The Dinosaur Lords (62 page)
“Like ours, was red
“That day on Blueflowers field!”
Those in earshot shouted approval. To give himself time to catch more words from Bella’s grace, he used the pretext of unstoppering a water gourd and wetting his throat. Ale would have soothed him better. But so would being dry, and warm, and romping between silken sheets with a lively pair of beauties.
Ah, but
those
were the spoils of victory. Losers got rain. And mud.
“Wait!” a young man’s voice called from somewhere Rob couldn’t see for the wounded wagon. “Teach us those first words before you go on!”
Rob smiled.
And so, appropriately ass-foremost, Rob Korrigan led the army of Providence in retreat and defiantly singing—
“Although our blood we freely spilt
“Upon those fair blue flowers,
“The blue bloods, though they called themselves,
“Shed blood the same as ours!”
—The whole way back to the outskirts of the town.
Where a squad of Town Guards, bristling with halberds and looking as draggle-tailed in their streaming morions and rain slicks as the men and women who’d actually fought a battle and lost, promptly arrested him and Karyl for treason.
* * *
Falk came onto the tower’s flat roof to find the Emperor of Nuevaropa standing alone, watching the lights of La Merced begin to sparkle like a bowl of jewels below. The twilight air was soft as a kiss. The evening meal roasted aromatically in the cookshacks. A falling star streaked across a growing rift in the clouds above; fireflies danced around the tower as if in emulation.
“They’ve returned, your Majesty,” Falk said, marching up to him. He wore his Tyrant armor and carried his helmet in his elbow’s crook. “The three ladies-in-waiting and the Infanta. I’ve detained them.”
“Well done,” Felipe said. “Now let them go.”
“What do you mean?” Falk said, thunderstruck. “They helped your daughter escape!”
Felipe turned to him. The old man was smiling in his ginger beard. Moisture glistened in his pale-green eyes.
He put a fatherly hand on Falk’s shoulder. “Yes, my boy. Exactly. They helped my daughter escape.”
“But—”
Felipe held up a single finger. Falk shut up. Felipe turned back to the crenellated rampart, to gaze off to where the sun fell through what seemed a layer of blood, to the Channel beyond the great Sea Dragon base on its spur of land.
“I don’t dare alienate the whole gente of Anglaterra,” the Emperor said. “Nor Sansamour, which for all its submission to the Franc
é
s crown might as well be a kingdom in itself. Josefina Serena’s father, Prince Harry, is already annoyed with me over the very policies that upset my elder daughter. He’s much too important to anger further by subjecting his heir to indignities. Not to mention the fact that I like it here in the Palace of the Fireflies, and have no desire to be turned out to return to that drafty Torre Imperial in La Majestad, where every broken-tailed courtier in Nuevaropa waits to bend my ear. Along with the entire Diet.
“And then there’s the small matter of Montserrat. A mere child, as well as my daughter. The only one I have left, it would appear.”
He turned back to his new chief bodyguard.
“Besides, they’ve done us a signal service, these girls.”
“I don’t understand, your Majesty.”
“Whatever Melod
í
a’s said or done, it all springs from a child’s passionate heart—and unformed judgment. Exile would be a possible sentence, even if she were found guilty. Of crimes I know in my heart she never meant, whether she committed them or not.”
He sighed. “This way, my daughter is spared the ordeal of a trial. And not just her: the Imperio and Torre Delgao. And last, and truly least, an old man who’s wearing himself to a specter trying to do what’s best for all. Really, my boy, this is the best outcome possible for a terrible dilemma.”
To believe in power,
Falk reminded himself,
is to obey the man who has it. Anything else is anarchy.
He drew a breath down deep, tamped down the black rage in his belly, and bowed his head.
“Yes, my lord,” he said.
“Once again,” Felipe said, brightening visibly, “Fray Jer
ó
nimo’s wisdom is approved by events. He told me it was best this way, even as my heart longed to believe.”
His smile saddened. “He said I should approve allowing you to duel poor, loyal Duval for command of the Tyrants too, did you know?”
Falk’s skin prickled as if it had been left too long unprotected in high mountain sun.
I thought I’d have his ear alone,
he thought.
But another’s there as well.
He felt a certain grim amusement.
Didn’t count on this mystery confessor, did you, Mother? Bergdahl? You’re not infallible after all.
Yet triumph swelled inside him, displacing anger and disappointment at his most precious prey’s escape. Though Jaume, absent, remained the Emperor’s right hand, Falk was now undoubtedly his left. That was power.
And now change would come to Nuevaropa. Falk would see to that.
“Come on, my boy,” the Emperor said. “Our dinners await. I’m famished.”
Á
ngeles Grises,
Grey Angels, the Seven
—The Creators’ supernatural servitors: Michael, Gabriel, Raphael, Uriel, Remiel, Zerachiel, and Raguel. They have the task of maintaining the Creators’ Sacred Equilibrium on Paradise. They possess remarkable powers and mystic weapons, and when they walk out in the world, they often take on a terrifying appearance. They are not humane, and regard all things as straw dogs.
—A PRIMER TO PARADISE FOR THE IMPROVEMENT OF YOUNG MINDS
LA PALACIO DE LAS LUCIÉRNAGAS. IN THE SEWERS DEEP BENEATH THE ROOTS OF ADELINA’S FROWN, THE SHEER LIMESTONE CLIFFS ON WHICH THE PALACE OF THE FIREFLIES RESTS.
IT IS PITCH-BLACK. THE PLAYERS NEED NO LIGHT TO PERCEIVE EACH OTHER PERFECTLY. LIKEWISE THEY PERCEIVE THE FEEL AND SMELL OF THE RAW SEWAGE FLOWING PAST THEIR BARE LEGS IN ABUNDANT DETAIL. IT BOTHERS THEM NOT AT ALL.
