Rulers of the Darkness

Eighteen

Bembo was sleeping the deep, restful sleep of a man with a clean conscience- or perhaps of a man with no conscience- when someone shattered that rest by rudely shaking him awake. His eyes flew open. So did his mouth, to curse whoever would perpetrate such an enormity. But the curses died before they saw the light of day: Sergeant Pesaro loomed over him, fat face filled with fury.

"Get your arse out of the sack, you son of a whore," Pesaro snarled. "Come with me this instant- this instant, do you hear?"

"Aye, Sergeant," Bembo answered meekly, and came, even though he wore only his light tunic and kilt and the barracks was chilly. He followed Pesaro into the sergeant's office, where, shivering, he plucked up his always indifferent courage enough to ask, "What- what is it?"

The worst he could think of was that Pesaro had found out how he'd spirited away the parents of Doldasai the Kaunian courtesan. By the fearsome expression on Pesaro's face, this was liable to be even worse than that. Pesaro snatched a leaf of paper off his desk and waved it in Bembo's face. "Do you see this?" he shouted. "Do you?"

"Uh, no, Sergeant," Bembo said. "Not unless you hold it still." Thus reminded, Pesaro did. Bembo read the first few lines. His eyes widened. "By the powers above," he whispered. "My leave's come through."

Pesaro's glare grew more baleful yet. "Aye, it has, you stinking sack of moldy mushrooms," he ground out. "Your leave has come through. Nobody else's has, not in this whole barracks, not in this whole stinking town. Not even mine. Powers below eat you, you get to go back to Tricarico for ten mortal days and enjoy yourself in civilization while the rest of us stay stuck with the fornicating Forthwegians."

He looked about to tear the precious paper to shreds. To forestall such a disaster, Bembo snatched it out of his hands. "Thank you, Sergeant!" he exclaimed. "I feel like a man who just won the lottery." That was no exaggeration; he knew how unlikely leaves were. All but babbling, he went on, "I'm sure yours will come through very soon. Not just sure- positive." Aye, he was babbling. He didn't care.

"Ha!" Pesaro tossed his head in magnificent, jowl-wobbling contempt. "Go on, get out of my sight. I'll be jealous of you every minute you're gone- and if you're even one minute late coming back to duty, you'll pay. Oh, how you'll pay."

Nodding, doing his best not to gloat, Bembo fled. He dressed. He packed. He collected all his back pay. He hurried to the ley-line caravan depot and waited for an eastbound caravan. He'd just scrambled aboard it when he realized he hadn't bothered waiting for breakfast. If that didn't speak to his desperation for escape, he didn't know what did.

Almost all the Algarvians in his caravan car were soldiers who'd got leave from the endless grinding war against Unkerlant. Some of them, seeing his constable's uniform, cursed him for a coward and a slacker. He'd heard that before, whenever soldiers passed through Gromheort. Here, he had to grin and bear it- either that or pick a fight and get beaten to a pulp.

But some of the soldiers, instead of reviling him, just called him a lucky dog. They shared food with him, and fiery Unkerlanters spirits, too. By the time the ley-line caravan had got well into Algarve, Bembo leaned back in his seat with a glazed look on his face.

He found he had little trouble figuring out just when the caravan entered his native kingdom. It wasn't so much that redheads replaced swarthy, bearded Forthwegians in the fields. That did happen, but it wasn't what he noticed. What he noticed was something starker: women replaced men.

"Where are all the men?" he exclaimed. "Gone to fight King Swemmel?"

One of the fellows who'd been feeding him spirits shook his head. "Oh, no, buddy, not all of them. By now, a good many are dead." Bembo started to laugh, then choked on it. The soldier wasn't joking.

Changing caravans in Dorgali, a good-sized town in south-central Algarve, came as more than a little relief. Most of the men under fifty in the depot wore uniforms, but some didn't. And hearing women and children use his own language as their birthspeech was music to Bembo's ears after a couple of years of listening to sonorous Forthwegian and occasional classical Kaunian.

Best of all, the civilians among whom Bembo sat on the trip to Tricarico didn't blame him for not being a soldier. Some of them, in fact, started to take his constable's uniform for that of the army. He wouldn't have denied it if a woman hadn't pointed him out for what he really was. But even she didn't do it in a mean way; she said, "You're serving King Mezentio beyond the frontier, too, just as if you were a soldier."

"Why, so I am, dear," Bembo said. "I couldn't have put it better, or even so well, myself." He flirted with her till she got off the caravan car a couple of hours later. That made him snap his fingers in disappointment; if she'd stayed on till Tricarico, something interesting might have developed.

He let out a long sigh of pleasure, like that of a lover returning to his beloved, when the conductor called, "Tricarico, folks! All out for Tricarico!" He grabbed his bag and hurried down onto the platform of the depot. It was, he saw, the platform from which he'd left for Forthweg a couple of years before. He kicked at the paving stones as he left the depot and hurried out into the city- his city.

There were the Bradano Mountains, indenting the eastern skyline. He didn't have to worry about blond Jelgavans swarming out of them, as he had in the early days of the war. He didn't have to worry about Jelgavan dragons anymore, either.

And there was a cab. He waved to it. The driver stopped. Bembo hopped in. "The Duke's Delight," he told the hackman, naming a hostel he'd have no trouble affording. He'd had to give up his flat when he went off to the west.

"You'll be from around these parts," the driver said, flicking the horse's reins.

"How do you know?" Bembo asked.

"Way you talk," the fellow answered. "And nobody who wasn't would know of a dive like that." Bembo laughed. He also got the last laugh, by shorting the driver's tip to pay him back for his crack.

Once he'd got himself a room at the hostel, Bembo walked down the hall to take a bath, then changed into wrinkled civilian clothes and went back out to promenade through the streets of Tricarico. How shabby everything looks, he thought. How worn. That took him by surprise; after so long in battered Gromheort, he'd expected his home town to sparkle by comparison.

As he'd seen on his caravan journey across Algarve, few men between seventeen and fifty were on the streets. Of those who were, many limped or were short a hand or wore an eye patch or sometimes a black mask. Bembo grimaced whenever he saw men who'd come back from the war something less than a full man. They made him feel guilty for his free if not especially graceful stride.

After so long looking at dumpy Forthwegian women and the occasional blond Kaunian, Bembo had thought he would enjoy himself back in his home town. But his own countrywomen seemed tired and drab, too. Too many of them wore the dark gray of someone who'd lost a husband or brother or father or son.

Powers above, he thought. The Forthwegians are having a better time of it than my own folk. For a moment, that seemed impossible. Then, all at once, it made sense. Of course they are. They're out of the war. They aren't losing loved ones anymore- well, except for the Kaunians in Forthweg, anyhow. We have to go right on taking it in the teeth till we finally win. Lurid broadsheets shouted, THE KAUNIANS STARTED THIS WAR, BUT WE WILL FINISH IT! Others cried, THE STRUGGLE AGAINST KAUNIANITY NEVER ENDS! They were pasted on every vertical surface, and gave Tricarico most of what little color it had. People hurried past them head down, not bothering to read.

Another thought occurred to Bembo: or we have to go on taking it till we lose. He resolutely shoved that one to the back of his mind.

He wasn't walking a beat here. He had to keep reminding himself of that. Whether he was or he wasn't, though, he soon found himself back at the constabulary station where he'd spent so much time before going to Gromheort. He hadn't seemed to belong anywhere else.

