“Right here? With Gradasso outside?” Krasta giggled. Being outrageous, being risky, often excited her. She’d flipped up Lurcanio’s kilt in here before. “Do you want to?”
Rather to her disappointment, her Algarvian lover shook his head. “No, not now. Tonight, perhaps, but I have not the time now.” He sighed. “I really have not the time to argue with my adjutant, either. With more and more of the men who have been aiding me gone, more and more of the work falls on my shoulders. For the work must be done, regardless of who does it.”
To Krasta, those who occupied Valmiera had always seemed to have it easy. They lived well when even Valmieran nobles often had trouble making ends meet. They had their choice of bed partners—she knew that all too well. That they, or some of them, also worked themselves to exhaustion hadn’t crossed her mind.
Lurcanio asked, “Did you come down here to pick my brains over strategy or to molest me? The one was interesting, the other would be enjoyable, but I really am too busy for either.”
Being twitted worked a minor miracle: it made Krasta remember why she had come down to see Lurcanio, something that had gone clean out of her mind even before she got to his office. She said, “What did your hounds end up deciding about Viscount Valnu? He made more entertaining company at most festivities than almost anyone else who was likely to come.”
“Oh, aye, indeed—Valnu has charmed any number of people, of all genders and preferences.” Lurcanio didn’t bother hiding his contempt. “He does very little for me, in which I seem to be almost unique in the city. But you asked about the hounds. They must not have found anything worth mentioning, for I am given to understand he is at liberty once more.”
“Is he?” Krasta breathed.
She must have sounded more excited than she’d intended to, for Lurcanio laughed at her. “Aye, he is. Why? Does it mean so much to you? Will you rush right out and make him the same offer you just made me? I would advise against that; I suspect he owes his freedom not least to the, ah, enthusiasm of certain handsome Algarvian officers.”
That wouldn’t have particularly surprised Krasta. Valnu did what he felt like, with whomever he felt like. But she heard the edge in Lurcanio’s voice, and knew she would have to soften him. “Oh, no,” she said, making her eyes go wide with little-girl innocence. “I wouldn’t think of doing such a thing, not after the lesson you taught me the last time.”
To her chagrin, that only made Lurcanio laugh again. “You wouldn’t think of doing such a thing if you might get caught. Isn’t that what you mean?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Krasta said with such dignity as she could muster. Lurcanio laughed harder than ever. She stuck out her tongue at him. She hated being transparent, and disliked the Algarvian for showing her she was. When he wouldn’t stop laughing, she flounced out of his office, slamming the door behind her. But she knew that, when he came to her bedchamber that evening, she wouldn’t slam the door in his face.
Ten
Sergeant Pesaro glared at the Algarvian constables drawn up at attention in front of the barracks in Gromheort. “Listen up, you lugs,” he growled. “You’d better listen up, on account of this is important.”
As imperceptibly as he could, Bembo shifted from foot to foot. “How many times have we heard speeches like this?” he whispered to Oraste, who stood next to him.
Oraste might have been carved from stone. Even his lips hardly stirred as he answered, “Too cursed many.”
“Shut up, the lot of you!” Pesaro roared. His jowls wobbled when he opened his mouth very wide. “You’d better shut up, or you’ll bloody well be sorry. Have you got that?” He looked so fierce, even Bembo, who’d known him since dirt, decided he had to take him seriously. After one more glare, Pesaro went on, “All right. That’s better. Our kingdom needs us, by the powers above, and we’re going to come through.”
Alarm blazed up Bembo’s back. One of the things he’d always feared was that the meat grinder of war might decide to take constables and turn them into soldiers. By the horrified expressions some of his comrades were wearing, the same thing had occurred to them, too.
Pesaro’s chuckle was anything but pleasant. “There. Have I got your attention? I cursed well better have. What we’re going to do is, we’re going to go into the Kaunian quarter here, we’re going to grab as many blonds as we can, and we’re going to ship ‘em west. The men in the trenches there’ll need all the sorcerous help they can get. We’re the boys who can give’em what they need.”
