“One thing, anyhow,” Sabrino said, pronouncing each word with considerable care.
“What’s that, sir?”CaptainOrosio sat on another stool not far away. He had a mug of spirits, too, and he’d also emptied it more than once.
“In weather like this, even the cursed Unkerlanters can’t get their dragons off the ground,” Sabrino said.
Orosio considered that with owlish intensity. Once it had penetrated, he nodded. “You’re right, sir,” he said, as if Sabrino had given him some hidden key to the true meaning of the world. “By the powers above, you’re right.”
“Of course I am,” Sabrino said grandly. He drew himself straight on his stool, and almost fell off it. “I am a colonel of dragonfliers. Do I know these things, or do I not?”
“You’re a colonel of dragonfliers. Of course you do.” Orosio tilted back his mug and drained it. He reached for the jar that sat on the rammed-earth floor between Sabrino and him. The jar sloshed when he picked it up. Grunting in satisfaction, he poured himself a refill. After he drank, he turned- carefully-toward Sabrino. “How come you’re still a colonel of dragonfliers?”
“What’s that?” Sabrino asked.
“How come you’re still just a colonel of dragonfliers, lord Count?” Orosio said again. “You’ve got the blue blood, and powers above know you fight your wing like a mad bastard. How come you’re not a brigadier of dragonfliers, or maybe a lieutenant general of dragonfliers by now? Plenty of people who started behind you and weren’t so good to begin with are ahead of you now. It doesn’t seem fair to me.”
“Ah.” Sabrino reached out and patted Orosio on the shoulder. “You are a gentleman, my friend. Nothing less than a gentleman. But the war could go on till I was much older than I am now-which is quite old enough, believe you me it is-and I would die a colonel of dragonfliers. I suppose I ought to count myself lucky I wouldn’t die a sergeant of dragonfliers.”
“I don’t understand, sir.” Orosio sounded on the verge of tears because he didn’t understand.
There had been times when Sabrino found himself on the verge of tears because he understood altogether too well. No more, though. He was-or he told himself he was-resigned to what had happened to his career. “Do you want to know why I’m not a brigadier of dragonfliers or even a lieutenant general of dragonfliers, Orosio? It’s simple. Nothing simpler, in fact. I toldKingMezentio to his face that he was making a mistake when he started sacrificing Kaunians for the sake of sorcery, and I turned out to be right. That’s why I’m still a colonel of dragonfliers, and why I’ll be one till my dying day.” He emptied his own mug and poured it full again.
“Would you have had a better chance for promotion if you turned out to be wrong?” Orosio asked.
Sabrino shook his head. “No, not any chance at all,” he said loudly-aye, he could feel the spirits, sure enough. “It didn’t help that I turned out to be right, but it didn’t matter much, either. You tell the king he’s made a mistake and you’ve made a worse one, if you ever wanted to see rank higher than the one you owned.”
“That’s not fair. By the powers above, it’snot fair,”CaptainOrosio said with drunken insistence of his own. “You’re a free Algarvian. You’ve got as much right to tell him what’s so as he’s got to tell you.”
“Oh, aye, I’ve got the right,” Sabrino agreed. “I’ve got the right, but he’s got the might.” The jingling rhyme made him laugh-a telling measure of how drunk he was.
“Not fair,” Orosio said again. “The way things are, we need every good soldier doing everything he can.” He leaned over to pat Sabrino this time, and he too almost fell off his stool. “You’re a good soldier, sir, but you’re not coming close to doing everything you can.”
“No? You think not?” Sabrino’s laugh was loud and emphatic, too. “Right this minute, I’m doing everything I can just to sit up, same as you are.”
“Who, me?” Orosio said. “I’m fine, just fine.” To prove how fine he was, he burst into raucous song.
“That’s lovely,” Sabrino said, another telling measure of how low in the jar the level of spirits had got. He yawned enormously. “Let’s go to bed.”
“Aye, let’s,”CaptainOrosio said, not that the hut boasted any real beds. Instead, it had benches against the wall, on which the Unkerlanter peasants who lived there had been wont to throw pillows and blankets and themselves.
