Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  Before Bembo could speak, the man sitting by him said, "He's after your famous cure for the grippe."

  "Ah." The woman nodded. She pointed to Bembo. "You come with me."

  "Aye, Mistress," he answered, and followed her into the back room. It had the impressive disorder he'd seen before among mages of a certain type, although he would have been mightily surprised if she held any formal ranking. When she gestured, he sat down in one of the chairs. She sat in the other, which faced his.

  "Grippe, eh?" she said.

  "That's right," Bembo agreed. "My partner's down with it now, and I don't want to catch it myself."

  Nodding again, she set her hand on his forehead. Her palm was cool and smooth. She clicked her tongue between her teeth. "You just in time- I hope," she said.

  "Have I got a fever?" Bembo asked anxiously.

  She held up her thumb and forefinger. "Little one," she answered. "Now little one. You not worry. I fix." She reached for a book. It was, Bembo saw, in Kaunian. He gave a mental shrug. Algarvian mages used the classical tongue, too.

  After reading, she rummaged through her sorcerous supplies (had she not been a mage of sorts, Bembo would have thought of the stuff as junk). She bound a small, reddish rock and a bit of something fibrous into a silk bag, then hung it round his neck by a cord. Then she put a couple of teeth, one needlelike, the other thicker but still sharp, into another little sack and set that in his breast pocket.

  "Bloodstone and sea sponge good against fever," she said. "Likewise fangs of serpent and crocodile." She stood and set both hands on top of his head. Some of her chant was in Forthwegian, some in Kaunian. When she was done, she gave Bembo a brisk nod and held out her right hand, palm up. "One broad silver bit."

  He started to growl. But angering a mage, even a lesser one, was foolish. He paid. Not only did he pay, he said, "Thank you."

  It wasn't what he was thinking. The healer had to know that. But nobody could blaze you for thinking. She said, "You're welcome."

  When he came out into the front room, conversation stopped most abruptly. A couple of new people had come in while the healing mage was helping him. He thought they were talking back and forth in Kaunian, but he hadn't heard enough to be sure. He strode past them and out onto the street again.

  The more he walked his beat, though, the more worried he got. If that was a place where disguised Kaunians gathered, had the healer tried to cure him or curse him? When he got back to the barracks, he put the question to a mage attached to the constabulary.

  "Let's see the amulets she gave you," the fellow said. Bembo showed them to him. He nodded. "The substances are what they should be. I can check whether the spell was perverted some sort of way." The mage chanted, cocked his head to one side as if listening, and chanted some more. He glanced over at Bembo. "Far as I can tell, friend, you're not likely to get the grippe for a while. Everything's as it should be."

  "Good," Bembo said. "The way things are nowadays, you can't be too careful."

  "Well, I'm not going to tell you you're wrong there," the mage said. "But everything's fine this time."

  Bembo intended to stop in and thank the healer- and probably frighten the life out of her customers- when he walked his beat the next day. But when he came to the little storefront, the door was ajar. He stuck his head inside. The door to the back room stood half open, too. He went back and peered into the gloom- no lamps shining now. And no litter of sorcerous apparatus there, either. The mage was gone, and she'd cleaned out all her stuff.

  Bembo sighed. He wasn't even very surprised. He patted the amulets she'd given him. She'd been honest, and then she'd decided she had to run away. "Shows what honesty's worth," Bembo muttered. And if that wasn't a demon of a thought for a constable to have, he didn't know what was.

  ***

  Spinello not only walked through the streets of Trapani with a limp, he walked through them with a cane. From what the healers said, he might get rid of the cane one day before too long. The limp, though, the limp looked to be here to stay.

  There were compensations. He got pitying glances from women, and pity, for a man of enterprise, might easily be turned to some warmer emotion. The wound badge he wore on his tunic now supported a gold bar. He'd been awarded the Algarvian Sunburst, Second Grade, for gallantry in the face of the enemy, to go with his frozen-meat medal, and he had a colonel's three stars on his collar patches. When he went back to the front, he'd probably end up commanding a brigade.

