The Dinosaur Lords (7 page)

The cowled man supplied it. He slipped into a narrow way illuminated only by light that filtered from rooms and corridors to either side through slits made to look like ornamentation or even random cracks in the walls. It was part of a network of secret stairs and passageways meant for trusted servants, discreet errands, and persons of high station on low missions.

The Firefly Palace sprawled across a high headland that protected the southern side of Happy Bay, about which stood, leaned, and occasionally rioted La Merced, the Empire’s richest seaport. Yellow-white limestone walls as high as twenty meters and as thick as ten encompassed a square kilometer inside an approximate pentagon. Within lay yards, stables, shops, and barracks. The Palace proper dominated all: an enormous rambling structure well spiked with towers, and courtyard gardens and pools tucked away within.

By arrangement with its owner, Prince Heriberto, the palace currently housed the widowed Emperor, his two young daughters, and the usual gaggle of courtiers. Emperador Felipe liked his comforts, and equally disliked the intrigues and stuffy self-importance of court and Diet in the Imperial capital of La Majestad
.
Easygoing La Merced was far more to his liking.

But figurehead that he was, the man who sat the Fang
è
d Throne still attracted intrigue. Especially one who had roiled the waters of state as vigorously as the placid-seeming Felipe.

The hooded man climbed three dim stories. Though he had never been inside the palace in his life, he knew the way well. Nor had he been to the Principado de la Quijada de Tirán. His real order didn’t even serve the Middle Son.

Under most circumstances, this assignment would have been carried out by someone already within the palace, preferably in the Imperial retinue. But none was available. And this commission was urgent as well as of the highest importance.

He peered into a sunlit room through a reaper-feather hanging to confirm it was vacant, then crossed to a door. He had to take great care: the Emperor’s apartments occupied this floor. If he were spotted here, not even his clerical robes would save him from scrutiny he couldn’t risk. The simple fact that he didn’t belong would not escape the attention of men with gazes as sharp as their spears who guarded the Emperor.

He wasn’t afraid of torture. His death would mean little; when he swore the oaths, he had accepted that he would die serving the Mother. The Brotherhood had blessed him with its confidence to carry out this task. He could endure anything but failure.

He slipped into a corridor with milky morning sunlight streaming through pointed-arched windows at either end. He saw no one, but heard prayers murmured behind closed doors. Incense thickened the air.

Silently he strode down the hallway. Despite fanatical training and years of meditation, his pulse raced. So much lay on this single cast.…

And here. The door.

Inside the room a figure garbed the Father’s grey sat in gloom. His back was to the door, his hood bowed in contemplation.

The intruder slipped his right hand inside his capacious left sleeve. His fingers closed around the cool familiar hardness of his dagger hilt.

Carefully he extended his right foot, laid the whole sandaled sole at once on maroon tiles. He would have sworn he made no sound—he would have staked his life.

The grey hood turned. The man looked upon the visage within.

“Your Radiance!” he exclaimed, but softly, softly. He dropped to his knees. His hand slipped from his sleeve, holding his now-forgotten weapon.

“Forgive me,” he said as the figure rose to towering height and approached. “Forgive me, Radiant One! I didn’t know. How could I know?”

“You are forgiven, my son,” replied a voice soft and dry and grey as ash. Its owner reached for him as if to confer benediction.

*   *   *

Naked and still damp from her afternoon bath, the Imperial Princess Melod
í
a Estrella Delgao Llobregat sat on her stool while her maidservant brushed out her long hair, listening to the deep tones her best friend drew from the springer-gut strings of her
vihuela del arco.

She enjoyed the way the music flowed, sweet and dark as Ruybrasil molasses, across the sitting room’s blond-and-dark-wood parquetry floor. She also enjoyed how easy they made it to ignore the girl who sat sobbing in buttery sunset light beneath a window facing out on La Canal.

“You’ve finally got something big and hard between those white-bread thighs of yours, Fanny,” said another of Melod
í
a’s five ladies-in-waiting, “and all you can do is sit there and scratch it.”

