Through the Darkness

Nine

As happened so often when Pekka was intent on her work, a knock on the door made her jump. She came back to herself in some surprise; it was time to head for home, which meant that was likely her husband out there. Sure enough, Leino stood in the hallway. Only after she gave him a hug did she realize how grim he looked. “What’s wrong?” she asked. “Sorceries making squibs instead of fires today?”

“No, the magic went about as well as it could,” he answered. “But they’re closing down my group, or most of it, even so.”

The sentence made perfect grammatical sense. It still didn’t mean anything to Pekka. “Why would they do that?” she asked. “It’s crazy.”

“Maybe so, but maybe not, too,” Leino said. “They don’t think so. They’re calling just about every practical mage who’s a man and under fifty into the military service of the Seven Princes-into the army or navy, in other words.”

“Oh.” Pekka deflated with the word, as a blown-up pig’s bladder might have done after a pinprick. “But how will they make better weapons if they send the sorcerers off to fight?”

“It’s a good question,” Leino agreed. “The other side of the silverpiece is, how can the soldiers fight without mages at the front to ward them and to use spells against the enemy?”

“But we haven’t got that big an army,” Pekka said.

“We haven’t now, no. But we’re going to,” Leino said. “Come on; let’s walk to the caravan stop. No use getting home late because of this, is there? I’m not going in tonight, or tomorrow, either. It won’t be long, though.” He started down the hall toward the door.

Numbly, Pekka followed. Having Olavin go into the army was one thing. Her brother-in-law would keep right on being a banker. He’d just be a banker for Kuusamo rather than for himself and his partners. If Leino went to war, he would go to war in truth.

As if reading her thoughts, he said, “You know, sweetheart, we’re only just getting started in this war. We’re going to need a lot of soldiers to fight the Gongs and the Algarvians both, and they’re going to need a lot of mages. When the Algarvians smote Yliharma, that was a warning about how hard this fight would be. If we don’t take it seriously, we’ll go under.”

“But where will the new things come from?” Pekka repeated as her husband held the door open so she could go outside.

He closed the door, then trotted a couple of steps to catch up with her as they walked across the campus of Kajaani City College. “From the mages who aren’t men under fifty,” he answered. “From the old men like your colleagues, and from women, too. We aren’t Algarvians, after all, to think women worthless outside the bedroom.”

“Will it be enough?” Pekka asked.

“How can I know that?” Leino said, all too reasonably. “It had better be enough-that’s all I can tell you.”

Two students, both young men, strode across their path. One of them looked back at Pekka. It meant nothing; it was no more than the way almost any man would eye an attractive woman. All of a sudden, though, Pekka hated him. Why wasn’t he going into the army instead of Leino?

Because he doesn’t know anything much. The thought echoed inside her head. She glanced over toward her husband. How unfair to have to go off and leave his family behind because he’d spent years learning to master a complex, difficult art. Knowledge was supposed to bring rewards, not penalties. Pekka reached out and squeezed Leino’s hand as hard as she could. He squeezed back, nodding as if she’d said something he understood perfectly well.

A good-sized crowd had gathered at the caravan stop in the center of the campus, waiting to go back to their homes in town. A news-sheet vendor cried out headlines: “Algarvians send dragons by the score over Sulingen again! Town in flames! Thousands said to be dead!”

“If it weren’t for the Strait of Valmiera, that could be us,” Pekka said.

Leino shrugged. “We have trouble fighting Gyongyos and Algarve at the same time. Mezentio won’t have an easy time warring on us and Lagoas and Unkerlant. He’d better not, anyhow, or we’re all ruined.”

“That’s so.” But then Pekka remembered how she’d thought the whole world was falling apart when the Algarvians made their sorcerous attack on Yliharma. “But we have scruples Mezentio’s thrown over the side, too.” And she clung to Leino, afraid of what would happen if he went to war against a kingdom whose mages didn’t blink at slaughtering hundreds, thousands-for all she knew, tens of thousands-to get what they wanted.

“It’ll be all right,” Leino said, though he had no more certain way of knowing that than Pekka did.

She was about to tell him as much when the ley-line caravan came gliding up. Only a couple of people got off, one of them a grizzled night watchman who’d been patrolling the City College campus longer than Pekka had been alive. But even the Kuusamans, most of the time an orderly folk, jostled and elbowed one another as they swarmed onto the cars.

Pekka found herself with a seat. Leino stood by her, hanging on to the overhead railing. The caravan slid away toward the center of town and then toward the residential districts farther east. The fellow sitting beside Pekka got up and got off. She moved over by the window. Leino sat down beside her till the caravan got to the stop closest to their home.

They held hands all the way up the little hill that led up to their house, and to Elimaki and Olavin’s beside it. Pekka smiled at Uto’s excited squeal when Leino knocked on the front door. Elimaki was smiling when she opened the door, too-smiling in relief, unless Pekka missed her guess. Since Uto often made her feel that way, she could hardly blame her sister for being glad to hand back her son.

Uto came hurtling out. Leino grabbed him and tossed him in the air. “What did you do today?” his father asked.

“Nothing,” Uto replied, which, if it meant anything, meant nothing Aunt Elimaki caught me at, anyhow.

“You look tired,” Elimaki told Pekka.

“No, that’s not it.” Pekka shook her head. “But Leino”-she touched her husband on the arm-”has been called into the service of the Seven Princes.”

“Oh!” Elimaki’s hand leaped up to her mouth. She knew what that meant, or might mean. Aye, Olavin had gone into the service, too, but he probably wouldn’t get anywhere near real fighting, not when he was as skilled at casting accounts as he was. The same didn’t hold for Leino. Pekka’s sister stepped forward and hugged him. “Powers above keep you safe.”

“From your mouth to their ears,” Leino said. Like everyone else, he surely knew the abstract powers had no ears. That didn’t keep him-or a lot of other people-from talking as if they did.

Uto came out onto the front porch in time to hear what was going on. He had a gift for that. One day, he might make a fine spy. “Papa’s going to go off and kill a bunch of stinking Gongs?” he exclaimed. “Hurray!”

He capered about. Above his head, his mother and father and aunt exchanged wry looks. “If only it were so simple,” Pekka said sadly. “If only anything were so simple.”

Leino ruffled Uto’s coarse black hair. “Come on, you bloodthirsty little savage,” he said, his tone belying the harsh words. “Let’s go home and have some supper.”

“What’s supper going to be?” Uto’s tone implied that, if he didn’t care for what was offered, he might not feel like going home.

But when Pekka said, “I’ve got some nice crabs in the rest crate,” her son started capering again. He liked the soft, sweet flesh that lurked inside crabs’ shells. He liked cracking the shells to get at the meat even better.

As usual with crabs, he made a hideous mess of himself during supper. Odds were he liked that best of all. Afterwards, Pekka heated water on the stove to add to the cold she ran into a basin. Uto didn’t particularly like getting a bath, not least because Pekka spanked his bare wet bottom if he splashed too outrageously.

He played for a while after the bath. Then Leino read him a hunting story. After that, with only a token protest, he tucked his stuffed leviathan under his chin and went to sleep.

Pekka walked into the kitchen and came back with an old bottle of Jelga-van brandy and a couple of glasses. She poured drinks for herself and Leino. “What I’d really like to do is get so drunk I won’t be worth anything for the next two days,” she said. “Ilmarinen would do it-and then on the third day he’d come up with something nobody else would think of in the next hundred years.”

