Out of the Darkness

Fifteen

Garivald’s company stood at attention in the town square of Torgavi, not far from the Albi River, the river dividing the part of Algarve occupied by Unkerlant from the part the Kuusamans had overrun. Lieutenant Andelot strode along in front of the soldiers in their rock-gray tunics. “All men who have volunteered for further service in King Swemmel’s army, one step forward!” he commanded.

About half the soldiers took that step. Here, for once, they were genuine volunteers. Along with the rest of the men who wanted nothing more than to go home, Garivald stayed where he was. Andelot dismissed the men who wanted to go on soldiering. He dismissed the common soldiers who’d chosen to leave the army. He talked briefly to one corporal who also wanted to leave, then sent him away, too. That left him alone in the square with Garivald.

“At ease, Sergeant Fariulf,” he said, and Garivald relaxed from the stiff brace he’d been holding. Andelot eyed him. “I wish I could talk you into changing your mind.”

“Sir, I’ve done enough,” Garivald answered. “I’ve done more than enough. Only thing I want is to get back to my farm and get back to my woman.” Obilot would have clouted him in the ear for talking about her like that, but she was far, far away, which was such a big part of what was wrong.

“You can’t possibly hope to match a sergeant’s pay and prospects with some little plot of ground down in the Duchy of Grelz,” Andelot said.

“Maybe not, sir,” Garivald said, “but it’s my little plot of ground.” And that was true, now. Whoever had owned that farmhouse before Garivald and Obilot took it for their own was most unlikely to come back after it. The house that had been his own-the village that had been his own-no longer existed.

“I ought to order you to stay in,” Andelot said. “You’re far and away the best underofficer I’ve ever had.”

“Thank you, sir,” Garivald said. “If you gave me an order like that, though, I probably wouldn’t stay the best underofficer you ever had for long.”

“You’d end up sorrier about that than I would,” Andelot said, which was bound to be true. But the young officer didn’t go on with his threat. Instead, he threw his hands in the air. “I still wish I could talk you into changing your mind.”

“Sir, I want to go home,” Garivald said, stubborn as only an Unkerlanter peasant knew how to be.

“Curse it, you even learned to read and write here in the army,” Andelot exclaimed.

“And I thank you for teaching me, sir,” Garivald said. “I still want to go home.”

“All right,” Andelot said. “All right. I could keep you here regardless of what you want. I expect you know that.” He waited for Garivald to nod, then continued, “But you did serve me, and serve the kingdom, well enough to deserve better than that. If you hadn’t spotted that sorcerously disguised redhead, who knows how much mischief would have come to our bridgehead by Eoforwic? Go home, then, and good luck to you.”

“Thank you, sir,” Garivald said. Andelot was at bottom a decent fellow, which made him unusual among the officers Garivald had seen-and which put him at a disadvantage when trying to deal with peasant stubbornness.

“I’ll give you your mustering-out papers tomorrow, and passage on westbound ley-line caravans to … what’s the name of the closest town to your farm?”

“Linnich, sir,” Garivald answered. “Thank you very much.”

“I’m not at all sure you’re welcome,” Andelot told him. “Go on. Get out of my sight. I tell you frankly, I wish I had some good reason to change my mind. If this regiment had been sent west to fight the Gyongyosians. . But we weren’t, and so you get what you want.”

Garivald hurried away. Algarvians on the streets of Torgavi hurried to step aside. A couple of bold redheaded women-sluttish redheaded women, in the reckoning of someone from a Grelzer peasant village-made eyes at him. He ignored them; he knew they wanted money or food from him, and cared nothing about himself. He’d visited a brothel a couple of times. There, at least, the bargain was open.

An Algarvian man in a filthy, threadbare uniform tunic and kilt stared at Garivald, too, and then turned away. Some surrendered soldiers were starting to come back to their home towns. Garivald knew he would have a hard time putting his life together once he got back to the farm. How much harder would it be for the redheads, with their kingdom under Unkerlant’s heel?

He didn’t waste much sympathy on them. They’d done their best to conquer his kingdom and to kill him. They’d come much too close to managing both, too. That fellow on the street looked as if the war hadn’t ended in his eyes.

When morning came, Andelot asked, “Have you by any chance changed your mind?”

“No, sir,” Garivald replied without hesitation.

“Very well. Here are your orders.” Andelot handed him a folded leaf of paper. “This includes your travel authorization. A westbound caravan leaves from the depot in about an hour. Good luck to you, Sergeant.”

“Thank you very much, sir,” Garivald said once more. As soon as Andelot left, he unfolded the orders to make sure they were what the company commander had said. He didn’t want to get off the caravan car to find that the orders told whoever checked his papers there to arrest him on sight. But everything was as it should have been. The only mention of his destination was as the place where he was to receive his mustering-out bonus. He wondered if he really would get the money. Getting his back pay would have been plenty to satisfy him.

Soldiers with duffel bags slung over their shoulders crowded the depot. Most of them made way for him: the sergeant’s emblems he wore on the collar tabs of his tunic still carried weight. He got a seat without trouble, too, and no one presumed to take the space next to his. He put his own duffel there. This wouldn’t be such a bad trip: nothing to do but look out the window till he got home.

Later than it should have, the caravan left the depot. So much for efficiency, Garivald thought. Unkerlanters spent a lot of time talking about it and not very much practicing it. He shrugged resignedly. That was nothing he didn’t already know.

Looking out the window proved poor sport. The landscape was battered and cratered. Every time the ley-line caravan glided through an Algarvian town, the place was in ruins. The redheads had done everything they could to hold back his countrymen. They hadn’t been able to do enough.

Mile after mile of wreckage and devastation and ruin went by. Here and there, in the countryside, Algarvians tended to their crops. Most of the people in the fields were women. Garivald wondered how many men of fighting age the redheads had left. Too many if they’ve got any at all, he thought.

Then he wondered how many men of fighting age his own kingdom had left. One of the soldiers in the compartment with him was close to fifty; the other looked at most seventeen. Unkerlant had won a great victory, and had paid a great price.