He went up the stairs and into the beat-up old building with hope thudding in his heart. He got his first jolt when he opened the door: that wasn't Sergeant Pesaro sitting behind the desk in the front hall. Of course not, you idiot, Bembo jeered at himself. You left Pesaro back in Forthweg. He didn't recognize the fellow in the sergeant's familiar seat.

The constable didn't recognize him, either. "What do you want, pal?" he asked in tones suggesting that Bembo had no business wanting anything and would be wise to take himself elsewhere in a hurry.

I'm not in uniform, Bembo realized. He fished in his belt pouch and found the card that identified him as a constable from Tricarico. Displaying it, he said, "I've been on duty in Forthweg the past couple of years. Lightning finally struck- they gave me leave."

"And you came back to a constabulary station?" the man in Pesaro's seat said incredulously. "Haven't you got better things to do with yourself?"

"Curse me if I know for sure," Bembo answered. "Tricarico looks dead and about halfway buried. What's wrong with everybody, anyway?"

"War news isn't so good," the other constable said.

"I know, but that's not it, or not all of it," Bembo insisted. With a shrug, he went on, "Here, at least, I know some people."

"Go on, then," said the constable behind the desk. "Just don't bother anybody who's working, that's all."

Bembo didn't dignify that with a reply. He hurried down the hall to the big room where clerks and sketch artists worked. A lot of the clerks he'd known were gone, with women taking their places. Most of the time, that would have cheered Bembo, but now he was looking for familiar faces. The jeers and insults he got from the handful of people who recognized him felt better than blank stares from even pretty strangers.

"Where's Saffa?" he asked one of the clerks who hadn't gone off to war when he didn't see the artist. "The army can't have taken her."

"She had a baby a couple weeks ago," the fellow answered. "She'll be back before too long, I expect."

"A baby!" Bembo exclaimed. "I didn't even know she'd got married."

"Who said anything about married?" the clerk replied. That made Bembo laugh. It also made him wonder why, if Saffa was going to fall into bed with somebody, she hadn't fallen into bed with him. Life isn't fair, he thought, and pushed on farther into the station.

Frontino the warder hastily stuck a trashy historical romance into his desk drawer when Bembo came in. Then he pulled it out again, saying, "Oh, it's you. I thought it might be somebody important," as if the constable had never gone away. He got up and clasped Bembo's wrist.

"Nice to see some things haven't changed," Bembo said. "You're still a lazy good-for-nothing."

"And you're still an old windbag," Frontino retorted fondly.

Again, trading insults made Bembo feel at home. His wave encompassed the whole constabulary station, the whole town, the whole kingdom. "It's not the same as it was, is it?"

Frontino pondered that. Bembo wondered how the warder was supposed to judge, when he spent most of his time shut away in the gaol he ran. But he didn't take long to nod and say, "It's been better, sure enough." Bembo nodded, too. All at once, he looked forward to getting back to Gromheort.

A baby's thin, angry wail woke Skarnu in the middle of the night. Merkela stirred beside him in the narrow, crowded bed. "Hush," she told the baby in the cradle. "Just hush."

The baby wasn't inclined to listen. Skarnu hadn't thought he would be. He didn't suppose Merkela had thought so, either. With a weary sigh, she got out of bed and lifted their son from that cradle. "What does he want?" Skarnu asked. "Is he wet, or is he just hungry?"

"I'll find out," she answered, and then, a moment later, "He's wet. I hope I don't wake him up too much changing him." She laid the baby on the bed and found a fresh rag with which to wrap his middle. "Hush, Gedominu," she murmured again, but the baby didn't want to hush.

"He's hungry," Skarnu said.

Merkela sighed. "I know." She sat down beside the baby, picked him up, and gave him her breast. He nursed avidly- and noisily. Skarnu tried to go back to sleep, but couldn't. He listened to his son eat. The baby was named for Merkela's dead husband, whom the Algarvians had blazed. It wasn't the name Skarnu would have chosen, but Merkela hadn't given him much choice. He could live with it. Gedominu had been a brave man.

Little Gedominu's sucking slowed, then stopped. Merkela raised him to her shoulder and patted him till he gave forth with a surprisingly deep belch. She set him back in the cradle and lay down beside Skarnu again.

"Not too bad," she said, yawning.

"No, not too," Skarnu agreed. Little Gedominu was only a couple of weeks old. Already, Skarnu and Merkela had learned the difference between good nights and bad, fussy feedings and others. Skarnu went on, "One of him and two of us. He only outnumbers us by a little."

No matter how sleepy she was, Merkela noticed that. "Ha!" she said: not laughter but an exclamation. "That isn't funny."

"I didn't think it was," Skarnu replied. A new thought crossed his mind. "Powers above! How do you suppose people with twins or triplets manage?"

Merkela noticed that, too. "I don't know," she said. "They probably just go mad, wouldn't you think?" She yawned again. Skarnu started to answer, but checked himself when her breathing grew slow and regular. She had the knack for falling asleep at once- or maybe, taking care of Gedominu, she was too weary to do anything else.

Gedominu woke once more in the night, and then again at first light. That left Skarnu shambling and red-eyed from lack of sleep, and Merkela a good deal worse. As she put a pot on the wood-burning stove to make tea, she said, "It might have been simpler just to let the Algarvians catch us."

She'd never said anything like that while they were on the farm. But then, she hadn't had to contend with a new baby while they were on the farm, either. Skarnu went over and set a hand on her shoulder. "Things will straighten out," he said. "Sooner or later, they have to."

"I suppose so." Even though Gedominu lay in the cradle, awake but quiet, Merkela sounded anything but convinced. When she waved her arm, she almost hit Skarnu and she almost hit a couple of walls; the flat wasn't very big. That, to her, was part of the problem. She burst out, "How do townsfolk stand living cooped up like this all their lives? Why don't they run screaming through the streets?"

Her farmhouse hadn't been very large, either, but when she looked out the windows there she saw her fields and meadows and the trees across the road. When she looked out the one small, grimy window here, all she saw were the cobbles of the street below and, across that street, another block of flats of grimy yellowish brown bricks much like the ones here.

"Erzvilkas isn't much of a town," Skarnu said with what he reckoned commendable understatement, "and this isn't much of a flat, either. We'll do better as soon as we get the chance. For now, though, we're safe from the redheads, and that's what matters most."

Merkela only grunted and poured two mugs of tea. She took a jar of honey and spooned some into her mug, then passed it to Skarnu, who did the same. He sipped the hot, sweet, strong brew. It drove back the worst of his weariness.

But it couldn't drive away his worries. They'd escaped the Algarvians, aye. That wasn't the same as saying they were safe from them. Skarnu knew as much, whether Merkela did or not. When Merkela fled the farm, she'd left everything behind. Algarvian mages could use her clothes or her cooking gear and the law of contagion to help find her. You didn't have to be a mage to know that objects once in contact remained in contact. Fortunately, you did have to be a mage to do anything about it.

Algarvian mages were spread thin these days. The war wasn't going so well for the redheads. Maybe they wouldn't worry so much about one renegade Valmieran noble. In the larger scheme of things, Skarnu wasn't that important. So he hoped they would reckon the odds, anyway.

It all boiled down to, how badly did they want him? He sighed. The other side of the coin was, they were liable to want him quite a bit with both his sister and Amatu howling for his blood. He didn't dare get too sure he was safe.

Merkela's thought followed a different ley line. After another sip of tea, she said, "How long can they keep holding down our kingdom? Sibiu is free again, or just about."