“As long as we’re not going into the trenches ourselves,” somebody behind Bembo muttered. Bembo had all he could do to keep from nodding like a fool, because that was exactly how he felt himself.
A constable in front of him stuck up a hand. When Pesaro nodded, the fellow asked, “What do we do if we run into people who look like Forthwegians?”
“Grab ‘em anyhow,” Pesaro answered promptly. “We’ll throw the buggers into holding cells. If they still look like Forthwegians a day later, we’ll turn’em loose. And if they don’t—which, you ask me, is a lot more likely—then off they go. If they’re in the Kaunian quarter, we figure they’re blonds till they show us different.”
Another constable, a young fellow named Almonio, raised his hand. “Permission to fall out, Sergeant?” He never had had the stomach for seizing Kaunians who would be doomed to massacre.
But Pesaro shook his head, which made his jowls wobble again, this time from side to side. “No.” His voice was flat and hard. “You can come along, or you can go to the guardhouse. Those are your choices.”
“I’ll come,” Almonio said miserably. “It’s not right, but I’ll come.” Bembo knew the youngster would drink himself into a stupor the first chance he got.
“You bet your arse you’ll come.” Pesaro wasn’t just going to have his way; he was going to rub the other constable’s nose in it, so that Almonio wouldn’t pester him again with second thoughts. “This war we’re fighting with Unkerlant touches everybody now. We’re all fighting it, irregardless of whether we’re in the front line or not.” A smile spread over his broad, fleshy face—he plainly thought that rather fine.
Elsewhere on the parade ground in front of the barracks, other sergeants were haranguing other squads of constables. That fit in with what Bembo knew, or thought he knew, of how soldiers and their leaders behaved before a battle. All the sergeants finished at about the same time. That, Bembo suspected, was no accident.
The captain who’d led the raid on the block of flats where the Kaunian robber Gippias’ pals had been hiding out was in charge of this assault on the Kaunian quarter. Bembo still didn’t know his name. He did know the fellow was from Trapani, and had a vast contempt not only for Kaunians but also for Forthwegians and for his own countrymen who had the misfortune to come from provincial towns.
“We’ll get them,” the captain declared as the constables marched toward the little district into which the blonds had been shoehorned. “We’ll get them, and we’ll teach them what it means to be Algarve’s enemies.”
“He sees what needs doing, anyhow,” Oraste said. But then the captain repeated himself, and then he said the same thing over again for a third and soon for a fourth time. Oraste rolled his eyes. “All right. We’ve got the fornicating idea.”
Forthwegians who saw a company’s worth of constables bearing down on them sensibly got out of the way as fast as they could. Pride made Bembo suck in his belly, throw back his shoulders, and march as if marching really mattered. Like any Algarvian, he reckoned being part of a parade the only thing better than watching one.
But that thought had hardly crossed his mind before the constables had to halt. It wasn’t Forthwegians or Kaunians who stopped them, either: it was their own countrymen. A couple of regiments of soldiers were marching through the city toward the ley-line caravan depot. They didn’t swagger, as the constables did; they just tramped along, intent on getting where they were going—probably back to the front in Unkerlant. The
ones who weren’t lean were downright skinny. Their tunics and kilts were faded and patched. And they all had a knowing look in their eyes, a look that said they’d been places and done things the constables couldn’t—and wouldn’t want to—imagine.
“Aren’t they cute?” one soldier said to another, pointing at the constables. “Aren’t they sweet?”
“Oh, aye, they’re just the most precious dears I ever saw,” his friend answered. Both men guffawed. Bembo’s ears heated in dull embarrassment.
Another Algarvian trooper was blunter. “Slackers!” he yelled. “Whose prong did you suck to stay out of the real fight?” His pals growled and shook their fists at the constables. One of them flipped up his kilt and showed his bare buttocks—he wasn’t wearing drawers.
“Get that man’s name! Discipline him!” the constabulary captain shouted to the sergeants and lieutenants and captains marching past. But, in spite of his fury, the military officers paid him no attention. The more they ignored him, the angrier and louder he got. It did him no good at all.
