Through the Darkness

Twelve

A stack of small silver coins and another of big brass ones, almost as shiny as gold, stood in front of Talsu. Similar stacks of coins, some larger, some smaller, stood in front of the other Jelgavans sitting at the table in a silversmith’s parlor. A pair of dice lay on the table. If Algarvian constables burst into the parlor, all they would see was gambling. They might keep the money for themselves-being redheads, they probably would-but they’d have nothing to get very excited about.

So hoped Talsu and all the other men, some young, some far from it, at the table. The silversmith, whose name was Kugu, nodded to his comrades. He peered at the world through thick spectacles, no doubt because he did so much close work. “Now, my friends,” he said, “let’s go over the endings of the declension of the aorist participle.”

Along with the others, Talsu recited the declensions-nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative-of the participle for singular, dual, and plural; masculine, feminine, and neuter. He got through all the forms without a hitch, and felt a certain modest pride at managing it. Despite getting through them, he wondered how his ancient ancestors had managed to speak classical Kaunian without pausing every other word to figure out the proper form of adjective, noun, or verb.

Jelgavan, now, Jelgavan was a proper language: no neuter gender, no dual number, no fancy declensions, a vastly simplified verb. He hadn’t realized how sensible Jelgavan was till he decided to study its grandfather.

Kugu reached out and picked up the dice on the table. He rolled them, and got a six and a three: not a good throw, not a bad one. Then he said, “We are gambling here, you know, and for more than money. The Algarvians want us to forget who we are and who our forefathers were. If they know we’re working to remember.. They knocked down the imperial arch. They won’t be shy about knocking over a few men.”

“Curse ‘em, the redheads have never been shy about knocking over a few men, or more than a few,” Talsu said.

Somebody else said, “They can’t kill all of us.”

“If what we hear coming out of Forthweg is true, they’re doing their best,” Talsu said.

Everyone stirred uncomfortably. Thinking of what had happened to Kaunians in Forthweg led to thoughts of what might happen to the Kaunian folk of Jelgava. Somebody said, “I think those stories are a pack of lies.”

Kugu shook his head. Lamplight reflected from the lenses of his spectacles, making him look for a moment as if he had enormous blank yellow eyes. He said, “They are true. From things I’ve heard, they are only a small part of what is true. Algarve doesn’t aim to kill just our memories. We are in danger ourselves.”

Then why aren‘t we fighting back more? Talsu wanted to shout it. He wanted to, but he didn’t. Aye, these men were here to study classical Kaunian, which argued that they had no use for the redheads. But Talsu didn’t know all of them well. He hardly knew a couple of them at all. Any of them, even Kugu himself, could have been an Algarvian spy. Back before the war, King Donalitu had had plenty of provocateurs serving him-men who said outrageous things to get others to agree with them, whereupon those others vanished into dungeons. A man would have to be insanely foolhardy to think the Algarvians couldn’t match such ploys.

“We’d be better off if the king hadn’t fled,” said someone who might have been thinking along with him, at least in part.

But Kugu shook his head. “I doubt it. King Gainibu’s still on the throne down in Priekule, but how much does that do our Valmieran cousins? They’re probably easier to rule than we are, because they haven’t got a foreigner sitting on the throne.”

By a foreigner, he meant an Algarvian. Several people nodded, taking the point. King Mezentio’s brother wasn’t the man whom Talsu had in mind as a proper King of Jelgava, either, but he just sat there, doing his best to look none too bright. If Kugu was a provocateur, Talsu didn’t intend to let himself be provoked-not visibly, anyhow.

With a sigh, the silversmith said, “It would be fine if the king came back to Jelgava. After a dose of King Mainardo’s rule, plenty of people would flock to Donalitu’s banner.”

Again, Kugu got nods. Again, Talsu wasn’t one of the men who gave them. He knew exactly how the redheads would judge such words: as treason. Hearing them was dangerous. Being seen to agree with them was worse.

Maybe Kugu realized as much, too, for he said, “Shall we go over some sentences that show how the aorist participle is used?” He read a sentence in the sonorous ancient tongue, then pointed to Talsu. “How would you translate that into Jelgavan?”

Talsu leaped to his feet, clasped his hands behind his back, and looked down at the floor between his shoes: memories of his brief days in school. He took a deep, nervous breath and said, “Having gained the upper hand, the Kaunian army advanced into the forest.”

Even if he was wrong, Kugu wouldn’t stripe his back with a switch. He knew that, but sweat trickled from his armpits anyhow. Maybe that too was left over from memories of school, or maybe it just sprang from simple fear of reciting in public.

Either way, he needn’t have worried, for Kugu beamed and nodded. “Even so,” he said. “That is excellent. Let’s try another one.” He read the sentence in classical Kaunian and pointed to the fellow next to Talsu, a red-faced, middle-aged merchant. “How would you translate that?”

The man made a hash of it. When Kugu set him straight, he scowled. “If that’s what they mean, why don’t they come out and say it?”

“They do,” Kugu said patiently. “They just do it differently. They do it more precisely and more concisely than modern Jelgavan can.”

“But it’s confusing,” the merchant complained. Talsu wondered how many more lessons the red-faced man would come to. Rather to his own surprise, he didn’t find classical Kaunian confusing himself. Complex? Aye. Difficult? Certainly. But he kept managing to see how the pieces fit together.

After everyone had had a crack at translating a sentence or two, the lesson broke up. “I’ll see you next week,” Kugu told his scholars. “Powers above keep you safe till then.”

Out into the night the Jelgavans went, scattering as they headed for their homes throughout Skrunda. Stars shone down from the clear sky: more stars than Talsu was used to seeing in his home town. Since the raid on Skrunda, the redheads had required the town to stay dark at night, which brought out the tiny sparkling points of light overhead.

It also made tripping and breaking your neck easier. Talsu stumbled over a cobblestone that stood up from the roadbed and almost fell on his face. He nailed his arms to stay upright, all the while cursing in a tiny voice. Though often ignored and hard to enforce because of the darkness shrouding Skrunda, the redheads’ curfew remained in force. The last thing Talsu wanted was to draw one of their patrols to him.

He picked his way through the quiet streets. The first time he’d come home from Kugu’s, he’d got lost and wandered around for half an hour till he came into the market square quite by accident. Knowing where he was had let him find his home in short order.

A cricket chirped. Off in the distance, a cat yowled. Those sounds didn’t worry Talsu. He listened for boots thudding on cobbles. The Algarvians knew a lot of things, but they didn’t seem to know how to patrol stealthily.

When he got to his house, he let himself in, then barred the door. If an enterprising burglar chose to strike on a night when he was studying classical Kaunian, tlie thief might clean out the downstairs of Traku’s shop and depart with no one the wiser.

To make sure Talsu wasn’t a burglar, his father came partway down the stairs and called softly: “That you, son?”

“Aye,” Talsu answered.

“Well, what did you learn tonight?” Traku asked.

“Having gained the upper hand, the Kaunian army advanced into the forest,” Talsu declaimed, letting the sounds of the classical language fill his mouth in a way modern Jelgavan couldn’t come close to matching.

“Isn’t that posh?” his father said admiringly. “What’s it mean?” After Talsu translated, Traku frowned and asked, “What happened then-after it advanced into the forest, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Talsu said. “Maybe the Kaunians kept on winning. Maybe the lousy redheads who lived in the forest ambushed them. It’s just a sentence in a grammar book, not a whole story.”

“Too bad,” Traku said. “You’d like to know how these things turn out.”

