Out of the Darkness

Fourteen

Hajjaj had been going on about his business and doing his best to forget that a good many high-ranking Algarvian refugees had taken up residence in Zuwayza. He’d always known how much trouble that might cause. Till it did, though, he’d kept hoping it wouldn’t.

As so many of his hopes had been since Unkerlant attacked his kingdom more than five years before, that one was wasted. Without warning, a blocky Unkerlanter strode into the outer office of the foreign ministry. Hajjaj heard him arguing with Qutuz. That wasn’t hard; everyone along the whole corridor surely heard the Unkerlanter’s shouts in accented Zuwayzi.

Getting to. his feet, the foreign minister went out to the outer office, where he found his secretary nose to nose with the irate Unkerlanter. “What’s going on here?” Hajjaj asked mildly.

“This. . gentleman”-plainly not the description Qutuz had in mind- “desires to speak with you, your Excellency.”

“I do not desire. I demand,” the Unkerlanter said. “And I demand that you come to the Unkerlanter ministry at once. At once, do you understand me?” The man snorted like a bull. Either he was a better actor than any of his countrymen Hajjaj had seen, Minister Ansovald included, or he was genuinely furious.

If he was really that angry, Hajjaj knew what was likeliest to make him so. Alarm ran through the Zuwayzi foreign minister. This is too soon for them to have found out, he thought. Much too soon, in fact. He did his best to sound calmer than he felt: “A man does not make demands of another kingdom’s minister in his own office, sir.”

“That’s what I told him, your Excellency,” Qutuz said. “That’s just what I told him, curse me if it isn’t.”

“Shut up, both of you!” the Unkerlanter shouted. “You, old man, you can come with me right now, or we can have another war right now. There’s your choice, powers below eat you.”

“This is an outrage!” Qutuz exclaimed.

“Too bad,” the Unkerlanter said. He scowled at Hajjaj. “Are you coming or not? You say no, you watch what happens to this pisspot of a kingdom.”

They know, Hajjaj thought gloomily. They must know. With a sigh, he replied, “I will come with you-under protest. May I dress first, to match your custom?”

“Don’t waste the time. It’s inefficient,” the Unkerlanter said. “Get your scrawny old carcass moving, that’s all.”

“Very well. I am at your service,” Hajjaj said. He nodded to Qutuz. “I’ll see you later.” I hope I will. I hope they let me leave the ministry. He took a broad-brimmed hat from the hat rack in the outer office and set it on his head. “Let us go.”

At this season of the year, even Zuwayzin went out as little as they could in the middle of the day. The sun smote down from as close to the zenith as made no difference. The palace’s thick walls of mud brick shielded against the worst of the heat. Out in the streets, the air might have come from a bake oven. Hajjaj’s shadow puddled at his feet, as if even it were looking for someplace to hide.

The Unkerlanter ignored the heat. He had a carriage waiting outside. The driver-also hatless, and a bald man to boot-sat steaming under that merciless sun. Hajjaj hoped he wouldn’t keel over halfway to the Unkerlanter ministry.

The fellow who’d stormed into his office spoke to the driver in their own language, then held the carriage door open for Hajjaj-one of the few formal courtesies he’d ever had from an Unkerlanter. By the way the man slammed it shut after getting in behind the Zuwayzi foreign minister, that courtesy hadn’t come easy.

They got to the ministry unscathed. The driver kept right on sitting out in the open. “You really should let him come inside and cool off,” Hajjaj remarked. “This weather can kill, you know.”

“You worry about your business,” the Unkerlanter told him. “We will tend to ours.”

“Zuwayza has been saying that very thing to Unkerlant for centuries,” Hajjaj said. “Somehow, you never seem to listen.”

The fellow escorting him didn’t seem willing to listen. Unkerlanters, as Hajjaj had said, never did listen to their northern neighbors. Being badly outweighed, Zuwayzin had to listen to Unkerlanters, no matter how little they cared to. This particular Unkerlanter took Hajjaj straight to Minister Ansovald, and spoke two words in his own tongue: “He’s here.” Hajjaj was far from fluent in Unkerlanter, but had no trouble understanding that.

Ansovald glared at Hajjaj. Hajjaj had met the Unkerlanter minister’s glares before, and bore up under this one. When he didn’t immediately crumple and admit guilt, Ansovald shouted, “You treacherous son of a whore!”-in Algarvian, because Hajjaj didn’t have enough Unkerlanter to carry on diplomacy-if such this was-in that language.

“Good day, your Excellency,” Hajjaj said now. “As always, I am delighted to see you, too.”

Irony was wasted on Ansovald. Like so many of his countrymen, he seemed immune to both shame and embarrassment. To serve King Swemmel, he needs to be, Hajjaj thought. But Unkerlanter boorishness was far older than the reign of the current King of Unkerlant.

“We’re going to hang all those Algarvian bastards,” Ansovald shouted now. “And when we’re done with that, we’re liable to hang you, too. How far will that scrawny neck of yours stretch?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Hajjaj said.

“Liar,” Ansovald said. What would have been an ugly truth from another man sounded like a compliment from him. “You’re hiding Balastro and a whole raft of other redheads in a stinking little town called Harran. We want ‘em. We’re going to get ‘em, too-or you’ll be sorry, and so will everybody else in this tinpot kingdom.”

“Even if I were to admit their presence, which I do not, on what grounds could you want them?” Hajjaj asked.

“Conspiracy to violate the Treaty of Tortusso by annexing Rivaroli. Conspiracy to wage war against Forthweg, Valmiera, Jelgava, Sibiu, Lagoas, Kuusamo, and Unkerlant. Conspiracy to murder Kaunians from Forthweg,” Ansovald answered. “Those will do for starters. We can find plenty more. Don’t you worry about a thing. We’ll try ‘em before we hang ‘em, so everything looks pretty.”

Hajjaj winced. He hadn’t expected Ansovald to come up with such a detailed, and damning, indictment. No doubt a good many of the Algarvian refugees were guilty of those things. Still, he said, “If they had won the war, they could charge you with as many enormities as you blame them for now.”

Ansovald didn’t even waste time denying it. All he said was, “So what? The bastards lost. You can turn ‘em over to us, or we can bring in soldiers to come and get ‘em. That’s the only choice you’ve got, Hajjaj. King Swemmel isn’t playing games here, believe you me he isn’t.”

The last thing Hajjaj wanted was Unkerlanter soldiers in Zuwayza. If they came, would they ever leave? Not likely, he thought. But he said, “There is no law between kingdoms governing whether one may make war on another or how to fight such wars.”

“Maybe there isn’t, but there’s going to be,” the Unkerlanter minister to Zuwayza replied.

“Where is the justice in hanging a man for breaking a law that was not a law when he did what he did?” Hajjaj asked.

“Futter justice,” Ansovald said. “We’re not going to let those buggers get away, and that’s flat. You have three days, Hajjaj. Give ‘em up or we’ll come get ‘em.”

“I cannot guarantee your soldiers’ reception if you do,” Hajjaj said.

“Try and stop ‘em.” Ansovald relished being on top.

“We shall do what we have to do,” Hajjaj said coldly. “Your master will not thank you for starting a war here when he plainly has plans farther west.”

“Only goes to show you don’t know King Swemmel,” Ansovald said.

