The Dinosaur Lords (12 page)

“Exactly, Lord Karyl.”

He dropped chin to clavicle and sat silent for a time. Aphrodite gazed at him calmly. Rob tried not to fidget.

Karyl laughed softly.

“If you’re willing to pay good gold to a failed captain and a sacked dinosaur master to perform the impossible, who am I to argue?”

*   *   *

“What’s that you’re playing?” Karyl asked. “It isn’t very interesting.”

They sat in a little clearing in thick hardwood forest not far from Pot de Feu beside a discreet campfire.

“Scales,” Rob said. “Just exercises. So my fingers don’t forget their art. Not meant to entertain. And who’s a critic here, Montador Toots-the-Flute-like-a-Half-Wit-Child? If I’d known you were going to asperse my playing, I’d’ve let the Guild bravos have their way with you.”

“You did.”

“Details,” Rob grunted.

He switched to playing a melody lightly, with lost-kitten plaintiveness. Night insects sang accompaniment. The Firepot mountain drummed bass. The woods’ green smell and the brushwood-fire tang almost took the brimstone from the air. Overhead the clouds had gone to rags, baring stars.

A few meters away, Little Nell browsed contentedly at thick, low ferns at the little clearing’s edge, tethered by a hind foot to a stout tree trunk. Rob, with Karyl behind him, had ridden her to this secluded spot in Telar’s Wood a few kilometers outside Pot de Feu. A patient, placid, amiable beast, the hook-horn had faithfully carried Rob and his gear for years. She was perhaps the only friend who had remained true to him all that time. Perhaps because she was the only one he remained true to.

“I doubt the Entertainer’s Guild will pursue us,” said Karyl, who sat with his back against his pack and his stick held against his shoulder. “Though some of them moonlight as bravos, they don’t strike me as trackers.”

“I don’t think anybody saw us leave town, even mounted on a six-meter dinosaur,” Rob said. Still, he felt unease.

Karyl rubbed at the stump of his left hand. “It itches like mosquito bites,” he complained.

“Of course. It’s the witch-woman’s magic. You were there.”

Karyl stopped rubbing. “There’s no such thing as magic.”

“Suit yourself.”

For a span Karyl sat listening to Rob play his lute. In the firelight he looked mostly tired when Rob glanced at him.

“Is that a dirge?” Karyl asked.

“We’d call it a lament,” Rob said. “Are you a lover of music, then, for all your crimes against her?”

A corner of Karyl’s mouth quirked up. “My piping’s scarcely the worst of my crimes.”

“And what worse could you do, pray tell?”

“I banned music from the court of the Misty March, and discouraged it in the countryside. As I did the playing of games, and the wearing of bright colors, and anything else I deemed frivolous. Things I thought distracted the people from work.”

“Bella! How could you
do
something like that?”

“It seemed right. At this remove, it looks like the most frivolous thing of all.”

“So now you’ve the sack to sit here and justify such outrages?”

“No. I neither apologize for nor justify anything I did in my … prior lives.”

“Why do you keep saying ‘lives’?”

“I’ve died twice, by my count,” Karyl said. “Once at the Battle of Gunters Moll under Duke Falk’s axe. And again … soon after.”

Rob awaited further explanation. Karyl resumed silence.

Rob plucked his strings savagely with scarred, blunt fingers. They produced plangent, dissatisfied sounds.

“I hope you’ve not misplaced your skill for war there in the mists of your mind.”

Karyl set his sword-staff down beside him and stretched out on warm, moist grass. “We’ll see.”

“You’re going to sleep?” Rob exclaimed. “What about watches?”

“What about them?”

Rob waved a big broad hand around at the night. “This is wild land. Anyone could fall on us here if we’re not keeping lookout.”

“Let them. I don’t carry anything worth staying awake to defend.”

“But what of your life—a ‘small and miserable thing,’ and I quote?” demanded Rob. “You fought for it in Pot de Feu!”

