Karyl Bogomirskiy canted his head right. His brow was lightly furrowed as if in thought. Rob could see, even under his cloak, that his shoulders stayed relaxed.

“You’re depriving good Guild members of pay! We can’t have that. Our families will starve.”

“Can we hit him now?” asked the second Guildsman. He was even slighter than Karyl and no taller. He cradled his arm-long truncheon as if it were a baby. Rob reckoned him much more interested in inflicting pain than alleviating that of starving Guild families.

The third man was a bulwark of shadow. Though he hadn’t said anything, a slight sway betrayed uncertainty. Indeed, none of the three struck Rob as overly confident. The leader covered hesitancy with bravado, the second man with viciousness. Did they suspect their victim’s identity?

No
, Rob decided.
They’ve no way of knowing that. They’re simply bullies. Their victim’s failure to show deference or fear unnerves them.

“Nothing to say for yourself?” the leader demanded. He squeezed out a brassy laugh. “But I forgot. You’re mute!”

The cloaked man turned away. The volcano muttered evilly to itself. Brimstone spiked the warm, heavy air.

The chief bravo grabbed the busker’s left shoulder and spun him around. As if by accident the cloaked man’s staff rapped the bravo’s left knee.

The Guildsman yelped and danced back, clutching his leg. The second bravo, the eager one, shouted “Hey!” and lunged.

The leader stumbled over a strew of junk and sat down hard. The busker leaned forward as if concerned. His stick pivoted over his thigh to jut to his right.

Before he could stop, the second Guildsman ran his groin right onto it. He doubled over with a bellows wheeze.

“Bastard!” the lead bravo shouted. He scrambled up and swung his club.

The busker had straightened and stood holding the top of his staff. He wheeled away from the cudgel-stroke. His staff swung out. It tripped the Guildsman, who fell onto his doubled-over companion. Both went down.

The leader squawked like a wet vexer as the two rolled in alley muck reeking of mildew and decay. As if reluctantly the third man advanced on the busker. A cauldron belly overhung his strider-leather loincloth. Rob could make out little of his face, but it looked oddly shaped. Rob wondered just exactly what sort of public entertainment this one provided.

Taking hold of his staff again, the busker kicked its lower end. It pivoted quickly up to crack the other beneath a lantern jaw.

Dropping his cudgel, the bravo fell to his knees and began to weep, clutching a split and bleeding chin.

“I’ve had enough of you!” the lead Guild bravo yelled. He had disentangled himself from his cohort and regained his feet. A short sword glinted in yellow alley light.

He charged. The cloaked man leaned away, avoiding a forehand slash guided more by rage than skill. As he did he whipped his staff down and away from himself. Something flew away to land clattering in impenetrable dark.

The bravo had overbalanced. As he fought to recover, the busker stepped past his right side with his own right leg. Light scurried like a handroach along a meter of bright metal.

Rob heard a sound like tearing silk.

The bravo fell to his knees. Black spray fanned from his neck.

The busker turned to face the other Guildsmen. He had lost his hat. Where he had held a stick before, now he held a single-edged sword.

The surviving bravos had found their feet, and short swords of their own. They rushed their foe with desperate fervor.

Like a living shadow, the cloaked man slid left, toward the smaller attacker. Rob thought he had never seen a man move as quickly. Yet he didn’t seem to
hurry
. Impossibly, there seemed an air of deliberation about his movements, as if each were planned carefully in advance and exactly executed.

The little bravo raised his short sword for an overhand hack. His opponent whipped past him, slicing open the belly thus exposed.

Gobbling a cry more of surprise than pain, the bravo tripped in slimily gleaming loops of his own intestines and pitched forward. As he went down, the cloaked man slashed him diagonally across the back of the neck. His piteous gurgles ended.

The lead bravo flopped on his face, bled dead.

Wheezing like a frightened morion, the big man rushed the busker. His opponent spun clockwise out of the way of a clumsy but powerful downward cut.

The short sword swept past a cloaked left shoulder. As he faced away from his opponent, the busker reversed grip on his own weapon. He laid his left forearm on its butt and thrust straight back beneath his right arm.

Rob saw the big bravo’s eyes go wide as the sword-tip crunched through his sternum. He uttered a child’s wail of pain.

The busker yanked his sword free as the last man fell.

Then he stabbed with it, straight down. The bravo kicked at foul-smelling mud and went still.

“You want to make sure your victims die?” Rob asked. Somehow his voice had grown hoarse in the last handful of seconds.

“He was dying anyway,” the busker said. “He didn’t need to suffer.”

He glanced up and down the alley for further foes. Rob’s announcement of his own presence made no visible impression.

The cloaked man flicked his blade. It shed dark droplets like a carrack-bird’s back. Kneeling, he wiped the sword on the back of the lead bravo’s vest. Then he walked to where the rest of the blackwood staff lay. He inserted the sword-tip in the scabbard mouth, angled it up, thrust it until it clicked home.

Rob applauded softly. And only half sardonically.

“This is a bad thing,” the busker said, shaking his head. Though the night was warm, as most nights were, Rob couldn’t make out the faintest sheen of sweat on his pale forehead. “If only they hadn’t drawn blade.…”

He picked up his bag of props, which he had dropped when the Guild bravos braced him. Then he walked on his way.

“Why were you acting mute?” called Rob, who could barely imagine
voluntarily
not talking.

“To avoid misunderstanding,” the other said. He neither paused nor turned his head.

Rob glanced at the bodies. “Hard to misunderstand
this
,” he said to himself.

As dogged as a matador trailing a wounded thunder-titan, he followed.

*   *   *

The busker’s hovel slumped at the village outskirts. Beyond it, fields of ripe grain and bean frames stretched pale to the ever-waiting woods. Apparently built for storage, the shack was a jumble of black lava rocks, with a plank and cycad-frond roof thrown on to keep out the frequent rains. At which it met indifferent success, Rob noticed, watching residual drips from an afternoon shower fall to the tramped-earth floor.

Surprisingly, it didn’t stink inside. The busker kept body and clothing clean, anyway. He didn’t object when Rob, having followed him here, followed him inside.

“You
are
Karyl Bogomirskiy, aren’t you?” Rob asked.

The man was sorting through his few possessions by faint volcanic light through the open door. He stuffed even fewer of them into an oiled-canvas rucksack. He didn’t answer.

“Be kind, man,” Rob said, speaking Spa
ñ
ol now. “My name’s Rob Korrigan. I have a proposition for you.”

“The answer’s no.” The other’s Spa
ñ
ol was excellent, as befitted the highly educated man Rob knew the former Voyvod of the Misty March to be.

“Ah, but I can’t hear that,” Rob said, digging in an ear with a fingertip. “I’m only looking after your interests, amigo. You’ll see.”

Karyl looked up with eyebrow hooked. “If you’re so solicitous of my welfare, why didn’t you lend a hand back there?”

“You were doing quite well for yourself. I’ve seldom seen a man lay out three foes so slickly. Never, to put none too fine a point on it.”

Bearded lips twitched. “If you’d helped, I wouldn’t have had to kill any of them.”

“That troubles you?”

“Taking life’s a serious thing, because it’s irrevocable.”

He straightened, experimentally slinging a strap over one shoulder. For all his hatred of nobles, it pained Rob to see this one reduced to such a state.

“You balk at killing?” Rob asked.

“I kill when I must. I don’t enjoy it.”