“Are we quite through here? Have you made all your demands?” Hajjaj asked. “If so, I shall take your words to King Shazli.”

“Go on. Get out.” Ansovald gestured contemptuously. Biting his lip, Hajjaj turned and left the minister’s chamber. The hard-faced young Unkerlanter waited outside, and escorted him to the carriage in stony silence. The carriage, he saw, had a new driver. He didn’t remark on it. He wanted nothing more than to get away from the Unkerlanter ministry.

Back at the palace, he hurried to King Shazli’s private audience chamber. He had to wait there, for the king was greeting the new minister from Sibiu. Shazli came in rolling his eyes. “I’m glad to be out of those clothes,” he said. “Would you care for tea and wine and cakes, your Excellency?”

“No, thank you, your Majesty,” Hajjaj answered. “Your Majesty, we have a problem.” He summed up what Ansovald had told him, leaving out only the coarse language and the shouts.

When he’d finished, Shazli frowned. “Do you think he means these threats?”

“Aye, your Majesty, I fear I do. I fear he does.”

“I was afraid of that.” Shazli let out a long, sad sigh. “When we took in these Algarvians, I made up my mind I would not let the kingdom suffer on account of them. I still hold to that. If Swemmel wants them so badly, I shall give them to him.”

That took Hajjaj by surprise. “Your Majesty!” he exclaimed. “Will you turn over men who helped in our revenge, who fought side by side with us for as long as they could? Where is the loyalty a man must show his friends?”

“I am willing to be loyal to my friends, in their place,” the king answered. “But their place is behind that of my own people. I will not go to war with Unkerlant to save these Algarvians. I will not even risk war with Unkerlant to protect them.”

“I don’t think Swemmel could fight much of a war to get these redheads,” Hajjaj said. “From everything we’ve been able to learn, he’s shipping soldiers west as fast as he can, to drive the Gyongyosians out of his kingdom.” In an aside, he added, “I have warned Minister Horthy of this-discreetly, of course.” He returned to the main topic: “While the Unkerlanters are busy in the west, they can’t bother us too badly.”

“I am sorry, your Excellency, but I dare not take the chance,” King Shazli said. “The Algarvians will be surrendered.”

Shazli had rarely overruled Hajjaj. Having it happen now hurt more than all the other times put together. “I must protest, your Majesty,” Hajjaj said stiffly.

“I’m sorry,” Shazli told him. “In this matter, my mind is made up.”

Hajjaj took a deep breath. “That being so, you leave me no choice but to offer my resignation.” He’d done that a handful of times in his long tenure; it had always persuaded the king to change his mind.

King Shazli sighed. “You have served this kingdom long and well, your Excellency. Without you, there might well be no Kingdom of Zuwayza today. But I shall do what I think I must do. I hope you will consult with me on my choice of your successor.”

“Of course, your Majesty.” Hajjaj bowed his head. He’d tried. He’d failed.

Now it was time to go. So he tried to tell himself. But the blood pounded in his ears. He suddenly felt very old, very shaky. Just as he’d been a part of Zuwayza for so very long, so Zuwayza was also a part of him. Had been a part of him. It’s over, he told himself. It’s all over.

Colonel Lurcanio sat across the table from a young Lagoan major who spoke Algarvian with such a thick accent, he would sooner have conversed with the fellow in classical Kaunian: he swallowed vowels and case and verb endings, as if he were still speaking his own tongue. “There’s. . some difficulty about your release, your Excellency,” the Lagoan said.

“Thank you so much, Major Simao, for informing me of this,” Lurcanio said, acid in his voice. “Without your telling me, I never should have noticed.”

Simao turned almost as red as his hair. “Your attitude, Colonel, is not helpful,” he said reproachfully.

Pride and annoyance rang in Lurcanio’s voice: “Why should I be helpful? I see the men I commanded being freed from this captives’ camp, and I see myself still confined. What I fail to see is the reason for it. I should like to return to Albenga as quickly as possible. My county is under Unkerlanter occupation, and I want to do everything I can to protect the people from King Swemmel’s savages.”

“You are speaking of my kingdom’s allies,” Simao said, more stiffly than ever.

“The more shame to you,” Lurcanio retorted.

“You are most uncooperative,” the Lagoan said.

Lurcanio threw his arms wide. “I have surrendered. I will not go back to war if you turn me loose. What more do you want? Do you ask me to love you? There, I fear, you ask for too much.”

“That is not the issue,” Simao said. “You spoke of your county under Unkerlanter occupation. My kingdom has a request from Valmiera to return you to Priekule to answer for what you did there while Algarve was the occupying power.”

“How thoroughly barbarous,” Lurcanio said, using scorn to hide the unease prickling through him. “The war is over. Will you blame me for fighting on my kingdom’s side?”

Major Simao shook his head. “No, Colonel. We have investigated that. When you were in the field, you fought as a soldier should fight. When you were on occupation duty, however.. Does the phrase ‘Night and Fog’ mean anything to you?”

That unease curdled into outright fear. How much did Simao know of the quiet, vicious war between occupiers and occupied? How much of it had been war, and how much murder? Lurcanio didn’t precisely know himself. He wondered if anyone else did.

“You do not answer my question, Colonel,” Simao said sharply.

“I’ve heard the phrase,” Lurcanio said. If he denied even that much, he was too likely to be proved a liar. “One heard all sorts of things during the war- don’t forget, I spent four years in Priekule. I fathered a child there, and not, I assure you, in a rape. That may be one reason for the Valmierans’ malice.”

Simao shrugged. “Then you object to being returned to Priekule?”

“Of course I object!” Lurcanio said. “You Lagoans and the Kuusamans- aye, and the Unkerlanters-beat us in battle. You earned the right to dictate to us. But the Valmierans?” He made a horrible face.

“Or is it that Algarve thought she would never have to answer for what she did there?” Simao asked. Before Lurcanio could answer, the Lagoan went on, “And, of course, there were the massacres of Kaunians from Forthweg-and other Kaunians from Valmiera and Jelgava-when you aimed your sorcery across the Strait of Valmiera at my island.”

“I know nothing of any of that,” Lurcanio said, which was a lie he thought he could get away with. He really didn’t know much about such things. He also hadn’t gone out of his way to find out. Better not to ask where groups of people pulled out of gaols were going.

Major Simao scribbled something on a leaf of paper. “I have noted your objection,” he said. “You will be notified as to whether it is heeded.”

“How?” Lurcanio asked. “Will you drag me out of here and haul me off to Valmiera?”

“Probably,” the Lagoan answered. “You are dismissed.”

As Lurcanio left the makeshift office in the captives’ camp, another worried-looking Algarvian officer went in. I wonder what he did during the war, Lurcanio thought. I wonder how much he’ll have to pay for it. We had our revenge on our enemies-and now they’re having theirs on us.

He mooched around the camp. More often than not, time hung heavy here. Even the interview, however unpleasant, had broken routine. He could look up to the sky of his kingdom, but more than a palisade separated him and his fellow captives from the rest of Algarve. Outside the camp, his countrymen had begun to rebuild. Here. .

Lurcanio shook his head. Rebuilding would come here last. Memory and misery reigned here, nothing else. Algarvian soldiers walked as aimlessly as Lurcanio did himself. For close to six years, they’d done everything they could do, and what had it got them? Nothing. Less than nothing. They’d had a thriving kingdom before the war. Now Algarve lay in ruins, and all her neighbors despised her.