“He’s something, all right,” Leino agreed. “But I don’t want to talk about him, not tonight.”

Pekka cocked her head to one side and looked at him from the corner of her eye. “Oh?” she said, her voice arch. “What do you want to do tonight?”

“This,” he said, and took her in his arms. After they’d kissed and caressed each other for a while, Pekka thought he would lead her back to the bedchamber. Instead, he pulled her tunic off over her head and lowered his lips to her breasts.

“Oh,” she said softly, and pressed his head against her. But caution reasserted itself. “What if Uto walks in and catches us?”

“Then he does, that’s all,” Leino answered. “We’ll send him back to bed again with a warm backside, and then we’ll get back to what we were doing.”

Most nights, Pekka would have kept on arguing a good deal longer. Not tonight. She usually had a good healthy yen for her husband. Tonight, the way she stroked him, the way she took him in her mouth, the way she lay down in front of the fireplace and arched her hips so he could go into her felt as much like desperation as like passion. The mewling noises she made deep in her throat as her own pleasure overflowed came far louder and wilder than usual.

Sweat slicked Leino’s hair. It had very little to do with the fire only a few feet away. He grinned down at her. “I ought to get called into the service of the Seven Princes more often.”

She poked him in the ribs, which made him grunt and twist away and pull out of her. She felt him go with a stab of regret. How many more chances would they have before the war swept them apart? Would they ever have more chances after the war swept them apart?

To her dismay, tears dripped from the corners of her eyes and spilled down onto the rug. Leino brushed them away. “It’ll be all right,” he said. “Everything will be all right.”

“It had better be,” Pekka said fiercely. She clutched him to her. Presently, she felt him stir against her flank. That was what she’d been waiting for. She rolled him onto his back and rode astride him-she knew that was easier for his second round, and knew how much she wanted one. It wouldn’t solve anything-she knew as much, even while she threw back her head and gasped as if she’d run a long way. For now, though, she didn’t have to think about all the things that might happen later. And that wasn’t so bad.

The distant mutter ahead was the surf rolling up onto the rocky beaches of southern Valmiera. Cornelu glanced at the Lagoans his leviathan had borne across the Strait of Valmiera from Setubal. He spoke two words in their tongue: “Good luck.”

One of them said, “Thanks.” The other just nodded. They both let go of the leviathan’s harness and struck out for the shore a few hundred yards away. Cornelu wondered if he’d ever see either one again. He doubted it. The Lagoans were brave, but they weren’t showing much in the way of sense, not here.

Or maybe he had it wrong. He recognized the possibility. A lot was going on here, in the ocean, on the shore, and in the air above the little Valmieran village called Dukstas. Lagoan dragons flew overhead, dropping eggs all over the surrounding countryside and, with luck, keeping Algarvian footsoldiers from coming forward. Along with the saboteurs and spies who rode leviathans, Lagoan ships had brought along several regiments of soldiers. They were going up onto the beach even as Cornelu watched. For the first time, Lagoas was bringing the war home to the occupiers of Valmiera.

“But what do they expect?” Cornelu asked his leviathan, as if it knew and could answer. “Will a few regiments throw all the Algarvians out of this kingdom? Will the Valmierans rise up and fight the occupiers? Will it be a great victory? Or are they only throwing their men away to no purpose?”

Columns of smoke rose into the sky from Dukstas. King Vitor’s thrust here had caught whatever Algarvian garrison the seaside hamlet held by surprise. For the moment, it belonged to the Lagoans. But now that they had it, what would they do with it?

“They do not think these things through,” Cornelu said. Now that the leviathan had served him well for a while, he talked to it almost as he would have to Eforiel. “Will they storm on to Priekule, chasing Mezentio’s men before them as they go? I have my doubts.”

Maybe the Lagoans didn’t have any doubts, because more and more men paddled ashore in small boats. Cornelu supposed the Lagoans had chosen to attack Dukstas because a ley line ran close by the beach. Even if naval vessels couldn’t come right up to the shore, they could let soldiers off close by. And they certainly had taken the Algarvians by surprise.

Even so, Mezentio’s men were fighting back. Eggs splashed into the water around the Lagoan warships. One of them burst alarmingly close to Cornelu. The shock wave buffeted him and the leviathan. The beast, which felt it far more acutely than a man would, quivered in pain. A burst too near a leviathan could kill, as Cornelu knew too well.

But Mezentio’s men didn’t even know he and his leviathan were there. They were after the ships, which they could see. The naval vessels fought back with eggs of their own, and with heavy sticks. Those set more fires on the shore. Despite everything the navy could do, despite the dragons, an Algarvian egg struck home. A ship staggered in the water, staggered and fell off the ley line. Whether any more eggs hit it or not, it wouldn’t be going home to Setubal.

Cornelu looked up into the sky. Dragons wheeled and twisted there now. The Lagoans weren’t having it all their own way, as they had when the attack on Dukstas began. The Algarvians were flying in beasts of their own from the interior of Valmiera. If they flew in enough of them-if they had enough of them to fly in-the ships here would be in a lot of trouble. One of the lessons of this war was that ships needed dragons to ward them from other dragons.

An older lesson, one dating from the Six Years’ War, was that ships needed leviathans to ward them from other ships and leviathans. How long would the Algarvians take to start moving patrol craft from ports along the Strait of Valmiera to attack the Lagoan interlopers? Not long-Cornelu was sure of that.

He urged his leviathan away from the little Lagoan fleet. If-no, when- Mezentio’s sailors moved to the attack, he wanted to be ready to give them an unpleasant surprise. He knew the ley line along which the ships would be coming. As for leviathans. . He grinned. With the beast he rode, he was willing and more than willing to take on any Algarvian leviathan around. He hadn’t thought he would feel that way about any beast save Eforiel, but he’d turned out to be wrong.

An Algarvian dragon dove on one of the Lagoan ships. Cornelu could see the eggs slung under the dragon’s belly. Beams from heavy sticks reached up for it. One of them found it before the dragonflier let the eggs drop. Burning and tumbling, the dragon fell into the sea. The ship kept gliding along the ley line.

“Up, my friend,” Cornelu told his leviathan, and it rose in the water. He, of course, rose with it. Taking advantage of that, he peered inland. He couldn’t see so much as he would have liked; smoke from the fires already burning in the seaside village obscured his view. But he could see that the Lagoan soldiers seemed to be making for some specific place in back of Dukstas, not fanning out all over the countryside. Maybe that meant they really did know what they were doing. He hoped so, for their sake.

Nobody’d bothered to tell him what they were doing, though. He sighed. That was no tiling out of the ordinary.

And, sure enough, here came an Algarvian ship from the east, the first, no doubt, of many to assail the Lagoan fleet. Cornelu’s lips skinned back from his teeth in a savage smile. The Algarvians had come too fast. They were intrepid, sometimes intrepid to a fault. Having got the order to attack the Lagoans, they’d piled into their patrol craft and charged out of whatever harbor housed it, eager to be first on the scene and make King Vitor’s men pay.

“And here they are, out ahead of everyone,” Cornelu murmured, “and the next thought of leviathans they have will be their first.”