For a moment, he wondered if the price had been too great. Only for a moment-then he shook his head. Whatever his kingdom had paid to beat Algarve, it would have paid more had Mezentio’s men overrun all of Unkerlant. He’d seen how the Algarvians had ruled the stretches they’d occupied. Imagining that kind of rule going on and on, year after year, across the whole kingdom made him shiver even though the caravan car was stuffy and warm, almost hot.

Then he shivered again. No matter how brutally the Algarvians had ruled in Unkerlant, more than a few Grelzers-and, he supposed, more than a few men from other parts of the kingdom as well-had chosen to fight on their side and against King Swemmel. He’d had no love for Swemmel himself, not till the redheads showed him the difference between bad and worse. That anyone could have chosen Mezentio over Swemmel only proved how much better things might have been in his homeland.

For that matter, things were better in Algarve than they were in his homeland. He wondered why the redheads had tried to conquer Unkerlant. What did they want with it? Their farmers were richer than Unkerlanter peasants dreamt of being. And their townsfolk … To his eyes, their townsfolk all lived like nobles, and rich nobles at that.

How can they have lived the way they did when we live the way we do? He wondered about that, too. If the redheads managed such prosperity, why couldn’t his own kingdom? Unkerlant was far bigger than Algarve, and had more in the way of natural riches-he knew how many problems the Algarvians had had because their dragons ran out of quicksilver. But it didn’t seem to matter, not in the way people lived.

Maybe we’ll live like that, too, once the war is done. We won’t have it hanging over us like a thundercloud at harvest time. He could hope that might be so. He could hope, but he had trouble believing it. Mezentio’s subjects had lived better than Swemmel’s before the war, too. Of course, Unkerlant had gone through the Twinkings War while Garivald was a boy. That might have had something to do with it. Or it might not have, too-Algarve, after all, had fought and lost the Six Years’ War.

Garivald shrugged again, yawned, and gave it up. Here, he knew all too well how little he knew. He was a peasant who’d had his letters for less than a year. Who was he to try to figure out why his kingdom had a harder time than the Algarvians at doing so many different things? He could see it was true. Why remained beyond him.

He fell asleep not long after the sun went down. By then, the ley-line caravan had left Algarve and gone into Forthweg. The Forthwegians were better off than his own countrymen, too, but to a lesser degree. He didn’t know why that was so, either, and he refused to dwell on it. Sleep was better. After some of the places he’d slept during the war, a ley-line caravan car might have been a fancy hostel.

When he woke, he was in Unkerlant once more. It wasn’t the Duchy of Grelz, but it was his kingdom. And it had taken a worse battering than either Forthweg or Algarve. The Algarvians had wrecked things coming west, then the Unkerlanters pushing back toward the east. Counterattacks from both sides meant war had touched many places not once, not twice, but three or four times or even more.

As in Algarve, most of the people in the fields were women. Here, though, great stretches of land seemed to have no one cultivating them. What sort of crop would the kingdom have this year? Would it bring in any crop?

Garivald had plenty of time to wonder. He had to change ley-line caravans twice, and didn’t get in to Linnich for another day and a half. A couple of inspectors met the departing soldiers. Garivald didn’t think much of it; someone had to pay the men their mustering-out bonuses. “How long in Algarve?” one of the men asked him.

“Since the minute our soldiers got there,” Garivald said proudly.

“Uh-huh,” the fellow said, and scribbled a note. “You have your letters, Sergeant?”

He’d asked other men that question; Garivald had heard them answer no. More proudly still, he nodded. “Aye, sir, I do.”

“Uh-huh,” the inspector said again. “Come along with me, then.” He led Garivald toward a back room in the depot.

“Is this where you’ll pay me off?” Garivald asked.

Instead of answering, the inspector opened the door. Two more inspectors waited inside, and three unhappy-looking soldiers. One of the inspectors aimed a stick at Garivald’s face. “You’re under arrest. Charge is treason of the kingdom.”

The other sergeant tore the brass squares of rank from Garivald’s collar tabs. “You’re not a sergeant any more-just another traitor. We’ll see how you like ten years in the mines-or maybe twenty-five.”

Hajjaj had never felt so free in his life. Even before he’d gone off to the university at Trapani, he’d had nothing but public service ahead of him-in those long-ago days before the Six Years’ War, service to Unkerlant, and service to his own revived kingdom in the years since. He’d worked hard. He’d been influential. Without false modesty, he knew he’d served Zuwayza well.

And then King Shazli had chosen to go his own way, not Hajjaj’s. Now a new, more pliant, foreign minister served the king. Hajjaj wished them both well. He wasn’t used to not worrying about things outside his own household. Now, though, affairs of state were passing him by. I could get used to that, he thought. I could get used to it very soon.

He had wondered if Shazli would also order him to give Tassi back to Iskakis of Yanina. That hadn’t happened. It didn’t look like happening, either. Propitiating Unkerlant was one thing. Propitiating Yanina was something else again, something over which not even defeated Zuwayza needed to lose much sleep.

“You ought to write your memoirs,” Kolthoum told Hajjaj one blazing summer day when they both stayed within the house’s thick mud-brick walls to have as little as they could to do with the furnace heat outside.

“You flatter me,” he told his senior wife. “Ministers from great kingdoms write their memoirs. Ministers from small kingdoms read them to find out how little other people remember of what they said.”

“You don’t give yourself enough credit,” Kolthoum said.

“There are more problems than you think,” Hajjaj said. “What language should I use, for instance? If I write in Zuwayzi, no one outside this kingdom will ever see the book. If I use Algarvian. . Well, Algarvian is a stench in everyone’s nostrils except in Algarve, and people there have more urgent things to worry about than what an old black man who wears no clothes has to say. And I’m so slow composing in classical Kaunian, the book would probably never get finished. I can write it, certainly-one has to-but it’s less natural to me than either of the other tongues.”

“I notice you don’t mention Unkerlanter,” Kolthoum remarked.

Hajjaj answered that with a grunt. Like anyone else who’d grown up back in the days when Zuwayza was part of Unkerlant, he’d learned some of the tongue of his kingdom’s enormous southern neighbor. He’d taken patriotic pride in forgetting as much of it as he could since. He still spoke a bit, but he wouldn’t have cared to try to write it. And even if he had, hardly anyone east of Swemmel’s kingdom understood its tongue.

But none of that was to the point. The point was that he wouldn’t have used Unkerlanter to save his life. Kolthoum knew as much, too.