He was still steaming when the last footsoldier finally walked past. Some of the other constables had got angry, too. More, like Bembo, were just resigned. “Soldiers never have any use for us,” he said. “They’re jealous that they have to go forward and we get to stay back here.”
“Wouldn’t you be?” Oraste returned.
“Of course I would. You think I’m daft?” Bembo said. “But I don’t have to be jealous of me, on account of I’m a constable, not a soldier.”
Oraste might have had further opinion on just what Bembo was. If he did, he kept his mouth shut about them. The two constables were partners, after all. They marched on till they came to the edge of the Kaunian quarter. There the captain divided them into two groups: a larger one that would go into houses and shops and bring out the blonds, and a smaller one that would guard them and keep them from slipping away in the confusion. Bembo and Oraste were both in the first group.
“This is for Algarve!” the captain declared. “This is for victory! Go in there and do your duty.”
Had the constables been rookies, they might have charged into the Kaunian district with cheers ringing from their lips. But almost all of them had been through roundups before, both in Gromheort and in the surrounding villages. They had a hard time getting excited about another one.
Oraste might not have been excited, but he enjoyed kicking in a door when no one responded after he yelled, “Kaunians, come forth!” He liked breaking things and knocking things down. Roundups gave him the chance to have fun.
But he went from gloating to cursing when he and Bembo found nobody in the flat once he had kicked in the door. They went next door. This time, Bembo shouted, “Kaunians, come forth!” Again, no one came forth. No one responded at all. With a snarl, Oraste put a boot to the door near the latch. It flew open. The constables swarmed in, sticks in hand and ready to blaze. Once more, though, they found only a deserted flat.
“Powers above!” Oraste exclaimed. “Did all the stinking blonds magic themselves dark and sneak out when nobody was looking?”
“They couldn’t have,” Bembo said, though without much conviction. “Somebody would have noticed.”
“Then where are they?” Oraste asked, and Bembo had no good answer for him. He did hope Doldasai and her family had managed to get out of the Kaunian quarter. If they hadn’t, he wouldn’t be able to do a thing about it if they got seized again.
They both shouted, “Kaunians, come forth!” in front of the doorway to the next flat. Once more, no one inside came out or said a word. Yet again, Oraste kicked in the door—not only was he better at it than Bembo, he enjoyed it more. This time, though, they found a man and a woman hiding in a closet under some cloaks. Both of them might have been Forthwegian by their looks.
“We were just visiting,” the man quavered in Algarvian, “and your shout frightened us, so—”
“Shut up!” Oraste said, and hit him in the head with his bludgeon. The woman screamed. He hit her, too. “For one thing, I know you’re lying. For another thing, I don’t give a fart. Orders are to grab everybody, and I don’t care what you look like. Get moving, or else I’ll wallop you again.”
As the unhappy couple stumbled toward the door, blood ran down their faces and dripped on the shabby carpeting. Desperation in his voice, the man said, “I’ll give you anything you want to pretend you never saw us.”
“Forget it,” Oraste said. Bembo couldn’t do anything but nod. Oraste continued. “Go on, curse you. It’s not like anybody’ll miss you once you’re gone.”
The man said something in classical Kaunian. Oraste didn’t know a word of the language. Bembo knew just enough to recognize a curse when he heard one. He hit the man again, on the off chance that the fellow was mage enough to make the curse stick if he got to finish it. “None of that,” he snapped. “We’re warded against wizardry anyhow.” He hoped the wards worked well.
He and Oraste led the couple they’d captured back to the constables in charge of holding Kaunians once caught. Other constables were leading more Kaunians and presumed Kaunians out of the cramped district. “Powers above, a lot of these buggers look like Forthwegians and wear tunics,” Oraste said.
Bembo could only nod. Close to half the captives looked swarthy and dressed like their Forthwegian countrymen. Genuine blonds wearing genuine trousers had become scarce even in the Kaunian quarter. “I do wonder how many have slipped away to someplace where nobody knows what in blazes they are,” Bembo said.