He’d sunk a ley-line cruiser. He had no trouble sneaking up on this smaller enemy ship: Mezentio’s men, their eyes on the target ahead, paid no attention to anything but the Lagoan ships on their ley line. The rest of the ocean? They worried about it not at all.

Cornelu secured an egg to the side of the Algarvian vessel, then urged his leviathan away from it. When the egg burst, the leviathan gave a startled jerk, then swam away harder than ever. After a while, it had to surface to breathe. Cornelu looked back toward the ship he’d attacked.

There wasn’t much to see, not any more. That egg could have put paid to another cruiser. It was ever so much more than enough to wreck a patrol craft. Only a few bits of flotsam floated on the water; only a few men struggled in it. If they kept their heads, they might be able to swim to shore. Most of their countrymen, though, had gone down and would never rise again.

Another Algarvian ship had been perhaps a mile behind the first one. Seeing it come to grief, Mezentio’s men frantically brought their vessel to a stop. Eggs from the Lagoan ships began landing near it, and quickly scored a couple of hits. Cornelu cheered. The Algarvian vessel reversed its course and limped away from the fight.

But more Algarvian ships were coming from the west, and more and more Algarvian dragons were overhead. A Lagoan ship caught fire and settled back to the surface of the sea, unable to ride on the ley line any more. Another ship, hit by several eggs, rolled over onto its side and sank.

When Cornelu glanced at the sun, he was surprised to see how far into the northwest it had slid. The fighting on land and sea around Dukstas had been going on for most of the day. The question was, how much longer could the Lagoans keep it up in the face of the superior forces Algarve was marshaling against them?

Though Cornelu hopefully peered south, he spied no new ships coming up from the direction of Setubal. Whatever he and his comrades were supposed to be doing, they were supposed to be doing it by themselves.

Soldiers started trotting back toward the beach and piling into the boats from which they’d gone forth to kill and burn. Oars flashing, they pulled out toward the ships that had brought them to Valmiera. But not so many of those ships were left, and some of the survivors were under attack. Cornelu cursed to see the punishment the soldiers took. It wasn’t as if they were Sibians, but they were fighting the Algarvians.

Sailors let down nets and rope ladders to help the ones who made it out to the ley-line ships come aboard. As soon as all the soldiers had been taken up, the ships glided east along their ley line till it crossed one leading south toward Lagoas. Cornelu urged his leviathan south, too, to cover their retreat.

No Algarvian warships pursued them, which surprised him-Mezentio’s men were not usually inclined toward half measures. But dragons from the mainland of Derlavai dogged the fleet almost all the way back to Setubal. Cornelu wondered how many men who’d landed at Dukstas would see their homes again. He would have been astonished if even half were that lucky.

The leviathan didn’t bring him to the Lagoan capital till after sunrise the next day. Exhausted almost beyond bearing, he staggered to the Sibian barracks and fell asleep without even wrapping the blanket on his cot around himself.

No one woke him. When he climbed out of the cot, the sun had crawled across the sky. Instead of barley mush, he ate fried prawns and washed them down with ale. Then he went out to learn what he could, not in the harbor but in the taverns next door to it.

He’d expected to find the sailors furious at such a botched assault on the Algarvians. Instead, they seemed happy enough. That puzzled him, but not for long. He had to buy only a couple of mugs before a Lagoan told him what he wanted to learn. “Aye,” the fellow said, “we did what we came for, we did, and no mistake.”

“And that was?” Cornelu asked in his halting Lagoan.

“Didn’t you know?” The sailor stared at him with something approaching pity. “They was building a captives’ camp back o’ that town, they was. Would have served us the way they served Yliharma, they would. Won’t be able to do that now, they won’t. Let a lot o’ poor cursed Kaunians run free, we did.”

“Ah,” Cornelu said slowly once he made sense of the Lagoan’s dialect, which took a little while. “So that was the game.”

“That was the game, sure was,” the sailor agreed. “Cost us some, it did, but Setubal won’t come crashing down around our ears, it won’t.”

“No, it won’t.” Cornelu raised a finger to the busy fellow behind the bar and bought the Lagoan sailor another mug of ale-and one for himself as well. The sailor gulped his. Cornelu sipped more thoughtfully.

How many more times would the Lagoans have to strike across the Strait of Valmiera to keep the Algarvians from using massacre to power magic against their capital? That had an obvious answer-as many as they have to. Cornelu nodded. Seen only as a raid, the strike against Dukstas had been expensive. Seen as protection for Setubal, it was cheap indeed. He had trouble imagining Lagoas staying in the fight with its greatest city ruined. And Lagoas has to stay in the fight, he thought. If she doesn’t, Algarve likely wins. However much he disliked that, he saw no way around it.

Most of the time, Talsu was convinced, the Algarvians would have been far happier had Skrunda had no news sheets at all. Every once in a while, though, the redheads found them useful. When enemy dragons dropped eggs on the town, the news sheets had screamed and brayed about it for days. Now they were screaming and braying again.

“Lagoan pirates try to invade mainland of Derlavai!” a hawker shouted, waving a sheet. “Enemy beaten back with heavy loss! Generals say they’re welcome to try again! Read it here! Read it here!”

Talsu gave him a copper, as much to make him shut up as for any other reason. The news sheet didn’t tell him much more than the hawker had. It just said the same things over and over, each time shriller than the last. When he’d finished that story and the ones about the great Algarvian victories in southern Unkerlant, he crumpled up the sheet and tossed it into the gutter. Then he wiped the ink from the cheap printing job off the palms of his hands and onto his trousers. His mother would complain when she saw the dark smudges there, but that would be later. For now, he wanted to get his hands somewhere close to clean.

More hawkers with stacks of news sheets cried out the headlines as Talsu strode through the market square. As far as he could tell, they used the same words as had the ragged fellow from whom he’d bought a sheet. He wondered if hawkers all over Jelgava were selling the exact same stories with the exact same words. He wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

When he walked past the grocery store Gailisa’s father ran, he looked in the window hoping to get a glimpse of her. No such luck: her father ambled out from behind the counter to put jars of candied figs on the shelves. Talsu was heartily glad Gailisa favored her mother; had she been plump and doughy and hairy, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her.

Her father saw him through the window and waved. Talsu waved back, more from duty than from affection. He looked forward to marrying Gailisa- he certainly looked forward to some of the concomitants of marrying Gailisa- but he didn’t particularly look forward to being yoked to the rest of her family as well.

He got round a corner before her father could come out and start yattering at him. Hurrying like that, though, gave him a painful stitch in the side. It wouldn’t have before the Algarvian soldier stabbed him; he knew as much only too well. But he couldn’t make that not have happened.

His own father had a copy of the news sheet open on the counter behind which he worked. Traku was cutting and sewing a tunic while he read. His hands knew what to do, so well that he had to glance at his work only every now and then. He looked up from the news sheet when Talsu came in. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

“Were you expecting somebody else?” Talsu asked. “King Donalitu, maybe?”

He wouldn’t have made such jokes before Donalitu fled the Algarvians, not unless he felt like spending some time in one of the king’s dungeons. The redheads encouraged jokes about the king. For jokes about themselves, though, they had dungeons of their own. Talsu’s father, knowing that, lowered his voice as he answered, “No, I thought you’d be one of Mezentio’s officers, ready to gloat about this.” He tapped the news sheet with a forefinger.