Tewfik walked into the chamber where Hajjaj and his senior wife were talking. With a short, stiff bow, the ancient majordomo said, “Your Excellency, you have a visitor: Minister Horthy of Gyongyos has come up from Bishah to speak with you-if you’d be so kind as to give him a few minutes, he says.”

Horthy didn’t speak Zuwayzi. Tewfik didn’t speak Gyongyosian-or a lot of classical Kaunian, either. The Gyongyosian minister to Zuwayza must have had some work to do, getting his message across. But that was beside the point. Hajjaj said, “Why would he want to speak to me? I’m in retirement.”

“You may leave affairs behind, young fellow, but affairs will take longer to leave you behind,” Tewfik said. That young fellow never failed to amuse Hajjaj; only to Tewfik did he seem young these days. The majordomo went on, “Or shall I send him back down to the city?”

“No, no-that would be frightfully rude.” Hajjaj’s knees creaked as he got to his feet. “I’ll see him in the library. Let me find a robe or some such thing to throw on so I don’t offend him. Bring him tea and wine and cakes-let him refresh himself while he’s waiting for me.”

Unlike most Zuwayzin, Hajjaj kept clothes in his house. He dealt with too many foreigners to be able to avoid it. He threw on a light linen robe and went to the library to greet his guest. Gyongyos was far enough away for the political implications of kilt or trousers not to matter much.

When Hajjaj entered the library, Horthy was leafing through a volume of poetry from the days of the Kaunian Empire. He was a big, burly man, his tawny beard and long hair streaked with gray. He closed the book and bowed to Hajjaj. “A pleasure to see you, your Excellency,” he said in musically accented classical Kaunian. “May the stars shine upon your spirit.”

“Er, thank you,” Hajjaj replied in the same language. The Gyongyosians had strange notions about the power of the stars. “How may I serve you, sir?”

Horthy shook his head, which made him look like a puzzled lion. “You do not serve me. I come to beg the boon of your conversation, of your wisdom.” He sipped at the wine Tewfik had given him. “Already you have gone to too much trouble. The wine is of grapes, not of the-dates, is that the word? — you would usually use, and you have taken the time to garb yourself. This is your home, your Excellency; if I come here, I understand your continuing your own usages.”

“I am also fond of grape wine, and the robe is light.” Hajjaj waved to the cushions piled on the carpeted floor. “Sit. Drink as much as you care to, of wine or tea. Eat of my cakes. When you are refreshed, I will do for you whatever I can.”

“You are generous to a foreigner,” Horthy said. Hajjaj sat and used pillows to make himself comfortable. Rather awkwardly, Horthy imitated him. The Gyongyosian minister ate several cakes and drank a good deal of wine.

Only after Horthy paused did Hajjaj ask, “And now, your Excellency, what brings you up into the hills on such a hot day?” As host, he was the one with the right to choose when to get down to business.

“I wish to speak to you concerning the course of this war, and concerning possible endings for it,” Horthy said.

“Are you sure I am the man with whom you should be discussing these things?” Hajjaj asked. “I am retired, and have no interest in emerging from retirement. My successor would be able to serve you better, if you need his help in any official capacity.”

“No.” Horthy’s voice was sharp. “For one thing, my being here is in no way official. For another, with due respect to your successor, you are the man who knows things.”

“You honor me beyond my deserts,” Hajjaj said, though what he felt was a certain amount-perhaps more than a certain amount-of vindication.

“No,” Horthy repeated. “I know why you resigned. It does you honor. A man should not abandon his friends, but should stand by them even in adversity- especially in adversity.”

Hajjaj shrugged. “I did what I thought right. My king did what he thought right.”

“You did what you thought right. Your king did what he thought expedient,” Horthy said. “I know which I prefer. Therefore, I come to you. The Kuusamans have threatened us with some new and titanically destructive sorcery. Unkerlant masses men against us. How may we escape with honor?”

“Do you believe the threat?” Hajjaj asked.

“Ekrekek Arpad does not, so Gyongyos does not,” Horthy replied. “But there has been so much dreadful magic in this war, more would not surprise me. I speak unofficially, of course.”

“Of course,” Hajjaj echoed.

“Do you know-have you heard-anything that would lead you to believe the Kuusamans either lie or speak the truth?” the Gyongyosian minister asked.

“No, your Excellency. Whatever this magic may be-if, in fact, it is anything at all-I cannot tell you.”

“What of Unkerlant?”

“You already know that. You are the last foe still in the field against King Swemmel. He loves you not. He will punish you if he can. The time has come that he thinks he can.”

Horthy’s broad, heavy-featured face soured into a frown. “If he should think that, he may find himself surprised.”

“So he may,” Hajjaj agreed politely. “Still, your Excellency, if you thought your own kingdom’s victory certain, you would not have come here to me, would you?

He wondered if he’d phrased that carefully enough. Gyongyosians were not only touchy-which bothered Hajjaj not at all, coming as he did from a touchy folk himself-but touchy in ways Zuwayzin found odd and unpredictable. Horthy muttered something in his own language, down deep in his chest. Then he returned to classical Kaunian: “There is, I fear, too much truth in what you say. Can Gyongyos rely on your kingdom’s good offices in negotiating a peace with our enemies?”

“You understand, sir, that I cannot answer in any official sense,” Hajjaj said. “Were I still part of his Majesty’s government, I would do everything I could toward that end: of that you may be certain. You might have done better to consult with my successor, who can speak for King Shazli. I cannot.”

“Your successor would have asked me about what Gyongyos proposes to yield,” Horthy growled. “Gyongyos does not propose to yield anything.”

“My dear sir!” Hajjaj said. “If you will yield nothing, how do you propose to negotiate a peace?”

“We might discover that we had previously misunderstood treaties pertaining to borders and such,” the Gyongyosian minister replied. “But we are, we have always been, a warrior race. Warriors do not yield.”

“I … see,” Hajjaj said slowly. And part of him did. Every man, every kingdom, needed to salve pride now and again. The Gongs found odd ways to do it, though. Professing a misunderstanding was one way not to have to admit they were beaten. Whether it would do to end the Derlavaian War. . “Would Kuusamo and Lagoas and Unkerlant-especially Unkerlant-understand your meaning?”