“… So we made the feint from the front, and when the Unkerlanters bit on it, we hit ‘em from behind,” one scrawny captive was telling another. “We cleaned ‘em out of that village neat as you please.”

His pal nodded. “Aye, that’s good. Those whoresons never did pay enough attention to anything that wasn’t right under their noses.”

One of them had two bars under his wound badge, the other three. They went on hashing over the fights they’d been through as if those battles still meant something, as if other Algarvian soldiers remained in the field to take advantage of what they’d so painfully learned. Lurcanio wondered how long the war would stay uppermost in their thoughts. He wondered if it would ever be anything but uppermost.

I’m lucky, he thought. I was only in the field for the early campaigns, and then at the end. In between, I had those four civilized years in Priekule. It wasn’t so much that his body had come through unscarred, though he was anything but sorry to have escaped the enormous grinding battles in the west: a great many men had gone from Valmiera to fight in Unkerlant, and precious few ever came back again. But Lurcanio hadn’t had the war branded on his spirit to the same degree as most of his fellow captives.

He shrugged an elaborate, Algarvian shrug. I don’t think I have, anyway. He’d spent most of his nights in Priekule in his own bed or, more pleasantly, in Krasta’s. Instead of warring with a stick, he’d fought his battles against the Valmieran irregulars with a pen.

And I won most of them, he thought. The kingdom had stayed quiet, or quiet enough, under Algarve’s heel till the situation in the west and in Jelgava grew too desperate to let the occupiers stay. For a moment, he took pride in that. But then he shrugged again. What difference did it make? No matter how well he’d done his job, his kingdom had lost the war. That mattered. The other didn’t.

Two days later, he was summoned from the ranks of the captives at morning roll call. His wasn’t the only name the Lagoan guard called out. About a dozen men, most of them officers but with two or three sergeants among them, stepped forward.

Major Simao came out of the administrative center. “You men have been ordered remanded to Valmieran custody for investigation of murders and other acts of cruelty and barbarism inflicted on the said kingdom during its occupation by Algarve,” Simao droned, his mumbling, nasal Lagoan accent making the bureaucratic announcement even harder to follow.

But Lurcanio understood what it was all too likely to mean. “I protest!” he said. “How can we hope to get a fair investigation from the Valmierans? They want to kill us under form of law.”

“How many of them did you kill without bothering with form of law?” Simao said coldly. “Your protest is denied.”

Lurcanio hadn’t expected much else. But the speed-and the relish-with which Simao rejected his appeal were illuminating. He’d known the kingdoms allied against his own hated Algarvians. Seeing that hatred in action, though, showed him how deep it ran.

As the Lagoans marched the captives out of the camp and toward wagons that would, Lurcanio supposed, take them to a ley-line caravan depot, one of the sergeants said, “Well, we’re futtered royal and proper. Only question is whether they blaze us or hang us or drop us in the stewpot.”

“Valmierans don’t do that,” Lurcanio said. But then he added, “Of course, by the look of things, they might make an exception for us.”

“That’s right.” The sergeant nodded. “But I’ll tell you something else, sir: they can only get me once, and I got a lot more’n one o’ those stinking blond bastards.”

“Good for you,” Lurcanio said. Algarvian bravado ran deep. He hoped he would be able to keep it up himself when he needed it most.

Sure enough, the wagon ride-with as many Lagoan soldiers as captives: a compliment of sorts-took them to a small depot. The soldiers stood watch over them till an eastbound ley-line caravan came up and stopped. One of the cars had bars across the windows. A Lagoan guard favored the captives with a nasty smile. “Like the ones you used for Kaunians you killed, eh?” he said in Algarvian, a comparison Lurcanio could have done without.

After Lurcanio and the other captives and most of the guards boarded the caravan car, it glided away. The bars didn’t keep Lurcanio from peering avidly out the windows. As the caravan drew near the border with Valmiera, he saw long columns of redheaded, kilted men and women and children trudging westward, some pushing handcarts, some with duffels slung over their shoulders, a lucky handful with a horse or a donkey to bear their burdens.

That Algarvian-speaking guard said, “The Valmierans throw you whoresons out of the Marquisate of Rivaroli. No more trouble there. No more treason there, either.”

Algarvians had lived in Rivaroli for more than a thousand years. Even when Valmiera annexed the marquisate after the Six Years’ War, no one had talked of expelling them. But a generation and more’ had gone by since then. These were new times-hard times, too.

At a stop by the border, the Lagoan guards left the caravan car. Blonds in trousers took their place. “Now you get what is coming to you,” one of them said, proving he too spoke Algarvian. His laugh was loud and unpleasant.

“Go ahead. Have your joke,” the irrepressible sergeant said. “I bet you ran away from the fighting, too, just like all your pals.” The Valmieran spoke in a low voice to his comrades. Four of them beat the sergeant bloody while the rest held sticks on the other Algarvian captives to make sure they didn’t interfere.

“Any other funny men?” the guard asked. No one said a word.

On through Valmiera glided the ley-line caravan. In the early afternoon, the landscape started looking familiar to Lurcanio. Before long, he saw the famous skyline of Priekule. I enjoyed myself here, aye, he thought. All the same, I’d sooner have kept the memories.

Krasta paid as little attention to news-sheet hawkers as she could. When she came to the Boulevard of Horsemen, she came to spend money, to get away from her bastard son, and to show herself off. She had her wig all done up in curls, in the style of the glory days of the Kaunian Empire. A lot of Valmieran women wore their hair that way these days, perhaps to affirm their Kaunianity after the Algarvian occupation. The wig was hot and uncomfortable, but her own hair hadn’t grown out far enough for her to appear in public without its help. Better-far better-discomfort than humiliation.

Hawkers who worked the Boulevard of Horsemen were supposed to be discreet and quiet, so as not to disturb the well-heeled women and men who shopped there. Such rules had gone downhill since the Algarvians pulled out, though. These days, the men who waved the sheets on street corners were about as raucous here as anywhere else in Priekule.

“Redheads coming back for justice!” one of them yelled as Krasta came out of a clothier’s. During the war, the dummies in the window had worn some of the shortest kilts in town. These days, of course, they were all patriotically trousered. The vendor thrust a sheet in Krasta’s face. “It’s our turn now!”

She started to wave him away in annoyance, but then checked herself. “Let me have one.” She couldn’t remember the last time she’d bought, or even looked at, a news sheet, and had to ask, “How much?”

“Five coppers, lady,” the fellow answered apologetically, adding, “Everything’s up since the war.”

“Is it?” Krasta paid as little attention to prices as she could. She gave him a small silver coin, took the news sheet and her change, and sat down on a local ley-line caravan bench to read the story.

It was what the hawker had said it was: an account of how a dozen Algarvians who’d helped rule Valmiera for King Mezentio were being brought back to Priekule to stand before Valmieran judges and answer for their brutality and atrocities. It is to be hoped, the reporter wrote, that the vicious brutes will get no more mercy than they gave.

“That’s right.” Krasta nodded vigorously.

