Darkness Descending (87 page)

He stared so hard, the taverner noticed. “What’s the matter, pal?” he asked. “See somebody you know?” He threw back his head and laughed uproariously at his own wit.

What would he do if Skarnu said aye?
Call me a liar, I hope,
Skarnu thought; every other possibility struck him as worse. “Likely tell,” was all he answered, which made the taverner chuckle, but not chortle again.

Worst was that Skarnu couldn’t just up and leave. He had to hang around and finish his ale and keep on chatting while he was doing it. Anything else would have been out of character and drawn notice.

Concealing his anguish was as hard as hiding a physical wound would have been. He’d always known Krasta was headstrong and willful, but what could have possessed her to take up with an Algarvian officer? He wondered if she knew; she’d never been long on self-examination.

After he could finally start back to the farm with propriety, he heaved a long sigh. His sister had made, or more likely unmade, her bed; now she would have to lie in it... with this Colonel Lurcanio. Skarnu sighed again. Whatever Krasta had done, he couldn’t do anything about it.

He walked on for a while before realizing that wasn’t true. If he and his comrades did somehow manage to expel the Algarvians from Valmiera, Lurcanio would go and Krasta, presumably, would stay. What would happen then? He couldn’t imagine. Nothing pleasant—he was sure of that.

“My own sister,” he muttered as he tramped along the road. It was safe enough; he could see a good long blaze in every direction. “My own
sister?’
He’d never dreamt of being on opposite sides of a civil war with Krasta.

When he got back to the farm, he told Raunu and Merkela the news straightaway. He knew he didn’t have to; no one else was likely to associate his name and that of a noblewoman in Priekule. But he preferred not to take the chance: better they should hear it from him than from anybody else.

Raunu had been repairing the steps that led up to the farmhouse porch. He paused to pound in a couple of nails, using what struck Skarnu as needless force. Then he said, “That’s hard, sir. Aye, that’s about as hard to choke down as anything I can think of.”

Merkela took Skarnu by the hand. “Come upstairs with me,” she said. Raunu’s ears went red. He drove one more nail in a tearing hurry, then almost ran out of earshot of the farmhouse; Skarnu listened to the veteran’s footfalls fade as he himself followed Merkela up the stairs to her bedchamber. If this was how she wanted to make him feel better, he had no doubt she’d succeed.

In the bedchamber, she turned his way. He held out his arms to her. She stepped toward him—and slapped him in the face almost hard enough to knock him off his feet.

He staggered back, one hand coming up to his cheek, the other grabbing for the door frame to help him stay upright. “Powers above!” he exclaimed, tasting blood in his mouth. “What was that for?”

Merkela’s eyes blazed. “I’ll tell you what that’s for,” she snarled. “It’s for caring about your sister now that she’s an Algarvian’s whore.”

“She’s still my sister,” Skarnu mumbled. His cheek felt as if it were on fire. He probed the inside of his mouth with his tongue, trying to find out whether Merkela had loosened any of his teeth for him.

“You haven’t got a sister, not anymore.” Merkela spoke with great certainty—in that, at least, she was a lot like Krasta. “If she knew what you were doing, don’t you think she’d blab to this redheaded colonel and count, whatever his name was? Powers below eat him and eat his name, too.”

Skarnu started to say,
Of course she wouldn’t.
But the words clogged in his throat. He had no idea what Krasta would do if she found out he was one of the small, stubborn band of men—and women—keeping the war against Algarve sputteringly alive in the countryside. Maybe she would keep silent. But maybe she wouldn’t, too.

Merkela saw the doubt on his face. She nodded. “You aren’t trying to lie to me, anyhow. That’s something.”

“Lurcanio,” Skarnu said. “His name’s Lurcanio.”

“I told you, I don’t care what his name is,” Merkela answered. “He’s an Algarvian. That’s enough to know. Your sister gave herself to him, and now you have no sister.”

“Aye,” Skarnu said dully. Merkela viewed the world in very simple terms. He’d known that all along. This time, though, try as he would, he couldn’t find any way to believe she was wrong.