Those pillows and blankets were long gone, as were the Unkerlanter peasants. Sabrino did not miss them. For one thing, the hut already boasted a generous oversupply of lice and bedbugs and fleas. For another, the dragonfliers were wearing the furs and leathers in which they rose high with their mounts. Those were warm enough to take the measure of even an Unkerlanter winter.
Sabrino lay down. So did Orosio. The wing commander heard Orosio start to snore. Then weariness and spirits rolled over him like an avalanche, and he heard nothing more for a long time.
When he woke up, he was lying on the floor by the bench. He had no recollection of falling off, but he must have done it. Orosio remained where he’d lain down. He was still snoring, too. The horrible noise made Sabrino wince.
Everything, just then, made Sabrino wince. The fire had died into embers, but even their faint red glow seemed too bright for his eyes. His head throbbed as if eggs were bursting inside it. “Powers above,” he muttered. Talking hurt, too. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done such a thorough job of damaging himself with spirits.
He started to crawl toward the jar, then gathered himself, got to his feet, and walked over to it. He poured some spirits-not too much-into his mug and swallowed as if he were swallowing medicine. His outraged stomach tried to rebel, but he sternly refused to let it. After the first dreadful shock, the spirits started cutting into his hangover instead of making it worse.
Had he been an Unkerlanter peasant, he probably would have gone from hangover remedy straight into another drunk. He was tempted to do that anyway, but shook his head, which also hurt. The blizzard might end. If the dragons hadn’t frozen out there, he might have to fly. Flying hung over was painful; he’d done that a few times. Flying drunk
… Flying drunk was asking to get killed. He might have felt like death, but he didn’t feel like dying.
He shook Orosio. The squadron leader groaned, but then went back to snoring. Sabrino shook him again. Orosio opened one eye, which was redder than the embers in the hearth. “Go away,” he croaked. His eyelids slid shut again.
“Duty,” Sabrino said.
“Futter duty,” Orosio answered. “I’m not fit for it, anyway. Can’t you see I’m diseased? I need a healer.”
“I know what you need.” Sabrino poured some more spirits into a mug. It was the one from which he’d drunk, but he wasn’t worrying about the niceties just then. And the gurgle and splash got Orosio’s attention. The squadron leader opened both eyes. He sat up. When Sabrino held out the mug to him, he took it and gulped the spirits.
“Powers above, that’s foul stuff,” he said, and then, a moment later, “Let me have some more.”
“No.” Sabrino shook his head again, which made him wish it would fall off. “The idea is to cure you, not to start you down the slope again.”
“Oh, I’m cured,” Orosio said in hollow tones. “Into shoe leather, I think. I’m going to swear off spirits forever, or at least until the next time I feel like getting drunk again.” He eyed the jar in Sabrino’s hand. “A little more?”
“No,” Sabrino repeated, and shoved the stopper into the jar again. He sat down beside Orosio: his legs didn’t want to hold him up any more. “I didn’t take any more for myself than I gave you-enough to take the edge off things, but that’s all.”
“You’re a hard, cruel man, Colonel.” Orosio grimaced. “I’ve got demons ringing bronze bells in my head.”
“I know what you mean.” With an old man’s spraddle-legged shuffle, Sabrino walked to a window. He felt like a very old man just then. When he undid the leather lashings that held the s
hutter closed, he looked out on swirling white. “The snow hasn’t let up.”
“Good,” Orosio said. “Maybe we’ll be somewhere close to human before we have to fly again. Right now, I don’t think the undertakers did much of a job embalming me.”
“You embalmed yourself, same as I did,” Sabrino answered. “I wonder how many men in the wing have gone and done the same.”
“Nothing elseto do in this miserable place,” Orosio said. “Nothing to do on this whole front but drink and fly. If we can’t fly, that only leaves one thing.” He cast a longing eye at the jar of spirits.
“Don’t remind me.” Sabrino’s laugh was half real amusement, half something darker, something grimmer. “When I’m drunk, I keep looking around for my wife to hit, the same as any Unkerlanter peasant would.” He laughed again. “I wouldn’t really hit Gismonda, mind you; she’d have the law on me in nothing flat. But if Fronesia were here…”
“But she’s notyour mistress anymore,” Orosio said. “Didn’t you tell me she’d taken up with a major of footsoldiers?”
