“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—KAUNIANTTY 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.
Ten
Marshal Rathar wished he were still at the front. Coming back to Cottbus meant coming back to King Swemmel’s constant complaints. It meant coming back to subordination, too. Away from the capital, Rathar gave orders and none dared say him nay. In Cottbus, Swemmel gave the orders. Rathar understood that very well.
He also understood why he’d been summoned to the capital. Major Merovec fiddled with the decorations pinned onto Rathar’s fanciest dress-uniform tunic. “The ministers—especially the Lagoan—will sneer at you if everything isn’t perfect,” Merovec said fussily. He sniffed. “I don’t care what anybody says: the whoreson looks like a stinking Algarvian to me.”
“He looks like an Algarvian to me, too,” Rathar answered. “There’s one difference, though: he’s on our side. Now am I pretty enough? If I am, kindly let me take my place beside the king.”
Still fussing, Merovec reluctantly stepped aside. Rathar walked from the antechamber out into the throne room. A murmur ran through the courtiers as they spied him. They wished he were at the front, too; his presence meant they had less room for jockeying among themselves.
He’d overstated things when telling Merovec he would stand beside Swemmel. The king, gorgeous in ermine and velvet and cloth of gold, sat on a throne that raised him high above the mere mortals who formed his court. That was how things were in Unkerlant: first the sovereign, then, a long way below, everyone else. But Rathar’s place was closest to the throne.
Horns blared harsh. In a great voice, a herald cried, “Your Majesty, before you come the ministers of Lagoas and Kuusamo!” And down the long way from the entrance to the throne room to the throne itself came the two diplomats. They walked side by side in step with each other, so that neither had to acknowledge his colleague as his superior.
Lord Moisio of Kuusamo bore an annoyingly ambiguous title, as far as Rathar was concerned. He wore an embroidered tunic over baggy trousers, but there his resemblance to anything Kaunian stopped. He was swarthier than any Unkerlanter, little and lithe, with narrow eyes and a nose that hardly seemed there at all. A few gray hairs sprouted from his chin: a most halfhearted beard.
And Major Merovec had been right—but for his ponytail, Count Gusmao, Lagoas’ minister, did look like an Algarvian as he strode along beside Moisio. He even walked like an Algarvian, with the air of a man who owned the world and expected you to know it. He was tall and long-faced and redheaded, and wore tunic and a kilt that showed his knobby knees. Maybe the styles of those garments were subtly different from the ones Mezentio’s men would have worn, but few Unkerlanters cared for subtleties. Rathar wasn’t the only man who wanted to bristle at the sight of Gusmao. The real Algarvians had come too close to swarming over the palace here.
Still in unison, Gusmao and Moisio bowed before King Swemmel. Not being his subjects, they didn’t have to prostrate themselves. Moisio spoke first, which had probably been decided by the toss of a coin: “I bring greetings, your Majesty, from my masters, the Seven Princes of Kuusamo.” His Unkerlanter had an odd drawl.
Swemmel leaned forward and peered down at him. “Most men have trouble enough serving one master. We have never fathomed serving seven.”
“I manage,” Moisio said cheerfully. He nudged Gusmao.
The nobleman who looked too much like an Algarvian said, “And I bring greetings from King Vitor, who congratulates your Majesty on your brave resistance against Mezentio’s hungry pack.” He didn’t sound like an Algarvian; his accent, though probably thicker than Moisio’s, lacked the trilling lilt Mezentio’s men gave to Unkerlanter.
“We greet you, and Vitor through you,” Swemmel said. He glared down at both diplomats. “More gladly, though, would we greet soldiers from Lagoas or Kuusamo fighting our common foe on the mainland of Derlavai, where this war will be won or lost. Our men fight here. Where are yours?”
“All over the seas,” Gusmao answered. “In Siaulia. On the austral continent. In the air above Valmiera and above Algarve itself.”
“Everywhere but where it matters,” Swemmel said with a sneer. “You had some on the Derlavaian mainland, and the redheads—the other redheads, I should say—ran you off it. What heroes you must be!”