She eyed him. She nodded once more, in what looked like grudging approval. And then, in a swift, sudden motion, she pulled her tunic up over her head and threw it on the floor. She kicked off her sandals, yanked down her trousers and drawers, and took the couple of steps that brought her over to the bed. She lay down on it. Now she held out her arms to him. “You have no sister,” she repeated. “But you have me.”

Getting out of his own clothes was a matter of a moment. He lay down beside her, clutching at her flesh as fiercely as she grabbed for him. Very often, their lovemaking reminded him more of combat than of anything he’d ever known with other women. This was one of those times. She sank her teeth into his shoulder as if she meant to draw blood; her nails scored his back and flanks. He squeezed and pinched and prodded her. She pressed his hands to her, urging him to be rougher yet.

And when, not much later, he drove into her, he hardly cared whether he hurt her as well as pleasing her. By the way she moaned and bucked beneath him, she hardly cared, either, or knew the difference. His lips and teeth, jammed against hers, muffled her final cry. A couple of fierce thrusts later, he spent himself deep inside her.

Sweat made their bodies stick and slide against each other. Merkela pushed at him, to remind him to take a little weight on his elbows. He didn’t want to pull away; he hoped he’d get hard again inside her, so they could start again. Now that he was past thirty, though, such things didn’t happen very often. Sure enough, in a minute or two he flopped out.

Merkela reached for him. She wasn’t trying to make him rise; it seemed almost a gesture of respect for an admired foe. “Later,” she said. “There’s always later.”

“Aye,” Skarnu said, though he thought she was talking more to part of him than to all of him.

And indeed, Merkela started slightly, as if his voice reminded her all of him lay in this bed with her. Maybe she needed reminding; even more than a year after they’d started lying down together, she often called out her dead husband’s name at the moment of climax.

Her expression sharpened. She reached out and tapped Skarnu’s chest with a fingernail. “You have no sister,” she said once more, and he nodded again, admitting as much. She turned her head south, in the direction of Priekule. Her voice sank to a throaty whisper. “But oh, the vengeance you can take on her who was once your kin after the kingdom is free once again.”

Skarnu thought about it. What
would
he do if he ever saw Krasta face to face again?
Colonel and Count Lurcanio and Marchioness Krasta.
The words in the news sheet seared like vitriol. He nodded. “Aye.”

Nineteen

H
ajjaj’s secretary—his new secretary, his loyal secretary, his secretary who was not an Unkerlanter spy—stuck his head into the Zuwayzi foreign minister’s office and said, “Your Excellency, Marquis Balastro has arrived.”

“Very well, Qutuz. I am ready to receive him.” Hajjaj rose to display the Algarvian-style tunic and kilt he had donned for the occasion. They were making him sweat unreasonably, but that was one of the prices he had to pay for conforming to the diplomatic usages of the rest of Derlavai. “You may bring him in.”

“Aye, your Excellency,” Qutuz said, and went off to get the Algarvian minister.

A moment later, Hajjaj and Balastro were clasping hands. “Good day, good day,” Balastro said. He was stocky, middle-aged, vigorous, and much smarter than he looked. Reaching out to pat Hajjaj’s tunic, he said, “If you were a pretty young wench, I’d be disappointed you were wearing this. As is”—he shrugged a grandiloquent Algarvian shrug—”I can live with it.”

“Your reassurances do so ease my mind,” Hajjaj said dryly, and the redheaded Algarvian noble threw back his head and laughed out loud. Balastro would have laughed out of the other side of his mouth had Hajjaj told him Ansovald of Unkerlant had said something similar not so long before. Foreigners always thought of Zuwayzi nudity in terms of pretty young wenches. In one sense, Hajjaj understood that. In another, the ways it missed the point never failed to amuse him.

Balastro made himself comfortable with the cushions that did duty for chairs in Hajjaj’s office. So did the Zuwayzi foreign minister. Unlike most of his countrymen, he had a desk, but a low, wide one, one he could use while sitting on the carpet: another compromise between Zuwayzi usages and those of the rest of Derlavai.

The secretary came in with a silver tray that held the ritual tea and cakes and wine. Unlike Ansovald, Balastro appreciated the ritual. As long as he and Hajjaj nibbled and sipped, he stuck to small talk. He had an abundant store of it; Hajjaj enjoyed listening to him and fencing with him. He said as much—tea and cakes and wine were also a time for frank praise.