Talsu yawned. “What I’d like to do is go to bed. I’ll still have to get up and work tomorrow morning. Come to that, so will you, Father.”

“Oh, aye, I know,” Traku answered. “But I like to be sure everything’s all right before I settle down-and if I didn’t, I’d hear about it in the morning from your mother.” He turned and went back up to the top floor. Talsu followed.

His room had seemed cramped ever since he came home from the army after Jelgava’s losing fight against the Algarvians. It still did. He was too tired to care tonight. He took off his tunic and trousers and lay down wearing nothing but his drawers: the night was fine and mild. He fell asleep with participles spinning in his mind.

Instead of advancing into the forest the next morning, he advanced on breakfast: barley bread, garlic-flavored olive oil, and the usual Jelgavan wine tangy with citrus juice. Afterwards, and before his father could chain him to a stool to work on a couple of cloaks that needed finishing, he ducked out and headed over to the grocer’s shop to say hello to Gailisa and to show off the bits of classical Kaunian he was learning. She didn’t understand much of it herself, but it impressed her, not least because she did understand why he was studying it. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised over his shoulder as he left, to keep his father from getting too annoyed at him.

But he broke the promise. During the night, somebody-more likely several somebodies-had painted DEATH TO THE ALGARVIAN TYRANTS! on walls all over Skrunda: not in Jelgavan, but in excellent classical Kaunian. Talsu might not have been able to understand it before he started studying the old language. He could now.

Unfortunately, so could the Algarvians. Their officers, as he’d seen, were familiar with the classical tongue. And their soldiers were on the streets with jars of paint to cover up the offending slogan and with wire brushes to efface it. The redheads didn’t aim to do the work themselves, though. They grabbed Jelgavan passersby, Talsu among them. He spent the whole morning getting rid of graffiti. But the more he worked to get rid of them, the more he agreed with them. And he didn’t think he was the only Jelgavan who felt that way, either.

“New songs?” Ethelhelm shook his head and looked a little sheepish when Ealstan asked the question. “Haven’t got a whole lot. The boys and I have been on the road so much lately, we haven’t had very many chances to sit down and fool around with anything new.”

Ealstan nodded, doing his best to seem properly sympathetic. He didn’t want to say something like, Hard to write nasty songs about the Algarvians now that you’ve started cozying up to them. Even the last few new songs Ethelhelm had written had lost a good deal of their bite. But Ealstan needed the band leader’s business. And Ethelhelm knew he had a Kaunian lady friend. Ealstan didn’t think the musician would betray him to the redheads, but he didn’t want to give Ethelhelm any excuse for doing something like that, either.

“Good to have things quiet in Eoforwic again,” Ethelhelm said. “It got a little livelier than we really wanted for a while there.”

“Aye,” Ealstan said. No wonder Ethelhelm thought that way: the riots had made it into his district for a change. Ealstan started to remark that the Kaunian district had stayed very quiet; he wanted to remind Ethelhelm of the Kaunian blood the band leader was said to have. In the end, he didn’t say that, either: talking about Kaunians with Ethelhelm might also remind him of Vanai. When Ethelhelm looked to be drifting toward the Algarvians, Ealstan didn’t want to chance that.

He was my friend, Ealstan thought. And he was more than that-he was our voice, the only voice Forthwegians really had after the redheads overran us. And now he’s not any more. What went wrong?

Looking around the flat again, Ealstan saw what he’d seen before. Nothing had gone wrong for Ethelhelm. No, too many things had gone right instead. The drummer and songwriter had everything he wanted. He liked having everything he wanted, too. If the price of keeping it was going easy on the Algarvians, he would.

Had some redheaded officer come up to Ethelhelm and told him straight out that he’d better go easy or he’d end up in trouble? Ealstan didn’t know, and could hardly ask. He had his doubts, though. The Algarvians were smoother than that-unless they were dealing with Kaunians, in which case they didn’t bother.

Oblivious to his bookkeeper’s thoughts, Ethelhelm leaned forward and tapped the ledgers Ealstan had opened on the table in front of him. “Everything here looks very good,” he said-no small compliment, not when he’d been casting his own accounts before hiring Ealstan. He knew his way around money almost as well as he knew his way around drums and lyrics.

“You haven’t got all the silver in the world,” Ealstan told him, “but you surely do have a good chunk of it.”

“I never thought I’d end up with so much,” Ethelhelm said. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

Ealstan managed to nod. He’d been comfortable-looking back on things, he’d been more than comfortable-in his father’s house in Gromheort. It certainly was nicer than the humbler circumstances in which he lived now. He’d saved a good deal of money here in Eoforwic, but what could he spend it on? Not much. And Ethelhelm didn’t seem to have a hint about the sort of life Ealstan lived these days. He didn’t act interested in learning, either.

But then the band leader flipped the ledgers closed, one after another. And he took a goldpiece from his belt pouch and set it atop one of them. “There you go, Ealstan,” he said. “Aye, a job well done, no doubt about it, especially considering the state of the receipts I gave you. Bloody leather sack!”

Ealstan picked up the coin and hefted it. It was, he saw, an Algarvian gold-piece, not a Forthwegian minting. It was almost worth more than twice what his fee would have been. “Here, I can make change,” he said, and reached for his own belt pouch.

“Don’t bother,” Ethelhelm told him. “You can use it, and I can afford it. Always good to know I can rely on the people close to me.”

By the powers above! Ealstan thought. He’s buying me, the same way he buys off the Algarvians. He wanted to throw the coin in Ethelhelm’s face. If it hadn’t been for Vanai, he would have. Of course, if it hadn’t been for Vanai, he’d still be living back in Gromheort. He put the goldpiece in his pouch and contented himself with saying, “Bookkeepers don’t blab. They wouldn’t keep any customers if they did.”

“I understand that,” Ethelhelm said. “You’ve certainly shown it to me.” He could still be gracious. He could, in fact, still be very much what he had been, except when it came to the Algarvians. Somehow, that was particularly distressing to Ealstan. Ethelhelm went on, “There, you’ve taken it even so. Good.”

“Aye, and thanks,” Ealstan said. He got to his feet and tucked the ledgers under his arm. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, then, and odds are you’ll be richer.”

“There are worse problems to have,” Ethelhelm said complacently, and Ealstan could hardly disagree with him.

Since the latest round of riots, the doorman at Ethelhelm’s block of flats had taken to staying inside, in the lobby. He didn’t position himself out where people could see him, as he had before-maybe he’d had a narrow escape. One more question Ealstan didn’t feel like asking. The doorman got up and held the door open for him. “See you again,” he said.

“Oh, that you will,” Ealstan said. The prospect should have made him glad, especially if it meant he’d see more goldpieces. And it did-to a degree. But it saddened him, too, because Ethelhelm inarguably wasn’t what he had been.

Only a block and a half away from Ethelhelm’s elegant flat, a labor gang was clearing away the rubble of a burnt-out building. The laborers were Kaunians, some men, some women. Had their overseers been Algarvian soldiers or constables, Ealstan would have been angry but unsurprised. But the men holding the Kaunians to their tasks were Forthwegians armed with nothing more than bludgeons-and the certainty that they were doing the right thing.

Ealstan wanted to curse them. He wanted to persuade them they were wrong. He wanted to tell them they were playing into their conquerors’ hands. In the end, he did none of that. He simply walked on, free hand curled into a fist tight enough to make his nails bite into his palm, belly churning with rage he dared not show.