“I’ve seen it,” Talsu said. “Even if I hadn’t seen it, I’d have heard about it. The whole town’s heard about it by now, the way the hawkers keep bellowing like so many branded steers.”

Traku chuckled. “They do go on.”

“And on, and on,” Talsu agreed. “They’ll be putting up copies for broadsheets any minute now. If there’s one thing the Algarvians are good at, it’s bragging about themselves.” They were also good, all too good, at war, or they wouldn’t have occupied Skrunda and the rest of Jelgava. Talsu didn’t like thinking about that, and so he didn’t.

His father said, “You know what they’re telling us here, don’t you?” He tapped the news sheet again. “They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’ll just have to save ourselves.”

Talsu shook his head. “That’s not what they mean. They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’d bloody well get used to King Mainardo.” He still wasn’t talking very loud, but he spoke with great vehemence: “Get used to going hungry, get used to short-weight coins, get used to Algarvians lording it over us forever.”

“That’s what’ll happen if we don’t do something about it, all right.” Traku glanced down at the news sheet. “I think we’re saying the same thing with different words.”

“Maybe.” Talsu rubbed his side. How long would the livid scar there go on paining him? For the rest of his days? He didn’t like to think about that, either. “But I never dreamt, when the redheads came in, they’d make me wish we had our own king and nobles back again.”

“Who did? Who could have?” his father said. “But you have to be careful where you say that. If you aren’t, you’ll disappear and you won’t have the chance to say it anymore.”

“I know.” Talsu pointed to the tunic his father was working on. “Are you going to use the Algarvian sorcery to finish that one?”

“Aye.” Traku grimaced. He couldn’t get in trouble for praising the redheads, not with things as they were in Skrunda-in all Jelgava-these days, but that didn’t mean he was happy about doing it. “It’s better than the magecraft I had before, no two ways about it. The magic is good. The Algarvians …” He grimaced again, grimaced and shook his head.

Thinking about the Algarvians always made Talsu think about the one who’d stabbed him. Thinking about that redhead made him think about Gailisa, which was much more enjoyable. And from Gailisa his thoughts didn’t have to go far to reach her father. He said, “Maybe it’s time you talked with the grocer.”

Changing the subject didn’t bother his father. “Think so, do you?” Traku said. “If I had to guess, I’d say Gailisa has thought so for quite a while. What do I do when her old man asks me what took you so bloody long?”

Ears burning, Talsu answered, “Tell him anything you want. Do you think it’ll matter?”

Traku laughed, though Talsu didn’t think it was very funny. “No, I don’t suppose the stalling will queer this match, the way it would some I could think of. Not much likelihood Gailisa will turn you down, is there?”

“I hope not,” Talsu said, blushing some more.

“If she did, it’d be a scandal worse than any we’ve seen in Skrunda since I was younger than you are now,” Traku said. “I guess you may have heard the story of the fellow who got married to three different girls on the same day.”

“A time or two,” Talsu said, which was somewhere around a hundredth of the truth. He grinned at his father. “Must have been one tired bridegroom by the time he got done that night.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Traku said with a grin of his own. “Of course, they do say he was a young man, a very young man, so he had some chance of bringing it off.” Before Talsu could answer that with another lewd sally, his father went up the stairs. He returned a moment later with a jar of apricot brandy and a couple of glasses. After filling them both, he gave Talsu one and raised the other. “Here’s to grandchildren.”

“To grandchildren,” Talsu echoed, and drank. The brandy glided down his throat and burst in his stomach like an egg. He hadn’t thought much about having children of his own, though he certainly had thought about the process by which children came into the world.

Traku hadn’t brought the brandy down unnoticed. Ausra came halfway down the stairs and asked, “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“That my sister is a snoop?” Talsu returned. “Aye, what else could it mean?” Ausra stuck out her tongue at him. He went on, “We haven’t done any talking yet. But we’re going to do some talking.”

“It’s about time,” Ausra said, echoing Traku. “I’ve wanted Gailisa for a sister-in-law for a long time now. I figure getting her is the only good I’ll ever have from you as a brother.” Without giving him a chance to answer, she hurried back upstairs again.

But she didn’t stay there for very long. After a moment, she and her mother came down, both of them carrying glasses. Traku poured brandy for them, half a glass for Ausra, a whole one for Laitsina.

Talsu’s mother kissed him. “Do you know what the best thing about having grandchildren is?”

Begetting them, Talsu thought, but that surely wasn’t what Laitsina had in mind. He shrugged and said, “Tell me. You’re going to anyhow.”

“I certainly am, and I ought to box your ears for impudence.” But Laitsina, who’d gone through a lot of the brandy in a hurry, was smiling and a little red-faced. “The best thing about grandchildren,” she declared with oracular wisdom, “is that you can give them back to their mother and father when they get to be a nuisance.”

“That’s so,” Traku agreed. “Can’t do it with your own children. You’re stuck with them.” He looked from Talsu to Ausra and back again. Then he looked at his own glass, and seemed surprised to discover it empty. The jar of brandy stood close by on the counter. He remedied the misfortune he’d found.

The whole family was getting merry when the front door to the tailor’s shop opened. They all looked up in surprise, as if they’d been caught doing something shameful. The Algarvian officer standing in the doorway twiddled with one spike of his waxed mustachios. “Seeing happy people is good,” he said in fair Jelgavan. “Why am I seeing happy people?”

“A coming betrothal,” Traku answered. He didn’t offer the redhead any brandy.

Affecting not to notice that, the Algarvian said, “It is good. I hope there is being much joy from it.”

“Thanks,” Talsu said grudgingly. If that Algarvian trooper hadn’t stabbed him, his chances with Gailisa might not have been so good. Even that, though, didn’t endear any of King Mezentio’s men to him. More grudgingly still, he went on, “What do you want?”

“Here.” The redhead displayed a tunic. “I am wanting a warm lining sewn into this. I am going from here to another place to fight. I will be needing a warm lining. I will be needing all the warm I can be getting.”

“For Unkerlant, you’ll need more than a warm lining,” Talsu said, and the Algarvian winced, as if he hadn’t wanted to hear his destination named. Too bad, Talsu thought. That’s where you’re going, and with any luck you won’t come back.

“I can do it,” Traku said, “but my son’s right: you’ll need more than that. I saw as much last winter.” That made the Algarvian look unhappier yet. Traku added, “Would you be interested in a nice, thick cloak, now?”

“A cloak?” The Algarvian sighed. “Aye, I had better be having a cloak, is it not so?”

“It certainly is so,” Traku said. “And I have just the thing you’ll want.” To a redhead going off to Unkerlant, he would show sample after sample. Like Talsu, he surely hoped the Algarvian would meet his end there. And profit- profit counted, too.

Skarnu wished he had more connections, better connections. He’d managed to keep the fight against Algarve alive in his little part of Valmiera, and he knew others were doing the same across the kingdom. But he didn’t know how well they were doing, how much annoyance they were causing the occupiers.

“Not enough,” Merkela said when he raised the subject over supper one evening. “Not even close to enough.”

She would have said the same thing if the Valmierans had been on the point of driving King Mezentio’s men from the kingdom, tails between their legs. Had she known how to do it, she would gladly have gone to Algarve herself, to bring the war home to the redheads. She would have tried to kill Mezentio in his palace and wouldn’t have cared at all if she died, so long as she brought him down. Skarnu was sure of that.