“Your own excellent officials might help to make them understand,” Horthy said.

“I see,” Hajjaj said again. “Well, obviously, I can promise nothing. But you are welcome to tell anyone still in the government that I believe finding a ley line to peace is desirable. Anyone who wishes may ask me on this score.”

Horthy inclined his leonine head. “I thank you, your Excellency. This is the reassurance I have been seeking.”

He left not much later. As the sun sank in the west and the day’s scorching heat at last began to ease, Hajjaj’s crystallomancer told him General Ikhshid wished to speak with him. Perhaps because they were much of an age, Ikhshid had stayed in closer touch with Hajjaj than had anyone else down in Bishah. Now the white-haired officer peered out of the crystal at him and said, “It won’t work.”

“What won’t?” Hajjaj inquired.

“Horthy’s scheme,” Ikhshid replied. “It won’t fly. The Gongs aren’t going to be able to get away with saying, ‘Sorry, it was all a mistake.’ They’re going to have to say, ‘You’ve beaten us. We give up.’“

“And if they won’t?” Hajjaj said.

Ikhshid’s face was plump, and most of the time jolly. Now he looked thoroughly grim. “If they won’t, my best guess is they’re going to be very, very sorry.”

Because Ceorl was a war captive, he’d expected to be treated worse than the Unkerlanters who also had to labor in the cinnabar mines of the Mamming Hills. He didn’t need long to realize he’d made a mistake there. The guards in the mines and the barracks treated all their victims-Unkerlanters, Forthwegians, Algarvians, Kaunians, Gyongyosians, Zuwayzin-the same way: badly. They were all small, eminently replaceable parts, to be used till used up, and then discarded.

I’m going to die here, and die pretty soon unless I do something about it, the ruffian thought as he queued up for supper. He had a mess tin not much different from the one he’d carried in Plegmund’s Brigade. The only real difference was that he’d eaten pretty well as a soldier. The Unkerlanters fed the men in the mines horrible slop. He counted himself lucky when he found bits of turnip in the stew. As often as not, what he got were nettle leaves. He could have done more work with better food, but Swemmel’s men didn’t seem to care about that. And why should they have? They had plenty of people to take his place.

Behind him, an Algarvian said, “I’m too bloody worn to eat.”

He won’t last long, Ceorl thought. Men who gave up, who didn’t shovel every bit of food they could into themselves no matter how vile it was, quickly turned up their toes and died. Sooner or later, Ceorl was convinced, everyone in the mines would die; the Unkerlanters had set up the system with extermination in mind. But he wouldn’t give them the satisfaction of making it easy.

The queue snaked forward. Ceorl thrust his tin toward the cooks behind their vats of stew. They were also captives. They had it soft, as far as anyone here did. At the very least, they were unlikely to starve to death. They’d probably had to sell their souls-and, for all Ceorl knew, their bodies, too-to get where they were. He didn’t care. He wanted the same chance.

“Fill it up,” he said, a phrase similar in Unkerlanter and Forthwegian. And the cook did, digging his ladle deep down into the big pot to give Ceorl the best of what there was. Ceorl hadn’t been here long, but he’d already got a name for himself as a man who wouldn’t tamely yield up his life.

The luckless Algarvian behind him got mostly water in his mess tin. He didn’t even complain. He just went off to find a spot where he could spoon it up. He would probably leave it unfinished, too. Someone else would get what he left. Before long, he would leave, feet first.

In the refectory, Sudaku was holding a space for Ceorl. “Thanks,” the ruffian said, and sat down beside the blond from Valmiera. Sudaku had a good thick bowl of stew, too; people knew he was Ceorl’s right-hand man.

“Another happy day, eh?” Sudaku said.

“Bugger happy. We got through it.” Ceorl shoveled stew into himself the same way he’d shoveled ore for so long. “It’ll be better tomorrow,” he went on. “The supervisor who’s on then doesn’t know anything. Powers above, he doesn’t even suspect anything. We won’t have to work so hard.”

“Quota,” Sudaku said doubtfully.

Scorn filled Ceorl’s laugh. “The Unkerlanters talk about efficiency, but they fornicating lie. They don’t keep quota, either. I know they lie about that.”

“Something to what you say,” Sudaku admitted. Ceorl wanted to laugh again, this time at the blond. Sudaku was a trusting soul, an honest man or something close to it-not far from a fool, the way Ceorl reckoned things. But he was strong and brave, and he’d had his eyes opened for him in the desperate fighting of the last few months of the war. Anyone who came through that without learning from it would have deserved whatever happened to him.

“Come on,” Ceorl said. “Let’s get back to the barracks. We’ve got to keep watch on things, or else we’re in trouble.”

“Right.” Sudaku didn’t doubt that. Nobody in his right mind could doubt it. Only the strong had any hope of lasting here. If you didn’t show your strength, you often couldn’t keep it.

Bunks in the barracks were in tiers that went up four high. In the warmth of the brief southern summer, where a man slept didn’t matter so much. But Ceorl had been through Unkerlanter winters. He and the gang from Plegmund’s Brigade he headed had taken bunks close by the coal stove in the middle of the hall. They’d taken them and defended them with fists and boots and improvised knives. When they settled down for the night now, nobody troubled them.

On the other side of the stove, a group of Algarvian captives had carved out a similar niche for themselves. Their leader was a burly fellow whose faded, tattered uniform didn’t quite match those of the soldiers alongside whom Ceorl had fought. That didn’t mean the ruffian was ignorant of what sort of uniform it was.

“Ha, Oraste!” he called. “Throw anybody in gaol lately?”

“Futter you, Ceorl,” the redhead replied without rancor. “You’d have done better if somebody had jugged you. Sooner or later, they’d’ve let you out. But let’s see you get out of this.”

Ceorl gave back an obscene gesture. Oraste laughed at him, though the Algarvian’s eyes never lit up. Like any redhead, Oraste was indeed here for good. Even if he escaped the mines, he’d be hunted down in short order, for he stood out among the Unkerlanters like a crow among sea gulls. Because he couldn’t get away, he naturally thought nobody else could.

