Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ***

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  NineteenB

  “See that that gets translated into Algarvian," Hajjaj told his secretary, "but let me review the translation before we send it on to Marquis Balastro, and then… Are you listening to me?"

  "I'm sorry, your Excellency." Qutuz had cocked his head to one side and seemed to be listening not to the Zuwayzi foreign minister but to something outside King Shazli's palace. "Is that thunder?"

  "Nonsense," Hajjaj said. Aye, fall and winter were the rainy season in Zuwayza, but the day- the whole week- had been fine and dry and sunny. But then his ears also caught the low rumble the younger man had heard before him. He frowned. "That is thunder. But it can't be."

  He and Qutuz both found the answer more slowly than they should have. They both found it at the same time, too. "Eggs!" Qutuz blurted, while Hajjaj exclaimed, "The Unkerlanters!"

  Ever since the war began, King Swemmel's dragonfliers had occasionally visited Bishah. They hadn't come in large numbers; they could hardly afford to, not with Unkerlant locked in a life-or-death struggle against Algarve. As far as Hajjaj could tell, they'd mounted the attacks more to remind the Zuwayzin that Swemmel hadn't forgotten about them than for any other reason. The Unkerlanter dragons had also done their best to hit the Algarvian ministry in Bishah, but they'd never quite succeeded.

  Hajjaj didn't need long to realize this morning would be different. "They're dropping a good many eggs today, aren't they?" he remarked, doing his best to stay calm- or at least not to show he was anything else but.

  "Aye, your Excellency, so they are." Qutuz took his cue from Hajjaj, but he had less practice at seeming dispassionate while actually frightened or furious.

  More roars of bursting eggs beat against Hajjaj's ears. They were coming closer to the palace now, too, so he no longer had any doubt what they were. The ground started shaking under his fundament, as if at an earthquake. Pen cases and leaves of paper on his desk trembled and quivered.

  "Perhaps," Qutuz said, "we ought to look for shelter."

  "Where?" Hajjaj asked, not at all rhetorically. He'd read that people in Setubal and Sulingen and other places that often came under attack from the air took refuge in cellars. Cellars, however, had never been a part of Zuwayzi architecture, and no one had ever dreamt the Unkerlanters would really pummel Bishah.

  "I'm getting under my desk," Qutuz declared, and hurried off to do just that. Hajjaj nodded approval. It wasn't a bad notion at all. He crawled under his own. For once, he wished he were in the habit of working at it in a chair rather than sitting on the floor; he would have had more room under there. His joints creaked as he tried to fold himself into as small a space as he could.

  Then the first eggs fell on the royal palace. For the next little while, Hajjaj had nothing whatever to do with whether he lived or died. The ground shook. Windows blew out. Walls fell in. Chunks of the roof came crashing down. One of them landed where he'd been sitting while talking with his secretary. Another came down on the desk, but wasn't heavy enough to crush it- and, incidentally, Hajjaj.

  Someone was screaming. After a moment, Hajjaj realized that was his own voice. He bit down hard on his lower lip to make himself stop. Then he wondered why he bothered. Plenty of people, surely, were screaming right now. But he kept on biting his lip instead. Pride is a strange thing, he thought, a strange thing, but a very strong one.

  An eternity later- an eternity probably measurable as a couple of minutes- the eggs stopped landing on and around the palace and started falling farther north in Bishah. Hajjaj had to fight his way out from under the desk; some of the rubble all but caged him there.

  "Qutuz!" he called. "Are you all right?"

  "Aye, your Excellency." The secretary came ru
nning into Hajjaj's office. "Powers above be praised that you're safe."

  "I'm well enough," Hajjaj said, "but you're bleeding." He pointed to a gash on Qutuz's left calf.

  His secretary looked down at it. When he looked up again, astonishment filled his face. "I didn't even know it was there," he said.

  "Well, it needs bandaging- that's plain." Hajjaj used a letter-opener to cut up cushions to get cloth to wrap around Qutuz's leg. He would have had a simpler time of it had either of them worn clothes.

  "I thank you, your Excellency," Qutuz said. "There are bound to be plenty of people hurt a lot worse than I am. We'd better see what we can do for them."

  "You're right." Hajjaj went over to the little closet that opened onto his office. His ceremonial wardrobe lay in chaos on the floor. He didn't care. He tossed his secretary a couple of tunics and kilts and grabbed some for himself. Seeing Qutuz's bewilderment, he spoke aloud his thought of a moment before: "Bandages."

  "Ah." Qutuz's face cleared. "That's clever. That's very clever."

  "It's cleverness I wish we didn't need," Hajjaj said grimly. "Come on. Let's make for the audience chamber and the throne room." That was as close as he would come to admitting he was worried about King Shazli. His secretary's eyes widened, but Qutuz didn't worry out loud, either.

  And they both had plenty to do before they got anywhere near the throne room. People were down and groaning in the hallways. Some of them, the ones with broken bones, needed more than bandaging. Some were beyond all help. Hajjaj and Qutuz found not only bodies but buried bodies and pieces of bodies. Before long, their sandals left bloody footprints at every stride.

  Someone around the corner of a corridor barked peremptory orders: "Get that rubble off him! Grab that roof beam and lift! Maybe we can still save his leg!"

  Hajjaj's heart leaped within him. He knew that voice. "Your Majesty!" he called. Behind him, Qutuz whooped.