“If they steal it from me as I sleep,” said Karyl, rolling over, “my pride will never know.”

*   *   *

But hours later, in the belly of night, terrifying screams jerked Rob from deep slumber.

He scrambled from his bedroll to find Karyl sitting up in a jumble of his own bedding. His hair hung sodden to his shoulders. Sweat streamed between fingers covering his face.

He dropped both hand and stump to his lap like broken tools.

“The dreams,” he said without looking at Rob. “Every night, they come.”

“Mother Maia!” Rob exclaimed. “What happens in these dreams?”

Slowly Karyl shook his head. “I never remember. Just beauty. Terrible beauty. And fear beyond enduring.”

Chapter
9

Tit
á
n trueno,
Thunder-titan
—
Apatosaurus louisae.
Giant quadrupedal plant-eating dinosaur; 23 meters, 23 tonnes. Nuevaropan native. Placid and oblivious like all titans, Apatosaurus’s sheer size renders it a danger to life and property, especially in herds.

—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

With a decisive
tunk
the javelin struck the target-stand.

“Shit!” Princess Melod
í
a said.

“Can you believe it?” Fina said. “Someone was actually murdered in His Majesty’s apartments. It’s so terrible.”

Melod
í
a scowled. She’d missed the matador’s-eye by a full half meter. At twenty meters, she expected better of herself.

To one side of the exercise yard a nosehorn pulled a windlass arm, crunching away at a wheeled basket full of grain as it plodded endlessly around a circular track, pumping water from a stream deep beneath the Firefly Palace. She might have blamed the infernal off-kilter creaking for distracting her. She knew better.

“It’s not as if he was found in my father’s bedroom,” she said irritably.

“My maidservant, Mitzi, is friend to the chambermaid who found the body,” Lupe said, not without a certain ghoulish relish. “She said it was horrible. All black and bloated.”

“You make us
so
sorry we missed it,” Llurdis said. It got her a glare from Lupe.

“But whoever would send an assassin after the Emperor?” asked Princess Fanny, hefting a feathered dart from a basket.

“No one,” Melod
í
a said crisply as she stalked downrange. “There’s some mistake.”

“
Someone’s
gone and gotten himself assassinated,” Abi Th
é
l
è
me said.

“But that someone was not my father,” Melod
í
a said, wrenching loose her javelin with unnecessary force.

The morning was early-hot, the sun bright through thin clouds. A long-crested dragon wheeled hopefully overhead. Ballista crews and arbalesters waited on the ramparts to dissuade the monster from trying its luck on the palace grounds.

“It must have been the Trebizons,” Lupe declared with conviction.

Returning to the line, Melod
í
a frowned and angled her head to one side. “The Trebs? Why?”

“It stands to reason,” Lupe announced, as if it did. The Spa
ñ
ola Princess loved intrigues and conspiracies. Which were in no short supply in the Corte Imperial, of course. But the real ones, numerous as they were, were usually too trivial to satisfy her. She was beside herself at having an actual murder on hand.

“All right,” Melod
í
a said, curious despite herself. She wiped sweat from her forehead with the back of her hand. “How does it stand to reason?”

“The Trebizons have come to La Merced to petition for your hand in marriage to their Crown Prince Mikael.”

“Who they say weighs two hundred kilos,” said Llurdis. “And never bathes.”

“Eww,” said Fina and Fanny at once.

“Thanks so much for reminding me,” Melod
í
a said. “What’s that got to do with dead men in our apartments?”

“Everyone knows the Trebizons are mad plotters,” Lupe said, “just brimming with stratagems and treacheries. So they sent an assassin to eliminate whoever it is they blame for your father not giving them what they want.
¿Hola? Obvious
.”

“That would be me,” Melod
í
a said.

“Well, of course. You’re what they came for.”