She had to turn to an inside page to find out what she really wanted to know: the names of the Algarvians coming back to Priekule. Those didn’t seem to matter to the fellow writing the story: as far as he was concerned, one Algarvian was as good-or rather, as bad-as another. At last, though, the reporter came to the point. Krasta shook her head when he called an Algarvian brigadier a fiend and a known pervert, a man who took pleasure in killing. She’d met the officer in question at several feasts and dances. Maybe he liked boys, but he liked women, too; he’d pinched her behind and rubbed himself against her like a dog in heat.

“What do reporters know?” she muttered.

But then she saw the next name, the name she’d wondered if she would find. With the previously mentioned officer is his henchman, the vile and lecherous Colonel Lurcanio, who made our capital a place of terror for four long years. Lurcanio openly boasts of the child he sired on Marchioness Krasta, from whose mansion at the edge of the capital he leaped out like a wolf on honest citizens.

Krasta read that twice, then furiously crumpled up the news sheet and flung it in a trash bin. “Powers below eat him!” she snarled. Had Lurcanio stood before her and not a panel of judges, he wouldn’t have lasted long. She’d thought him a gentleman, and one of the things a gentleman didn’t do was tell.

He hadn’t just told-he’d told the news sheets. People who knew her of course knew her baby had hair the wrong color. Some of them had cut her- including some who’d been at least as cordial to the occupiers as she had. But this… in the news sheets. . Every tradesman she’d ever dealt with would know she’d had an Algarvian’s bastard.

Heels clicking on the slates of the sidewalk, she hurried down the Boulevard of Horsemen to the cross street where her carriage waited. When she got there, she found her new driver reading the news sheet. She wished she still had the one who drank to while away the time. “Put down that horrible rag,” she snapped.

“Aye, milady,” the driver said, but he carefully folded the sheet so he could go on reading it later. “Shall I take you home now?” He spoke as if certain of the answer.

But Krasta shook her head. “No. Drive me to the central gaol.”

“To the central gaol, milady?” The driver sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“You heard me,” Krasta said. “Now get moving!” She sprang into the carriage, slamming the door behind her.

He took her where she wanted to go. If he hadn’t, she would have fired him on the spot and either engaged a new driver or tried to take the carriage back to the mansion herself. She was convinced she could do it: drivers certainly weren’t very bright, and they had no trouble, so how hard could it be?

Luckily for her-she’d never driven a carriage in her life-she didn’t have to find out. “Here you are, milady,” the driver said, stopping in front of a fortresslike building not far from the royal palace.

Krasta descended from the carriage and swarmed toward the gaol, an invading army of one. “What do you want?” asked one of the men at the entrance.

Were they constables? Soldiers? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. “I am the Marchioness Krasta,” she declared. “I must see one of the nasty Algarvians you have locked up here.”

Both the guards bowed. Neither of them opened the formidably stout door, though. “Uh, sorry, milady,” said the fellow who’d spoken before. “Nobody can do that without the warder’s permission.”

“Then fetch the warder here at once.” Krasta’s voice rose to a shout: “At once, do you hear me?”

If they’d read the news sheet, if they’d paid attention to her name, they might not have been so willing to do as she said. But Valmierans were used to yielding to their nobles. One of them left. He returned a few minutes later with a fellow in a fancier uniform. “May I help you, milady?” the warder asked.

“I must see Colonel Lurcanio, one of your Algarvian captives,” Krasta said, as she had before.

“For what purpose?” the warder asked.

“To ask him how he dares have the nerve to tell so many nasty, lying stories about me,” Krasta said. That the stories might be nasty but weren’t lies had entirely slipped out of her memory.

“What was your name again?” the warder inquired. Fuming, Krasta told him. “Marchioness Krasta. .” the man repeated. “Oh, you’re the one who.. ” By the way his expression sharpened, Krasta could tell he’d read the day’s news sheet himself. “You say these are lies?’ he asked.

“I certainly do say that,” Krasta answered. Saying it, of course, didn’t mean it had to be true. She dimly remembered that distinction.

The warder didn’t note it. He bowed to her and said, “All right. You come with me.”

She came. The place was grimier and smellier than she’d imagined. The warder led her to a room with two chairs separated by a fine but strong wire mesh. To her annoyance, he not only made her leave her handbag outside but also turn out her pockets and put whatever she had in them on a tray. “I’m not going to give this Algarvian anything except a piece of my mind,” she said.

With a shrug, the warder said, “These are the rules.” Against the rules, plainly, the powers above themselves contended in vain. Even Krasta, who was anything but shy about arguing regardless of whether or not she had a case, forbore to do so here. The warder said, “You wait. Someone will bring him.”

Krasta waited longer than she cared to. Staring at the wire mesh made her feel imprisoned herself. She drummed her fingers on her trouser leg, trying to fight down her annoyance. After about a quarter of an hour-it seemed much longer to Krasta-two guards brought in Lurcanio. They shoved him toward the chair on the far side of the mesh. “Here’s the whoreson,” one of them said as the other slammed the door.

Instead of sitting down on the hard chair, Lurcanio bowed to Krasta. “Good day, milady,” he said in his musically accented Valmieran. “Have you come to gloat, or perhaps to throw nuts to the monkey in the cage? I could use the nuts. They do not feed me very well-which, considering how you Valmierans stuff yourselves, is doubly a crime.”

“How dare you tell the news sheets you fathered my boy?” Krasta demanded. “How dare you?”

“Well, did I not?” Lurcanio asked. “I surely had more chance than anybody else. But did Valnu or whoever get there at the right time?”

“That has nothing to do with anything,” Krasta said, suddenly recalling little Gainibu’s unfortunate hair color. Lurcanio laughed out loud, which only infuriated her further. “How dare you say it?”

Lurcanio gave back a serious answer, perhaps the most annoying thing he might have done: “Well, for one thing, it is-or it appears to be-the truth.”

“What has that got to do with anything?” Krasta yelped, very conscious of the difference between what was said and what was.

“And, for another”-Lurcanio went on as if she hadn’t spoken-”I can still strike a blow of sorts by telling the truth here. You Valmierans are going to be as hard on me as you know how; I doubt that not at all. Why shouldn’t I make things as difficult as I can for you?” Malicious amusement sparked in his cat-green eyes.

Revenge Krasta understood. She didn’t care to have it aimed at her. “It’s not gentlemanly!” she exclaimed.

“I am not in a gentlemanly predicament, you stupid little twat,” Lurcanio snapped. “You were pleasant in bed, but you haven’t the brains the powers above gave a hedgehog. I fought a war here in Priekule, and they intend to murder me under form of law on account of the way I fought it. I cannot do much to stop them, either. Now, have you got that through your thick skull?”

“Futter you!” Krasta said shrilly.

“I would tell you to go right ahead, my former dear, but the mesh is too narrow to make it practical,” Lurcanio replied.

“Powers below eat you, you put my name in the news sheets,” Krasta said.

“And when have you ever complained about that?” Lurcanio asked.

“Futter you!” Krasta said again. This time, she didn’t wait for an answer, but flounced out of the visiting chamber. When she slammed the door behind her, an earthquake might have hit the building. The warder, who was waiting in the anteroom, jumped. “Get me out of this horrible place,” Krasta snarled, snatching up her chattels.

The warder started to say something, looked at her, and thought better of it. He led her back to the entrance. He did dare a, “Goodbye,” then.

Krasta ignored him. She stalked back to her driver. “Take me home this instant-this instant, do you hear me?” she said. The driver, sensibly, obeyed without a word.