"Aye, I think so." Skarnu nodded. "The news sheets would talk more about the fighting there if it were going better for Algarve. But the Sibs didn't free themselves: Lagoas and Kuusamo beat King Mezentio and took the kingdom away from him. And it's a lot easier to invade some islands in the middle of the sea than to put soldiers ashore on the Derlavaian mainland."

For a moment, Merkela looked as if she hated him. "I want to be free again," she said. "I want that so much, I'd-" Before she could say what she might do, Gedominu started to whimper. Merkela laughed ruefully. "Nobody who wants to be free should ever have a baby." She picked him up and held him in the crook of her elbow. Maybe that was what he wanted, for he quieted down.

"Where'd that honey jar go?" Skarnu got up and opened it. He tore a piece off a loaf of black bread, dipped it in the honey, and ate it. Back before the war, he would have turned up his nose at the idea of such a breakfast. Now he knew that any breakfast at all was a long way toward being a good one.

"Fix some of that for me, too, would you?" Merkela said. Skarnu nodded and did. Gedominu stared up at his mother, as if trying to understand what she'd just said.

His intent expression made Skarnu start to laugh. "The world must be a demon of a confusing place for babies," he remarked as he handed Merkela the bread and honey.

"Of course it is," Merkela said. "It's a demon of a confusing place for everybody." She took a bite. Gedominu was still watching, wide-eyed. She shook her head at him. "You can't have any of this. Not till you get bigger."

The baby's face screwed up. He started to cry. Skarnu started to laugh. "That'll teach you to tell him what he can't do," he said. Merkela jiggled Gedominu up and down and from side to side. He subsided. She let out a sigh of relief.

Someone knocked on the door, a quick, hard, urgent knock.

Skarnu had been about to pour himself another cup of tea. He froze. So did Merkela, with a bite of bread halfway to her mouth. Nobody in Erzvilkas had any business here at this hour.

The knock came again. Skarnu grabbed a knife and went to the door. "Who is it?" he growled, his voice clotted with suspicion.

"Not the redheads, and cursed lucky for you."

Hearing that rough reply, Skarnu unbarred the door and worked the latch. Sure enough, Raunu stood in the hallway. Skarnu looked him up and down. "No, you're not the redheads," he agreed. "But if you're here now, you don't think they're very far behind you."

"They're sniffing around, all right," the veteran sergeant agreed. "Time for you and yours to pack up and go."

"What about you?" Skarnu demanded. "What about the Kaunians from Forthweg?"

Patiently, Raunu said, "I'm not a captain. I'm not a marquis. As far as the Algarvians are concerned, people like me are two for a copper. And Vatsyunas and Pernavai are just a loose end. You, though, you're a prize. And your lady's bait."

"He's right," Merkela said from behind Skarnu. "We have to go." She held little Gedominu in her arms, and also carried a sack full of diapers. "When there's no other choice, we run, and then we strike again another time."

Raunu smiled at her and gave her half a bow, as if her veins, not Skarnu's, held noble blood. "That's good sense. You've always shown good sense, as long as I've known you." He turned back to Skarnu. "Come on, Captain. We've a mage of sorts downstairs, ready to block the redheads' searching as best she can."

"A mage of sorts?" In spite of everything, Skarnu smiled. "That sounds- interesting." But the smile slipped. He was worried about Merkela. "Can you flee again, so soon out of childbed?" he asked her.

"Of course I can," she said at once. "I have to. Do you think I want to fall into the Algarvians' hands?"

He had no answer to that. "Let's go, then," he said roughly. Raunu's shoulders rose and straightened, as if he'd just had a burden lifted from them. He hurried for the stairs. Skarnu and Merkela followed. When they got to the stairway, Skarnu took the baby and the sack of cloths. Merkela didn't protest, a telling measure of how worn she was.

Out on the street, a carriage waited. Skarnu let out his own sigh of relief when he saw it. No matter how fiercely insistent she was, Merkela couldn't have got far on foot.

Also waiting was Raunu's "mage of sorts." She couldn't have been above fifteen, her figure half formed, her hair stringy, pimples splashing her cheeks and chin. In a low voice, Skarnu said, "She's going to hold the Algarvian wizards off our trail?"

It wasn't low enough; the girl heard him. She flushed, but spoke steadily: "I think I can do that, aye. The techniques for breaking affinities have improved remarkably since the days of the Six Years' War."

Skarnu stared. She certainly spoke as if she knew what she was doing. Raunu let out a soft grunt of laughter. He said, "I've been pretty impressed with Palasta, I have."

"Maybe I see why," Skarnu answered, and bowed to her.

"Get you gone," Palasta told him. "That's the point of this business, after all. From now on, powers above willing, the Algarvians will have a harder time coming after you."

Raunu had already helped Merkela up into the carriage. Now he slapped Skarnu on the back and gave him a little push. Skarnu handed Merkela Gedominu and the bag of cloths, then scrambled up beside her. The driver- another man from the underground- flicked the reins. The carriage started to roll.

Fleeing again, Skarnu thought bitterly. He reached out and set his hand on Merkela's. This time, at least, he had what mattered most to him.

The silversmith's shop that had been Kugu's remained closed. Every so often, Talsu would walk by, just for the satisfaction of seeing it locked and dark and quiet. He knew better than to do that very often. Someone might note it and report him to the Algarvians. He was grimly certain Kugu hadn't been the only collaborator in Skrunda.

He'd wondered if the redheads would come around asking questions of him after Kugu's untimely demise. So far, they hadn't. A forensic mage could have assured them he hadn't been in the room when the silversmith perished. That was true. But truth, here, had many layers.

He also knew Algarve still had foes in his home town. He wondered if Kugu's former students were among the men responsible for the new graffiti he saw on so many walls these days. HABAKKUK! they read, and HABAKKUK IS COMING! And he wondered what in blazes Habakkuk was.

"Whatever it is, Mezentio's men don't like it," Gailisa said when Talsu wondered out loud at supper one evening. "Have you seen them putting together gangs of people they drag off the street to paint it out wherever they find it?"

Talsu nodded. "Aye, I have. That's got to mean it's something good for Jelgava." He laughed. "Feels funny, hoping for something without knowing what I'm hoping for."

"I know what I'm hoping for," Traku said, dipping a piece of barley bread in garlic-flavored olive oil. "I'm hoping for more orders of winter gear from Algarvians heading off to Unkerlant. That wouldn't make me unhappy at all, Habakkuk or no Habakkuk."

"I won't say you're wrong there, because you're right." Talsu nodded again. "But it's such a funny name or word or whatever it is. It doesn't sound Jelgavan at all."

"Is it classical Kaunian?" his father asked.

"It's nothing Kugu ever taught me, anyhow," Traku answered, "and Kugu taught me all sorts of things." He paused, recalling some of the painful lessons he'd learned from the silversmith. Then he said, "Pass me the bread and oil, would you please?"

His mother beamed. "That's good. That's very good," Ausra said. "High time you got some meat back on your bones."

Talsu knew better than to argue with his mother about such things. Later, in the small room that now seemed even smaller because he shared it with Gailisa, he asked his wife, "Am I still as skinny as all that?"

"There's certainly more to you than there was when you first came home," Gailisa said after a brief pause for thought. "Back then, I think your shadow took up more room in bed than you did. But you're still skinnier than you were before the Algarvians grabbed you."

He lay down on the bed and grinned up at her. "If I take up more room now than I used to, maybe you can get on top tonight."