“A major, a colonel, something like that.” Sabrino made a fist. “Well, my good fellow, what better reason to hit her than that?”
“Ah,” Orosio said, again as if Sabrino had offered him a philosophical revelation.
Sabrino wasn’t feeling philosophical. He was just feeling battered and abused. The last thing he needed was someone pounding on the door to the hut. He flinched at the racket. So did Orosio. The only way to make it stop was to open the door. When Sabrino did; he marveled at how young and clean-cut the crystallomancer looked. “Well?” he growled-softly.
The crystallomancer seemed oblivious to his fragile condition. He said, “Sir, we’ve got ten new dragons and ten new dragonfliers coming in as soon as the weather clears enough.”
“Dowe?” Sabrino said, and the youngster nodded. “Ten? Really?” Sabrino asked. The crystallomancer nodded again.
“That’s about half the strength we’ve got here now,” Orosio said.
“Aye, and it brings the wing up to something close to half-strength,” Sabrino added. Though at the start of the war he’d never imagined it would be, that was something to celebrate. He went back into the hut, poured a mug full of spirits, and thrust it at the crystallomancer. “Here,” he said. “Have a drink.”
“I’m off to the Boulevard of Horsemen,” Krasta said with as much gaiety as she could muster.
ColonelLurcaniolooked up from his paperwork, but not for long. “Try not to buy more than the carriage can carry back here,” he told her: even for one of the Algarvian occupiers, he was notably cynical.
“I was hoping one of the lingerie shops might finally have something new,” she said.
“Were you?” That got Lurcanio’s notice, as Krasta had thought it would. If it hadn’t, she would have been offended, and she would have let him know about it, too. He ran his eyes up and down her, as if imagining her in a new negligee, or perhaps being peeled out of a new negligee. “Here’s hoping they do.”
“If you come to my bedchamber tonight, maybe you’ll find out,” Krasta purred. “Maybe. If I decide to open the door and let you in.” Giggling, she hurried out of his office. “Enjoy your papers,” she called from the empty antechamber. No new adjutant had replacedCaptainGradasso, who was off somewhere in the barbarous wilds of Unkerlant.
Krasta’s driver greeted the news that he was to take her into Priekule with something less than unrestrained enthusiasm. “Oh, very well, milady,” he said. “It’ll be a bit, though: I have to get the horses ready.” When Krasta went out to the stables, she discovered, not for the first time, that getting the horses ready also involved getting his trusty flask ready.
But he still handled the carriage well enough. So long as that remained true, Krasta didn’t care if he drank. He was a commoner, after all, and what were commoners but a pack of drunks?
The lingerie shop had the same wares it had displayed the last time she’d shopped there, a few weeks before-and on her visit before that, too. She’d sneered then. Today she bought a gown of filmy blue silk that would play up her eyes-as well as some other assets. She’d seen it before, aye, butColonelLurcanio wouldn’t have.
She didn’t even harass the shopgirl while making the purchase, which proved she had something on her mind. Carrying the parcel in her hand-the silk folded up into next to nothing-she hurried out of the shop. On the sidewalk, she paused and looked around. Everything looked as normal, and as dreary, as could be.
Shoes clicking on the slates, she hurried off the Boulevard of Horsemen and onto a side street. The blocks of flats there had a look of good breeding even wartime poverty and neglect couldn’t mar. People who lived in them were people to be reckoned with. Krasta looked around again. She didn’t see any of the people who’d been on the Boulevard when she left the lingerie shop. Satisfied, she ducked into one of the blocks of flats and went up to the third floor.
It’ll be the one farthest from the stairs, she reminded herself. The hallway had carpeting thicker and softer than her mansion boasted. She knocked on the door.
ViscountValnuopened it. “Well, come in, sweetheart,” he said, smiling his bright, predatory, skeletally handsome smile. “No one followed you here, I hope?”