More wrecked, burnt-out buildings lay in the poorer parts of Eoforwic. No one had started clearing them away. Ealstan wondered how long that would take. He also wondered if it would ever happen. He didn’t intend to hold his breath.

Here and there, people went through the wreckage. Some were folk who’d lived and worked in those buildings, doing their best to salvage what they could. And some, no doubt, were nothing but scavengers. Ealstan glared at the gleaners, which did no good at all: it might have angered the people who had a right to search for what was theirs, but bothered the looters not at all.

He stopped in a baker’s shop and bought two loaves of bread. It was nasty stuff, and had got nastier since the latest riots. He’d long since grown used to wheat flour cut with barley and rye. They made loaves thicker and chewier, because they rose less readily than wheat, but they didn’t taste too strange. Ground-up peas and beans and buckwheat groats, on the other hand …

“What’s next?” he asked the baker. “Sawdust?”

“If I can’t get anything else,” the fellow answered, adding, “Listen, pal, I eat the same bread I sell. Times aren’t easy.”

“No,” Ealstan agreed. Did the baker really eat the same bread he sold his customers? Ealstan doubted it. From everything he’d seen, anyone who got a position privileged in any way took advantage of it as best he could. Ealstan chuckled mirthlessly. If that wasn’t an Algarvian way of looking at the world, he didn’t know what was.

When he got back to his own part of town, he paused and marveled that all the buildings on his block had come through intact. Oh, some new windows on the bottom couple of stories were boarded up, but a lot of windows had been boarded up for a long time; glass, these days, was expensive and hard to come by.

Feet and hooves and wheels had worn away the fresh bloodstains from the crowns of the cobbles, but the red-brown still lingered between the gray and yellow-brown stones. Someone had left a bloody handprint on the wall of the building next to Ealstan’s, too. He wondered what had happened to that fellow. Nothing good, he feared.

He paused in the lobby to get his mail from the brass bank of boxes against the wall opposite the door. The lock on his box was as stout and fancy as he could afford; he had one key, the postman the other. The rest of the boxes sported similar impressive pieces of the locksmith’s art. Few people hereabouts trusted their neighbors’ good intentions.

When Ealstan saw his father’s precise, familiar script on an envelope, he grabbed it with a mixture of excitement and alarm. He didn’t hear from home very often, and wrote back even less. But news, he’d discovered when he got the letter telling of Leofsig’s death, could be bad as easily as good.

I’ll open it upstairs, he told himself. Iwon’t be able to do anything about it down here, anyhow. He laughed at himself, again without amusement. He wouldn’t be able to do anything about it after he got up to his flat, either.

He had to set down the ledgers so he could knock on the door. Vanai let him in. “What have you got there?” she asked, pointing to the envelope.

“It’s from home,” he answered. “That’s all I know right now.” He held up the envelope to show her he hadn’t opened it, then added, “I didn’t have the nerve to do it down in the lobby.”

Vanai bit her lip as she nodded. “Let me pour some wine.” She hurried off to the kitchen. Ealstan clenched his jaw. He’d needed numbing after other letters from home, and knew too well he might need it again.

He waited till Vanai came back with two full glasses before he tore open the envelope and took out the letter inside. He unfolded it, started to read- and let out a chuckle that was shaky with relief. “Oh!” he said. “Is that all?”

“What is it?” Vanai asked, a wineglass still in each hand.

“My sister’s married,” Ealstan answered. That seemed strange-Conberge had been a part of the household his whole life-but he’d known it was likely to happen one day. “My father says everything went very well. Powers above be praised for that! Wouldn’t it have been fine if Sidroc walked in right in the middle of the ceremony?”

“No,” Vanai said, and handed him one of the glasses. She raised the other. “Here’s to your sister. May she be happy.”

“Aye. Conberge deserves to be happy.” Ealstan drank. The wine was nowhere near so fine as the fancy vintages Ethelhelm served, but it would do. He finished reading the letter, then winced in sympathy. “My father says he and my mother are just rattling around in the house. They never expected it to empty out so soon.”

Vanai stepped up and held him for a moment. He’d had to flee Gromheort, his brother was dead-at least Conberge had left the way she should have.

And something else occurred to him: something, he realized, he should have thought of quite a while before. He slipped his arm around Vanai. “I wish I could marry you properly,” he said. “If I ever get the chance, I will, I promise.”

She looked up at him and started to cry. He wondered if he’d said the wrong thing. Vanai spent the rest of the night finding ways to show him he hadn’t.

Down below Sabrino, Heshbon burned. In a few spots among the ruins, Algarvian and Yaninan holdouts still struggled against the advancing Lagoan army. Most of the men who’d survived the sorcerous debacle in the land of the Ice People, though, had long since surrendered.

Being a dragonflier, Sabrino enjoyed more choices than surrender or hopeless resistance. Along with his wing, along with all the dragons on the austral continent, he’d been recalled to Derlavai. The order still left him more than a little startled. He’d expected King Mezentio to send another army across the Narrow Sea to take the place of the one his mages, in their bloodthirsty arrogance, had thrown away. But the king had chosen to cut his losses instead. That wasn’t like Mezentio. It wasn’t like him at all. Sabrino wondered what had happened in Trapani to persuade Mezentio to take such a course.

He’d find out before long. His wing was ordered to the great dragon farm outside the capital of Algarve: they’d get their next assignment there. He assumed they would also get a few days of rest and recuperation, during which he intended to learn all he could. He knew he had a lot of catching up to do; down on the austral continent, he might as well have been cut off from what went on in the wider world.

His dragon eagerly flew north over the gray-green waters of the Narrow Sea: toward the sun, toward the warmth, toward civilization-though of course the beast cared nothing for that last. Sabrino glanced back over his shoulder. No, the Lagoans and Kuusamans weren’t pursuing. They kept on pounding Heshbon with eggs. If the Algarvians wanted to leave the land of the Ice People, they would let them.

Before long, Sabrino spied a black line ahead: land crawling up over the edge of the world to mar the smooth horizon between land and sea. The swamps and forests of southern Algarve, though the homeland of his folk, were not the part of the kingdom of which he was fondest. They’d always struck him as dull and gloomy. No wonder the ancient Algarvic tribes had waged endless war against the Kaunian Empire-the Kaunians held most of the land worth living in.

Sabrino wasn’t in the habit of talking to his dragon, as leviathan-riders often did with their beasts; he knew too well that dragons neither knew nor cared about words. But he broke his own rule now, saying, “Do you know, after the land of the Ice People this doesn’t look so bad.”

In among the woods and the swamps, farmers grew turnips and parsnips and beets, and grain along with them. Little by little, the trees thinned out, the land got drier, and fields of wheat and barley supplanted the root crops. With every few miles farther north Sabrino flew, the greens of growing things got brighter.

Trapani lay still within the swampy belt, but toward its northern edge. One after another, the dragons in Sabrino’s wing spiraled down out of the sky. Handlers took charge of them, exclaiming at how thin and ill-used they were.

Tapping himself on the chest, waving toward his weary men, Sabrino demanded, “And how ill-used do you think we are?” The handlers stared at him. That a dragonflier could be as ill-used as a dragon had never crossed their minds.

One of them asked, “Colonel, uh, lord Count”-Sabrino, as usual, wore his badge of nobility on his tunic-”what went wrong, down there in the land of the Ice People?”

It was a good question. Sabrino pondered it for a moment, then answered, “We did.” The handler started to ask him something more. He pushed past the fellow and strode toward the commandant’s office.