Bembo threw away his cane and stood up on his own two legs in the middle of his flat. Actually, judging by what his kilt displayed, he stood up on about a leg and a half. The one that had been broken in Eoforwic was still only a little more than half as thick as the other. But he did stand, and he didn’t fall over.

“How about that, sweetheart?” he said to Saffa.

She looked up from her baby, who was nursing, to clap her hands. Seeing the baby at her breast never failed to make Bembo jealous, even though he knew how foolish that was: the baby wasn’t interested for the same reasons as his. “That’s good,” she said. “Pretty soon, you’ll be able to run like the wind.”

“Well. .” Bembo looked down at his portly form. He’d lost a good deal of weight since getting hurt, and he was still portly. I might be able to run like a slow breeze one of these days, he thought. That was about as much speed as he had in him. He said, “Maybe I will be able to start walking a beat before too long. Having some money coming in again would be good.”

“Aye.” Saffa nodded. Her little boy was falling asleep; her nipple slipped out of his mouth. She raised the baby to her shoulder to burp him, then set her tunic to rights. As she patted the baby’s back, she went on, “You know something?”

“I know all kinds of things,” Bembo said. “What have you got in mind?”

Saffa made a face at him. “I was going to say, you’re nowhere near as big a bastard as I thought you were before I let you get lucky. Maybe I ought to keep my mouth shut.”

“Maybe you should,” Bembo agreed. She made another face. He laughed. “You asked for that.”

“If you got everything you asked for, you wouldn’t think that was so cursed funny,” Saffa said hotly. Her temper would kindle on the instant, and then calm down again just as fast. Even when she was angry, she noticed people around her, which Bembo wouldn’t have done. When he gnawed on his lower lip instead of giving her a snippy answer, she asked, “What’s the matter?”

“Nothing,” he said, and limped over to a chair. He was glad to sit down; standing hadn’t been easy, and walking without a cane made him feel as if he’d fall over at every step he took with his bad leg.

Saffa knew a lie when she heard one. How many lies had she heard, from how many men? Bembo didn’t want to think about that. She gave him an exasperated look and said, “I didn’t mean to bite you there. I didn’t think I had bitten you. Why do you think I did?”

“You don’t want to know,” Bembo answered. “Believe me, you don’t.”

Before Saffa said anything, she eased her son, who’d fallen asleep, down off her shoulder and held him in the crook of her arm. Then, with her free hand, she shook a finger at Bembo. “Why don’t I? What do you think I am, a baby myself?”

“Curse it, Saffa, I don’t want to think about this stuff myself, let alone talk about it with anybody else,” Bembo said.

“What stuff?” she said.

If I got everything I asked for. . Bembo shuddered. He remembered too well the old Kuusaman mage’s eyes piercing him like swords, looking at the memories he concealed from everyone-including, as best he could, from himself. “I told you, you don’t want to know. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Saffa got up from the couch, using her free hand to help her rise. She went into the flat’s cramped kitchen. Bembo listened to her opening cupboards in there. When she came back, she was carrying a mug of spirits, which she set on the wooden arm of Bembo’s chair. “Drink,” she said. “Then talk.”

Bembo picked up the mug willingly enough. He rarely needed a second invitation to drink. “You poured that quick,” he said. “You’re good at doing things with one hand.”

“I’d better be,” she answered. “It’s like he’s attached to me all the time.” She joggled the baby, who never stirred. “Powers above only know what I’m going to do when he gets too big to carry in one arm, though. But never mind that.” She pointed imperiously to the mug.

He drank. “Do you really want to know?” he said. The spirits weren’t what made him ask. It was much more that he hoped to perform an exorcism, or perhaps to lance a festering wound. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you.”

Saffa leaned forward. “Go on, then.”

“You know all the things the islanders and the blonds say we did?” he asked.

Her lip curled. “I’m sick of the lies they tell.”

“Those aren’t lies,” Bembo said. Saffa’s jaw fell. He went on, “As a matter of fact, they don’t know the half of it.” And he told her of clearing Kaunians out of the villages near Gromheort, of sending them off in packed ley-line caravans to the west (and occasionally to the east), of forcing them into their guarded districts in Gromheort and later in Eoforwic, and of hauling them out of those districts and loading them into caravans, too. He told of their desperation, of the bribes he’d taken and the bribes he’d turned down. By the time he got done, the mug of spirits was finished, too.

He’d fallen into the days gone by while he was talking. He’d hardly paid any attention to Saffa through most of that torrent; he’d been peering back into his time in Forthweg, not at her. Now, at last, he did. She was white, her face set. “We really did those things?” she said in a small voice. “You really did those things? You’ve hinted before, every once in a while, but-”

“No buts,” Bembo said harshly. “Don’t press me about this again, or I’ll make you sorry for it, do you hear me?”

“I’m sorry for it already,” Saffa said. “I don’t want to believe it.”

“Neither do I, and I was there,” Bembo said. “If I’m lucky, by the time I’m an old man I won’t have nightmares about it anymore. If I’m very lucky, I mean.”

Saffa eyed him as if she’d never seen him before. “You were always a softy, Bembo. How could you do … things like that?”

“They told me what to do, so I did it,” Bembo answered with a shrug. But it hadn’t been quite that simple, and he knew it. He remembered Evodio, who’d begged off pulling blonds out of houses, and who’d regularly drunk himself into a stupor because he couldn’t stand what the Algarvians were doing in Forthweg. He said, “It’s like a lot of things: after a while, you don’t think about it, and it gets easier.”

“Maybe.” Saffa didn’t sound convinced. She got to her feet and went back into the kitchen. When she returned, she had another mug in hand. She set this on the little table in front of the sofa, saying, “I could use some spirits myself after that. Do you want some more while I’m still up?”

“Please,” Bembo said. “If I drink enough, maybe I’ll forget for a while.” He didn’t believe that. He wouldn’t forget till they laid him on his pyre. But his memories might at least get a little blurry around the edges.

Saffa sipped spirits before saying, “Hearing about things like that makes me ashamed to be an Algarvian.”

“Doing things like that. .” But Bembo’s voice trailed away. “It was better than going farther west and fighting the Unkerlanters.”

Only after he’d spoken did he remember what had happened to the fellow who’d sired Saffa’s son. The sketch artist’s face worked. She looked down at the baby. “I suppose so,” she whispered.

“Well, it was safer than going to fight the Unkerlanters,” Bembo amended. “Better?” He shrugged again. “I saw some real war of my own, you know, when the Forthwegians rose up in Eoforwic. That was a pretty filthy business, too. The only difference was, both sides were blazing then. You did what needed doing, that’s all.”

He thought about Oraste, who’d cursed him for getting wounded and escaping Eoforwic before the Unkerlanters could overrun it. He thought about fat Sergeant Pesaro, who’d stayed behind in Gromheort when he and Oraste got transferred to Eoforwic. He wondered if either one of them still lived. Not likely, he supposed, not after what had happened to the two Forthwegian cities. And even if they did, would the Unkerlanters ever let them come home again? Even less likely, he feared.

Saffa said, “I don’t think I know you at all. I was always sure what to expect from you: you’d make your bad jokes, you’d try to get your hand up under my kilt, you’d strut and swagger like a rooster in a henyard, and every once in a while you’d show you were a little smarter than you looked, the way you did when you figured out that the Kaunians here were dyeing their hair to look like proper Algarvians. But I never dreamt you had-that-underneath.”