Balastro gave back a seated bow. “I rejoice at pleasing you, your Excellency,” he replied. “I do my best to ‘treat my friend as if he might become an enemy,’ and I hope that precludes inflicting boredom.”

When he quoted the proverb, he did so in the original classical Kaunian. Hajjaj sipped at his cup of wine to keep from showing what he thought of that. Balastro was, and was proud to be, a man of culture. But he was also a man of Algarve, a man whose kingdom was tormenting the Kaunians who had shaped so much of the culture he displayed. Somehow, Balastro and his countrymen saw no contradiction there. Algarvians always wanted everything at once.

While partaking of tea and cakes and wine, Hajjaj could not say anything so serious without, by his own lights, becoming a boor. That he would not do. Presently, Qutuz took the tray away. Balastro smiled and said, “Well, shall we get on with it?”

“I am at your service, my lord Marquis,” Hajjaj replied. “As you must know, I am always pleased to see you, and I am always curious to learn what is in your mind.”

“Even when you don’t like it,” Balastro said, without much malice.

Hajjaj gravely inclined his head. “Just so, your Excellency. Even when I don’t care for what you say, how you say it never fails to fascinate me.” The Kaunian proverb crossed his mind again.

He won a chuckle from Balastro, but the Algarvian minister quickly sobered. “I can only speak simply here, for my message is of the plainest—Algarve needs your help.”

“My
help?” The Zuwayzi foreign minister raised an eyebrow. “Truly your kingdom is in desperate straits if you expect a skinny old man to shoulder a stick for you.

“Heh,” Balastro said. “I thought we were coming to grips with things. I mean Zuwayza’s help, of course.”

“Very well, though my reply changes little,” Hajjaj said. “Your realm is also in difficulties if you expect a skinny young kingdom to shoulder many sticks for you.”

“Of course we are in difficulties,” Balastro said—he could, sometimes, be refreshingly frank. “If we weren’t, we would have taken Cottbus before winter froze us in our tracks.”

He could, sometimes, also be disingenuous. “Winter did rather more than freeze you in your tracks,” Hajjaj pointed out.

“Well, so it did,” Balastro said. “We had misfortunes; I can hardly deny it. But we have the Unkerlanters checked now, all along the line. And this year . . . this year, by the powers above, we’ll beat them once for all.” He sat up very straight, as if making his bearing serve as proof for his claims.

From what the Zuwayzi generals said to Hajjaj, and from what he could gather for himself, Balastro was telling the truth about what had happened: the Unkerlanters were no longer advancing against Mezentio’s men. How much the spring thaw had to do with that, Hajjaj wasn’t sure. He suspected no one else was, either. As for the future . . . “You said last summer that you would beat Unkerlant then. Since you were wrong once, why should I not think you’re wrong twice?”

“Because of everything we did to Unkerlant last year,” Balastro answered—he had answers for everything, as most Algarvians did. “If you hit a man once, he may not fall right away. But if you hit him again and keep hitting him one blow after another, he
will go
down.”

Unkerlant had hit Algarve one blow after another, too. Who would fall, as far as Hajjaj could see, remained anyone’s guess. But Balastro would doubtless have some compelling explanations as to why it wouldn’t be Algarve. Mentally stipulating as much, Hajjaj asked what he judged the more important question: “What sort of help do you need from us?”

“Our main effort this year will fall in the south,” Balastro replied. “We aim to finish taking away Unkerlant’s breadbasket; to lay our hands on the herds of horses and unicorns and behemoths she raises there and to seize the cinnabar mines in the far southwest. With all that gone, King Swemmel can hardly hope to keep standing.”

He was, Hajjaj judged, likely to be right; if Algarve could seize so much, Unkerlant
would
fall. Whether King Mezentio’s men could do what they had in mind to do, though, was another question. Hajjaj said, “I will not ask my sovereign to send Zuwayzi warriors to the far south. He would say no, and I would agree with him. If you need more men than Algarve can provide, you have Yaninan allies there.”