  He tried to straighten up and walk as if he hadn't been wounded. He could do it- for a couple of steps at a time. After that, it hurt too much. He would have traded rank and decorations for the smooth stride he'd once enjoyed in a heartbeat- in half a heartbeat, by the powers above, he thought. But the powers above didn't strike bargains like that, worse luck.

  Going up the stairs to the Royal Cultural Museum made sweat spring out on his forehead. By the time he climbed them all and strode into the great rococo pile of a building, he was biting his lip against the pain. The ticket-seller, a nice-looking young woman, gave him a smile that could have been promising. But when Spinello said hello to her, he tasted blood in his mouth. He went on by, his own face grim.

  As always, he made for the large gallery housing artifacts from the days of the Kaunian Empire. The spare, even severe, sensibility informing those busts and pots and coins and sorcerous tools and other articles of everyday life was as far removed from that inspiring the building in which they were housed as it possibly could have been. And yet, all things considered, Spinello preferred elegant simplicity to equally elegant extravagance.

  As he always did in this gallery, Spinello paused in front of a two-handled drinking cup whose lines had always struck him as being as close to perfection as made no difference. Neither illustration nor memory ever did it justice. Every so often, he had to see it in the fired clay to remind himself what human hand and human will could shape.

  "Spinello, isn't it?"

  He was so lost in contemplation, he needed a moment to hear and recognize his own name. Then he turned and stared at the aged savant who'd been leaning on a cane longer than he had been alive. His own bow was awkward, but heartfelt. "Master Malindo!" he exclaimed. "What an honor! What a pleasant surprise!" What a pleasant surprise to see you still breathing, was what he meant. Malindo had been too old to serve in the Six Years' War, which surely put him up past ninety now.

  "I go on," Malindo said in a creaky voice. "Are those a colonel's stars I see?"

  "Aye." Spinello drew himself up with what he hoped was pardonable pride.

  "A man of valor. A man of spirit," Malindo murmured. He paused, perhaps trying to find what he'd meant to say. He is old, Spinello thought. But then, quite visibly, the savant did find it. "And have you fought in the west?"

  "Aye," Spinello repeated, this time in a different tone of voice.

  Malindo reached out with his free hand, all wrinkled and veiny, and set it on the one Spinello used to hold his cane. "Then tell me- I beseech you, by the powers above- that what we hear of Algarve's dealings with Kaunians, dealings with the descendants of those who created this" -he wagged a finger at the cup- "is nothing but a lie, a filthy lie invented by our enemies."

  Spinello couldn't nerve himself to lie to the old man. But he couldn't nerve himself to tell Malindo the truth, either. He stood mute.

  Malindo sighed. He took his hand away from Spinello's. "What shall become of us?" he asked. Spinello didn't think the old man was talking to him. Malindo heaved another sigh, then slowly shuffled down the exhibit hall.

  Try as he would, Spinello couldn't contemplate the cup the same way after that. The other Kaunian artifacts seemed somehow different, too. Cursing under his breath, he left the Royal Cultural Museum much sooner than he'd intended to. He wondered if he would ever be able to go back.

  Two nights later, though, he hired a cab to take him through the darkened streets of Trapani to the royal palace. The last time he was wounded, he'd been too badly hurt to
attend any of King Mezentio's receptions. This time, while not yet fit for field duty, he could- and did- display himself before his sovereign.

  A somber servitor checked his name off a list. An even more somber mage muttered charms to test his cane before allowing him to go forward. "I haven't got a knife in there, nor a stick, either," Spinello said. "I could have told you as much, had you asked."

  The mage bowed. "No doubt, your Excellency. An assassin could have told me as much, too, but he would have been lying. Best to take no chances, eh?"

  "I suppose not," Spinello agreed with rather poor grace. But he added, "You didn't fret about such things when the war was new."

  The mage shrugged. "Times are different now, sir." He waved Spinello past him.