Gailisa stuck out her tongue at him. "I did that anyhow when you came back- or have you forgotten? I didn't want you working too hard. Now…" Her eye's sparkled as she started to undo the toggles on her tunic. "Well, why not?"

She'd just gone off to her father's grocery store the next morning when an Algarvian captain strode into the tailor's shop. "Good morning, sir," Traku said to him. "And what can we do for you today?" He didn't ask the redhead if he was looking for something warm. The Algarvian might have taken that as gloating over a trip to Unkerlant, which would have cost Traku business.

But this particular Algarvian turned out not to be going to Unkerlant. Pointing to Talsu, he spoke in good Jelgavan: "You are Talsu son of Traku, is it not so?"

"Aye," Talsu answered. As his father had, he asked, "What can I do for you today, sir?" -but he feared he knew the answer.

Sure enough, the Algarvian said, "We haven't heard much from you. We'd hoped for more- quite a lot more."

"I'm sorry, sir," replied Talsu, who was anything but. "I've just stayed close to home and minded my own business. I haven't heard anything much."

With a frown, the Algarvian said, "That's not why we ordered you turned loose, you know. We expected to get some use out of you."

"And so you have, by the powers above," Traku put in. "I couldn't have done half as much for you people without my son here stitching right beside me."

"That's not what I meant," the redhead said pointedly.

"I don't care," Traku growled.

"Father-" Talsu said in some alarm. He didn't want to go back to the dungeon himself, no, but he didn't want to send his father there on his account, either.

But Traku wasn't inclined to listen to him, either. Glaring at the Algarvian, he went on, "I don't care what you meant, I tell you. Go ask the soldiers who've left this sunny land of ours for Unkerlant. Ask them about their tunics and kilts and capes and cloaks. Ask them if Talsu's done something worth doing for them. Then come back here and complain, if you've got the nerve."

Now the Algarvian captain frankly stared at him. Odds were; nobody in Jelgava had ever dared talk back to him before. He didn't seem to know what to make of it. At last, he said, "You play a dangerous game."

Still furious, Traku shook his head. "I'm not playing games at all. For you, maybe, it's a game. For me and my son, it's our lives and our livelihood. Why don't you cursed well leave us alone and let us mind our own business, like Talsu here said?"

He was shouting, shouting loud enough to make Ausra come halfway down the stairs to find out what was going on. When Talsu's mother saw the redhead in the shop, she let out a horrified gasp and retreated in a hurry. Talsu sighed in relief. He'd feared she would lay into the Algarvian the same way his father had.

The captain said, "There is service, and then there is service. You are trying to tell me that one kind is worth as much as another. In this, you…" Then, to Talsu's astonishment, he grinned. "In this, you may be right. I do not say you are; I say you may be. Someone of higher rank than I will make the final decision." He bowed and strolled out of the shop.

Talsu gaped at his father. "That was one of the bravest things I ever saw," he said.

"Was it?" Traku shrugged. "I don't know anything about that. All I know is, I was too little to go off and fight the redheads in the last war, and I get bloody sick of bending my neck and going, 'Aye, sir,' whenever they come through the door. So I told this son of a whore a couple of plain truths, that's all."

"That's not all," Talsu said. "You know the risk you were running."

"What risk?" Traku didn't want to take him seriously. "You went after the Algarvians with a stick in your hands. That, now, that was running a risk. This isn't so much, not even close." He coughed once or twice. "There've been times when I've sounded like it was your fault Jelgava didn't lick those Algarvian buggers. I know there have. I'm sorry for it."

Talsu tried to remember if he'd ever heard his father apologize for anything before. He didn't think so. He didn't quite know how to respond, either. He finally said, "Don't worry about it. I never have."

That was true, though perhaps not in a way Traku would have cared to know. Talsu discounted everything his father had to say about the war precisely because Traku hadn't seen it for himself. What soldier ever born took seriously a civilian's opinions about fighting?

They went back to work in companionable silence. After a while, Ausra appeared on the stairs again, Laitsina behind her. When the two women didn't see the Algarvian, they came all the way down. "Is everything all right?" they asked together.

"Everything is fine," Traku said gruffly. "Sometimes it's a little harder to make people see sense than it is other times, that's all."

"You made… an Algarvian see sense?" Laitsina sounded as if she couldn't believe her ears.

"He sure did." Talsu thumped his father on the shoulder. Traku, to his astonishment, blushed like a girl. Ausra came over and kissed her husband on the cheek. That made Traku blush more than ever.

Ausra and Laitsina went upstairs again. Talsu and Traku looked at each other before they started work again. Maybe the Algarvian captain had seen sense, aye. But maybe he'd just gone for reinforcements- more redheads, or perhaps some Jelgavan constables. Or maybe his superiors would overrule him. Having been in the army, Talsu knew how easily that could happen.

But the Algarvian didn't come back, with or without reinforcements. As the day wore on toward evening, Talsu began to believe he wouldn't. When Gailisa came back from the grocer's shop, Talsu told her how brave Traku had been. She clapped her hands together and kissed Traku on the cheek, too. That made Talsu's father turn even redder than the kiss from his own wife had.

Supper was barley porridge enlivened with garlic, olives, cheese, raisins, and wine: food for hard times. Talsu remembered that huge piece of mutton he'd eaten with Kugu. Then he shrugged. The company was better here. When he went off to his cramped little bedchamber with Gailisa, that thought occurred to him again, rather more forcefully. He kissed her.

"What was that for?" she asked, smiling.

"Just because," Talsu answered. Because you're not Kugu struck him as the wrong thing to say. He did add, "I like kissing you."

"Do you?" Gailisa gave him a sidelong look. "What else would you like?"

They found something they both liked. As a result, they were sleeping soundly when eggs started falling on Skrunda. The first bursts made Talsu sit bolt upright, instantly wide awake. After his time in the army, he would never mistake that sound, and never fail to respond to it, either.

"Downstairs!" he exclaimed, springing out of bed. "We've got to get downstairs! Powers above, I wish we had a cellar to hide in." He heard his parents and sister calling out in their bedrooms. "Downstairs!" he cried again, this time at the top of his lungs. "We'll hide behind the counter. It's good and thick- better than nothing."

Only later did he stop to think that going downstairs in pitch blackness was liable to be more dangerous than having an egg burst close by. But the whole family got down safe. They huddled behind the counter, chilly and frightened and crowded and uncomfortable. "The news sheets will be screaming about air pirates tomorrow," Traku predicted.

"Not if one of these eggs bursts on their office, they won't," Laitsina said.

"I hope some of them burst on the Algarvians here in town," Talsu said. "Otherwise, the Lagoans or Kuusamans up there on those dragons are just wasting their eggs."

"Why are they bothering us?" his mother wailed as an egg came down close by and made the building shake. "We haven't done anything to them."

Talsu did his best to think like a general, and a foreign general at that. "If they strike at Jelgava," he said, "that makes it harder for the Algarvians to pull men out of our kingdom and send them to Unkerlant." He paused. "That means Father and I won't sell the redheads so many cloaks."

"Curse the foreigners, in that case!" Traku exclaimed. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he was joking. Maybe he was doing both at once. Any which way, Talsu laughed in spite of the death raining down on his home town. May it strike the Algarvians indeed, just as my sister said, he thought, and hoped the powers above were listening.

Colonel Spinello's ley-line caravan glided to a stop in a battered city in eastern Forthweg- not that there were any cities in Forthweg, eastern or western, that weren't battered. The corporal doing conductor duty bawled, "This here is Gromheort. Two-hour layover- we're picking up some men and some horses here. Two-hour layover."