Melod
í
a’s cousin Guadalupe was Princess of Spa
ñ
a, lean, dark, and rather fierce-looking. Also rather fierce.

“Old joke,” said Abigail Th
é
l
è
me. Only child of the Archduke-Elector of Sansamour, she was taller even than Melod
í
a, slim and pale and cool as a blade.

Frances Martyn, Princess of Anglaterra, reddened to the roots of her curly gold hair. She kept on playing. Beautifully. She was used to jokes about her alleged prudery. Unlike the rest of Melod
í
a’s retinue, who wore silken loincloths and a few feathers in the late-autumn tropic heat, the short, well-rounded Princess was dressed demurely in a sleeveless blouse and skirt of foam-green silk that left only her belly bare between thigh and throat.

Melod
í
a’s dueña, Do
ñ
a Carlota—stout, devout, and moustached like a bandit—sniffed loudly from the stool where she sat discreetly with her fellows beneath a wall hanging woven of bright dinosaur feathers. Following the general custom that older folk wore more clothes than young, the other due
ñ
as had on light cloth gowns; Do
ñ
a Carlota was so swaddled from chin to instep in heavy blouse, mantilla, and thick dark skirts that Melod
í
a found it a wonder she didn’t pass out.

“
Some
highborn young ladies don’t know how to act according to their station,” Do
ñ
a Carlota said sternly. Her fellow due
ñ
as sniggered subversively.

The sturdily built young woman on the
banco
stopped sniveling. A dark eye peeked over the handkerchief she held to her face. She offered a particularly soulful sob.

“All right, Fina,” Melod
í
a said, “what are you emoting about now?”

It came out sharper than she intended. Especially to the adored daughter of their host, or landlord, Heriberto, who liked to be called Prince Harry in Angl
é
s style. The Principe was a good friend of Melod
í
a’s father, but there was no point in pushing things.

Besides, Josefina Serena was a good friend to Melod
í
a, within her limits. She could be a fearful pill, what with her weeping and vapors and passions, as fierce as summer Channel squalls and usually as brief.

“It’s terrible,” Fina moaned, “how the nobles treat their peasants.”

“And you’re just now finding this out?” Abi Th
é
l
è
me said. “It’s what they do, as dung beetles eat dung.”

As usual, she held her long blue eyes half-closed. On another it would be silly affectation; Abi made it sinister. Melod
í
a thought her quite the most striking girl in the room, with her finely chiseled features and silver-blond hair hanging to the small of her back.

Lupe scowled, which her single brow equipped her well to do. No one would call her pretty, exactly; she was handsome in an intense way, like a well-made quirt. Her skin was dark olive. Her blue-black hair, wound into tight pigtails that failed utterly to make her look innocent, came to a widow’s peak. A purple and yellow tr
ö
odon-feather gorget partially obscured her small breasts.

“How can you talk that way?” she said. “You’re highborn yourself.”

“How keen of you to notice, Lupita,” Abi said. Lupe’s face turned the color of well-cured nosehorn leather.

Sensing
attention
slipping away, Fina sniffed more loudly than before.

“Oh, very well,” Abi said. “Out with it, before you snort your face inside out.”

Fina glared, but recounted a recent holiday up-country with her father at his vassal barony of Lago Bravo.

“It was the way Baron Ludovico treated his peasants,” she said. “He was most frightfully cruel. He had them whipped for the slightest misdeed. I even saw one poor young man—a handsome, strapping fellow—branded on both cheeks for impertinence!”

“You’re right,” Melod
í
a said, wincing. “That
is
awful. It’s not right for lords to treat their people cruelly. Even serfs.”

At least Fina’s found something more interesting than palace gossip to cry about,
she thought. She briefly thanked the Creators, in whom she didn’t really believe, for distracting her companions from their earlier chatter about the latest fashions from Lumi
è
re, a subject that bored Melod
í
a stupid.

“My father would’ve had them roasted alive over a slow fire,” Abi said brightly.

“Which?” Fanny asked. “Lords or serfs?”

Abigail Th
é
l
è
me smiled.

“Why don’t you do something, D
í
a?” asked Llurdis.