“No,” Melod
í
a said with terrible precision. “I mean, the one who stands in their way is me. I am not going to some fever swamp on the Tahmina Sea. Especially not to wed an obese, unwashed Apatosaurus of a Crown Prince.”

“But your father’s the Emperor,” Fina said.

“Did you all drink a potion of grasping the obvious this morning?”

“But, don’t you have to do what he says?”

“You mean you haven’t learned to get your father to say what you want him to?” asked Abi.

Waiting her turn for her next cast, Melod
í
a cocked an eyebrow at her. Clever and cool as Abi was, Melod
í
a would never guess her father was easy for anyone to manipulate. Roger the Spider was Nuevaropa’s most infamous intriguer.

“Pap
á
won’t make me marry anyone I don’t want to,” Melod
í
a said confidently. The Emperor was highly indulgent of his daughters.

When he could be bothered to remember their existence.

Nonetheless she could see why the Trebs persisted in their suit long after its hopelessness should’ve been obvious even to foreigners. Although the Fang
è
d Throne wasn’t hereditary, an Emperor’s elder daughter held powerful potential to influence policy.

If only
, Melod
í
a thought. In any event, she doubted even Nuevaropa’s long-term rival empire was mad enough to imagine assassination could help their suit.

“Perhaps you should set your cap for that new Northerner,” said Lupe. “Terrible form.”

The latter was directed at Llurdis, who had just thrown her dart into the wood post beneath the butt.

“Bitch,” Llurdis said.

“
Puta
.”

Melod
í
a rolled her eyes.

The Princesa Imperial and her retinue were dressed for exercise, in loincloths with silken bands wound tightly around their breasts for support. Brown or pale, their bodies glistened with sweat from exercise and humid heat.

War was the duty and main occupation of the noble classes. Highborn ladies learned martial arts to be ready to defend their families and themselves. Though the profession of arms was not closed to women in Nuevaropa, it was considered beneath a noblewoman’s station to take the field except in dire necessity. A few women commanded mercenary companies, but almost none commanded household forces.

Naturally quick and strong of body as well as mind, Melod
í
a excelled at most of the combat arts she and her retinue practiced, which didn’t penalize a woman’s relative lack of muscle. She was lethal with javelin and twist-dart, a fine shot with the shortbow, adept with spear, dagger, and short sword and buckler.

At wrestling she could seldom beat Lupe’s snaky wiriness or Llurdis’s power, but both were skilled grapplers who not infrequently defeated boys of similar weight. The pair practiced a lot on each other, usually with little prior notice. They reminded Melod
í
a of cats.

“But why would our Princess even take notice of that new Duke’s strapping muscles and blue eyes?” said Abi archly. “She has her own Jaume, back from the wars.”

“Why should that blind her?” asked Fina. “She’s known
him
ages and ages.”

Melod
í
a’s throw sailed half a meter over the top of the post that supported the straw-bale butt, to stick in packed white dirt ten meters beyond. “Hold!” cried Fanny, who was taking her turn at range-mistress today.

When Melod
í
a, still fuming, came back with her javelin, her retinue had found a new topic: speculating about a certain dowager countess at court and a handsome page. She shook her head in disgust.

“Oh, don’t be such a wet-mop, D
í
a,” Llurdis said.

“I just don’t understand how you girls can be so preoccupied with such
trivia
,” she said, “with all these crises besetting the Empire.”

Abi tilted her head so that her long silver-blond hair spilled down a bare shoulder, and gave Melod
í
a a cool blue look.

“Crises always beset the Empire,” she said. “Always have and always will. The Creators set it up that way, my father says.”

“The Creators,” Melod
í
a said with a sniff.

Fashionably agnostic herself, she doubted the Spider said any such thing. Though widely presumed to be a complete atheist, not even Sansamour’s powerful Archduke-Elector would ever dare admit it.
The Books of the Law
decreed that all forms of worshipping the Eight Creators were righteous. What they didn’t countenance was
disbelief
.