"Gromheort," Spinello murmured. He'd been through this place before, when he was posted in Oyngestun back in the days when the war was easy. When he thought of Oyngestun, he thought of the Kaunian girl he'd enjoyed there. He'd whiled away a lot of bitter hours in Unkerlant telling stories about Vanai.

Gromheort was the biggest Forthwegian town near the Algarvian border. Almost without a doubt, the Kaunians from Oyngestun would have been brought here, to make it easier for the Algarvians to ship them west for sacrifice. If Vanai was here, if he could find her and bring her back… She won't be sacrificed, and I won't have to sleep with some dumpy Unkerlanter peasant wench, Spinello thought. It'll work out fine for both of us.

He got up and limped to the door of the caravan car. His leg still wasn't everything it might have been. But he could use it. And Algarve, these days, needed every man even remotely able to fight to throw into the battle against King Swemmel.

Outside the depot, a news-sheet vendor was waving a copy of his wares and shouting in Forthwegian. Spinello had only a smattering of Forthwegian, but he got the gist: Algarvian dragons striking hard at Sibiu. His mouth twisted. Some of the more ignorant or more forgetful Forthwegians might take that as an Algarvian victory. But if Lagoas and Kuusamo hadn't swooped down on the island kingdom, Algarvian dragons would have had no need to set upon it.

He saw no obvious Kaunians on the street. But what did that prove? He'd heard about the sorcery that let them look like Forthwegians, and about the trouble it had caused the occupying authorities. When he spotted a plump, redheaded constable in tunic and kilt, he waved to the man. "You, there!"

For a moment, he thought the fat constable would pretend he hadn't heard, but the fellow didn't quite dare. "Aye, Colonel?" he said, coming up. "What do you want?"

"Do you by any chance know for a fact whether the Kaunians from a no-account village called Oyngestun were brought here for safekeeping?" Spinello asked.

"I do know that." The constable's chest swelled with self-importance, till it stuck out almost as far as his belly. "Helped bring those blonds in myself."

"Did you?" That was better than Spinello had hoped for. "Good! Do you chance to recall a girl named Vanai, then? She'd be worth recalling."

And sure enough, the constable nodded. "She live with an old foof named Brivibas, didn't she? Cute little piece."

"That's right," Spinello agreed. "His granddaughter. I'm bound for Unkerlant, and I want to get her out of the Kaunian quarter here and take her along to keep my bed warm."

"Don't blame you a bit," the constable said, "but I don't think you can do it."

"Don't tell me she's been shipped west!" Spinello exclaimed. "That would be a horrible waste."

"I can't prove it one way or the other," the constable replied. "I'll tell you this, though: that Brivibas whoreson is dead as shoe leather. I caught him myself- me, Bembo. Bastard put on his sorcerous disguise- you know the blonds do?" He waited for Spinello to nod, then, looking smug, went on, "That disguise doesn't do anything for a voice, and I recognized his. He hanged himself in his gaol cell, and nobody misses him a bit, not so far as I can see."

Spinello missed Brivibas- he missed him a good deal. Brivibas was a key to getting Vanai to do what he wanted. Sooner than watch her dusty old granddad kill himself as a roadbuilder, she'd peeled off her clothes and opened her legs. Spinello sighed. "So you don't think anybody could find Vanai in a hurry?"

"Not a chance." The constable- Bembo- paused again, frowning. "In fact, come to think of it, she never got hauled into Gromheort at all. If I remember right, she ran off before we cleaned all the Kaunians out of Oyngestun."

"Powers above!" Spinello glared at him. "Why didn't you say that sooner? Who'd she run off with? Some boy?" Maybe that fellow from Plegmund's Brigade had known what he was talking about after all.

"I don't know all the ins and outs of it." Bembo laughed loudly at his own wit. "If it weren't for her mouthy old grandfather, I might not remember her at all. It's not like I ever laid her or anything."

"All right. All right." Spinello, who had, knew when to give up. He turned, cursing under his breath at a good idea wasted, and went back to the depot.

Before long, the ley-line caravan was gliding west across Forthweg again. It stopped in Eoforwic to pick up more reinforcements, then slid on toward the fighting front. Towns and villages in western Forthweg and in Unkerlant had taken even more damage, and more recent damage, than those farther east. Swemmel's men might not have fought skillfully, but they'd fought hard from the very beginning.

And they- or their brethren who practiced the nasty art of the guerrilla- kept right on making themselves difficult. The caravan had to halt twice before it got to the front, for Unkerlanter irregulars had burst eggs on the ley line and overloaded its energy-carrying capacity. Algarvian mages had to put the damage right, and there weren't enough of them to go around.

At last, a day and a half later than he should have, Spinello got down from the caravan car in the wreckage of a town named Pewsum. A sergeant was standing on the platform at the depot, holding up a leaf of paper with his name printed on it in big letters. "I'm Spinello," he said, cane in one hand, carpetbag in the other.

The sergeant saluted. "Pleased to meet you, sir. Welcome to the brigade. Here, let me get that for you." He relieved Spinello of the carpetbag. "Now if you'll just come with me, I've got a wagon waiting."

"Efficiency," Spinello remarked, and the sergeant grinned at him. Algarvians did their best to practice what King Swemmel preached. But the locally built wagon testified to genuine Unkerlanter efficiency- it was high-wheeled and curve-bottomed, and could go through mud that bogged down anyAlgarvian vehicle. As the sergeant flicked the reins and the horses got moving, Spinello said, "We can't have too many of these wagons, no matter how we get 'em. Nothing like 'em in the fall or the spring."

"That's the truth, sir. Powers above be praised that you see it," the driver said. "Sometimes we can get them from units that think something has to come from Trapani to be any good. If our neighbors want to be fools, it's no skin off our noses."

"No, indeed," Spinello said, but then he checked himself. "The way things are nowadays, nobody Algarvian can afford to be a fool. We have to leave that for the Unkerlanters." After a few seconds of very visible thought, the sergeant nodded.

Brigade headquarters lay in a little village called Ubach, a couple of miles northwest of Pewsum. Getting there took more than an hour; though Unkerlanter wagons could get through the mud, nothing could get through it very fast. The sergeant pointed to the firstman's house. "That'll be yours, sir. I'll let the regimental commanders know you're here, so you can meet them."

"Thanks." Spinello looked around Ubach with something less than overwhelming curiosity. He'd already seen more Unkerlanter villages than he'd ever wanted. A few peasants tramped along the streets, doing their best to keep their long tunics out of the mud. Some nodded to him as the wagon sloshed by. Rather more pretended he didn't exist. He'd seen all that before, too. And then he did a double take. Seeing a pretty young Kaunian girl in Ubach was the last thing he'd expected. She reminded him achingly of Vanai, though she was even younger and, he thought, even prettier. Pointing her way, he asked, "What's she doing here?"

"Oh, Yadwigai?" The sergeant blew her a kiss. He raised his voice: "Hello, sweetheart!"

The blond girl- Yadwigai- waved back. "Hello, Sergeant," she called in good Algarvian. "Is that the new colonel there?"

"Aye, it is," the sergeant answered, and blew her another kiss.

"Is she yours?" Spinello poked the sergeant in the ribs. "You lucky dog."

"Oh, no, sir!" The soldier driving him sounded shocked.

"Ah." Spinello nodded wisely. "A pet for one of the officers, then." He sighed, wishing again that he'd been lucky enough to get his hands on Vanai during the layover at Gromheort.

