The Dinosaur Lords (16 page)

When they finished eating, he came around the table. Smiling, he took her hand and drew her to her feet.

“What do you have in mind, Se
ñ
or Conde?” she asked. Her eyes were turned down to the wide-leaved plants that sprawled between her feet, encased in gilt sandals, and his in soft russet boots.

“Let’s dance.”

She looked up at him. “But there’s no music!”

He put an arm around her waist and began to lead her through a galliard. His hand seemed to scorch her bare hip. She tried to concentrate on the
cinco pasos
, the Five Steps of this particular dance. Her breath came in chops.

“Where you are,
mi amor
,” he said, “is music. Isn’t that your name?”

She laughed. They danced.

He turned her to face him, clasped her close. She gasped. He raised her off the ground and spun her three-quarters of a circle in a scandalous
vuelta
.

When he set her down he kissed her. She felt as if hot honey filled her veins. She kissed him back with adolescent fervor.

The flat muscles of his chest crushed her bare breasts. She clutched his lower rib cage. Strong, long-fingered hands molded her buttocks as if Jaume were a blind artist and meant to sculpt them.

He bore her back to the table. Reached to sweep spent dishes from the way.

A tiny throat was cleared.

In the act of sliding a hand down his body to the firmness that pressed against her belly through his trunks, Melod
í
a froze. Her racing heart stumbled painfully. She knew that sound.

“
Montse,
” she hissed.

“Good afternoon, Count Jaume,” the little girl said, with formal deference that was utterly unlike her.

Giving a last kiss to Melod
í
a’s sweat-streaming forehead, Jaume straightened, then turned and bowed. “A pleasure as always to see you, Infanta Montserrat,” he said gravely.

Melod
í
a glared at her sister. Montse’s dark-blond dreadlocks dangled over the shoulders of a smock as grubby and grey-mottled as any garment she’d worn more than five minutes. She had wide cheekbones, a snub nose, great green eyes whose dancing mischief gave the lie to the innocence she was faking.

She curtsied. “I like you, Count Cousin. You don’t treat me like a little girl.”

“You
are
a little girl,” Melod
í
a said, pulling herself reluctantly and with a certain difficulty to a sitting position on the table’s edge. “A nosy little brat, to be precise.”

“I like to take people at their own evaluation,” Jaume said. “Life plays much more harmoniously that way.”

“You spoil her,” Melod
í
a said sulkily. “She oughtn’t spy on people.”

“I’m not spying,” Montse said. “I hate spies. I want to build things. You know that.”

“Yes, yes,” Melod
í
a said. Exasperating as Montse was, she found it hard to stay mad at her. “And I want to serve the Empire in a way that
matters
. And both of us are Imperial Princesses, and will doubtless never get what we want.”

Jaume winked at her and silently said, “
Not so
.” She had to fight down a giggle.

“We know you weren’t spying on us, Montserrat,” Jaume said. “So what errand brought you here?”

“I was sent to fetch my sister to begin her preparations,” she declared importantly.

“For what?” Melod
í
a asked.

“Father’s decreed a
huge
banquet tonight, to celebrate Jaume’s return. All kinds of boring people will be there. I’m glad
I’m
too young to have to go.”

Chapter
12

Cuellolargo
, Long-Neck
—
Elasmosaurus platyurus.
A kind of plesiosaur or long-necked sea monster; 14 meters, 2 tonnes. Eats fish and smaller marine lizards. Rarely attacks humans, sea-stories notwithstanding, and only when provoked.

—THE BOOK OF TRUE NAMES

“Something’s got to be done,” declared the Conde Monta
ñ
azul.

Melod
í
a, a forkful of a salad halfway to her lips, exerted considerable will not to roll her eyes.
How many bad ideas get prefaced with that phrase?
she wondered.

Count Bluemountain was a tall man, still strongly built in middle age, with a pointy black beard striped silver down the sides. He wore a gown of scarlet silk with a blue mountain on gold shield sewn on the front. His fief was large, prosperous from mines and fine cloths, if not necessarily from wise rule. He was influential, popular among his fellow grandes.

Melod
í
a held her tongue. For now.

The feasting hall was lively as a skimmer rookery with conversation and the companionable clatter of tableware. A small army of servants swarmed around bearing pitchers and trays. The smells of meats roasting and pastries baking competed with myriad essences the diners had doused themselves in, which fortunately blended into a m
é
lange Melod
í
a found pleasant. The twenty-five-meter-long blueheart table teemed with those whose estimates of their own importance accorded closely enough with the Imperial Chamberlain’s to get them a place at it.

Melod
í
a sat on her father’s left, seven chairs down. Despite her rank, it was a standard placement for her at state dinners. As always she resented being excluded from the only conversation that mattered.

“Something must be done about what, Don Roberto?” the Condesa Rinc
ó
n asked.

A countess in her own right, Teresa de Rinc
ó
n was a widow of late middle age, silver haired and still trim. She sat across from Melod
í
a, nestled closer to Herzog Falk von Hornberg than protocol required.

“Why, this Garden of Beauty and Truth in Providence, of course,” Monta
ñ
azul said. “They’re a scandal. Their nonsense is likely to attract the sort of attention no one wants from the Grey Angels themselves! It wouldn’t surprise me if they sent that assassin after our beloved Emperor.”

Melod
í
a swallowed anger at the implied slur against her beloved Jaume. “Wouldn’t a more obvious culprit be the Princes’ Party?” she made herself ask blandly. “They’re the ones who made war on my father, not the Gardeners. Who are pacifists anyway.”

She turned to look at the
norte
ñ
o
Duke. So did everyone else in earshot. His presence at court provided such delicious controversy.