That was another cousin: the Princess of Catalunya, which although subject to Spa
ñ
a was nominally a kingdom. It was unlike Llurdis to be last into any conversation. Melod
í
a guessed she’d just been waiting for a chance to stir things up.

“What on Paradise am I
supposed
to do?” Melod
í
a snapped. At once she regretted letting her cousin get under her skin. It only encouraged her.

“
You’re
the Emperor’s daughter,” Llurdis said. “Not me.”

She was large and powerfully built, with breasts so large Melod
í
a wondered she didn’t have a constant backache. Her hair was black, as coarse and untamable as she. Her features were too emphatic to be considered pretty, any more than Lupe’s could. Like the Spa
ñ
ola, Llurdis more than made up for it with flamboyant passions, and a tireless appetite for sex and other dramas.

Melod
í
a tossed her head in irritation. Pilar was trying to tease out a recalcitrant snag. The movement made the captive lock yank painfully at Melod
í
a’s scalp. She grimaced and turned, slapping her maid’s hand away.

“Be
careful
, Pilar! That hurt. What’s the matter with you?”

Pilar’s dark cheeks tightened, and her green eyes narrowed. She bowed her head. “I’m sorry, Highness. Please forgive my clumsiness.”

Ignoring her, Melod
í
a turned her glare back on her cousin where it belonged.

“What
good
does being Princess do me?” she demanded. “My father’s position is mostly ceremonial, as you never tire of reminding me, Llurdi, thank you so much. And it’s not as if he pays attention to me.”

“He loves you, dear,” Fanny said, switching to a lively galliard to lighten the mood.

“Yes, yes,” said Melod
í
a, not about to let herself be mollified, or otherwise deflected from a good rant. “He loves both his daughters. When he remembers he has them. But he never
listens
to me. ‘Yes, dear,’ he says, and nods. Then he goes back to what really interests him: plotting his next hunt or war, whatever. And then there’s that creepy confessor of his. Fray Jer
ó
nimo. He’s been with Father three years and I haven’t even
seen
him.”

“No one has,” Fanny said. “I hear he’s under a vow of seclusion.”

“I hear he’s hideously deformed,” Fina said in a voice that quivered between titillation and sympathy.

“Imperial law says I can’t inherit the Throne,” Melod
í
a said. “Fine. And my father’s got the rest of the family so pissed off with his military adventures I’m never going to get elected on my own. Fine. Who wants to be Empress anyway? It’s just a pain in the ass.”

“Young lady!” Do
ñ
a Carlota said briskly.
“Language.”

“But can’t I at least do
something
worthwhile? All the court and my family want to do is push me into the background like—like an ugly piece of furniture!”

“You could run away and become a mercenary,” Abi Th
é
l
è
me suggested.

“Or a pirate,” said Fanny. Anglaterra was still called Pirate Island, in commemoration of the national pastime that had gotten it conquered and annexed by the Imperio in the first place.

“Why not join your boyfriend’s private army?” asked Lupe. “Oh, that’s right. It’s boys only.”

“But such beautiful boys,” Llurdis said.

“Who mostly like boys,” said Lupe.

“That doesn’t matter,” Melod
í
a said, thinking Lupe was a fine one to talk, given her open, if sporadic and occasionally violent, affair with Llurdis. “So long as Jaume likes
me
best. And he does. He loves me. I love him. I’ll marry him, as soon as my father gives him enough breathing space from fighting to
ask
me.”

“If I were you, D
í
a, I’d worry about that black-haired lieutenant of his,” Fina said earnestly. She said everything earnestly. Unless she sobbed it.

“He’s a pretty one too,” Lupe said.

“Jaume and Pere have been friends since childhood,” Melod
í
a said. “And he’s Jaume’s best knight.”

“And Pere’s been doing him since they were striplings,” Llurdis said. “Haven’t you noticed how Pere looks at you?
¡Ai, caray!
Daggers.”

“Oh, don’t be absurd. I’ve known him since I was a child! Anyway, he knows Jaume and I sleep together.”

“Don’t talk that way, Princess!” Do
ñ
a Carlota said.
“¡Escandalosa!”