But the sergeant shook his head once more. "No, sir," he repeated. "Yadwigai isn't anybody's- not any one man's, I mean. She belongs to the brigade."

"Really?" Spinello knew he sounded astonished. He'd seen more camp followers than he'd ever wanted to, too. Yadwigai had none of their hard, bitter look. If anything, she put him in mind of a prosperous merchant's daughter: happy and right on the edge of being spoiled.

"Aye, sir," the sergeant replied, and then, realizing what Spinello had to mean, "No, sir- not like that! She's not our whore. We'd kill anybody who tried doing anything like that with her. She's our… our luck, I guess you might say."

Spinello scratched his head. "You'd better tell me more," he said at last. The sergeant had to know what happened to most of the Kaunians the Algarvians brought into Unkerlant. Spinello wondered if Yadwigai did.

"Well, it's like this, sir," the sergeant said, halting the wagon in front of the firstman's house. "We picked her up in a village in western Forthweg when we first started fighting Swemmel's buggers, and we've brought her along ever since. We've had good fortune ever since, too, and I don't think there's a man among us who wouldn't die to help keep her safe. She's… sweet, sir. You know what I'm saying?"

"All right, Sergeant. I won't mess with your good-luck charm." Spinello could see that any other answer would land him in trouble with his new brigade before he met anyone in it but this fellow driving him.

He got down from the wagon and went into the firstman's hut. Along with the benches against the walls that marked Unkerlanter peasant houses, the main room held an Algarvian-issue cot, folding table, and chairs. A map was tacked down on the table. Spinello studied it while the sergeant brought in his carpetbag, set it down beside the cot, and went out again.

Officers started coming in to greet their new commander a few minutes later. The brigade was made up of five regiments. Majors led four of them, a captain the fifth. Spinello nodded to himself. He'd led a regiment as a major, too.

"Very pleased to make your acquaintance, gentlemen," he said, bowing. "By what I saw on the map, we have a good deal of work ahead of us to make sure King Swemmel's whoresons stay where they belong, but I think we can bring it off. I tell you frankly, I'd be a lot more worried if we didn't have Yadwigai here to make sure everything turned out all right."

The officers stared. Then they broke into broad smiles. A couple of them even clapped their hands. Spinello smiled, too, at least as much at himself as at his subordinates. Sure as sure, he'd got his new command off on the right foot.

"With your kind permission, milady," Colonel Lurcanio said, bowing, "I should like to invite Count Amatu to supper again tomorrow night."

Krasta drummed her fingers on the frame of the doorway in which she was standing. "Must you?" she said. "I don't like hearing my brother cursed in the house that is- was- his home."

"I understand that." Lurcanio bowed again. "I shall do my best to persuade Amatu to be moderate. But I should be grateful if you would say aye. He needs to feel… welcome in Priekule."

"He needs to feel not quite everybody hates him, you mean." Krasta tossed her head. "If he curses Skarnu, I will hate him, and I will let him know about it. Even you don't do that."

"For which praise, such as it is, I thank you." Lurcanio bowed once more. "Professionally speaking, I quite admire your brother. He is as slippery as olive oil. We thought we had him again not long ago, but he slipped through our fingers again."

"Did he?" Krasta kept her voice as neutral as she could. She was glad the Algarvians hadn't caught Skarnu, but knew Lurcanio could and would make her unhappy for showing it. Changing the subject and yielding on the side issue struck her as a good idea; with a theatrical sigh, she said, "I suppose Amatu is welcome- tomorrow night, you said? -if he behaves himself."

"You are gracious and generous," Colonel Lurcanio said- qualities few people had accused Krasta of having. He went on, "Might I also beg one more favor? Would it be possible for your cook to serve something other than beef tongue?"

Krasta's eyes sparkled. "Why, of course," she said, and her prompt agreement made Lurcanio bow yet again. Krasta kissed him on the cheek and hurried into the kitchen. "Count Amatu will be coming for supper again tomorrow night," she told the cook. "Do you by any chance have some tripe in the rest crate there?"

He nodded. "Aye, milady. I do indeed." He hesitated, then said, "From what I know of Algarvians, the colonel will be less happy at eating tripe than Count Amatu will."

"But Amatu is our honored guest, and so his wishes must come first." Krasta batted her eyes in artful artlessness. She doubted she convinced the cook. If Lurcanio asked him why he'd prepared a supper unlikely to be to an Algarvian's taste, though, he had only to repeat what she said and she would stay out of trouble. She hoped she would stay out of trouble, anyhow.

The cook dipped his head. "Aye, milady. And I suppose you will want the side dishes to come from the countryside, too." He didn't quite smile, but something in his face told Krasta he knew what she was up to, sure enough.

All she said was, "I'm certain Count Amatu would enjoy that. Pickled beets, perhaps." Lurcanio wouldn't be happy with tripe and pickled beets or whatever else the cook came up with, but she didn't think he would be so unhappy as to do something drastic.

Still, having given the cook his instructions, Krasta thought she might be wise to get out of the house for a while. She ordered her driver to take her into Priekule. "Aye, milady," he said. "Let me harness the horses for you, and we'll be on our way."

He took the opportunity to don a broad-brimmed hat and throw on a heavy cloak, too. The slight sloshing noise Krasta heard between hoofbeats came from somewhere by his left hip: a flask under the cloak, she realized. That would also help keep him warm. Thinking of Lurcanio discomfited put Krasta in such a good mood, she didn't even snap at the driver for drinking on the job.

He stopped the carriage on a side street just off the Avenue of Equestrians. Krasta looked back over her shoulder as she hurried toward Priekule's toniest boulevard of shops. He'd already tilted the flask to his lips. It wouldn't slosh nearly so much on the way back to the mansion. It might not slosh at all. She shrugged. What could you expect from commoners but drunkenness?

She shrugged again, much less happily, when she started up the Avenue of Equestrians toward the park where the Kaunian Column of Victory had stood from the days of the Kaunian Empire till a couple of winters before, when the Algarvians demolished it on the grounds that it reflected poorly on their barbarous ancestors. She'd got used to the column's no longer being there, though its destruction had infuriated her. The shrug came from the sorry state of the shops. She'd been unhappy about that ever since Algarve occupied the capital of Valmiera.

More shopfronts were vacant now than ever before. More of the ones that still had goods had nothing Krasta wanted. No matter how many Valmieran women- aye, and men, too- wore Algarvian-style kilts these days, she couldn't bring herself to do it. She'd had kilts in her closet before the war, but that had been fashion, not compulsion. She hated compulsion, or at least being on the receiving end of it.

A couple of Algarvian soldiers ogled her. They did no more than that, for which she was duly grateful. She sneered at a Valmieran girl in a very short kilt, though she suspected the redheads would like the girl fine. And she started to sneer at a Valmieran man in an almost equally short kilt till he waved at her and she saw it was Viscount Valnu.

"Hello, sweetheart!" he cried, hurrying up to kiss her on the cheek. "How much of your money have you wasted this afternoon?"

"None, yet," Krasta answered. "I haven't found anything worth spending it on."

"What a tragedy!" Valnu exclaimed. "In that case, why don't you buy me a mug of ale, and maybe even a bite to eat to go with it?" He waved. They stood in front of an eatery called Classical Cuisine. "Maybe it'll have dormice in honey," he said.