You’re not as smart as you think you are, Ceorl thought. Thinking themselves more clever than they really were-and than anybody else was-had always been the Algarvians’ besetting vice. But Ceorl looked like anybody else around these parts. Forthwegian wasn’t impossibly far removed from Unkerlanter. If he managed to escape, he thought he could stay free.

A couple of Unkerlanter thieves swaggered into the barracks, each with some of his followers in train. They waved to Ceorl and to Oraste as equals. Their gangs held the other bunks close by the stove. They’d made as much of their captivity as they could. Even the guards treated them with respect.

They and their henchmen took their places. Beyond, back toward the walls, came Algarvian captives and Unkerlanters who didn’t belong to any of the principal gangs in the barracks. They were the luckless ones, the spiritless ones, who would soon lose the battle for survival. And as they died off, new men, just as lost, would pour in to take their places. Ceorl knew a sort of abstract admiration for King Swemmel. He made sure he was never short of captives.

Between supper and lights-out, men gossiped, told stories-told lies-about what they’d done in the war (except for who was talking about whom, and in which language, those of Algarvians and Unkerlanters sounded very much alike, and nobody cared who’d been on which side-here in the Mamming Hills, they were all losers), gambled, and passed around jars of clandestinely brewed spirits. Some of them, especially those beginning to fail, fell asleep as soon as they could and stayed asleep in spite of all the noise the others made.

Ceorl had learned better than to roll dice with Oraste. He couldn’t prove the redhead’s dice were crooked, but he’d lost to him too often to believe it nothing but chance. He didn’t say anything as Oraste started fleecing a young Unkerlanter too new here to know better than to accept such invitations. Ceorl didn’t care what happened to the Unkerlanter, and he was curious about how Oraste cheated so smoothly.

He didn’t find out that night, any more than he had when the redhead had taken his money. After a while, even though the sky remained pale-which it would do through most of the night-a guard came in and shouted, “Lights out!”

That meant shuttering the windows, too, so that something approaching real darkness filled the barracks. Ceorl lay down on his bottom bunk, which boasted one of the thickest mattresses in the building. He’d made himself as comfortable, as well off, as one of Swemmel’s captives could be. Things could have been a lot worse-he even knew that. He also knew it wasn’t remotely close to being enough. He would break out if he ever found the chance.

As usual, he slept hard. The next thing he knew, the guards were screaming at the captives to get out of their bunks and line up for roll call. Routine there hadn’t changed since the captives’ camp outside of Trapani. Ceorl took his place, waited to sing out when his name was called, and wondered if the Unkerlanters would make a hash of the count, which they did about one day in three. Efficiency, he thought, and laughed a mocking laugh.

To complicate things, a ley-line caravan full of new captives chose that moment to arrive in the barracks. The guards bringing in the new fish and those trying to keep track of the ones already there started screaming at one another, each group blaming the other for its troubles. Ceorl spent his time eyeing the newcomers.

Most of them looked to be Unkerlanter soldiers-or rather, former Unkerlanter soldiers. No, Swemmel wasn’t shy about jugging his own people, any more than he’d been shy about murdering his own people when the Algarvians started killing Kaunians. Swemmel wanted results, and he got them.

No one cared about roll call for a while. The captives just stood there. Had it been winter, they would have stood there till they froze. Nobody dared ask permission to go to breakfast. Eating before roll call and the count were done was unimaginable. In fact, they didn’t have breakfast at all. The delay just meant they went straight to the mines. If they had nothing in their bellies, too bad.

Ceorl shoveled cinnabar ore into a handbarrow. When it was full, another captive lugged it away. Shoveling wasn’t so bad as chipping cinnabar out of the vein with picks and crowbars. It also wasn’t so bad as working in the refinery where quicksilver was extracted from some of the cinnabar. Despite sorcery, quicksilver fumes killed the men who worked there long before their time.

Before too long, some of the new fish started coming down into the mine. They would have needed a while to get processed, to have their names recorded and to get assigned to a barracks and a work gang. That was efficiency, too, at least as the Unkerlanters understood it. To Ceorl, it often seemed like wheels spinning uselessly on an ice-slick road. But Swemmel’s men had won the war, and didn’t have to worry about what he thought.

One of the new men spoke with such a strong Grelzer accent, Ceorl could hardly understand him. “Powers below eat you,” the ruffian said, doing his best to make his Forthwegian sound like Unkerlanter. “I spent a good part of the war hunting whoresons like you.”

The Unkerlanter followed him. “I was in the woods west of Herborn,” he answered. “A lot of the bastards who hunted me didn’t go home again.”

“Is that so?” Ceorl threw back his head and laughed. “I hunted through those woods, and you stinking irregulars paid for it when I did.”

“Murderer,” the Unkerlanter said.

“Bushwhacker,” Ceorl retorted. He laughed some more. “Fat fornicating lot of good our fight back then did either one of us, eh? We’re both buggered now.” He had to repeat himself to get the Unkerlanter to understand that. When the fellow finally did, he nodded. “Fair enough. We both lost this war, no matter what happened to our kingdoms.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Fariulf.”

“Well, futter you, Fariulf.” Ceorl clasped it. “I’m Ceorl.”

“Futter you, too, Ceorl,” Fariulf said, squeezing. Ceorl squeezed back. The trial of strength proved as near a draw as made no difference.

“Work!” a guard shouted. Sure enough, no matter which of them was the stronger, they’d both lost the war.

Everything in Yliharma was different from anything Talsu had ever known. The air itself tasted wrong: cool and damp and salty. Even on the brightest days, the blue of the sky had a misty feel to it. And, even in summer, fog and rain could come without warning and stay for a couple of days. That would have been unimaginable in Skrunda.

The Kuusamans themselves seemed at least as strange to him as their weather did. Even Gailisa was taller than most of their men. Children eyed both Talsu and his wife in the streets, not being used to fair blue-eyed blonds. Adults did the same thing, but less blatantly. To Talsu, little swarthy slant-eyed folk with coarse black hair were the strange ones, but this was their kingdom, not his.

It wasn’t even a kingdom, or not exactly-somehow, the Seven Princes held it together. The Kuusamans drank ale, not wine. They cooked with butter, not olive oil, and even put it on their bread. They wore all sorts of odd clothes, which, to a tailor, seemed even more peculiar. Their language sounded funny in his ears. Its grammar, which he and Gailisa tried to learn in thrice-weekly lessons, struck him as stranger yet. And its vocabulary, except for a few words plainly borrowed from classical Kaunian, was nothing like that of Jelgavan.