  Spinello went. What the fellow meant, of course, was, The war news sounded a lot better then. Who would have wanted to harm King Mezentio when Algarve's armies drove everything before them? No one, save perhaps some foreign hireling. Nowadays… Nowadays, there might well be Algarvians who'd lost enough to seek to avenge themselves on their sovereign. Spinello hoped not, but had to admit Mezentio was right to use the mage to help keep himself safe.

  "Viscount Spinello!" a flunky bawled after Spinello murmured his name and rank to the man. A few heads turned his way. Most of the people already in the reception hall went on with what they were doing. A viscount limping along with the help of a cane was neither exotic nor prominent enough to be very interesting.

  Officers and civilian functionaries drank and gossiped and eyed one another's women. The women drank and gossiped and eyed one another's men. And everyone, of course, eyed King Mezentio, who drifted through the room talking now with one man, now with another, or yet again with one of the better-looking women there.

  After asking for a glass of wine and sipping it, Spinello looked at it in some surprise. "Something wrong, sir?" asked the servitor behind the bar.

  "Wrong? No." Spinello shook his head. "But I've poured down too much in the way of Unkerlanter spirits, I think. Any drink that doesn't try to tear off the top of my skull hardly seems worth bothering with."

  "Ha! That's the truth, by the powers above!" a soldier behind him boomed. The fellow also leaned on a cane, but would have been monstrous tall if straight. He wore a brigadier's rank badges, and had three gold bars under his wound badge. He went on, "After that stuff they brew from turnips and barley, wine isn't good for much but making you piss a lot."

  "It does taste good," Spinello said, sipping again. For all the jolt it carried, it could have been water.

  With a snort, the brigadier said, "My mistress tastes good, too, but that's not why I eat her." Had Spinello been drinking then, he would have sprayed wine over everything in front of him. As it was, he laughed loud enough to turn several heads his way.

  One of those heads belonged to King Mezentio. He came over and asked, "And what is so funny here?"

  "Your Majesty, you'll have to ask my superior here," Spinello answered. "He made the joke, and I would never dream of stealing it from him while he's close enough to listen to me do it."

  Amusement flashed in Mezentio's hazel eyes. He turned to the brigadier, giving Spinello the long-nosed profile already familiar to him from the coins in his belt pouch. "Well, your Excellency?" Repeating himself didn't embarrass the brigadier one bit. And he made the king laugh. "Aye, that's good. That's very good," Mezentio said.

  "I thought so," Spinello said: since he hadn't made the joke, he had to take credit for laughing at it. But maybe the wine he'd drunk had made him bolder than he'd believed, for he heard himself asking, "And when do we start making the Unkerlanters laugh out of the other side of their mouths again your Majesty?"

  "If you have a way to do that, Colonel, leave a memorial with my officers," Mezentio replied. "I assure you, they will give it their closest attention."

  He means it, Spinello realized, a wintry notion if ever there was one. The brigadier must have had the same thought, too, for he exclaimed, "We should have been readier when we struck them, then."

  Now Mezentio looked right through him. "Thank you for your confidence in us, Carietto," the king said, for all the world as if he were Swemmel of Unkerlant, or perhaps twins. Spinello hadn't known the brigadier's name, but Mezentio did. Carietto, plainly, would never, ever, advance in rank again.

  Spinello said, "Your Majesty, what can we do?"

  "Keep fighting," King Mezentio said at once. "Make our foes bleed themselves white- and they will. Hold on till our mages strengthen their sorceries- and they will. Never admit we can be defeated. Fight with every fiber of our being so that victory comes to us- and it will."

  He sounded very sure, very strong. Spinello saluted. So did Brigadier Carietto, not that it would do him any good. With a grin, Spinello said, "There may not be any Kaunians left by the time we're through."

  "And so what?" Mezentio said. "How better to serve our ancient oppressors than to use them as weapons against the western barbarians? Algarve must save Derlavaian civilization, Colonel- and it will." He had a brandy in his hand. He knocked it back and strode away.

  So much for old Malindo, Spinello thought. The savant, briefly, had made him feel guilty. Mezentio made him feel proud. Pride was better. He glanced over at Carietto. The brigadier looked like a man refusing to acknowledge he was wounded. He had pride, too. When he went back to the fighting, Spinello didn't think he would let himself live long.