"If they do, I'll get you a big plate of them," Krasta promised. But, since Valnu had made it plain she'd be doing the buying, she held the door open for him instead of the other way round. He took the point, and kissed her on the cheek again as he walked past her into the eatery.

She ordered ale for both of them, and- no dormice appearing on the bill of fare- strips of smoked and salted beef to go with it. "I thank you," Valnu said, and raised his mug in salute.

"It's all right," Krasta said. "It's rather better than all right, in fact."

"Really?" The tip of Valnu's rather sharp pink tongue appeared between his lips for a moment. "What have you got in mind, darling?"

He meant, Do you want to go to bed with me, darling? Krasta did want to, but didn't dare. She had to get in her digs at her Algarvian lover less directly. "I'm going to feed Lurcanio tripe tomorrow night," she answered, "and he'll have to eat it and make as if he likes it."

"You are?" Valnu said. "He will? How did you manage that?"

"I didn't, or not mostly. Lurcanio did it himself, and to himself," Krasta replied. "He's invited Count Amatu to supper again, and Amatu, say what you will about him, eats like a Valmieran. Do you know him?"

"I used to, back before the war. Haven't seen much of him since," Valnu said.

Krasta sighed and gulped down her ale. "I wish I could say the same. He's a bit of a bore these days. More than a bit, if you want to know the truth."

Valnu finished his ale, too. Instead of ordering another round for both of them, as Krasta expected him to, he got up and fluttered his fingers at her. "I'm terribly sorry, my love, but I must dash," he said. "One of my dear friends will beat me to a pulp if he thinks I've stood him up." He shrugged a comic shrug. "What can one do?"

"Pick different friends?" Krasta suggested. Instead of getting angry, Valnu only laughed and slid out of the eatery. Krasta bit down on a strip of smoked meat with quite unnecessary violence.

A waiter came up to her. "Will there be anything else, milady?"

"No," she snarled, and strode out of Classical Cuisine herself.

Not even buying a new hat made her feel better. The hat sported a jaunty peacock feather leaping up from the band- an Algarvian style, although that, perhaps fortunately, didn't occur to her. Her driver hadn't got too drunk to take her back to her mansion. The horse knew the way, whether the driver was sure of it or not.

Lurcanio praised the hat. That made Krasta feel a little guilty about the supper she'd planned for the next evening, but only a little: not enough to change the menu. If Lurcanio would inflict Amatu on her, she would inflict tripe on him.

Amatu, for a wonder, did have the sense not to talk much about Skarnu when he came. Maybe Lurcanio really had warned him to keep his mouth shut. Whatever the reason, it made him much better company. And he praised the tripe to the skies, and made a pig of himself over it. That made him better company still. Colonel Lurcanio, by contrast, picked at his supper and drank more than he was in the habit of doing.

"So sorry to see you go," Krasta told Amatu when he took his leave. To her surprise, she meant it.

"I'd be delighted to come again," he answered. "You set a fine table- eh, Colonel?" He turned to Lurcanio. The Algarvian's nod was halfhearted at best. Krasta hid a smile by swigging from her mug of ale.

Amatu's driver had had his supper with Krasta's servants. She never even thought to wonder what they had eaten. The count's carriage rattled off toward the heart of Priekule. Standing in the doorway, Krasta watched till it was out of sight- which, in the all-encompassing darkness that pervaded nights to foil Lagoan dragons, did not take long.

When she closed the door and turned around, she almost bumped into Lurcanio, who stood closer behind her than she'd thought. She let out a startled squeak. Lurcanio said, "I trust you were amused, serving up another supper not to my taste."

"I served it for Count Amatu. He certainly seemed to enjoy it." But Krasta, eyeing Lurcanio, judged it the wrong moment for defiance, and so changed her course. Putting a throaty purr in her voice, she asked, "And what would you enjoy, Colonel?" and set a hand on his arm.

Up in her bedchamber, he showed her what he would enjoy. She enjoyed it, too; he did know what he was doing, even if he couldn't do it quite so often as a younger man might have. Tonight, unusually, he fell asleep beside her instead of going back to his own bed. Maybe he'd put down even more ale with the supper he'd disliked than Krasta had thought. She fell asleep, too, pleased in more ways than one.

Some time in the middle of the night, someone pounded on the bedchamber door, someone who shouted Lurcanio's name and a spate of unintelligible Algarvian. Lurcanio sprang out of bed still naked and hurried to the door, also exclaiming in his own language. Then he remembered Valmieran, and called to Krasta as if she were a servant: "Light the lamp. I need to find my clothes."

"I need to go back to sleep," she complained, but she didn't dare disobey. Blinking in the sudden light, she asked, "What on earth is worth making a fuss about at this hour?"

"Amatu is dead," Lurcanio answered, pulling up his kilt. "Rebel bandits ambushed him on his way home from here. Powers below eat the bandits, we needed that man. His driver's dead, too." He threw on his tunic and rapidly buttoned it. "Tell me, milady, did you mention to anyone- to anyone at all, mind you- that the count would visit here tonight?"

"Only to the cook, so he would know to make something special," Krasta replied around a yawn.

Lurcanio shook his head. "He is safe enough. He can't fart without our knowing it, let alone betray us. You are certain of that?"

"Of course I am- as certain as I am that I'm sleepy," Krasta said. Lurcanio cursed in Valmieran, and then, as if that didn't satisfy him, said several things in Algarvian that certainly sounded incandescent. And Krasta, yawning again, realized she'd just told a lie, though she hadn't intended to. She'd mentioned Amatu to Viscount Valnu when they went into that place called Classical Cuisine. Which meant…

Which means I hold Valnu's life in the hollow of my hand, Krasta thought. I wonder what I ought to do with it.

Cornelu would rather have entered Tirgoviste harbor aboard his own leviathan. But the Lagoan and Kuusaman naval patrols around the harbor were attacking all leviathans without warning; the Algarvians had already sneaked in a couple and sunk several warships. And so Cornelu stood on the foredeck of a Lagoan ley-line frigate and watched the wharves and piers come nearer.

Speaking Algarvian, a Lagoan lieutenant said, "Coming home must feel good for you, eh, Commander?"

"My kingdom no longer has King Mezentio's hobnailed boot on its neck," Cornelu replied, also in the language of the enemy. "That feels very good indeed." Thinking he'd got agreement, the Lagoan nodded and went away.

The frigate glided up to its assigned berth, a pretty piece of work by its captain and the mages who kept it afloat. Sailors on the pier caught bow lines and stern lines and made the ship fast. When the gangplank thudded down, Cornelu was the first man off the ship. He'd had a new sea-green uniform tunic and kilt made up in Sigisoara town, so that he looked every inch a proper Sibian officer- well, almost every inch, for the truly observant would have noticed he still wore Lagoan-issue shoes.

He cursed when he got a close look at the harbor buildings. They'd taken a beating when the Algarvians first seized the city, and had been allowed to decay. It would be a while before Tirgoviste became a first-class port again. "Whoresons," he muttered under his breath.

But he had more reasons, and more urgent and intimate reasons, for cursing Mezentio's men than what they'd done to the harbor district. Three Algarvian officers had been billeted in the house his wife and daughter shared, and he feared- no, he was all too certain- Costache had been more than friendly with them.

Away from the harbor, Tirgoviste town looked better. The town had yielded to Algarve once the harbor installations fell, and the Algarvians hadn't made much of a stand here after Lagoan and Kuusaman soldiers gained a foothold elsewhere on Tirgoviste island. Cornelu didn't know whether to be grateful to them for that or to sneer at them for their faint-heartedness.