“Too cursed many, I’ll tell you that,” Oraste said.
The captain in charge of the operation plainly agreed with him. “You’ll have to do better than this,” he shouted to his men. “Algarve’s going to need bodies for the fight ahead. You’ve got to go in there and get’em.”
“There aren’t that many bodies to get, not anymore,” Bembo said. “We’ve already nabbed a good many, and likely even more have slipped through our fingers with their sorcerous disguises.” Again, he hoped Doldasai had. He wouldn’t have wanted to put his neck on the block like that for nothing.
“Too right they have,” Oraste agreed. “But the ones that are left, we’ve bloody well got to dig out. Come on.” Back into the Kaunian quarter he went, intent on doing all he could. Bembo couldn’t come close to matching such zeal, and didn’t much want to, but he followed nonetheless. What choice have I got? he wondered. He knew the answer all too well: none whatever.
Smooth as velvet, the ley-line caravan glided to a stop at the depot. “Skrunda!” the conductor yelled, going from car to car. “All out for Skrunda!”
“Your pardon,” Talsu said as he got to his feet. The man sitting next to him swung his legs into the aisle so Talsu, who’d been by the window, could get past and walk to the doorway that would let him return to his own town.
He had to snatch at his trousers as he went up the aisle. They’d fit fine when the Algarvians first captured him. After months in prison, though, they threatened to fall down with every stride he took. He was willing to hang on to them. When he got home, he or his father could alter his clothes so they’d fit his present scrawny state. And he could start eating properly again, to start making himself fit the clothes.
“Watch your step, sir,” the conductor said as Talsu got down from the caravan car by way of the little set of stairs that led to the platform. His voice was an emotionless drone. How many thousands of times, how many tens of thousands of times, had he said exactly the same thing? Enough to drive a man easily bored mad, surely. But he said, “Watch your step, sir,” to the man behind Talsu, too, in just the same way.
Talsu had no baggage to reclaim. He counted himself lucky that his captors had given him back the clothes he was wearing when they’d seized him. He hurried out of the depot and onto the streets of the town where he’d lived all his life till conscripted into King Donalitu’s army. That hadn’t turned out well, not for him and not for Jelgava, either. Next to months in a dungeon, though …
He went through the market square at close to a trot. Part of him said the bread and onions and olives and almonds and olive oil on display there were shadows of what had been for sale before the war. The rest, the part that had thought hard about eating cockroaches, wanted to stop right there and stuff himself till he couldn’t walk anymore.
He did stop when someone called his name. “Talsu!” his friend repeated, coming up to pump his hand. “I thought you were … you know.”
“Hello, Stikliu,” Talsu said. “I was, as a matter of fact. But they finally let me go.”
“Did they?” Something in Stikliu’s face changed. It wasn’t a pleasant sort of change, either. “How … lucky for you. I’ll see you later. I have some other things to do. So long.” He left as fast as he’d come forward.
What was that all about? Talsu wondered. But he didn’t need to wonder for long. Stikliu thought he’d sold his soul to the Algarvians. Talsu scowled. A lot of people were liable to think that. For what other reason would he have come out of the dungeon? What would he have thought if someone imprisoned were suddenly freed? Nothing good. Stikliu hadn’t thought anything good, either.
A couple of other people who knew Talsu saw him on the way to the tailor’s shop and the dwelling over it. They didn’t come rushing over to find out how he was. They did their best to pretend they’d never set eyes on him. His scowl got deeper. Maybe the gaolers hadn’t done him such an enormous favor by turning him loose.
He walked into the tailor’s shop. There behind the counter sat his father, doing the necessary hand stitching on an Algarvian kilt before chanting the spell that would use the laws of similarity and contagion to bind the whole garment together. Traku looked up from his work. “Good morn—” he began, and then threw down the kilt and ran out to take Talsu in his arms. “Talsu!” he said, and his voice broke. He rumpled his son’s hair, as he had when Talsu was a little boy. “Powers above be praised, you’ve come home!” He didn’t care how that might have happened; he just rejoiced that it had.
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