“Before Captain Sasso ordered me west, I didn’t,” Bembo answered. “Saffa, don’t you see? Everybody who comes back alive from the west is going to have stories like mine-oh, maybe not just like mine, but the same kind of stories. Fighting that war did something horrible to Algarve, and the whole kingdom’s going to be a long time getting over it.”

“We’re going to be a long time getting over everything,” Saffa said. “What with this new king the Unkerlanters have put on the throne in the west, we’re not even one kingdom anymore.”

“I know. I don’t like that, either,” Bembo said. “For powers above only know how long, there were all these little kingdoms and principalities and grand duchies and plain duchies and marquisates and baronies and counties and whatnot here instead of a real kingdom of Algarve, and our neighbors would play them off against each other so we fought amongst ourselves. I’d hate to see that day come again, but what can we do about it?”

“Nothing. Not a single thing.” Saffa sipped at her spirits. She still studied Bembo with a wary-indeed, a frightened-curiosity he’d never seen from her before. “But, since I can’t do anything about it, I don’t see much point to worrying over it, either. You, though. . Do I want to have anything to do with you any more when you’ve-done all these things?”

Bembo pointed to the baby sleeping in her arms. “If the kid’s father was here, he’d give you the same kind of stories I did. Us constables didn’t do clean things, but neither did the army, and you can take that to the bank. Would you tell his father what you just told me?”

“I hope so,” Saffa said.

“Aye, you probably would,” Bembo admitted. “You’ve got a way of saying what’s on your mind.” He sighed. “Sweetheart, I want you to stay. You know that.”

Saffa nodded. “Of course I do. And I know why, too.” She made as if to spread her legs. “Men,” she added scornfully.

“Women,” Bembo said in a different tone, but also one old as time. They both laughed cautious laughs. He went on, “I’m not going to lie and say I don’t like bedding you. If I didn’t, would I care whether you went or not? Curse it, though, Saffa, it’s not the only reason. Would I have chased you so hard when you weren’t giving me anything if that was all I cared about?”

“I don’t know. Would you? Depends on what you had going on the side, I suppose.”

“You’re making this as hard as you can, aren’t you?” Bembo said. Saffa’s answering shrug was unmistakably smug. He stuck out his tongue at her. “Powers above, you stupid bitch, don’t you know I really like you?”

“Oh, Bembo,” she crooned, “you say the sweetest things.” He grimaced again, in a different way; he could have put that better. But she didn’t up and walk out on him, either, so maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

Skarnu liked his move to the provinces much better than he’d thought he would. He stayed busy learning what needed doing in his new marquisate and in setting to rights whatever he could. The Algarvian occupation had made endless squabbles flare up-and some had been smoldering for years. The more recent ones were usually straightforward. Some of the long-standing disputes, though, proved maddeningly complicated. They gave him a certain small sympathy for the collaborationist counts who’d preceded him as local lords.

“How am I supposed to know how to rule on a property dispute that’s been going on so long, everybody who first started quarreling about it’s been dead for twenty years?” he asked Merkela at breakfast one morning.

“That’s how things are here,” she answered. “There are quarrels older than that, too.”

“Why haven’t I seen them?” he said, sipping tea.

“People are still making up their minds about you,” Merkela told him. “They don’t want to stick their heads up too soon and be sorry for it later.”

Skarnu grunted. He’d seen that sort of country caution when he’d lived on the farm with Merkela. He didn’t care to have it aimed at him, but could understand how it might be. To a lot of people in the marquisate, people who hadn’t heard about him till he came here as local lord, what was he? Just a stranger from Priekule. He wouldn’t have understood that before the war. He did now.

When he remarked on it, Merkela said, “Oh, you’ll always be that stranger from Priekule to a lot of people. After a while, though, they’ll know you’re honest even if you aren’t from here, and then you’ll hear from them.”

“All right.” He set down his cup. “Pass me the inside of the news sheet, would you? People complain about me because I’m new, do they? Well, I complain about the news sheets we get, too. By the time I see them, they’re old news.”

“Old back in Priekule, maybe,” she said. “Nobody else around here sees them any sooner than you do.”

She had a point, even if it wasn’t one he would have thought of. He was used to getting news as soon as it happened. He hadn’t been able to do that hereabouts during the war, but the war had thrown everything out of kilter. Not being able to do it for the rest of his days depressed him.

But why should it? he wondered. Merkela’s right-no one else in these parts will know more about what’s going on than I do.

His wife passed him the part of the news sheet she’d been reading. He went through it greedily; if he couldn’t get the news on time, at least he could seize all of it the news sheet offered. “Ha!” he said. “So we’re going to get some revenge from the redheads who ran the occupation? Just what they deserve, too.”

“We can’t take full revenge from them unless we go through their countryside and start grabbing people and killing them,” Merkela said. “I wouldn’t mind a bit.”

“I know,” Skarnu answered. The war itself had done that to a good deal of the Algarvian countryside, but he didn’t say so. Whatever had happened to Algarve, Merkela wouldn’t think it was enough. Skarnu had no love for the Algarvians, either, but. … He stiffened. “Well, well.”

“What is it?” his wife asked.

“One of the redheads they’ve hauled in is my nephew’s father,” Skarnu answered. Merkela needed a moment to work out who that was, but bared her teeth in a fierce grin when she did. Skarnu nodded. “Aye, they’ve got their hands on Lurcanio, sure enough.”

“I hope they hang him,” Merkela said. “What he’d have done if he ever got his hands on you-”

“We met once, you know, under flag of truce, and he honored that,” Skarnu said. Merkela waved his words away, as being of no account. Maybe she was right, too; by that time, the Valmieran underground had become a power in the land, and the Algarvians had troubles enough in other places to want to keep things here as quiet as they could. He added, “I really don’t think my sister blabbed anything special that had to do with me.”

Tartly, Merkela answered, “I suppose the next thing you’ll tell me is that she doesn’t have a sandy-haired little bastard, too.”

Skarnu coughed and reached for the teapot to pour himself another cup. He couldn’t tell her anything of the sort, and they both knew it. He sipped his tea and concentrated on reading the news sheet. “They’re charging him with brutality during the occupation, and with sending Valmierans off to be sacrificed.”

“They will hang him, then, and a good thing, too,” Merkela declared, “for he did do those things. If he’d caught you, Mezentio’s men would have used your life energy, and they would have been glad to do it.”

In fact, Skarnu doubted that. He suspected the redheads would have killed him right away if they’d got hold of him. In their shoes, that was what he would have done with a dangerous captive, and he knew he’d proved himself dangerous. But he didn’t argue with his wife. Even if she was wrong as to details, she was right about the bigger picture.

She asked, “Do you suppose they’ll call you back to the city to testify against him?”

“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.” He read on, then clicked his tongue between his teeth in annoyance. “Curse him, he’s bragging in the news sheet about fathering Krasta’s baby. That’ll do the family name a lot of good.”

“You see?” Merkela said with something like triumph. “You and Valnu had doubts about who did what, but the redhead hasn’t got any.”

“He hasn’t got any he’s admitting, anyhow,” Skarnu said. “In his place, I’d likely be trying to embarrass us as much as I could. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why he claims the baby for his own.”