But none of that marked the biggest difference between his homeland and this place to which he and Gailisa had been exiled. He needed a while to realize what that big difference was. It came to him one afternoon as he was walking back to the flat the Kuusamans had given Gailisa and him: a bigger, finer flat than the one his whole family had used back in his home town.

“I know!” he said after giving his wife a kiss. “I’ve got it!”

“That’s nice,” Gailisa said agreeably. “What have you got?”

“Now I know why, up in Balvi, the Kuusaman minister told us living in Jelgava was like living in a dungeon,” Talsu answered. “Everybody always went around watching what he said all the time.”

She nodded. “Well, of course. Something bad would happen to you if you didn’t, or sometimes even if you did.” Her mouth twisted. “We know all about that, don’t we?”

“Aye, we do,” Talsu agreed. “And that’s the difference. We know all about it. The Kuusamans don’t. They say whatever they please whenever they feel like it, and they don’t have to look over their shoulders while they’re doing it. They’re free. We weren’t. We aren’t, we Jelgavans. And we don’t even know it.”

“Some do,” Gailisa answered. “Otherwise, why would the dungeons be so full?”

“That’s not funny,” Talsu said.

“I didn’t mean it for a joke,” she told him. “How could I, after everything that happened to you?”

Having had no ready comeback for that, he changed the subject: “What smells good?”

“A reindeer roast,” Gailisa replied. Talsu chuckled. She rolled her eyes. There might have been a few reindeer in Jelgavan zoological parks, but surely nowhere else in the kingdom. She went on, “All the butcher shops here have as much reindeer meat as beef or mutton. It’s cheaper, too.”

“I’m not complaining,” Talsu said. “You’ve picked it up before, and it tastes fine.” He kissed her again to show her he meant it-and he did. He went on, “I wish the language were easier. I can’t get started in business till I can talk to my customers at least a little.”

“I know,” Gailisa said. “When I buy things, I either read what I want off the signs-and I know I make a mess of that, too, because some of the characters don’t sound the same here as they do in Jelgavan-or else I just point. It makes me feel stupid, but what else can I do?”

“Nothing else I can think of,” Talsu said. “I do the same thing.”

The next day, though, Talsu and Gailisa found a parcel in front of their door when they came back from their language lesson. Unwrapping it, he pulled out a Jelgavan-Kuusaman phrasebook. It looked to have been made for Kuusaman travelers in Jelgava, but it would help the other way round, too. Gailisa unfolded a note stuck in the little book. “Oh,” she said. “It’s in classical Kaunian.” She knew next to none of the old language, so she handed Talsu the note.

His own classical Kaunian was far from perfect, too, but he did his best. “ ‘I hope this book will help you,’“ he read. “ ‘It helped me when I visited your kingdom. I am Pekka, wife to Leino, whom you helped, Talsu. I am glad I could help you leave your kingdom. My husband was killed in the fighting. I was pleased to do anything I could for his friends.’ “

“He’s the one I wrote to,” Gailisa said.

“I know,” Talsu answered. “I didn’t know he’d got killed, though. She must have been the one who helped me get out of the dungeon, too, then.” He blinked. “It’s something-that they paid attention to a woman, I mean.”

“Maybe she’s important in her own right,” Gailisa said. “She must be, in fact. The Kuusamans seem to let their women do just about anything their men can. I like that, if you want to know the truth.”

“I’m not sure it’s natural,” Talsu said.

“Why not?” his wife demanded. “It’s what you were talking about before, isn’t it? It’s freedom.”

“That’s different,” Talsu said.

“How?” Gailisa asked.

In his own mind, Talsu knew how. The kind of freedom he had in mind was no more than the freedom to say what you wanted without fear of ending up in a dungeon because the wrong person heard you. Surely that was different from the freedom to do what you wanted regardless of whether you were a man or a woman. Surely it was. . and yet, for the life of him, he found no way to put the difference into words.

“It just is,” he said at last. Gailisa made a face at him. He tickled her. She squealed. They weren’t equal there: she was ticklish, and he wasn’t. He took unfair advantage of it.

After the next language lesson a couple of days later, the instructor-a woman named Ryti, whose standing went some distance toward proving Gailisa’s point-asked Talsu and his wife to stay while the other students were leaving. In slow, careful Jelgavan, she said, “We have found a tailor who is looking for an assistant and who speaks classical Kaunian. Would you like to work for him?”

“I’d like to work for anyone,” Talsu answered in his own tongue. “I’d like to work for myself most, but I know I don’t speak enough Kuusaman yet. I couldn’t understand the people who’d be my customers.”

“How much will this fellow pay?” Gailisa asked the practical question.

When Ryti answered, she did so, of course, in terms of Kuusaman money. That still didn’t feel quite real to Talsu. “What would it be in Jelgavan coins?” he asked. Ryti thought for a moment, then told him. He blinked. “You must be wrong,” he said. “That’s much too much.”

After a little more thought, the language instructor shook her head. “No, I do not believe so. One of ours is about three and a half of yours, is it not so?”

It was so. To Talsu, Kuusaman silver coins were big and heavy, but not impossibly big and heavy. Things cost more in Yliharma than they had back in Skrunda, but not a great deal more. The money this fellow offered a tailor’s assistant would have made an independent Jelgavan tailor prosperous. “How much does this man make for himself?” Talsu asked.

“I cannot answer that,” Ryti answered. “But he does make enough to be able to pay you what he says he will. We have looked into that. We do not want people going into bad situations.”

“Tell me his name. Tell me where his shop is,” Talsu said. “Tell me when I need to be there, and I’ll be there at that time tomorrow.”

“Good.” The instructor smiled. “I told him I thought you were diligent. I see I am right. His name is Valamo. His shop is near the center of town, not far from the hostel called the Principality. Here-let me draw you a map.” She did, quickly and competently. “Where are you staying now?” she asked. When Talsu told her, she nodded. “I thought you dwelt in that district. There is a ley-line route that will take you close to the shop. Valamo says he would like you to be there by an hour after sunrise.”