“We shall be back,” Gusmao answered. “Meanwhile, we tie up plenty of Algarvians and Yaninans who would be fighting you.”
Swemmel’s glance flicked, fast as a striking snake, at Rathar. Ever so slightly, the marshal nodded. Gusmao was telling the truth there, or a good part of it, no matter how welcome Lagoan soldiers on Derlavai would have been. All that meant at the moment was Swemmel swinging his eyes toward Moisio. “And you, sirrah, what lying excuses will you give us?”
“I don’t know,” Moisio answered easily. “What sort of excuses would you like, your Majesty?” Rathar didn’t think Swemmel would order a friendly land’s minister boiled alive, but he wasn’t altogether sure. Few people had the nerve to talk back to the King of Unkerlant. Even he trembled every time he had to try it. But Moisio went on, “The plain truth is, we are not ready to fight on the mainland yet. We would not have been in this war at all had the Algarvians not started killing Kaunians to power their sorcerers’ spells against you.”
Don’t push us too far, or we can still back out. That was what Rathar thought the Kuusaman meant. He hoped King Swemmel understood as much. Swemmel’s storms of temper were famous, but now would be a very bad time for him to have one.
The king glared at Moisio. The Kuusaman minister looked steadily back. In his quiet, understated way, he had sand. After a silence that stretched, Swemmel said, “Well, now you have seen for yourselves what their wizards can do. If you are not yet ready to fight hard, you had better be soon.”
“We work toward it,” Moisio answered. “As soon as we can, we aim to hit Algarve a good, solid blow.”
“As soon as you can.” Swemmel was sneering again, though not so fiercely. “And what are we supposed to do in the meantime? We have been bearing this burden by ourselves since last summer.”
“We bore it alone for most of a year,” Gusmao said.
King Swemmel looked daggers at him. “But Mezentio’s men could not come to grips with you, not when you hid behind the sea. If they could have, your kingdom would have rolled onto its belly soon enough. We did not. We have not. We fight on.”
Rathar coughed. If the king ever wanted help from Kuusamo and Lagoas, he would be wise not to antagonize their ministers now. Gusmao was scowling b
ack at the King of Unkerlant. Lagoans weren’t quite so proud and touchy as their Algarvian cousins, but they had their limits.
Then Moisio said, “We need to remember the enemy we all fight.”
And that, for the first time in the audience, struck the proper chord with Swemmel. “Aye!” he exclaimed. “By the powers above, aye! But you two, your lands are all but untouched. We have taken many heavy blows. How many more can we take before our hearts break?”
In his own way, Swemmel was clever. He never would have raised the possibility of defeat to his own people. If these foreigners thought Unkerlant might give up, though, what would they not do to keep her in the fight? If Unkerlant went under, Kuusamo and Lagoas would have to face a Derlavai-bestriding Algarve allied with Gyongyos. Rathar wouldn’t have wanted to try that.
By their expressions, neither Lord Moisio nor Count Gusmao relished the prospect. Gusmao said. “We of Lagoas have not given up, and we know our brave Unkerlanter comrades will not give up, either. We’ll help you in every way we can.”
“And we,” Moisio agreed. “It would be easier if we didn’t have to dodge so many Algarvian ships to bring things to you, but we manage every now and then.”
“A pittance,” Swemmel said. Rathar suppressed a deadly dangerous urge to turn and kick his sovereign in the ankle. But then the king seemed to realized he’d gone too far. “But all aid, we grant, is welcome. We are in danger, and stretched very thin. Aye, all aid is welcome.”
When Gusmao and Moisio used we they were plainly speaking of their people. With King Swemmel, Rathar often had trouble figuring out whether he was talking about Unkerlant or himself. He certainly seemed stretched very thin these days—one more reason Rathar wished he were back on the battlefield and away from the subtle poisons of the capital.
Not two minutes after the ministers from Kuusamo and Lagoas bowed their way out of the throne room—before most of the Unkerlanter courtiers had had the chance to leave—a runner came up the aisle toward Rathar. “Lord Marshal!” he called, and waved a folded sheet of paper.
Through the Darkness Page 34