“Whatever reasons he’s got, he’s right,” Merkela said.

Since Skarnu couldn’t very well argue with that, he buried his nose in the news sheet again. Glancing up over the top of it, he saw the triumphant look on Merkela’s face. He let out a silent sigh. His wife despised his sister, and nothing in the world looked like changing that. He’d hoped at first that time might, but thought himself likely to be disappointed there. That might eventually matter very much-but even if it did, he failed to see what he could do about it.

Instead of bringing it up and starting an argument, he found another story in the news sheet to talk about: “The last little Algarvian army in Siaulia has finally surrendered.”

That made Merkela raise her eyebrows. “I didn’t even notice,” she said. “What took the whoresons so long?”

Laughing, Skarnu wagged a finger at her. “That’s not how a marchioness talks.”

“It’s how I talk,” Merkela said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”

“They stayed in the field a long time and caused a lot of trouble,” Skarnu said. “Not a lot of real redheads in the army there, of course-most of the soldiers are natives from the Siaulian colonies. And they lost their last crystal a while ago, so nobody here on Derlavai could let them know Algarve’d given up. The Lagoan general up there let the Algarvian brigadier in charge keep his sword.”

“I know where I’d have let him keep it-right up his. .” Merkela’s voice trailed off as she realized that wasn’t fitting language for a marchioness, either.

“By everything the news sheets said, the Algarvians fought a clean war up there,” Skarnu said.

“I don’t care,” his wife replied. “They’re still Algarvians.” To her, that was the long and short of it.

Servants cleared away the breakfast dishes. Skarnu went out to the reception hall. “Good morning, your Excellency,” Valmiru said. The butler bowed low.

“Good morning to you, Valmiru,” Skarnu said. “What’s on the list for today?” The servitor was doing duty for a majordomo, and handling the job well.

“Let me see, sir,” Valmiru said now, taking a list from a tunic pocket and donning spectacles to read it. “Your first appointment is with a certain Povilu, who accuses one of his neighbors, a certain Zemglu, of complicity with the Algarvians.”

“Another one of those, eh?” Skarnu said with a sigh.

“Aye, your Excellency,” Valmiru replied, “although perhaps not quite of the ordinary sort, for Zemglu has also lodged a charge of collaboration against Povilu.”

“Oh, dear,” Skarnu said. “One of those? How many generations have these two families hated each other?”

“I don’t precisely know, sir-one of the disadvantages of coming here from the capital,” Valmiru replied. “I had hoped you might be familiar with the gentlemen from your, ah, earlier stay in this part of the kingdom.”

“No such luck,” Skarnu said. “Are they from over by Adutiskis?” At Valmiru’s nod, he nodded, too. “Merkela’s farm was close to Pavilosta. I know those people better.” He sighed again. “But I’m everybody’s marquis, so I have to get to the bottom of it if I can.”

He sat in the seat of judgment in the reception hall and looked out at Povilu and Zemglu and their supporters. Povilu was squat and Zemglu was tall and skinny. They’d each brought not only kinsfolk but, by the packed hall, all their friends as well. The two sides plainly despised each other. Skarnu wonder if they would riot.

Not if I can help it, he thought. “All right, gentlemen. I will hear you,” he said. “Master Povilu, you may speak first.”

“Thank you, your Excellency,” Povilu rumbled. He was a man of no breeding, but he’d obviously practiced his speech for a long time, and brought it out well. He accused his neighbor of betraying men from the underground to the redheads. Zemglu tried to shout objections.

“Wait,” Skarnu told him. “You’ll have your turn.”

At last, Povilu bowed and said, “That proves it, your Excellency.”

Skarnu waved to the other peasant. “Now, Master Zemglu, say what you will.”

“Now you’ll hear truth, sir, after this bugger’s lies,” Zemglu said. Povilu howled. Skarnu silenced him. Zemglu went on to accuse his neighbor of having left one daughter behind so he wouldn’t have to show Skarnu her bastard child.

“That was rape!” Povilu yelled.

“You say so now,” Zemglu retorted, and went on with his accusations. His followers and those of Povilu pushed and shoved at one another.

“Enough,” Skarnu shouted, hoping they would listen to him. Eventually, they did. Still at the top of his lungs, he went on, “Now you’ll listen to me.” Povilu and Zemglu both leaned forward, tense anticipation on their faces. Skarnu said, “I doubt either of you has clean hands in this business. I don’t doubt you were enemies before the Algarvians came, and that you’re trying to use the cursed redheads to score points off each other. Will you tell me I’m wrong?”

Both peasants loudly denied it. Skarnu studied their followers. Those abashed expressions told him he’d hit the mark. He waited for Povilu and Zemglu to fall silent again-it took a while-then held up his hand.

“Hear my judgment,” he declared, and something close to silence fell. Into it, he said, “I charge the two of you to live at peace with each other for the next year, neither of you to do anything-anything, do you hear me? — by word or deed to trouble the other. If you care to pursue these claims at the end of that time, you may, either to me or to his Majesty the king. But be warned: justice may fall on both of you alike. For now, go back to your lands and think on what happens when you aim sticks at each other from a distance of a yard.”

Still glaring at each other, the peasants and their followers filed out of the reception hall. Skarnu hoped he’d bought a year. If he hadn’t, he promised himself both sides in the quarrel would regret it.

Grandmaster Pinhiero looked out of the crystal at Fernao. Fernao had made the etheric connection with the head of the Lagoan Guild of Mages himself; no Kuusaman crystallomancers were in the room with him. Pekka, fortunately, understood he sometimes had to talk with his countrymen without anyone’s overhearing him. “This thing can be done?” Pinhiero said.

“Aye, sir, it can be done,” Fernao answered. “I don’t doubt it for a moment.”

“And it will be done if the Gongs are too stubborn to see sense?” the grandmaster persisted.

“I don’t doubt that, either,” Fernao said. He didn’t go into details about just what sort of sorcery might be used. Gyongyosian mages were probably trying to spy on these emanations. So were Unkerlanter mages. He wouldn’t have been surprised if the Valmierans and Jelgavans were doing their best to listen in as well. But if the Gongs were looking for evidence that what their captives had seen at Becsehely was faked, they would be disappointed.

Pinhiero nodded. “And you know, of course, the workings of the sorcery. You can bring them back to Setubal?”

“I know the workings,” Fernao agreed. He took a deep breath. “As for the other, though, sir, I’m not so sure. I don’t know if I’ll be coming back to Setubal. The way things look now, I would doubt it.”

He waited for the storm to burst. He didn’t have to wait long. Rage filled Pinhiero’s foxy face. “You got her drawers off, so now you love her kingdom better than your own, too, eh?” he growled. “I was afraid this would happen, but I thought you had better sense. Shows what I know, doesn’t it?”

“I have done our kingdom no harm, nor would I ever,” Fernao said stiffly. “But I am allowed to please myself now and again as well.”

“Is that what you call it?” the grandmaster said. “I’d tell you what I call it, though I don’t suppose you care to hear.”

“You’re right, sir-I don’t,” Fernao said. “I will send you what I can by courier. I will answer any questions you may have. But I don’t think I’ll come back to Setubal any time soon. I’ll have to arrange to have my books and instruments shipped here.”