This far south, the sun rose very early in the summertime: one more thing Talsu was getting used to. Even so, he nodded. “I will.”

And he did, though he missed the caravan stop closest to the tailor’s shop and had to get out at the next one and then go running back up the street. People stared at him. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be late, not on his first day.

“Greetings. You must be Talsu,” Valamo said in classical Kaunian when he came in out of breath and sweaty. The tailor wasn’t young. Past that, Talsu had trouble guessing. Kuusamans seemed to show their years less than his own countrymen did.

“Aye, sir,” Talsu answered in the same tongue. “Thank you for taking me in. I shall work hard for you. I promise it.”

“Good. Glad to hear it.” Despite a Kuusaman accent, Valamo was more fluent in the old language than Talsu was himself. Talsu found that distressing, as he had with other Kuusamans who knew more classical Kaunian than he did. Valamo said, “Come here behind the counter, and I will show you what wants doing.”

The first jobs he gave Talsu were simple repairs. Talsu handled some of them with no more than needle and thread, others with the craft tricks that were sorcery but hardly seemed like it. Before long, he was done. “Here you are,” he told Valamo.

“Thank you.” His new boss was polite enough, but inspected the work with a knowing eye before nodding. “Good. You have some notion of what you are doing. One can never tell beforehand, you understand. I speak without intending to cause offense.”

“Of course,” Talsu said. “What else have you for me to do?”

“I have the pieces of an outfit here,” Valamo said. “Join them together, if you would be so kind.”

“Of course,” Talsu said again. He examined the pieces, got needle and thread to sew small parts of them together, and then used the sorcery an Algarvian mage had taught his father to finish the joining. All told, it took about an hour. He brought Valamo the finished garment.

This time, the Kuusaman tailor gave him a very odd look. “How did you get done so fast?” he asked. “Did you use one of those basting spells that will not last?”

“No,” Talsu answered. “Judge for yourself.”

Valamo poked and prodded at the tunic and leggings. He examined the stitchery, not only with his bare eyes but with a jeweler’s loupe and with spells. At last, he said, “This looks to be good work. But how did you do it so well so quickly?”

Talsu explained, finishing, “I shall be glad to teach you the charm.”

“You have earned your pay, by the powers above,” Valamo exclaimed. “You have more than earned it. Please do teach me that spell. Before long, I am sure you will use it in a place of your own.”

“A place of my own,” Talsu echoed dreamily. Could he ever find such a thing in this foreign land? Slowly, he nodded to himself. Maybe I can.

Ealstan looked at his father. “Aye, of course I’ll help you with this business,” he said. “I have my doubts you really need any help from me, though.”

“Well, that depends,” Hestan answered. “Two can often do a job quicker than one. I suppose I could manage it myself, but I know for a fact it would take me longer. And the town officials have said they’d pay for an assistant. I’m hoping you recall that nine comes after eight and not the other way round.”

“I still have some notion of how to cast accounts,” Ealstan agreed. “I made a living at it in Eoforwic. You taught me well, Father-I knew more than most of the men who’d been bookkeepers for years.”

That teased out one of his father’s rare, slow smiles. “You make me proud of myself,” Hestan said, “and that’s a dangerous thing in any man.”

“Why is being proud of what you’re good at dangerous?” Ealstan asked. “Most ways, Eoforwic makes Gromheort look like a provincial town, and-”

“It is,” his father broke in.

“But you would have made any of the bookkeepers there ashamed to call himself by the name,” Ealstan went on, as if the older man hadn’t spoken. “You could have gone there and got rich, Father. It makes me wonder why you stayed here.”

“Don’t forget, up till about the time I was your age, Gromheort was in Algarve and Eoforwic was in Unkerlant,” Hestan replied. “Forthweg didn’t get its freedom back till after the Six Years’ War. And then, not much later, I married your mother and settled down. And I never truly wanted to be what you’d call rich. Enough is enough. Too much?” He made a face. “If you go after money for the sake of money instead of for the sake of being comfortable, it has you-you don’t have it any more.”

“I’m not so sure I believe that,” Ealstan said.

Hestan smiled again, at least with half his mouth. “I’m sure I didn’t, not at your age. And you asked why being proud of what you’re good at is dangerous? I’ll tell you why: it can make you proud of yourself in general, and it can make you think you’re good at things you’re not.”

Ealstan considered, then nodded. If that wasn’t his careful, cautious father, he didn’t know what was. Using a cane, Ealstan got to his feet. “Well, I already told you: if you want me to come along, I will. And if our city fathers want to know where every last copper in the rebuilding of Gromheort is going, I’ll help you tell them.”

“Good,” Hestan said. “Truth to tell, I don’t think the city fathers care so much. Baron Brorda never did, back before the war, and things haven’t changed a great deal since. But the Unkerlanters want to know what everything is worth. Efficiency, you know.” In a different tone of voice, that would have been praise.

As Ealstan and his father walked toward the door, Saxburh toddled down the hall toward them. “Dada!” she said. She called Ealstan that with much more conviction these days than she’d shown when she first came to Gromheort. He picked her up, gave her a kiss, and then jerked his head back in a hurry so she couldn’t grab a couple of handfuls of beard and yank. She looked over at Hestan. She had a name for him too now: “Pop!”

“Hello, sweetheart.” Ealstan’s father kissed her, too. This time, Hestan’s smile was broad and rather sappy. He took to being a grandfather with great relish.

When Vanai came around the corner, Ealstan was glad enough to put Saxburh down. Handling her and the cane was awkward, and her weight put extra strain on his bad leg. “Mama!” Saxburh squealed, and dashed for Vanai as fast as her legs would take her. As far as the baby was concerned, Vanai was the center of the universe, and everyone and everything else-Ealstan included-only details.

“Out and about?” Vanai asked as she bent to scoop up Saxburh.

“Bookkeeping,” Ealstan answered.

“Ah,” she said. “Good. We can use the money. Your parents are wonderfully generous, but. ” She didn’t know what to make of generous parents-or of any parents, come to that. Ealstan didn’t care to think about what being raised by Brivibas would have been like.

Hestan switched to classical Kaunian: “You make it sound as if you were a burden. How long will it be before you understand that is not so?”