Raunu set down a rib bone from which he’d gnawed all the meat; they’d killed a pig the day before. He said, “The more we tie them up here, the less they have to throw at the Unkerlanters. And if they don’t beat the Unkerlanters, they don’t win the war.”

He’d been only a sergeant, but no general could have summed things up better. So Skarnu thought, at any rate. Merkela tossed her head; to her, Unkerlant was too far away, too foreign, to seem either real or important.

But Vatsyunas and Pernavai both nodded. Having come from Forthweg, the escaped Kaunians knew in their bellies the importance and reality of Unkerlant. “He speaketh sooth,” Vatsyunas said, still sounding antiquated as he learned Valmieran after a lifetime of classical Kaunian.

“Aye,” the former dentist’s wife said softly. That was one word that had changed little down through the centuries.

“How much more could we be doing, though?” Skarnu persisted.

“How badly do you want to get yourself killed, and everybody who’s in this with you?” Raunu asked. “If you try and get greedy, that’s what’ll happen.” Merkela glared at the veteran sergeant. He ignored her, which wasn’t easy. Skamu feared he was right. Whenever the Algarvians grew provoked enough to go after irregulars, they could muster enough force to put them down.

Vatsyunas said, “An you tell me what the game requireth, so shall I right gladly undertake it, though I lay down my life in the doing. For I have seen horrors, and long to requite them.”

“Aye,” Pernavai said again.

Neither of them sounded as fierce as Merkela, but she eyed them with nothing but respect. Her hatred for the redheads was personal. So was theirs, but they’d also seen Kaunianity in Forthweg wrecked. They never talked about going home. As best Skarnu could tell, they didn’t think they would have any home to which to return.

Vatsyunas said, “Is’t true, the tale borne hither from Pavilosta, that Lagoas did smite the Algarvians exceedingly down by the shore of the salt sea?”

Skarnu shrugged. “There was a fight. That’s all I know. The Lagoans couldn’t have done all that well, or they’d have kept a grip on the mainland.” He still wanted to look down his nose at the islanders. If they’d done more earlier in the war, maybe Valmiera wouldn’t have fallen. And their kingdom still held out, where his had given up two years before. He resented them for being able to shelter behind the Strait of Valmiera. How would they have done against swarms of Algarvian behemoths? None too bloody well, or he missed his guess.

But Pernavai said, “Methinks you mistake their purpose. For is’t not more likely they came for to hinder the slaughter of more of my kinsfolk than intending invasion of your land?”

Now Vatsyunas spoke up in support of his wife: “Aye, that’s also my conception of the quarter whence bloweth the wind. For surely the redheaded savages would have drained mine energies of vitality and the aforesaid of my lady’s as well, to hurl a stroke thaumaturgic ‘gainst the isle across the sea.”

Slowly, Skarnu nodded. Across the table from him, Raunu was nodding, too. Skarnu clicked his tongue between his teeth. The western Kaunians’ suggestion made more sense than anything he’d come up with for himself. He and his comrades had managed to sabotage one ley-line caravan bringing Kaunians from Forthweg toward the shore of the Strait of Valmiera. If others had got through, if the Algarvians were on the point of serving Setubal as they’d served Yliharma…

Merkela spoke up after unusual silence: “People need to know.”

“People in these parts do know,” Skarnu said. “A lot of the folks who made it off that caravan are still free. People didn’t turn ‘em back to the Algarvians, any more than we did. And all the Kaunians out of Forthweg have tales to tell.”

Merkela shook her head. “That’s not what I meant. People all over Valmiera-people all over the world-need to know what the Algarvians are doing. The more reasons they have to hate the redheads, the harder they’ll fight them.”

Vatsyunas and Pernavai leaned toward each other and whispered back and forth in classical Kaunian, too soft and fast for Skarnu to catch more than a couple of words. Then Vatsyunas asked a blunt, bleak question: “Why think you this news will be of any great import to them that hear it? After all, ‘tis nobbut the overthrow of so many already despised Kaunians. Powers above, ‘tis likelier a matter for rejoicing than otherwise.” He picked up his mug of ale and gulped it dry.

“We’re Kaunians, too!” Skarnu exclaimed. He’d felt it like a beam through the heart when the Column of Victory was felled in Priekule. If that didn’t make him a proper Kaunian, what could?

But Pernavai and Vatsyunas looked at each other and didn’t say anything. Skarnu felt a slow flush rise from his neck to his cheeks and ears and on to the very top of his head. Till the war, no one had rubbed his nose in his Kaunianity every day of the year; he’d been one among many, not one among a few. No one had hated him for what he was. Thinking about that made him shake his head, as if trying to fend off invisible gnats.

“We have to let people know,” Merkela repeated. Once she got an idea, she disliked letting go.

“How?” Raunu asked. “Does Pavilosta even have a printer’s shop? I don’t recall seeing one.”

“No news sheet-I know that,” Skarnu said.

“If we did up one broadsheet, a mage could make copies,” Merkela said, and Skarnu, to his surprise, found himself nodding. Most printing was mechanical, but that was because presses were older and cheaper and needed less skill than the equivalent magecraft, not because sorcery couldn’t mimic what they did.

“Where do we find a mage we can trust?” Raunu asked. “If he sells us out…” He drew this thumb across his throat. Skarnu nodded again. The rebels he knew were farmers, not wizards. Even Merkela looked glum.

Vatsyunas said, “Is’t a mage you need? Perhaps I can be of some assistance to you in this undertaking.”

Skarnu frowned. “Every trade has its own sorcery. I know that.” He didn’t know much more than that; as a rich young marquis, he hadn’t had to have a trade himself. He went on, “How much has dentistry got to do with news sheets?” He couldn’t think of any connection between the two.

But the Kaunian from Forthweg answered, “Both involve copying, which is to say, the law of similarity. I am most certain sure I can do that which the art requireth, provided I be given ample paper for our needs and an original wherefrom to shape simulacra. For whilst I can make shift to speak somewhat the jargon employed hereabouts, I would not be so daft as to set my hand to writing it.”

Everyone at the table looked to Skarnu. Raunu could read and write, but he probably hadn’t been able to before he joined the army during the Six Years’ War. Merkela too had only a nodding acquaintance with letters. And Pernavai, like her husband, was hardly at home in modern Valmieran. Time to see whether all my schooling really taught me anything, Skarnu thought. He knew he couldn’t delay, and so said, “I’ll do the best I can.”

Doing that meant putting together the story of how and why the Algarvians were tormenting and killing the Kaunians from Forthweg. Skarnu understood the redheads’ strategy, but a story that was nothing but strategy turned out to be anything but interesting. He talked with Pernavai and Vatsyunas about what had happened to them and what had happened to people they’d known, people they’d seen. By the time he finished taking notes, he and the ex-dentist and his wife were all in tears.

Skarnu rewrote the story. When he had it the way he liked it, he read it to Merkela and Raunu. They both suggested changes. Skarnu bristled. Merkela flared up at him. He stomped off, the picture of an offended artist. The next day, after he’d cooled down, he put in some of the changes. Even he had to admit they improved the piece.

Then, being without a press, he had to write it out as neatly as he could. When he was done, it didn’t look like a proper news sheet, but no one who could read at all would have any trouble making out what it said. He took it to Vatsyunas in the barn. “All yours. Go ahead. Work your magic.” He made a fist, ashamed of his own sarcasm.