“Kajaani,” Grandmaster Pinhiero said scornfully. “How well will you love it when the first blizzards roll in? It’s a town with ten months of winter and two months of bad snowshoeing.”

Shrugging, Fernao answered, “Lagoas didn’t worry about that when I got sent to the land of the Ice People.”

“You had to go there,” Pinhiero said. “But to want to go to Kajaani? A man would have to be mad.”

“It’s not that bad-a pleasant little place, really,” Fernao said: about as much praise as he could find it in himself to give. Pointedly, he added, “And I am fond of the company I’d be keeping.”

“You must be, to think of leaving Setubal behind.” Pinhiero spoke with the automatic certainty that his city was, and had every right to be, the center of the universe. Not so very long before, Fernao had known that same certainty. The grandmaster went on, “What do they have in the theaters there? Do they even have theaters there?”

“I’m sure they do,” answered Fernao, who didn’t know. But he added, “Since I haven’t gone to the theater since before I left for the austral continent, though, I won’t lose much sleep over it.”

“Well, whatever you saw then in Setubal should be coming to Kajaani any day now,” Pinhiero said, soothing and sarcastic at the same time. Fernao glared. The grandmaster added, “Are you sure she didn’t ensorcel you?”

That did it. Fernao growled, “Just because nobody’s ever been daft enough to fall in love with you, you old serpent, you don’t think it can happen to anyone else, either.”

“I thought you had better sense,” Pinhiero said. “I thought you’d be sitting in my seat one of these years. I hoped so, in fact.”

“Me? Grandmaster?” Fernao said in surprise. Pinhiero nodded. The younger mage shook his head. “No, thanks. I like the laboratory too well. I’m not cut out for politics, and I don’t care to be.”

“That’s why you have someone like Brinco,” Pinhiero said. “What’s a secretary for?”

“Doing work I don’t feel like doing myself? Is that what you’re saying?”

Pinhiero nodded. “That’s exactly what I’m saying, my dear young fellow. A chap like Brinco does the work that needs doing, but that you don’t care to do. That gives me time to go out and chat with people, keep myself abreast of what’s on their minds. If you’d sooner spend your odd moments in the laboratory, no one would hold it against you.”

“Very kind of you.” Fernao meant it. He knew a grandmaster should be a man like Pinhiero, a man who enjoyed backslapping and politicking. Pinhiero had to know it, too. If he was willing to bend the unwritten rules for a theoretical sorcerer like Fernao, he badly wanted him back. Fernao sighed. “You do tempt me, sir. But the point is, I’d sooner spend my odd moments-just about all my moments-in Kajaani.”

“I’m going to be blunt with you,” Pinhiero said. “Your kingdom needs what you know. It needs every scrap of what you know, for you know more about this business than any other Lagoan mage.” He paused, frowning. “You do still reckon yourself a Lagoan, I trust?”

That hurt. Fernao didn’t try to pretend otherwise. He said, “You’d better know that I do, or I’d break this etheric connection and walk away from you. . sir. I’ve already told you, if you want to send a man to me, I will tell him and write down for him everything I know. Lagoas and Kuusamo are allies; I don’t see how the Seven could possibly object to that, and King Vitor would have every right to scream if they did.”

Pinhiero still looked unhappy. “Better than nothing,” he admitted, “but still less than I’d like. You surely know how the cleanest-seeming written instructions for a spell don’t help a mage as much as having another mage, a knowledgeable fellow, take him through the conjuration.”

“I’m sorry. I’m doing the best I can.” What Fernao didn’t say was that he feared he wouldn’t be allowed to come back to Kuusamo if he went to Lagoas. As Grandmaster Pinhiero had pointed out, he knew too much.

“When the time comes, then, I will make the necessary arrangements with you,” Pinhiero said sourly. “I suppose I should congratulate you on finding love. I must say, though, that your timing and your target could have been better.”

“As for timing, you may possibly be right,” Fernao admitted. “As for whom I fell in love with-for one thing, that’s none of your business, and, for another, you couldn’t be more wrong if you tried for a year. And now I think we’ve said about everything we have to say to each other.”

Grandmaster Pinhiero bridled. He wasn’t used to having Fernao-he wasn’t used to having anybody-speak to him that way. But he wasn’t King Swemmel. He couldn’t punish Fernao for speaking his mind, especially if Fernao no longer cared about advancing through the Lagoan sorcerous hierarchy. All he could do was glare as he said, “Good day,” and cut the etheric connection.

The crystal flared, then became no more than a sphere of glass. Fernao let out another sigh, a long, heartfelt one, as he rose from the chair in front of it. Nervous sweat ran from his armpits and made the back of his tunic stick to his skin. Defying the grandmaster-essentially, declaring he was abandoning allegiance to his kingdom-didn’t, couldn’t, come easy.

When he left the chamber, he found the Kuusaman crystallomancer outside, her nose in a romance. “I’m finished,” he told her in his own language, and then wondered how he’d meant that.

He walked up to his room. A couple of mosquitoes whined in the stairwell. Outside the hostel, they swarmed in millions, so that going out for long was asking to be eaten alive. When all the ice and snow melted, they made puddles uncountable, as they did in spring and summer on the austral continent. And oh, how the mosquitoes and gnats and flies reveled in those spawning grounds!

Fernao swatted one of the buzzing bugs when it lit on the back of his wrist. The other-if there was only one other-didn’t land on him, which meant it survived. He heard more buzzes in the hall. Something there bit him. He slapped at it, but didn’t think he got it.

He was muttering to himself when he went into his chamber. Pekka sat studying a grimoire there, as engrossed as the crystallomancer had been in her book. She looked up from it with a smile, which faded when she saw how grim Fernao looked. “You didn’t have a happy time with your grandmaster, did you?” she said.

“Worse than I thought I would,” Fernao answered. “I told him he could send someone to learn what I know once I get settled in Kajaani. I think I would be foolish to go back to Setubal any time soon. For all practical purposes, I’ve walked away from my kingdom.”

Pekka put down the sorcerous text without bothering to mark her page. “You had better be quite sure you want to do that.”

He limped over to her and let his free hand, the one without the cane, rest on her shoulder. She set her hand on top of his. “I’m sure,” he answered. “It follows everything else that’s been on this ley line we’ve traveled.”

“Will it be all right? Truly?” she asked. “Can you live in Kajaani after Setubal?”

“The company’s better,” he said, which made her smile. He went on, “Besides, once Pinhiero’s man squeezes everything I know about this business out of me, the Lagoan Guild of Mages will forget I was ever born. You wait and see whether I’m right. You won’t do any such thing.”

“I should hope not!” Pekka squeezed his hand.

Fernao hoped not, too. He was betting his happiness on it. “In the end,” he said, “people matter more than kingdoms do. The kings who would say different aren’t the sort of rulers I care to live under.” He thought of Mezentio, of Swemmel, of Ekrekek Arpad, and shook his head. “We have one more job to do-if we must do it-and then two of them won’t trouble us anymore.”

Pekka nodded. “And one will hold more of Derlavai in his sway than any one sovereign ever did before.”

“So he will,” Fernao agreed. “But he’ll be more afraid of us than we are of him, and he’ll have reason to be, too.”

“That’s true,” she admitted.

“When this war’s finally over, spending some quiet years in Kajaani will look very good to me,” Fernao said. “Very, very good.” Pekka squeezed his hand again.