“A reasonable conjecture, Princess,” he said with a blandness that made her want to kick him. He wiped his full lips on a linen napkin. “On the surface. But I ask, why? We never intended harm to our Emperor, or his family. Also, His Majesty has convinced me that no assassins would accept such a commission in the first place. So against whom would we dispatch them?”

Melod
í
a’s mouth tightened. Falk looked like just another big muscle-bound dolt, epitome of the buckethead, as wags called the Empire’s warrior-aristocrats. But he was showing a most unbucketheadlike turn of both wit and forbearance.

“Might your Party try to assassinate the evil advisors the Princes claimed they fought against?” she asked.

“To what end, Highness? We lost our war and admitted our fault.”

“Really, you shouldn’t bullyrag our guest,” Countess Rinc
ó
n said, giving a squeeze of solidarity to Falk’s thick biceps. “He’s done his penance, and received absolution.”

“Don’t let Se
ñ
orita Melod
í
a fool you, your Grace,” called a nasal and unwelcome voice from farther down the table.

The immaculately coiffed, bearded, and outsized head of Melod
í
a’s cousin Gonzalo Delgao sat on a white ruff as if it were a plate. Which was very much where Melod
í
a would have liked to see it. She noticed that the diminutive, black-velvet-clad man had arranged his silver salad dish and utensils with his customary precision after finishing the course.

Across from him sat his younger brother Benedicto, big as a titan and just as swift, his great handsome brown block of a face creased by the effort of following the conversation.

“How do you mean?” Falk asked Gonzalo.

“Our Princess opposed her father’s waging war on you and your comrades in the North,” Gonzalo said. A beat later his brother nodded accord.

The brothers’ usual partners in undermining Melod
í
a’s father, their supercilious brother-in-law Ren
é
Alarc
ó
n and Augusto Manorqu
í
n, from a cadet family of Torre Ram
í
rez, were blessedly absent. They might be elsewhere brewing mischief; Melod
í
a suspected they were patronizing one of La Merced’s justly famous brothels.

Again Falk’s blue eyes fixed on Melod
í
a. She found their intensity unsettling. It was already
quite
warm enough in here, thank you.

“Why, your Highness?” Falk asked.

“She’s against war,” Gonzalo said. “She’s full of novel notions, my cousin.”

“But doesn’t war ultimately maintain that very order which supports you in your position of privilege?” Falk asked.

“I don’t oppose all war,” she said, shooting a ruffled-harrier look Gonzalo’s way. “Only unnecessary ones. I’ve studied military history extensively. And before you ask, yes, I think my father should have tried harder to resolve his dispute with your Princes’ Party through negotiation before opting for war.”

Falk lifted a brow. “Reading about war is not the same as experiencing it, Highness.”

“I know that,” she said. “You fought with distinction in that war, your Grace. Can you name me any activity
less
orderly?”

“An interesting point, Princess. Battle, at least, is the most chaotic activity imaginable.”

“
Regardless
of who sent the assassin and why,” Monta
ñ
azul said, loudly trying to win back center stage, “I still say the Emperor has to act against this Garden of Beauty and Truth, so-called. Bring them to heel like disobedient vexers.”

“Why?” Falk asked, sipping wine. “What threat can a pack of pacifists pose?”

“They teach sedition! Pacifism, to begin. Worse, far worse, is this notion that nobles owe a
duty
to their peasants: absurd! If that idea gets out, it will cause chaos. Anarchy!”

His wife, Condesa Mar
í
a, smiled and patted his bloodred arm. “Roberto knows how dangerous it is for peasants to get above themselves. Other hidalgos admire how efficiently he crushes their every unrest.”

“One wonders that he gets so many of them,” Melod
í
a said sweetly.

“
S
í
,
” Countess Mar
í
a said, nodding. “It is a great mystery. It just goes to show how little serfs differ from the savage horrors of the woods.”

To keep from laughing in her face, Melod
í
a sipped wine. It was a fine vintage from La Meseta, the highland where both La Majestad, the Imperial capital, and Spa
ñ
a’s capital, La Fuerza, lay.
Something
good came out of the dusty place, anyway.

Felipe couldn’t stand La Majestad or the Imperial Palace. Melod
í
a liked them less. It was why they’d lived here since Melod
í
a’s mother had died bearing Montse.

“The Gardeners are heretics,” Monta
ñ
azul declared. “His Holiness has intimated as much himself.”

The Pope sat at Felipe’s left hand. Fearfully old, with a titan’s egg of a head perched on a body scrawny as a half-starved flier’s, swaddled in layers of gold-embroidered white cloth despite the heat, P
í
o was a great enthusiast of all the Emperor’s worst impulses toward centralizing power. He was one reason for Melod
í
a to be glad she wasn’t allowed a nearer place at table: she had a hard time behaving with the Pope in earshot. Also he smelled.

That P
í
o never seemed entirely clean lent currency to whispers that he was a secret devotee of the Life-to-Come sect Melod
í
a’s due
ñ
a was so devoted to. If true, it
had
to be secret: La Vida-que-Viene held that the precepts of the Creators’ own
Books of the Law
, which mandated things like sanitation and sensuous enjoyment of the world the Creators had given their children, were metaphors that were sinful to follow literally. Cleanliness and pleasure, believers taught, were meant to be enjoyed solely in the afterlife.

Melod
í
a wasn’t alone in wondering how they got any followers at all, much less a growing number of them.

Grinning openly now, she said, “You believe the Gardeners teach heresy, Count Roberto? How fascinating. Perhaps you’d like to take up the matter with the man whose writings they base their beliefs on.”