He got no satisfaction there. A captain told him, “I’m very sorry, sir, but General Borso didn’t come in today, due to an unfortunate indisposition.”

In bed with his mistress, or with a hangover? Sabrino wondered. He was almost indiscreet enough to do his wondering out loud. In the end, all he asked was, “Have you any idea why we were summoned home from the austral continent?”

“Me, sir?” The captain shook his head. “No, sir. No one tells me anything like that, sir.”

Sabrino’s scornful glance withered him hardly less than dragonfire might have done. “Well, young fellow, did anyone tell you where to get hold of a carriage for me, so I can get to the nearest ley-line caravan and head for Trapani, where they are in the habit of telling people things?”

Flushing, gnawing at the inside of his lower lip in mortification, the captain spat out one word: “Aye.” But then, noting Sabrino’s towering temper, he hastily added two more: “Aye, sir.”

Neither Sabrino’s wife nor his mistress knew he was in Trapani; he was sure of that. He wondered what the news sheets had said of the Algarvian disaster in the land of the Ice People, and how worried Gismonda and Fronesia were. Then he wondered if Fronesia was worried at all, except about finding a new lover with enough money to keep her in her fancy flat.

But she and his wife could both wait. When the ley-line caravan reached the center of Trapani, Sabrino made for neither his home nor the one he maintained for Fronesia. Instead, he strode into the building near the royal palace that housed the Ministry of War: a building so severely classical in line, it wouldn’t have looked at all out of place in the Kaunian Empire. He wondered if the soldiers serving there ever pondered that irony. Probably not, and too bad, too.

He hadn’t bothered freshening up; his stubbled chin and cheeks and wrinkled, dirty uniform drew startled looks from the spruce young officers hurrying through the halls. But none of them had rank enough to call him on his appearance. Presently, he ducked into an office where a much neater colonel was peering from a map to a long column of figures and back again and swearing under his breath. Sabrino said, “Hello, you old fraud. They haven’t got wise to you and shipped you off to Unkerlant yet, eh? Don’t worry-they will.”

The other colonel sprang to his feet, enfolded him in a muscular embrace, and kissed him on both cheeks. “Why, you son of a whore!” he said affectionately. “I figured they’d left you down there to freeze, or else for dragon food.”

“Dragons’ll eat almost anything, Vasto, but even they draw the line somewhere,” Sabrino answered. He cocked his head to one side. “You look as ugly as ever, curse me if you don’t.”

Vasto bowed low. “I’ll curse you any which way, and you bloody well know it.” He and Sabrino were both grinning enormously. They’d fought side by side in the Six Years’ War, and been fast friends ever since. “Sit down, sit down,” Vasto said. “You see me ashamed-you’ve caught me without a bottle of brandy in my desk, so I can’t give you a nip the way I usually do.”

“I’d probably fall asleep right here if you did,” Sabrino told him. “But if you can give me a couple of straight answers, they’ll go down smoother than brandy anyhow.”

Vasto pointed a forefinger at him as if it were a stick. “Go ahead-blaze,” he said. They’d been giving each other straight answers for almost thirty years, too, and the usual rules of military secrecy had very little to do with what they said.

“All right.” Sabrino took a deep breath. “Why did they pull us off the austral continent instead of sending in more soldiers after our sorcery went awry? The Lagoans haven’t got that many men down there, may the powers below eat them. We could have held them off for a cursed long time.”

For the first time in many years, he saw Vasto reluctant to answer. “I wish you hadn’t asked me that,” the other colonel said slowly. “I’ll tell you, but you swear first on your mother’s name you’ll never let anyone know where you heard it. Anyone, you hear me? Even Mezentio.”

“Powers above!” Sabrino said. Seeing his friend was serious, though, he twisted the fingers of his left hand into a sign Algarvians had used since they skulked through the southern forests, living in fear of imperial Kaunian soldiers and sorcerers. “On my mother’s name I swear it, Vasto.”

“Good enough.” Vasto said, although he still didn’t sound happy. Leaning toward Sabrino across his desk, he spoke in a rasping whisper: “It’s simple, when you get down to it. We’ve got the men to go on fighting the Unkerlanters, or we’ve got the men to send a proper new army down to the land of the Ice People. What we haven’t got are the men to do both those things at once.”

Sabrino had thought he’d escaped the austral continent for good. The chill that ran up his spine at Vasto’s words made him wonder if he was wrong. “Are things as bad as that?” He discovered he was whispering, too.

“They are right now.” But Colonel Vasto held out a hand and waggled it, palm down, to show they might not stay that way. “Once we get past this Sulingen place, once we get down into the Mamming Hills and seize those cinnabar mines, then we’ll have old Swemmel where we want him. Then we can start thinking about the austral continent again. You know as well as I do, it’s not as if the Lagoans can give us much trouble from there.”

“Well, that’s true enough,” Sabrino said. “Nobody can do much with that country; it’s too bloody poor. If it weren’t for furs and cinnabar, the hairy savages could keep it and welcome. But still. . We can’t afford to send any men at all?”

“Not a one,” Vasto answered. “That’s what they’re saying, anyhow. Swemmel’s pulling out all the stops down in Sulingen. He’s no fool-he’s crazy, but he’s no fool. He knows as well as we do that if we get across the Wolter and into the hills, he’s ruined. So we have to give it everything we’ve got down there, too.”

Sabrino spat on the carpeted floor of Vasto’s comfortable office, as he might have out in the field. His disgust was too great for any smaller gesture. Bitterly, he said, “They told us slaughtering the Kaunians would crack the Unkerlanters like an almond shell. They told us we had plenty of men, plenty of dragons, to lick the Lagoans off the land of the Ice People and still whip Swemmel, too. And they believed it, too, every time they said it. And now it comes down to this?”

“Now it comes down to this,” Vasto agreed. “But if we break the Unkerlanters this time, they’re broken for good. You can take that to the bank, Sabrino.”

“Well, you know more about the big picture than I do,” Sabrino said. “I never worried much about anything but my piece of it, whatever that happened to be. So here’s hoping you’re right.”

“Oh, I am.” Vasto spoke in his normal tone of voice for the first time. “Once we take Sulingen and the Mamming Hills, the Unkerlanters won’t be able to lick us. We’ll roll ‘em up the way you do a ball of yarn.”

“All right.” Sabrino held up a forefinger. “Now let me guess. I bet I can see the future without being any kind of mage at all. I predict”-he tried to sound mystical, and had no doubt he ended up sounding absurd-”I predict my wing will be flying west before long.”

Vasto said, “I haven’t seen your orders-I didn’t even know you were back on the mainland of Derlavai. But I wouldn’t bet an olive pit against you. They say southern Unkerlant is lovely this time of year. But they say it gets pretty cold in another couple of months, too.”

“I’ve seen all the cold I want, thanks,” Sabrino said. “We’ll just have to beat the Unkerlanters before then, that’s all.”

Sergeant Pesaro looked over with something less than delight the squad of Algarvian constables he led in Gromheort. “Come on, you lugs-let’s do it,” he said. “The sooner we take care of it, the sooner we can get back to our everyday business.”

Standing there listening to Pesaro, Bembo leaned toward Oraste and murmured, “He doesn’t much like this, either.”

Oraste’s answering shrug showed none of the usual Algarvian playfulness. It was as indifferent as it was massive: a mountain might have shrugged that way. “What difference does it make? He’s going to do it, and so are we.”

As if to underscore Oraste’s words, Pesaro went on, “We go in there; we grab our quota, and we get out. Has everybody got that?”