“I don’t think so,” Krasta said, before remembering that trusting him was liable to be even more dangerous than trusting Lurcanio. Hastily she added, “If I don’t come back, I’ve left enough behind in writing to make sure you get what you deserve.”
Smiling still, Valnu said, “I don’t believe you.” Alarm blazed through Krasta, for she was bluffing. Before she could say anything, before she could do anything, Valnu went on: “Before the war, though, you never would have had the wit to come up with the lie-so maybe it isn’t a lie. Invasions are so educational, aren’t they?”
“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,” Krasta snapped.
Valnu laughed. “Well, that sounds more like you. But the question isn’t what you don’t know. The question is what you do know, and what you intend to do about it.”
“I know…” Krasta paused and took a deep breath. “I know you’re part of the underground, because if you weren’t, CountAmatu wouldn’t be dead.”
“And so?” Valnu asked. “What do you propose to do about that? That Algarvian colonel’s been in your bed ever since the redheads marched into Priekule. I don’t care to have my name come up in pillow talk, you know.”
The parcel Krasta was holding crinkled a little. That reminded her of what was inside the paper. Her cheeks heated. Even so, she said, “If you didn’t care to have that happen, you shouldn’t have tried molesting me at one party or another-at one partyand another, I should say.”
“Molesting you?” Valnu threw back his head and laughed. “My dear, you didn’t seem molested. And who, if I may ask, was doing just what to whom?”
Krasta needed a moment to sort through that, too. Once she did, she put the parcel down on a table and walked right up to Valnu. “The last time we got caught,” she said, putting her arms around him, “I was doing something like this.” She kissed him.
He didn’t respond for a moment. Then, his mouth still joined to hers, he started to laugh, and he kissed her back.
“That’s better,” she said after a while. “I was starting to wonder if those handsome Algarvian officers were the only ones who mattered to you any more.”
“I already said you have a handsome Algarvian officer in your bed,” Valnu replied. “Why shouldn’t I have some in mine?” He was, as usual, altogether flagrant and altogether unabashed.
“Why?” Krasta said. “I’ll show you why.” She kissed him again, this time so hard that she tasted blood-hers or his she neither knew nor cared. Whatever his interest in Algarvian officers, she knew she’d excited him in the past. By the bulge in his trousers, she was exciting him again, too. Now she laughed in the middle of a kiss, laughed and ground her hips against him.
“I asked you once, who was m
olesting whom?” Valnu panted. His left hand cupped her right buttock; his right squeezed her left breast.
“Oh, shut up,” she told him, and rubbed him with her hand.
Deft and sure, his right hand undid the wooden toggles that held her tunic closed. He bent to her and teased her nipples with his tongue. Whatever his interest in Algarvian officers, he remembered how to excite her, too.
She fumbled with his belt. Once she got it unbuckled, she yanked his trousers down. She fell to her knees in front of him. But as she began, as one of his hands went to the back of her head to guide her, he said, “The last time you put your mouth there, you threw me out of your carriage when you found out a pretty little shopgirl had done that before you.”
“And so?” Krasta rocked forward and back a couple of times. Valnu’s breath sighed out of him. Krasta paused and said, “She was just a commoner.” She returned to what she’d been doing. His fingers tangled in her hair. His hand urged her forward again, urged her on. In spite of it, she paused again and looked up at him. “I presume all your handsome Algarvians were of noble blood?”
He gaped. Then he laughed. He laughed so hard, he lost the most obvious evidence of his excitement. “There’s no one like you, is there?” he said.
“I should hope not,” Krasta replied indignantly, and set about repairing the damage. It didn’t take long. She hadn’t thought it would.
After a bit, Valnu pulled away. “Shall we go back to the bedchamber?” he asked.
Krasta considered. “No,” she said, and pulled him down onto the floor with her.
She regretted that in short order: thrashing about on the carpet wasn’t so comfortable as it would have been on a soft, resilient mattress. But that regret was only a small thing, especially after Valnu poised himself above her, her thighs clasping his lean flanks. He had stamina and to spare, and also had the courtesy to help her along with a finger so that she gasped and shuddered and stiffened at the same instant he drove himself deepest into her.
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