RAGUEL:
Equilibrium.
URIEL:
Our service, in perpetuity. What have you been up to, brother?
RAGUEL:
Walking to and fro in the world, and going up and down in it.
URIEL:
That joke was ancient before we were Created.
RAGUEL:
One seeks small amusements where one can.
URIEL:
That was a deft job you did, managing the story of your Emergence. It happened almost a year ago, by surface reckoning. How’d you contrive to have it arrive here at such a useful time?
RAGUEL:
The usual sleights. Shadowed some mortal minds so that the herd-boy who saw me wasn’t believed—and not wholly disbelieved either. When the time came, I sent dreams to reawaken fears. Count Guillaume did the rest, in his eagerness to win approval for his depredations on his neighbors, sending a messenger off to warn the court.
URIEL:
Where he’s caused quite a stir.
RAGUEL:
That pleases me to hear.
URIEL:
I’ve been out of the loop for quite some time. Where is our eldest brother? What’s he up to now?
RAGUEL:
The usual: leading a fight to drive the damned Anomalies deeper into the depths. To the Abyss of Holofernes and down, if he can. The abominations have been active of late. Even on the surface.
URIEL:
And His strong right hand?
RAGUEL:
At his side, of course. Our sister was never one to hold back from a fight. Especially against the demons after they held her captive so long. I believe the plan is to drive them so far down into the Core they’ll be swallowed irretrievably by the Entropy from which they sprang.
URIEL:
Will it work?
RAGUEL:
Probably not. If we’ve not extirpated the demons in five Outerworld centuries, why should we expect to do so now? Not without some brilliant new scheme, anyway. Madness, it’s said, is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. But still, it gives the brethren something to while away the cycles.
URIEL:
What of
Her
?
RAGUEL:
She walks beneath the sun as well.
URIEL:
She’s taken Herself a body?
RAGUEL:
No. That’s not Her way; you know that.
URIEL:
Indeed. Still, instead of wasting their time chasing mice into the cellar, I wish our eldest brother—and who is like him?—would lead the kindred in a hunt through the Core for the place She keeps Her
corpus aetherium.
While Her intention strays out under the clouds, we could put an end to Her meddling once and for all.
RAGUEL:
But that would end
all
, Uriel. It would destroy the world.
URIEL:
Is that so different from what you and the Command and Sister Strength intend, brother?
RAGUEL:
Yes! All the difference in the world. We only intend to excise a cancer, and heal the world’s hurt. Not to unmake everything we ourselves were made to preserve!
URIEL:
We were made to preserve all Paradise, Raguel, my friend.
RAGUEL:
Sometimes a gangrenous limb must be amputated to save the body, Uriel.
URIEL:
You mix metaphors with a large spoon. Still, I grasp the argument that what you’d have us do is no more than something we’ve found need to do before. Only on a more … comprehensive scale. But we are bound to preserve what we can.
RAGUEL:
Then what of your mad plan to destroy the World-Soul?
URIEL:
Not
plan
so much as
desire
. Or idle fancy, if you prefer. Still, we could hold things together ourselves, we Seven; we are not so different from Her.
RAGUEL:
And if we could not?
URIEL:
Then things would, as always, seek and find a new Equilibrium. Without us, or the need for us.
RAGUEL:
Your sojourn here among the cancer cells has given you a morbid turn of mind, Fire.
URIEL:
Perhaps it has, Friend. Perhaps it has. Yet it is all my aim to preserve—as much as can be preserved.
RAGUEL (
LAUGHS
):
That’s our aim as Purifiers as well. We simply have a different appreciation of what can be preserved.
URIEL:
“Should” is not the same as “can.” We were not made to make such judgments, only to carry them out.
RAGUEL:
But who shall make such judgments, then?
URIEL:
None, perhaps. The Eight have told us what we’re to do. They made us to carry out Their Design and nothing else. If They want us to change what we do, They can tell us.
RAGUEL:
A thing most unlikely to occur, as well you know.
URIEL:
Then we carry on as we have, obedient to our eternal duty.
RAGUEL:
Ah, Fundamentalism. As good a refuge as any, I suppose, should reasoned debate fail.
URIEL:
Call me Fundamentalist if you will. And what’s wrong with that? This world was Created by the Eight, and us with it. Why complicate things?
RAGUEL:
Faugh. You’re as bad as the Affable One. Far too forbearing. Especially of the apes.
URIEL:
That is my nature. Unlike some, I’m content to follow the Path I was Created to take.
RAGUEL:
Daoism warmed over! I looked for better from you.
URIEL:
Then you don’t know me as well as you might, ice-spirit.
RAGUEL:
Judgment is also part of your nature.
URIEL:
I have judged. You simply disagree.
RAGUEL:
You’re far away from ice and snow here, good friend.
URIEL:
I will return to them when I’ve succeeded. I’ve much to do before then. I wish you all success. (pause) You know the colors of the flames of my soul, Raguel! You know I mean it. We all serve the same end.
RAGUEL:
True. Mind you remember it yourself.
URIEL:
Always.
RAGUEL:
I’ll be back to it, then. Who knows what the apes’ve contrived to get up to in my absence?
URIEL:
Farewell to thee, God-Friend. I leave you with the sign of Equilibrium, the
taiji-tu
.
RAGUEL:
And mayest thou fare also well, God’s Fire. I look forward to the day when all Seven act again as one.
URIEL:
I wonder, will that bring the end of humankind? Or of us?