“Permission to fall out, Sergeant?” Almonio asked. The young constable never had been able to stand rounding up Kaunians.

But Pesaro shook his head. “Not this time. You’re coming along with us, by the powers above. This isn’t some little village in the middle of nowhere. This is the Kaunian quarter in the middle of Gromheort. You never can tell who’s liable to be watching. Any other questions?” He looked around. Nobody said anything. Pesaro stuck out a meaty forefinger. “All right. Let’s go.”

Off they went, bootheels clattering on cobbles. Almonio muttered to himself and swigged from a hip flask as they tramped along. Pesaro affected not to notice that. So did Bembo, though he wished he’d thought to equip himself with a hip flask, too.

They weren’t the only squad of constables on the march, either. Most of the Algarvians who kept order in Gromheort were moving toward the Kaunian quarter. With a chuckle, Bembo said, “Any Forthwegian crooks who know what we’ve got laid on could rob this town blind while we’re busy.”

“They could try,” Oraste said. “You ask me, though, there’s not much here worth stealing.”

A couple of Kaunians saw what amounted to a company of constables bearing down on their quarter. The blonds ran back toward the miserable market square they’d set up in the middle of the district, calling out in alarm. “Don’t worry about it, boys,” said the constabulary lieutenant in charge of the Algarvians. “Don’t you worry about it one little bit. You know what you’re supposed to do, don’t you?”

“Aye, sir,” the constables chorused.

“All right, then.” The lieutenant wore a whistle on a silver chain around his neck. He raised it to his lips and blew a long, piercing blast. “Go do it, then!”

“My squad-perimeter duty!” Pesaro bellowed, for all the world as if the constables were assaulting a fortified position down in southern Unkerlant. “Move! Move! Move! Don’t let the blond buggers get past you.”

Bembo never liked moving fast. Here, though, he had no choice. Along with the rest of the constables from Tricarico-and several other squads besides-he trotted two blocks into the Kaunian quarter, then moved along a street parallel to the one marking the district’s outer border. More constables fanned out through the couple of square blocks thus cut off, crying, “Kaunians, come forth!”

Some Kaunians did come forth. The Algarvian constables pounced on them and hustled them away toward the edge of the district, where more Algarvians took charge of them. Other blonds tried to hide. Wherever no one came forth, the constables broke down the doors and went through flats and shops. Bembo listened to shouts and screams and the sound of blows landing.

So did Oraste. Bembo’s burly partner kicked at the cobblestones. “Those buggers get to have all the fun, and we’re stuck here twiddling our thumbs,” he grumbled.

“There’s always next time,” answered Bembo, who was just as well pleased not to be beating people-and not to run the risk that some desperate Kaunian might fight back with a knife or even with a stick.

By the noises coming from the sealed-off blocks, the Kaunians weren’t doing much in the way of fighting back. The Algarvians’ descent on their district must have caught them by surprise. That rather surprised Bembo. Given the way his countrymen liked to brag and boast, they weren’t the best folk for keeping secrets.

He was about to say as much when a Kaunian woman fleeing from the constables dashed across the street toward the interior of the district to which the blonds had been relegated. Oraste let out a roar of glee. “Hold it right there, sister,” he shouted, “or you’re dead the next step.” He leveled his stick at the woman.

She skidded to a stop. Obviously, he meant what he said. If his tone hadn’t told her as much, the fierce eagerness on his face would have. “Why?” she asked bitterly, in good Algarvian. “What did I ever do to you?”

“It doesn’t matter,” Oraste said. “Just get moving, or it’s all over now instead of later.”

Her shoulders slumped. All the fight oozed out of her; Bembo watched it happen. She turned away and stumbled back toward the other blonds who were being rounded up.

Oraste still didn’t seem satisfied. “That was too easy,” he complained.

“You really want to kill somebody, don’t you?” Bembo said.

His partner nodded. “Sure-why not? That’s what this business is all about, isn’t it? — killing Kaunians, I mean. Of course, they do us more good dead if the mages get to use their life energy, but a couple knocked off here won’t make much difference one way or the other.”

“If you say so.” Bembo would sooner have collected bribes or favors of a more intimate sort from the blonds, but nobody paid any attention to what he wanted. He sighed, wallowing in self-pity.

And then several more Kaunians came dashing toward him, desperation in every line of their frantically fleeing bodies. Oraste didn’t have time for wordy challenges now. “Halt!” he shouted, and started blazing.

A Kaunian man went down almost at once, howling and grabbing at the wounded leg that would no longer bear his weight. A woman fell a moment later. She didn’t howl. She didn’t move, either. Red, red blood pooled under her head.

But the rest of the blonds ran the gauntlet and vanished into buildings beyond the constables’ perimeter. Oraste turned a furious glare on Bembo. “Well, you’re fornicating useless, aren’t you?” he snarled.

“They caught me by surprise,” Bembo said-not much of an excuse, but the best he could come up with. He advanced on the wounded Kaunian. “Let’s take charge of this son of a whore.”

“He hasn’t got all he deserves yet, by the powers above,” Oraste said, yanking his bludgeon from the belt loop that held it. “You can help me give him what for.”

He laid into the Kaunian with savage gusto. Every cry the wounded man let out seemed to spur him on. And Bembo had to beat the blond, too-either that or have Oraste reckon him a slacker. “You stupid bugger,” he said again and again as he swung his own club. “You ugly, stupid bugger.” He hated the Kaunian for not either escaping or dying. As things were, the fellow had left Bembo no choice but to do something for which he had no stomach.

When more blonds tried to break free of the Algarvian net, Bembo got to stop beating the wounded Kaunian man. Instead of blazing at the fugitives, he ran after them. Rather to his own surprise-he wasn’t especially fast on his feet-he caught up with one of them-a woman-and brought her down with a tackle that surely would have started a brawl on any football pitch.

“That’s more like it,” Oraste shouted from behind him. “Maybe you’re worth a little something after all.”

The blond woman, after letting out a shriek of despair when she fell, lay still on the cobbles, her shoulders shuddering with sobs. After a few deep, panting breaths of his own, Bembo said, “See? Running away didn’t do you any cursed good.” To drive the point home-and to look good to Oraste-he whacked her with his bludgeon. “Stupid bitch.”

“Futter you,” she said in clear Algarvian. Hate blazed from her blue eyes as she glared up at him. “If I hadn’t been big with child, you never would have caught me, you turd-faced tun of suet.”

Bembo stared down at her belly. Sure enough, it bulged. All his pride at running down anyone, even a woman, evaporated. He raised his club, then lowered it again. He couldn’t enjoy the notion of hitting a pregnant woman, either, even if she cursed and reviled him.

“Get up,” he told her. “You’re caught now. There’s nothing you can do about it.”

“No, there isn’t, is there?” she answered dully as she climbed to her feet. Her trousers were out at both knees; one of them bled. “They’ll take me away, and sooner or later they’ll cut my throat. And if I stay alive long enough to have the baby, they’ll cut its throat, too, or blaze it, or whatever they do. And they won’t care at all, will they?”

“Get moving,” Bembo told her. It wasn’t much of an answer, but he didn’t have to give her much of an answer. He was an Algarvian, after all. His folk had won the war here. Winners didn’t need to give losers an accounting of themselves. All they had to do was enforce obedience. Bembo brandished the bludgeon. “Get moving,” he said again, and she did. She had no choice-none except dying on the spot, anyhow. Bembo wasn’t sure he could blaze her in cold blood, but he hadn’t the slightest doubt Oraste could.