Luckily, Vatsyunas didn’t notice. He inclined his head to Skarnu. “That shall I undertake to do.” His preparations seemed simple, almost primitive. They involved the yolks of half a dozen eggs and a cut-glass bauble of Merkela’s that broke sunlight up into rainbows. Seeing Skarnu’s curious stare, he condescended to explain: “The yellow of the egg symbolizeth the generacy-nay, the birth, you would say-of the new, whilst, as this pendant here spreadeth the one light into many, so shall my magecraft spread your fair copy here to all these blank leaves.” He patted the ream of paper Raunu had brought back from Pavilosta.

“You know your business best,” Raunu said, wondering whether Vatsyunas knew it at all.

Then the Kaunian from Forthweg began to chant. He was, Skarnu realized ruefully, more at home in the classical tongue than any Valmieran Kaunian, no matter how scholarly, could ever hope to be. For him, it was birthspeech, not a second language drilled in with a schoolmaster’s switch. He could make classical Kaunian do things Skarnu would never have imagined, because it was his.

And when he cried out, when he laid the palm of his left hand on the ream of blank sheets, Skarnu could feel the power flowing through him. A moment later, the ex-dentist lifted his hand, and the sheets were blank no longer. Skarnu saw his story set forth on the topmost one, line for line, word for word, letter for letter as he had written it. Vatsyunas riffled through the ream. Every sheet was identical to the first, identical to the copy Skarnu had given him.

Skarnu saluted him, as if he were a superior officer. “You did better than I thought you could,” he said frankly. “Now we have to get these out where people can see them, and be sneaky enough while we’re doing it so they can’t be traced back to us.”

“This I leave to you.” Vatsyunas staggered, yawned, and caught himself by main force of will. “You will, I pray, forgive me. I am spent, fordone.” He lay down on the straw and went to sleep, just like that. As he snored, Skarnu saluted him again. The sheets he’d made would hurt the redheads far more than ambushing a nighttime patrol. Skarnu hoped so, anyhow.

All things considered, Fernao would as soon have died down in the land of the Ice People. His comrades had saved him-for what? For more torment was the only answer that came to him in the intervals when he was both awake and undrugged.

He’d never been interested in medical magecraft, which meant he knew less about the various distillations of the poppy than he might have. Some left him more or less clear-headed, but did less than they might have against the pain of his broken bones and other wounds. Others took the pain away, but took him away with it, so that he seemed to be standing outside himself, perceiving his battered body as if it belonged to someone else. Sometimes, he felt ashamed to need such drugs. More often, he welcomed them and even began to crave them.

He got them less often as his body began to mend. He understood the reasons for that and resented them at the same time. “Would you rather stay in so much pain, you need the poppy juice to take you out of it?” a nurse asked him.

From flat on his back, he glared up at the earnest young woman. “I’d rather have stayed whole in the first place,” he growled. She shrank away, fright on her face. The war, or Lagoas’ part of it, was still new. Not many wounded men had come back to Setubal to remind the folk who stayed home of what fighting really meant.

Get used to it, he thought. You’d better get used to it. You’ll see-you’ll hear-worse than me.

The next day-he thought it was the next day, anyhow, but the distillations sometimes made time waver, too-he got a visitor he hadn’t expected to see. The Lagoan officer still seemed absurdly young to be wearing a colonel’s rank badges. “Peixoto!” Fernao said. “Planning to send me back to the austral continent again?’

“If you’re well enough, and if the kingdom needs you, I’ll do it in a heartbeat,” the young colonel answered. “Or I’ll go myself, or I’ll send a fisherman, or I’ll do whatever I think needs doing or my superiors tell me to do. That’s my job. But I did want to say I’m sorry you were hurt, and I’m glad you’re on the mend.”

He meant it. Fernao could see as much. That obvious sincerity helped some-but only some. “I’m sorry I was hurt, too,” the mage answered, “and the mending …” He stopped. Peixoto hadn’t gone through it. How could he understand?

“I know,” Peixoto said sympathetically. Fernao didn’t rise from the bed to brain him, but only because he couldn’t. What did Peixoto know? What could he know? Then the officer undid the top few buttons of his tunic, enough to let Fernao see the edges of some nasty scars. Fernao’s rage eased. He couldn’t guess how Peixoto had picked up those wounds, but the soldier did know something about pain.

“I hope you can keep me out of the land of the Ice People when I’m on my feet again,” Fernao said. On his feet again! How far away that seemed. “I have something else in mind, something where I might serve the kingdom better.”

“Ah?” Colonel Peixoto raised an eyebrow, almost as elegantly as if he were an Algarvian. “And that is?”

By his tone, he didn’t think it could be important, whatever it was. He was itching to ship Fernao back to the austral continent; the mage could see as much. But Fernao said, “The Kuusamans know something about theoretical sorcery that we don’t. I’m not sure what it is-one reason I’m not sure is that they’ve done such a good job of keeping it a secret. They wouldn’t be doing that if it weren’t important.”

Peixoto pursed his lips, then slowly nodded. “Aye,” he said at last. “I know somewhat of that, though not the details, which are none of my business. Well, if the Guild Grandmaster agrees you should be doing this, I doubt anyone from his Majesty’s army will quarrel with him.”

Grandmaster Pinhiero had already visited Fernao a couple of times. The mage made up his mind to make sure the grandmaster knew what he wanted. Pinhiero thought it was important, too; he wouldn’t have sent Fernao to Kuusamo to try to learn about it if he hadn’t. And hadn’t Pinhiero said he’d gone himself? Fernao thought, so, but he’d been too dazed and drugged to trust his memory. If he could escape eating roasted camel’s flesh ever again … he wouldn’t shed a tear.

Thoughtfully, Peixoto went on, “And you may be needed here to help ward Setubal against the Algarvians’ magic. We blocked one of their assaults when we broke up that captives’ camp near Dukstas. You know about that?”

“I’ve heard a thing or two, the times I’ve been fully among those present,” Fernao answered.

“It could have been very bad. They might have served Setubal as they served Yliharma this past winter,” Peixoto said. “This time, we got wind of it and stopped them before they could get well started. But who knows if we’ll have good luck or bad the next time?”

Fernao knew all about bad luck, knew more than he’d ever wanted to learn about it. Before he could answer Peixoto, a physician in a white tunic and kilt came into the chamber. “Time for your next procedure,” he said cheerfully, gesturing for the colonel to leave. Peixoto did, waving to Fernao as he went. The mage hardly noticed. He was scowling at the physician. Why shouldn’t the whoreson sound cheerful? It wasn’t as if anything were going to happen to him.

Two attendants moved Fernao from his bed to a stretcher. They were well practiced and gentle; he cried out only once. That tied his record; he’d never yet been shifted without at least one howl of anguish. Down the hall he went, and into a clean, white room with a piece of sorcerous apparatus resembling nothing so much as a large rest crate. The spell powering it wasn’t identical to the one that kept mutton chops fresh in his flat, but it wasn’t far removed, either.

Both the attendants and the physician draped themselves with elbow-length rubber gloves covered in silver foil to insulate themselves from the effects of the spell. Then the men who’d borne him here lifted him once more and set him in the crate.