  "What were you talking about with the king?" That wasn't Carietto, but a woman about Spinello's own age. She had a wide, generous mouth, a nose with a tiny bend that made it more interesting than it would have been otherwise, and a figure her tight tunic and short kilt displayed to advantage.

  Spinello bowed. "The war. Nothing important." He bowed again. "I would sooner talk about you, milady. I am Spinello. And your name is-?"

  "Fronesia." She held out her hand.

  After bowing over it once more, Spinello kissed it. "And whose friend are you, milady Fronesia?" he asked. "As lovely as you are, you must be someone's."

  She smiled. "A colonel of dragonfliers' friend," she answered. "But Sabrino has been in the west forever and a day, and I grow lonely, to say nothing of bored. When I got myself invited here tonight, I hoped I would find a new friend. Was I right?"

  Algarvian women had a way of coming straight to the point. So did Algarvian men. "Milady, with your looks" -Spinello's eyes traveled her curves- "you could have an array of friends, did you so choose. If you want one in particular, I am at your service."

  Fronesia nodded. "If you're as generous as you are well-spoken, we should get on very well indeed, Colonel Spinello."

  "There is generosity, and then there is generosity." Spinello looked her up and down again.

  "My flat isn't far from here, Colonel," Fronesia said. "Shall we go back there and talk about it?"

  "As long as we're there, we might as well talk, too," Spinello agreed. Laughing, they left together.

  ***

  Ealstan had come up in the world. From bookkeeper, he'd advanced all the way to conspirator. If that wasn't progress, he didn't know what was. "I wish I'd found you a long time ago," he told Pybba.

  "No, no, no." His boss shook his head. "Wish we'd been strong enough to give the stinking Algarvians a good boot in the balls when the war first started. Then we wouldn't have to play all these stupid games."

  The pottery magnate was playing enough of them. Ealstan had thought as much when he first found the discrepancies in Pybba's books. He'd hoped as much. But even he hadn't had any notion of how deeply Pybba was involved in resisting King Mezentio's men in Forthweg. Nothing but admiration in his voice, he said, "I don't think anybody can write anything nasty about the Algarvians on a wall anywhere in Eoforwic unless you know about it before it happens."

  "That's the idea." Pybba sounded smug: his usual growl with a purr mixed into it. The purr disappeared as he went on, "Now shut up about what you're not supposed to be talking about and get back to work. If I don't ma
ke any money, I can't very well put any money into giving the redheads a hard time, now can I?"

  Back to work Ealstan went, and utterly mundane work it was, too. But he didn't care. He'd scratched his itch to know. He'd done more than that. He'd started working to help drive Mezentio's men out of his kingdom. What more could he want? Nothing, or so he thought. If fighting the Algarvians also meant keeping track of invoices on fifty-seven different styles of teacup- and it did- he would cheerfully do that. If it wasn't his patriotic duty, he didn't know what it was.

  And the news sheets had got very vague about how the fighting in Unkerlant was going. He took that as a good sign.

  He'd been working in his new capacity for a few weeks when something odd struck him. That was almost literally true: he was walking home in the first rain of fall when the thought came to him. "The mushrooms will be springing up," he told Vanai when he got back to their flat.

  "That's true." She clapped her hands together. "And I'll be able to go hunting them this year. Staying cooped up in the middle of mushroom season is something that shouldn't happen to anyone."

  "Thanks to your sorcery, it won't happen to nearly so many people." Ealstan said went over and gave her a kiss. Then he paused, scratching his head.

  "What is it?" Vanai asked.

  "Nothing," Ealstan answered. "Or I don't think it's anything, anyway."

  Vanai raised an eyebrow. But, rather to his relief, she did no more than raise an eyebrow. She didn't constantly push at him, for which he was duly grateful. Maybe that was because she'd never been able to push at her grandfather, by all the signs one of the least pushable men ever born. If so, it was one of the few things for which Ealstan would have thanked Brivibas had he been able. And, by all the signs, Brivibas wouldn't have appreciated his thanks.