Oraste was interested in other things. “How many of them do you suppose we’ve caught?” he asked Bembo as the pregnant Kaunian woman limped away.

“I don’t know,” Bembo answered. “They’re stuffed in here pretty tight, I’ll tell you that. Hundreds, anyway.”

“Aye, I think you’re right,” Oraste said. “Well, good riddance to the lot of ‘em, and I hope they end up smashing a lot of Unkerlanters when they go.”

“Aye.” Bembo did his best to keep his voice from sounding too hollow. If the Algarvians were going to sacrifice the Kaunians-and his countrymen plainly were-he couldn’t do anything about it. Didn’t it make sense, then, to get as much benefit from their life energy as possible?

That seemed logical. And he wasn’t like foolish Almonio, to get in an uproar about something he couldn’t change. But he couldn’t take it for granted the way Oraste did, either.

Well, what should I do, then? he wondered. The only thing that did any good was not thinking about it at all. That wasn’t easy, not when he was in the middle of rounding up Kaunians to send them west.

And Sergeant Pesaro didn’t make it any easier, bellowing, “Come on, we’ve got our quota. Let’s get these whoresons over to the caravan depot. The sooner we’re rid of them, the sooner we don’t have to worry about them anymore.”

On the way to the depot, Forthwegians stared at the column of unhappy Kaunians. Some showed no expression whatever. Maybe they, like Bembo, were trying not to think about what would happen to the blonds. A good many, though, knew perfectly well what they thought. Some jeered in their own language. Others, cruder or just more erudite, chose classical Kaunian.

Bembo understood bits of that. It was about what Algarvians would have said in the same circumstances.

Most of the Kaunians just shambled along. A few shouted defiant curses at the folk who had been their neighbors. Bembo supposed he ought to admire their spirit. Admire it or not, though, he didn’t think it would do them a bit of good.

Now that Sidroc had seen a little soldiering, the whole business appealed to him much less than it had when he joined Plegmund’s Brigade. Along with two squads of his comrades, he tramped along a dusty road that led from one miserable excuse for a village to the next. He yawned, wishing he could fall asleep as he marched.

Sergeant Werferth saw the yawn. As far as Sidroc could tell, Sergeant Werferth saw everything. He didn’t look as if he had eyes in the back of his head, but that was the only explanation that made sense to Sidroc. Werferth said, “Keep your eyes open, kid. Never can tell what’s liable to be waiting for you.”

“Aye, Sergeant,” Sidroc said dutifully. There were times when a common soldier could sass a sergeant, but this didn’t feel like one of them.

And, however reluctant he was to admit it even to himself, he knew Werferth was right. The brigands in these parts were sneaky demons. They liked skulking through the woods best, but they’d come out and waylay soldiers in open country, too. Most marches were nothing but long, tedious bores. Terror punctuated the ones that weren’t, with no telling when it might break out.

A couple of Unkerlanters-Grelzers, Sidroc supposed they were in this part of the kingdom-stood weeding in a field off to the side of the road. They straightened up and started for a moment at the troopers of Plegmund’s Brigade. “Whoresons,” Sidroc muttered. “As soon as we’ve gone by, they’ll find some way to let the bandits know.”

“Maybe not,” Werferth said, and Sidroc looked at him in surprise: the milk of human kindness had long since curdled in the sergeant. After a couple of strides, Werferth went on, “Maybe they’re bandits themselves. In that case, they don’t have to let anybody know.”

“Oh.” Sidroc trudged along for a couple of paces while he chewed on that. “Aye. How do we do anything about it? If we can’t tell the brigands from the peasants who might be on our side, that makes things tougher.”

Werferth’s shrug had no Algarvian-style extravagance or mirth in it; all it said was that he either didn’t know, didn’t care, or both. “The way it looks to me is,” he said, “we treat ‘em all like enemies. If we’re wrong some of the time, so what? If we treat ‘em like our pals and they stab us in the back, then we’ve got real trouble.”

Again, Sidroc kept marching while he thought. “Makes sense,” he said at last. “They won’t ever love us, most of’em. They’re foreigners, after all.”

Werferth laughed. “As far as they’re concerned, we’re the foreigners. But aye, that’s about the size of it. If we keep ‘em afraid of us, they’ll do what they’re told, and that’s about all anybody can hope for.”

Birds chirped and trilled. Some of the songs were different from the ones Sidroc had heard up in Forthweg. He knew that much, though he would have been hard pressed to say anything more. Except for the most obvious ones like crows, he didn’t know which birds went with which calls. Off in the distance, a dog barked, and then another. That meant something to him, though it wouldn’t have before he came down to Grelz. “Sounds like a village up ahead,” he remarked.

“Aye.” Werferth nodded. “There’s supposed to be one somewhere past that stand of trees there.” His eyes narrowed. “I wonder if the brigands have a surprise waiting for us in those trees. Sort of thing they’d try.”

“Do you want to go in there and try to flush them out?” Sidroc asked. A few weeks before, he would have sounded eager. Now he hoped Werferth would tell him no.

And Werferth did shake his head. “No way to guess how many of those buggers might be hiding in there. No, what we’ll do is, we’ll swing wide through the fields-we won’t stay on the road and give them a clean, easy blaze at us. There are ways to ask for trouble, you know what I mean?”

Before Sidroc could answer, a dark cloud covered the sun. More came drifting up from out of the west. “Looks like rain,” he said. That sparked another thought in him: “I wonder what kind of mushrooms a good soaking rain’d bring out down here.”

“If you don’t know what they are, don’t eat ‘em,” Werferth advised. “You watch-some cursed lackwit’s going to try something he’s never seen before, and it’ll kill him. Silly bugger’ll get what he deserves, too, you ask me.”

Up in Forthweg, people died every year from eating mushrooms they shouldn’t have. Sidroc’s attitude was much like Werferth’s: if they were stupid enough to do that, they had it coming to them. But in Forthweg, everybody was supposed to know what was good and what wasn’t. How could you do that here? Sidroc figured he might take a chance or two. If the Unkerlanters couldn’t kill him with sticks, odds were they couldn’t kill him with mushrooms, either.

Big, fat raindrops started falling about the time the troopers from Plegmund’s Brigade went off the road and into the fields. Sidroc pulled his hooded rain cape out of his pack and threw it on. The ground under his feet rapidly turned to mud. He didn’t like squelching through it. But the raindrops also meant beams wouldn’t carry so far, which would make any attack from the woods harder to bring off. Give a little, get a little, he thought.

No Unkerlanter hordes screaming “Urra!” burst from the trees. No devious Unkerlanter assassins skulked after Sidroc and his comrades, either. He couldn’t prove a single irregular had been lurking in the forest. All the same, he was just as well pleased Werferth gave it a wide berth.

When he came back to the road-which had turned into mud even stickier than that in the fields-he could see the Unkerlanter village ahead. “Is that a friendly village?” he asked. Some few places in Grelz were conspicuously loyal to King Raniero. Even the Algarvians were supposed to leave them alone, though Algarvians, as far as Sidroc could tell, did pretty much as they pleased.

But Werferth shook his head. “No, we can plunder there to our hearts’ content. They’re fair game.”

The villagers must have known they were fair game, too. Through the rain, Sidroc watched them fleeing at the first sight of the men from Plegmund’s Brigade. “They don’t trust us.” He barked laughter. “I wonder why.”