The next thing he knew, they were lifting him out of the crate again. He had a new pain in his broken leg, and a new one in his flank, too, with no memory of how he’d got them. He also had no sure way of knowing whether they’d left him in there an hour or a couple of weeks. One of the attendants offered him a little glass cup filled with a viscous, purplish fluid. He gulped it down. It tasted nasty. He’d expected nothing different. After what seemed forever but couldn’t really have been too long, the pain drifted away-or rather, it stayed and he drifted away from it.

He dimly recalled taking the purplish stuff a few more times. Then, instead, a nurse gave him a thinner yellow liquid that didn’t taste quite so vile. Some of the pain returned, though without the raw edge it would have had absent the yellow stuff. Some of his wits returned, too.

He didn’t notice Grandmaster Pinhiero coming into his room, but did recognize him after realizing he was there. “How are you today?” Pinhiero asked, worry on his wrinkled, clever face.

“Here,” Fernao answered. “More or less here, anyhow.” He took stock. He needed a little while; he could think clearly under the yellow distillate, but he couldn’t think very fast. “Not too bad, all things considered. But there’s a good deal to consider, too.”

“I believe that,” Pinhiero said. “They tell me, though, they won’t have to do any more really fancy repairs on you. Now you’re truly on the mend.”

“They tell you that, do they?” Fernao thought some more, slowly. “They didn’t bother telling me. Of course, up till not too long ago I wouldn’t have had much notion of what they were talking about, anyhow.”

“Well, I’m glad you’re back with us, and not too badly off,” Pinhiero said, which only proved he hadn’t been through what Fernao had. The yellow drug took the edge off Fernao’s anger, as it had taken the edge off his pain. The grandmaster went on, “That army colonel and I have had a thing or two to say to each other lately.”

“Have you?” That drew Fernao’s interest regardless of whether he was drugged. “What kinds of things?”

“Oh, this and that.” Pinhiero sometimes delighted in being difficult. Who was the Kuusaman mage who acted even worse? Ilmarinen, that’s what his name was. Dredging it up gave Fernao a brief moment of triumph.

“For instance?” he asked. He knew he had more patience with the drug than he would have without.

“For instance? The business the Kuusamans are playing with. You know what I mean. Is that an interesting enough for-instance for you?” Pinhiero waggled a finger at Fernao. “I know more about it now than I did when I sent you east to Yliharma, too.”

“Do you?” Fernao also knew he should have been more excited, but the drug wouldn’t let him. “What do you know?”

“I know you were right.” Pinhiero swept off his hat and gave Fernao a ceremonious bow. “The Kuusamans have indeed stumbled onto something interesting. More than that I shall not say, not where the walls have ears.”

Had Fernao still been taking the purple distillate, he might have seen, or imagined he saw, ears growing out of the walls. With the purple stuff, it wouldn’t even have surprised him. Now his wits were working well enough to recognize a figure of speech. Progress, he thought. “Are they talking more than they were?” he asked.

“They are.” The grandmaster nodded. “For one thing, we’re allies now. They aren’t neutral any more. But I think the whack Yliharma took counts for more. That’s what showed them they can’t do everything all by themselves.”

“Sounds sensible,” Fernao agreed-but then, Pinhiero was nothing (except possibly devious) if not sensible. After a little more slow thought, the mage added, “When they do finally let me out of here, I want to work on that. I already told Peixoto as much.” He touched one of the scars-scars now, not healing scabs or open wounds-on the arm he hadn’t broken. “And I’ve earned the right.”

“So you have, lad; so you have. Even more to the point, you know where they took flight, and that’ll help you get off the ground.”

“Here’s hoping,” Fernao said. “After dealing with the Ice People for so long, I don’t know if I know anything anymore.”

“You’ll do fine,” Pinhiero told him. “You have to do fine. The kingdom needs you.” As Peixoto had before, he waved and left. He could leave. Even with the yellow distillate dulling his senses, Fernao knew how jealous he was of that.

Three days later, the attendants heaved him onto his feet for the first time since he’d come to Setubal. They gave him crutches. Getting one under the arm still encased in plaster wasn’t easy, but he managed. By then, he was down to a half dose of the yellow drug, so everything hurt. He felt like an old, old man. But he was upright, and managed a few swaying steps without falling on his face. He had to ask the attendants for help in turning him around toward the bed. He made it back there, too. Progress, he thought again.

They weaned him from even the half dose a couple of days after that, and it was. . not too bad. He found himself craving the drugs, which angered and embarrassed him. When he fell asleep in spite of the pain that wouldn’t go away, he felt another small surge of triumph.

Having his head clear was a pleasure in itself. He’d always thought well, and didn’t miss the mist the liquids of one color and another had cast over his mind. When Pinhiero came to see him again, the grandmaster nodded in something like approval. “You’re starting to look more like yourself,” he said.

“I hope so,” Fernao answered. “It’s been a while. I’m glad I don’t know anything about the time in the crate.”

Pinhiero thrust some papers at him. “Time for you to get back into it,” he said. “Read these. Don’t say anything. Just read them. They’re from Kuusamo.”

Fernao read. By the time he’d got halfway down the first sheet, he had to slow down, because he was staring up at Pinhiero every other line. At last, in spite of the grandmaster’s injunction, he did speak: “I’ve been away much too long. I’ve got a lot of catching up to do.”

Colonel Lurcanio triumphant annoyed Krasta more than he did any other way, even importunate in bed. He waved a news sheet in her face, saying, “We have crushed them, crushed them-do you hear me? Sulingen is bound to fall, and everything beyond it right afterwards. Swemmel is beaten, lost, overthrown, as surely as the Kaunian Empire was long ago.”

“If you say so.” Krasta had an easier time feigning excitement in the bedchamber when she didn’t feel it there. But then she really did brighten. “That would mean the end of the war, wouldn’t it?” When she thought of the war ending, she thought of the Algarvians going home.

Lurcanio disabused her of that idea. “No, for we still have the Lagoans and Kuusamans to bring to heel. And then we shall shape all of Derlavai into the land of our hearts’ desire.” By his expression, the idea made him ecstatic.

Krasta wasn’t much given to thinking in large terms. But she remembered the crash as the Kaunian Column of Victory went over, and a chill ran through her. In an unwontedly small voice, she asked, “What will you do with Valmiera?” She almost said, What will you do to Valmiera? She didn’t think Lurcanio would like that. On the other hand, he might like it altogether too well.

“Rule it,” the Algarvian officer answered placidly. “Go on ruling it as we rule it now.” He got up from behind his desk, stood in back of Krasta’s chair, and began caressing her breasts through the thin silk of her tunic. She wanted to slap his hands away; he wasn’t usually so crude in reminding her that power, not love, made her take him to her bed. But she didn’t have the nerve, which proved his point.

After a little while, he seemed to recall himself, and sat back down. When he wasn’t touching her, her spirit revived. She said, “Derlavai’s too big to fill up with Algarvians, anyhow.”

“Do you think so?” Lurcanio laughed, as if she’d said something funny. By the look in his eye, he was going to explain just how and why he found her a fool. He’d done that many times. She always hated it, as she always hated submitting to any judgment save her own. But at the last moment Lurcanio checked himself, and all he said was, “Where shall we go for supper tonight?”

“So many restaurants have gone downhill these days,” Krasta said in no small annoyance. “They serve up the most horrible pottages.”