Tirgoviste town rose rapidly from the sea. Cornelu was panting by the time he began to near his own house. Then he got a chance to rest, for a squad of Kuusamans herded a couple of companies' worth of Algarvian captives past him, and he had to stop till they went by. The Algarvians towered over their slight, swarthy captors, but that didn't matter. The Kuusamans were the ones with the sticks.

A small crowd formed to watch the Algarvians tramp past. A few people shouted curses at Mezentio's defeated troopers, but only a few. Most just stood silently. And then, behind Cornelu, somebody said, "Look at our fancy officer, back from overseas. He's all decked out now, but he couldn't run away fast enough when the Algarvians came."

Cornelu whirled, fists clenched, fury on his face. But he couldn't tell which Sibian had spoken, and no one pointed at the wretch who'd impugned his courage. The last of the captives went by, opening the intersection again. Cornelu let his hands drop. He couldn't fight everybody, however much he wanted to. And he knew he'd have a fight a few blocks ahead. He turned back around and walked on.

Algarvian recruiting broadsheets still clung to walls and fences. Cornelu spat at one of them. Then he wondered why he bothered. They belonged to a different world- and not just a different world now, but a dead one.

He turned onto his own street. He'd envisioned knocking on the door, having Costache open it and watching astonishment spread over her face. But there she was in front of the house, carrying something out to the gutter in a dustpan- a dead rat, he saw as he got closer.

What the dustpan held wasn't the first thing he noticed, however much he wished it would have been. The way her belly bulged was.

She dumped the rat into the gutter, then looked up and saw him. She froze, bent out over the street, as if a sorcerer had turned her to stone. Then, slowly and jerkily, she straightened. She did her best to put a welcoming smile on her face, but it cracked and slid away and she gave up trying to hold it. When she said, "You came back," it sounded more like accusation than welcome.

"Aye." Cornelu had never imagined he could despise anyone so much. And he'd loved her once. He knew he had. But that made things worse, not better. So much worse. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

"Of course I did," Costache answered. "Nobody thought the Algarvians would lose the war, and you were never coming home if they won." She dropped the dustpan: a clatter of tin. Her hands folded over her swollen stomach. "Curse you, do you think I'm the only one who's going to have a baby on account of Mezentio's men?"

"No, but you're mine." Cornelu corrected himself: "You were mine. And it wasn't as if you thought I was dead. You knew I was still around. You saw me. You ate with me. And you still did- that." He pointed to her belly as if it were a crime somehow separate from the woman he'd wooed and married… and lost.

"Oh, aye, I saw you." Scorn roughened Costache's voice till it cut into Cornelu like the teeth of a saw. "I saw you filthy and unshaven and stinking like the hillman you were pretending to be. Is it any wonder I never wanted anything to do with you after that?"

He clapped a hand to his forehead. "You stupid slut!" he shouted. "I couldn't very well go around in uniform then. Do you think I wanted to end up in a captives' camp, or more likely blazed?"

Instead of answering right away, Costache looked all around, as if to see which neighbors were likely drinking in the scandal. That also seemed to remind her of the dustpan, which she picked up. "Oh, come inside, will you?" she said impatiently. "You don't have to do this in front of everyone, do you?"

"Why not?" Cornelu slapped her in the face. "Don't you think you deserve to be shamed?"

Her hand flew to her cheek. "I think…" She grimaced- not with pain, he thought, but with disgust, and not self-disgust- disgust at him. "What I think doesn't matter anymore, does it? It never will anymore, will it?" She walked up the path to the house, not caring, or at least pretending not to care, whether Cornelu followed.

He did, still almost too furious to speak. In the front room, Brindza was playing with a doll- the gift of an Algarvian officer? Of the father of her half brother or sister to come? Cornelu's own daughter shied away from him and said, "Mama, who is the strange man in the funny clothes?"

"Brindza, I am your father," Cornelu said, but he could see that didn't mean anything to her.

"Go on back to your bedroom now, sweetheart," Cornelu told her. "We'll talk about it later." Brindza did as she was told. Cornelu wished Costache would have done the same. He looked down at himself. Sibian naval uniform- funny clothes? Maybe so. Brindza might never have seen it before. That spoke unhappy volumes about the state of Cornelu's kingdom.

Costache went into the kitchen. He heard her getting down goblets, and knew exactly the cupboard from which she was getting them. He knew which cupboard held the wine and ale and spirits, too. Costache came back carrying two goblets full of wine. She thrust one of them at him. "Here. This will be bad enough any which way. We may as well blur it a little."

"I don't want to drink with you." But Cornelu took the goblet. Whether with her or not, he did want to drink. He took a big swig, then made a face. "Powers above, that's foul. The Algarvians sent all their best vintages here, didn't they?"

"I gave you what I have," Costache answered.

"You gave everybody what you have, didn't you?" Cornelu pointed at her belly as he finished the wine. Costache's mouth tightened. He went on, "And you're going to pay for it, too, by the powers above. Sibiu's free again. Anyone who sucked up to the Algarvians" -he started to say something else along those lines, but the thought so infuriated him, he choked on the words- "is going to pay."

She just stood there, watching him. She has nerve, curse her, he thought angrily. "I don't suppose I could say anything that would make you change your mind," she observed.

"Ha!" He clapped a hand to his forehead. "Not likely! What'll you tell me, how handsome the Algarvian was? How good he was?"

That got home. Costache flushed till the handprint on her cheek seemed to fade. She said, "I could talk about how lonely I was, and how afraid, too."

"Aye, you could," Cornelu said. "You might even get some softheaded, softhearted fool to believe it, too. But so what? You won't even get me to listen."

"I didn't think so," Costache said tonelessly. "You never had any forgiveness in you. And I'm sure you never got into bed with anyone all the time you were away."

"We're not talking about me. We're talking about you," Cornelu snapped. "I'm not carrying an Algarvian's bastard. You miserable little whore, you were sleeping with Mezentio's men when you knew I was on Tirgoviste island. Do you even know which one put the baby in you?"

"How do you know what I was doing or what I wasn't?" she asked.

"How do I know? They were chasing me, that's how!" Cornelu howled. "I came down here out of the hills hoping I'd find some way to shake free of them and bring you and Brindza along with me. And what did I find? What did I find? You telling the Algarvians how much they'd enjoy it, that's what!"

He took a couple of quick steps across the room and slapped her again. She staggered. The goblet flew out of her hand and shattered on the floor. She straightened, the whole side of her face red now. "Did you enjoy that?" she asked.

"Aye," he growled, breathing hard. He might have been in battle. His heart pounded. His stomach churned. He raised his hand to hit her once more. Then, quite suddenly, his stomach did more than churn. It knotted. Horrible pain filled him. He bent double, clutching at his belly. The next thing he knew, he'd crumpled to the floor.

Costache stood over him, looking down. Calmly, she said, "The warning on the packet was true. It does work on people the same way it works on rats."

"You poisoned me," he choked, tasting blood in his mouth. He tried to reach for her, to grab her, to pull her down, but his hands obeyed him only slowly, oh so slowly.

She stepped back, not very far. She didn't need to step back very far. "So I did," she told him, calm still. "I knew what you'd be like, and I was right." Her voice seemed to come from farther and father away.

Cornelu stared up at her. "You won't- get away- with it." His own words seemed to come from farther and farther away, too.

"I have a chance," she said. He tried to answer. This time, no words came. He still stared up, but he saw nothing at all.