“We ought to see if we can catch a couple and find out why,” Werferth said. But then he shrugged and shook his head. “Not much chance, is there? They’ve got too good a start on us.”

Not everyone had fled, as the troopers discovered when they strode into the village. A handful of old men and women came out to greet them. One geezer, tottering along on a stick, even turned out to speak some Forthwegian. “I was in your kingdom on garrison duty twenty years before the start of the Six Years’ War,” he quavered.

“Bully for you, old-timer,” Werferth said. “Where’s the rest of the people who live here? Why’d they hightail it?”

He had to repeat himself; the old Unkerlanter was deaf as could be. At last, the fellow answered, “Well, you know how it is. People aren’t friendly nowadays.”

Looking at the wrinkled, toothless grannies who’d come out with their menfolk, Sidroc didn’t much feel like being friendly to them. What went through his mind was, If I ever get that desperate, I think I’d sooner blaze myself Maybe Werferth’s mind was traveling along the same ley line, for all he said us, “Give us food and spirits and we won’t give you a hard time.”

After the fellow who’d been in Forthweg translated that into Unkerlanter or Grelzer or whatever they spoke hereabouts, the old men and women hurried to obey. Black bread and pease porridge and smoked pork weren’t very exciting, but they filled the belly. Instead of spirits, Sidroc drank ale. Like any proper Forthwegian, he would sooner have had wine, but the next vineyard he saw in this part of the world would be the first.

“King Raniero good, eh?” he asked the wizened old lady who fetched him his mug of ale. Good wasn’t much different in Unkerlanter from its Forthwegian equivalent.

But the old woman looked at him with beady eyes-one of them clouded by a cataract-and said something in her own language that, coupled with her outspread hands, had to mean she didn’t understand him. Sidroc didn’t believe her for a minute. She just didn’t want to answer, which meant the answer she would have given was no.

Anger surged in Sidroc. He didn’t have to take anything from these cursed Unkerlanters. If they’d been on his side, most of the people in this village wouldn’t have lit out as soon as they found the men from Plegmund’s Brigade were coming. “We ought to have some fun here,” he said, a nasty sort of anticipation in his voice.

One of his squadmates, the ruffian named Ceorl, spoke up: “Can’t have as much fun as we might. Everything’s too stinking wet to burn the way it should.”

“We can always slap these buggers around,” Sidroc said. “Pity none of the younger women hung around. We’d have better sport then.” Nobody was inclined to say no to a man who carried a stick. Sidroc had watched Algarvian soldiers making free with Kaunian women-and with some Forthwegians, too-back in Gromheort. Now that he carried his own stick, he enjoyed imitating the redheads.

As he spoke, he eyed the old woman who’d brought him ale. She couldn’t hide the fear on her face. Even if she wouldn’t admit it, she understood some of what he and his pals were saying. As far as he was concerned, that was reason enough to slap her around … in a little while. Till then, she could bloody well keep on serving him. He thrust the mug at her and growled, “More.”

She understood that, all right. She hurried off to fill up the mug again. Sidroc poured the ale down his throat. No, it wasn’t nearly as good as wine. But it would do. It put fire in his belly, and fire in his head, too.

He started yet another mug of ale, fully intending to start raising a ruckus when he finished that. He was just draining it, though, when a horseman came splashing up the villages main, and only, street. The fellow called out in unmistakable Forthwegian: “Ho, men of Plegmund’s Brigade!”

Sergeant Werferth was the senior underofficer. He pulled his hood down low over his eyes, stepped out into the rain, and said, “We’re here, all right. What’s toward?”

“We’re all ordered back to the encampment outside Herborn,” the courier answered.

“Now there’s a fine piece of bloody foolishness,” Werferth said. “How are we supposed to hold down this stinking countryside if we sit in that cursed encampment with a thumb up our arse?” Werferth liked fighting, all right.

But the courier gave a blunt, two-word reply: “We’re not.”

That brought not only Werferth but Sidroc and Ceorl and almost all the other troopers from Plegmund’s Brigade out into the rain. “Then what in blazes will we be doing?” Sidroc demanded. Several other men threw out almost identical questions.

“We’ll be getting on a ley-line caravan and heading south and west,” the courier said. “If the lousy Grelzers want to go out and chase their own brigands, fine. If they don’t, the powers below can eat ‘em up, for all we care from now on. They’re sending us off to fight the real Unkerlanter armies, not these odds and sods who sneak through the woods.”

“Ahh,” Werferth said, a grunt of satisfaction that might almost have come from a man who’d just had a woman. “It won’t get any better than that.” He turned to his troopers. “The Algarvians have decided we’re real soldiers after all.”

“My arse,” Ceorl muttered to Sidroc. “The Algarvians have lost so many men of their own, they’re throwing us into the fire to see if we can put it out.”

Sidroc shrugged. “Anybody wants to kill me, he won’t have an easy time of it,” he said. Werferth nodded and slapped him on the back. Rainwater sprayed off his cape.

Captain Gradasso bowed to Krasta. “An you be fain to closet yourself with Colonel Lurcanio, milady, I am to tell you he hath gone forth into Priekule, but his return is expected ere eventide.”

Krasta giggled. “You talk so funny!” she exclaimed. “It’s not quite classical Kaunian anymore, but it’s not really Valmieran, either. It’s a mishmash, that’s what it is.”

Lurcanio’s new aide shrugged. “Bit by bit, I come to apprehend somewhat of the modern speech. Though my locutions be yet archaic, I find also that I make shift for to be understood. An my apprehension gaineth apace, ere o’er-much time elapseth I shall make of myself a fair scholar of Valmieran.”

“Don’t hold your breath,” Krasta advised him, an idiom which, perhaps fortunately, he didn’t catch. Her expression sharpened. “What’s Lurcanio doing in Priekule?”

Captain Gradasso shrugged again. “Whatsoever it be, I am not privy to’t.”

“Privy to it?” That set Krasta giggling once more. Her mirth puzzled Gradasso. She didn’t feel like explaining, and took herself off. When she looked back over her shoulder, Gradasso was staring after her, scratching his head. “Privy to it!” she repeated, and dissolved into still more giggles. “Oh, dear!”

The Algarvians who helped Lurcanio administer Priekule all eyed Krasta curiously as she threaded her way back past their desks. They often saw her angry, sometimes conspiratorial, but hardly ever amused. Some of them, the bolder ones, smiled and winked at her as she went by.

She ignored them. They were small fry, not even worthy of her contempt unless they let their hands get bolder than their faces. And her giggles soon subsided. When she thought of the privy, she thought of disposing of the pieces into which she’d torn the broadsheet her brother had written.

Skarnu’s alive, she thought, and shook her head in slow wonder. She still didn’t know who’d sent her the broadsheet or where it had come from, but she couldn’t have been wrong about her brother’s script.

As she went upstairs to her bedchamber, something new occurred to her. Some while before, Lurcanio had asked her about some provincial town or other. She frowned, trying to remember the name. It wouldn’t come. She kicked at a stair. But her Algarvian lover-her Algarvian keeper-had seemed to think this town, whatever its name was, had something to do with Skarnu.

She couldn’t ask Lurcanio about it, not if he was out. How inconsiderate of him, she thought. Then she realized she couldn’t ask him about it even after he got back. He had a cursedly suspicious mind and a cursedly retentive memory. He would still know the name of that miserable little town, and he was all too likely to figure out why she’d started asking questions about it. No, she would have to stay silent.