“What they would be serving goes to better use.” Lurcanio didn’t elaborate, but went on, “What do you say to The Suckling Pig? You may rely on its food, for many Algarvian officers visit there.”

“All right,” Krasta said, not making the connection between her remark and Lurcanio’s comment. “Shall we leave here around sunset? I get too hungry to wait long for supper.”

Lurcanio bowed in his seat. “Milady, I am putty in your hands.” Even Krasta knew that was overblown Algarvian courtesy, for Lurcanio’s will prevailed whenever it clashed with hers. He went on, “And now, if you will be so gracious as to excuse me, I must get some small bits of work done to keep my superiors content with me.”

Even Krasta knew that was dismissal. She got up and left, not too ill-pleased despite his roaming hands. Now she knew she had something to do with her evening. Life in Priekule wasn’t what it had been before the redheads came. And life in Priekule without the Algarvians was duller than it was with them. She sighed. Things would have been ever so much simpler had Valmiera won the war.

She reached the front hall just as the postman brought the afternoon delivery. Normally, she didn’t see the mail till the servants had gone through it and got rid of the advertising circulars and anything else that didn’t seem interesting. Today, just to be contrary, she took it all herself and carried it upstairs.

As soon as she started going through it, she realized how much trouble the servants saved her. Several pieces went into the wastepaper basket unopened. One ordinary-looking envelope almost joined them there, because she didn’t recognize the handwriting in which it was addressed. How likely was it that some stranger vulgar enough to write to her would have anything worth saying?

But then curiosity overcame disdain. With a shrug, she used a letter opener in the shape of a miniature cavalry saber to slit the envelope. When she unfolded the paper inside, she almost threw it out again. It wasn’t a letter at all, but some sort of political broadside.

Her lip curled in a sneer; it wasn’t even properly printed, but written out by hand and then duplicated by a sorcerer who was none too good at what he did-ink smudged her fingers and blurred the words as she held it. But some of those words seized her attention. The headline-KAUNIANITY IN PERIL-fit too well with the conversation she’d just had with Lurcanio.

Lurcanio, she knew, would have denied every smeary word on the sheet. He had denied that his countrymen were doing such things to Kaunians. Krasta had believed him, too, not least because disbelieving him would have made her look at things she didn’t care to face. But the story that unfolded on the broadsheet certainly sounded as if it ought to be true, whether it was or not. The details felt convincing. If they hadn’t happened, they seemed as if they could have.

And the sheet was written in a style she found very familiar, though she had trouble putting her finger on why. She’d got about halfway through it when she realized the style wasn’t the only familiar thing about it. She recognized the handwriting, too.

She shook her head. “No,” she said. “That’s impossible. Skarnu’s dead.”

But if she didn’t know her brother’s handwriting, who would? She stared down at the sheet, then over toward the west wing, where Lurcanio was busy running Priekule for the conquerors. Slowly and deliberately, she tore the sheet into tiny pieces. Then she used the privy and flushed the pieces away. She washed her hands with great care: as much care as she might have used to get blood off them.

Skarnu’s alive, she thought dizzily. Alive. Lurcanio had asked after him not so long before. He’d known, or at least suspected, her brother hadn’t perished in the fighting. She’d thought he had. She’d been wrong. For once, she wasn’t even sorry to find out she’d been wrong.

Past that dizzy relief, she thought no more about what Skarnu’s being alive might mean till Lurcanio handed her up into the carriage for the trip to The Suckling Pig. Then she realized her lover might have been--no, surely had been-asking after her brother so the Algarvians could hunt him down and kill him. For Skarnu had to be one of the brigands and bandits who showed up in news sheets every now and again.

What would she do if Lurcanio started asking questions about Skarnu now? He won’t, she thought. He can’t. I got rid of everything. He can’t know anything.

She relaxed a little. Then-and only then-did another question occur to her: What would she do if Skarnu asked her questions about Lurcanio? What are you doing sleeping with an Algarvian? was the first of those questions to spring to mind.

They won the war. They’re stronger than we are. Surely everyone could see that. But if everyone could see it, why was her brother still fighting the Algarvians? She didn’t want to think about that. She didn’t want to think about anything.

When they got to The Suckling Pig, she ordered spirits instead of ale and with grim determination went about the business of getting drunk. Lurcanio raised an eyebrow. “That time I had you after you drank yourself blind wasn’t much fun for either one of us,” he said.

“That’s what you’ve told me.” Krasta shrugged. “I don’t remember anything about it but the headache the next morning.” Remembering the headache made her pause before her next sip, but not for long. The end of her nose turned numb. She nodded. She was on the way.

She ordered pork and red cabbage on a bed of noodles. Lurcanio winced. “I wonder that all you Valmierans aren’t five feet wide, the way you eat.” His own choice was crayfish cooked in a sauce flavored with apple brandy. “This, now, this is real food, not just stuffing your belly full.”

A few tables away, Viscount Valnu, in the company of a pretty Valmieran girl and an even prettier Algarvian officer, was demolishing an enormous plate of stewed chicken. Seeing Krasta looking his way, he fluttered his fingers at her. She waved back, then said to Lurcanio, “See how he’s eating? And he’s skinnier than I am.”

“Well, so he is,” Lurcanio admitted. “More versatile, too, by all appearances.” He rubbed his chin. “I wonder if I made a mistake, letting him take you off that one night. Who knows what he had in mind?”

“Nothing happened,” Krasta said quickly, though she’d wanted, intended, something to happen. To keep Lurcanio from seeing that, she added, “We both might have been killed if we hadn’t gone out just before that cursed egg burst.”

“Aye, I remember thinking so at the time.” Lurcanio scratched the scar on his face he’d carried away from that night. “A lucky escape for the two of you. We never have caught the son of a whore who secreted that egg there. When we do…” His handsome features congealed into an expression that reminded Krasta why she feared to cross him.

Hesitantly, she said, “If you Algarvians worked more to make us like you and did less to-”

Lurcanio didn’t let her finish. He burst out laughing, so uproariously that people from all over The Suckling Pig turned to stare at him. Ignoring them all, he said, “My dear, my dear, my foolish dear, nothing under the sun will make Kaunians love Algarvians, any more than cats will love dogs. If we do not use the strength we have, your people will despise us.”

“Instead, you make them hate you,” Krasta said.

“Let them hate, so long as they fear,” Lurcanio said. As he had a way of doing, he waggled a finger at her. “And with that, I give you a word of advice: do not believe everything that comes to you in the daily post.”

Krasta picked up her glass of spirits, knocked it back, and signaled for a refill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The liquor had made her nose numb. Fear did the same to her lips. He’d made jokes about knowing what came to her before she got it. What if they weren’t jokes at all?

“Very well,” he said lightly now. “Have it your way. But you had better go right on not knowing what I’m talking about, or you will be most sorry. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I think so,” Krasta answered. How did he know? How could he know? Did he have a mage monitoring her? Did the servants blab? They hadn’t sorted the afternoon post, but some of them might have seen the envelope she’d got. Did Lurcanio sort through everything that went down the commode, by the powers above? Krasta smiled. There were times when she thought he deserved to do just that.

Whatever he knew, he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know about Skarnu. He’d asked after her brother before, when she didn’t know about him, either. Whatever he knew, he hadn’t pulled all the pieces together. Krasta hoped he never would.