“Curse him!” she snarled, an imprecation aimed mostly at Lurcanio but also at her brother. For Krasta, staying silent was an act far more unnatural than any Lurcanio enjoyed in the bedchamber. Probably even more unnatural than anything Valnu enjoys in the bedchamber, Krasta thought. That was enough to set her giggling again. She never had found out what all Valnu enjoyed in the bedchamber. One of these days, she told herself. Aye, one of these days when Lurcanio infuriates me again. That shouldn‘t be too long.

She’d just reached the upper floor when Malya started howling. Krasta set her teeth. Bauska’s bastard brat wasn’t quite so annoying these days as she had been right after she was born, when she’d screeched all the time. She didn’t look so ugly, either; when she smiled, even Krasta found herself smiling back. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t a nuisance.

And now Krasta smiled, too, though she couldn’t see the baby. “Bauska! Bauska, what are you doing? Come here at once,” she called, as if she couldn’t hear Malya crying, either. Her servant might had had the little squalling pest, but Krasta was cursed if she would let that inconvenience her. “Bauska!”

“I’ll be with you in a moment, milady.” Bauska sounded as if she were forcing the words out through clenched teeth. Krasta’s smile got wider. Sure enough, she’d hit a nerve.

“Hurry up,” she said. No, she wouldn’t make things easy for her maidservant. And here came Bauska, her tunic sleeves rolled up, her expression put upon. But when Krasta got a look at-and a whiff of-Bauska’s hands, her smile evaporated. “Powers above, go wash off that filth!”

“You did tell me to hurry, milady,” Bauska answered. “I always try to give satisfaction in every way.”

By the look in her eye, she thought she’d won the round. But Krasta wasn’t easily bested. “If you hadn’t given Captain Mosco every satisfaction, your hands wouldn’t stink now,” she snapped.

Bauska looked as if she were on the point of saying something more, something that likely would have landed her in real trouble with her mistress. And then, very visibly, she bit it back. After a deep breath, she asked, “How may I serve you, milady?”

Krasta hadn’t even thought about that. She’d called her maidservant to be annoying, not because she wanted anything in particular. She had to cast about for something Bauska might do. At last, she came up with something familiar: “Go down and tell the stablemen and the driver to get my carriage ready. I intend to do some shopping today.”

“Aye, milady,” Bauska said. “Have I your gracious leave to wash my hands first?”

“I already told you to do that,” Krasta said with the air of one conferring a large, undeserved boon. Bauska departed. Not until she was gone did Krasta wonder if she’d been sarcastic. The marchioness shook her head. Bauska wouldn’t dare: she was convinced of it.

She hadn’t really planned to go into Priekule, but the thought of a day spent on the Avenue of Equestrians, the principal street of shops and fine eateries, was too tempting to resist. Downstairs she went, and stood around fuming till the driver brought the carriage out of the stable. When she decided to do something, she always wanted to do it on the instant.

But even going into town didn’t make her so happy as it would have in the days before the war. Though she was sleeping with an Algarvian colonel, she didn’t like seeing kilted Algarvian soldiers on the streets, gaping like so many farmers at the sights of the big city or cuddling yellow-haired Valmieran women. The Algarvians had even presumed to put up street signs in their language to direct the soldiers to the principal sights. It was as if they thought Priekule would be theirs forever-and so, by all indications they did.

Krasta also scowled every time she saw a Valmieran, whether man or woman, in a kilt. In a way, that struck her as even worse than going to bed with the redheads: it abandoned the very essence of Kaunianity. She hadn’t worried about such things till she recognized her brother’s handwriting on that broadsheet. If Skarnu worried about them, she supposed she should, too.

But, set against the display windows of the Avenue of Equestrians, Kaunianity didn’t seem so important. “Let me off here,” she told her driver.

“Aye, milady.” He reined in. After he handed Krasta down from the carriage, he climbed back into his seat and took a flask from his pocket. Krasta hardly noticed. She’d already begun exploring.

Not only did she examine the display windows, she also poked her nose into every eatery on the Avenue of Equestrians. Captain Gradasso had said Lurcanio was here somewhere. If he wasn’t with his countrymen but with some little blond tart, Krasta would make sure he remembered it for a long time to come.

If he was with some little blond tart, he was more likely to be in a hostel bedchamber than in an eatery: Krasta recognized as much. But she couldn’t check bedchambers, while eateries were easy. And Lurcanio liked fancy dining. He might want to impress a new Valmieran girl-or fatten her up-before he took her to bed.

“Why, hello, you sweet thing!” That wasn’t Lurcanio-it was Viscount Valnu, who sat not far from the door of the fourth or fifth eatery into which Krasta peered. He sprang to his feet so he could bow. “Come on down and take lunch with me.”

“All right,” Krasta said. And if she and Valnu happened to end up in a hostel bedchamber-well, it wouldn’t be anything that hadn’t almost happened before. Swinging her hips, she walked downstairs and sat beside him. “What are you eating there?”

“Boiled pork and sour cabbage,” he answered, and then eyed her. “Why? What would you like me to be eating?”

“You are a shameless man,” she said. She eyed him, too, but just then a waiter came up and asked what she wanted. She ordered the same thing Valnu was having, and ale to go with it.

“You’re looking lovely today,” Valnu said with another carnivorous smile.

“I’m sure you say that to all the girls,” Krasta told him, which only made him grin and nod in delight. She didn’t want him to take anything for granted, and so, with a spark of malice, she added, “And to at least half the boys, as well.”

“What if I do?” Valnu answered with an expressive shrug. “Variety is the life of spice-isn’t that what they say?” He gave her a limp-wristed wave and some malice of his own: “I wouldn’t say it to your precious Lurcanio, I’ll tell you that.”

Where Krasta had been intent on cuckolding her Algarvian lover, now she found herself defending him: “He knows what he’s doing, as a matter of fact.”

“What if he does?” Valnu shrugged again, almost as an Algarvian might have done. And he was wearing a kilt-Krasta had noticed when he rose to greet her. Pointing to her, he went on, “But do you know what you’re doing?”

“Of course I do.” Doubt was not among the things that troubled Krasta. Again, she might have said more without the waiter’s interruption, but he distracted her by setting the ale on the table.

“Aye, you always know.” Valnu’s smile, instead of being hard as it had been a moment before, seemed strange and sweet, almost sad. “You’re always so sure-but how much good does that do you, with the avalanche thundering down on all of us?”

“Now what are you talking about?” Krasta asked impatiently. “Avalanches! There aren’t any mountains around Priekule.”

Viscount Valnu sighed. “No, not literally. But you know what’s happening to us.” Seeing Krasta’s blank look, he amplified that: “To our people, I mean. I know you know about that.” He studied her.

She didn’t think to wonder how he knew. “It’s pretty bad,” she agreed. “But it’s worse over in the west-and won’t it get better if the miserable war ever ends?”

“That depends on how the war ends,” Valnu replied, a distinction too subtle to mean much to Krasta. The waiter set her plate of pork and cabbage in front of her. “Put it on my bill,” Valnu said as she dug in.

“You don’t need to do that,” Krasta said. “I outrank you, after all.”

“Nobility obliges,” Valnu said lightly. He regained his leer. “And how obliging do you feel like being?”

“Are you an Algarvian officer, to think you can buy me with a lunch?” Krasta retorted. They flirted through the meal, but she didn’t go to a hostel with him. Mentioning Algarvian officers made her think of Lurcanio again, and she found she simply did not have the nerve to be deliberately unfaithful to him. Someone will have to sweep me off my feet, she thought, and wondered how she could arrange that.