“You are very kind, sir,” Vanai replied in the same language, which meant she didn’t believe him for a moment.

Ealstan’s father understood the meaning behind the meaning, too. He let out a slightly exasperated snort. “Come on, son,” he said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her when we get home.”

“Oh, I doubt it,” Ealstan answered. “After all, she married me, so how much sense is she likely to have?”

Now Vanai snorted. “A point,” Hestan said. “A distinct point. That speaks well for your sense, but not for hers.”

Although Ealstan laughed at that, Vanai didn’t. “How can you say such a thing?” she demanded. “If he wasn’t mad to marry a Kaunian in the middle of the war, what would you call madness?”

“I knew what I was doing,” Ealstan insisted.

“You can argue about that later, too,” his father said. “Come on.”

Gromheort still looked like a city that had undergone a siege and a sack. Streets were largely free of rubble, but blocks had houses missing and practically every house still standing had a chunk bitten out of it. People on the street were still thinner than they should have been, too, though not so thin as when Ealstan fought his way into the city.

Some of the men weren’t undernourished at all: Unkerlanter soldiers doing constable’s duty, as Algarvian soldiers had before them. “When do we get to be our own kingdom again?” Ealstan asked, after walking past a couple of them.

“Things could be worse,” his father answered. “As I told you back at the house, when I grew up we weren’t our own kingdom. Swemmel could have annexed us instead of giving us a puppet king like Beornwulf. I feared he would.”

“Penda’s still my king,” Ealstan said, but he pitched his voice so no one but Hestan could hear him.

“Penda was no great bargain, either,” Hestan said, also softly. “He led us into a losing war, remember, and more than five years of occupation.”

“But he was ours,” Ealstan said.

Hestan’s laugh held both amusement and pain. “Spoken like a Forthwegian, son.”

A labor gang trudged past, its men carrying shouldered shovels and picks and crowbars as if they were sticks. They had reason to walk like soldiers: most of them were Algarvians in tattered uniforms. The men herding them along had smooth faces and wore rock-gray tunics, which meant they came from Unkerlant.

Ealstan eyed the few Forthwegians in the labor gang. “I keep wondering if I’ll see Sidroc one of these days,” he said.

His father’s face hardened. “I hope not. I hope he’s dead. If he happens not to be dead and I do see him, I’ll do my best to make sure he gets that way.”

Each word might have been carved from stone. Ealstan needed a heartbeat to remember why his father sounded as he did. He’d already fled to Eoforwic himself when Sidroc killed Leofsig. He knew it had happened, but it didn’t seem real to him. His memories of his cousin went back further, to school days and squabbles no more serious than those between a couple of puppies. Hestan, though, had watched Leofsig die. Recalling that, Ealstan understood every bit of his father’s fury.

The gang went by. On the sidewalk coming toward Ealstan and his father was Hestan’s brother, Hengist. He saw the two of them and deliberately turned away. Ealstan’s father muttered something under his breath. “Him, too?” Ealstan asked in dismay-he hadn’t seen, or looked for, Uncle Hengist since returning to Gromheort.

“Him, too,” Hestan said gravely. “When he finally found out from dear Sidroc some of the reasons why you’d run away, he tried to turn me in to the Algarvians.”

“Powers below eat him!” Ealstan exclaimed, and then, “Tried to turn you in to the redheads?”

His father chuckled, a noise full of cynicism. “One thing my dear, unloving brother forgot was how much the Algarvians enjoy taking bribes. I paid my way out of it, the same as I paid Mezentio’s men to look the other way when Leofsig broke out of their captives’ camp and came home. Saving my own neck cost me less, because I only had to pay off a couple of constables. Still, it’s the thought that counts, eh?”

“The thought that counts?” Ealstan echoed. “He wanted you dead!” His father nodded. After a couple of angry steps, Ealstan said, “You ought to denounce him to the Unkerlanters. That would pay him back in his own coin.”

“First you talk like a Forthwegian, and then you talk like a bookkeeper,” Hestan said. “Anyone would think you were my own son.” He stooped, picked up a quarter of a brick, and tossed it up and down, up and down. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. I remember everything he did to me, and everything Sidroc did to the whole family, and I want vengeance so much I can taste it. But then I remember he’s my brother, too, in spite of everything. I don’t need revenge that badly.”

“I’d take it.” Ealstan’s voice was fierce and hot.

“For my sake, let it go,” his father said. “If Hengist ever causes us more trouble, then aye, go ahead. But I don’t think he will. He knows we could tell the Unkerlanters about Sidroc. That would make Hengist a traitor, too, if I rightly read some of these new laws King Beornwulf has put forth. How’s your leg holding up?”

“Not bad,” Ealstan answered. He didn’t push his father any more about Sidroc or Uncle Hengist; Hestan wouldn’t have changed the subject like that unless he didn’t want to talk about them at all.

A couple of minutes later, Hestan said, “Here we are. If I remember rightly, the Algarvians used this place for one of their field hospitals. The Unkerlanters did try not to toss eggs at those on purpose, which is probably why it’s still standing.”

Ealstan recognized a couple of the men waiting for them inside the red brick building. The place kept the smell of a field hospital, even now: pus and ordure warring with strong soap and the tingling scents of various decoctions. It must have soaked into the bricks.

One of the men he didn’t know spoke to Hestan: “So this is your boy, eh? Chip off the old block. If he’s as good with numbers as you are, or even half as good, we’ll be well served.”

“He manages just fine,” Hestan answered. He introduced Ealstan to the men, saying, “If it weren’t for this crowd, a lot less of Gromheort would be standing today.”

“Pleased to meet you all,” Ealstan said. “I spent a good deal of the time outside of town, trying to knock things flat.”

“Boy does a good job at everything he sets his hand to, doesn’t he?” Hestan said. Several of the powerful men in Gromheort laughed.

“Let’s see what the two of you can do when you set a hand to our books here,” said the one who’d spoken before-his name was Osferth. He pointed to the two ledgers, which sat side by side on a table at the back of the hall. “Got to keep King Swemmel’s inspectors happy, you know, if such a thing is possible.”

Ealstan’s father sat down in front of one, Ealstan himself in front of the other. He sighed with relief as the weight came off his wounded leg. The two bookkeepers bent over the ledgers and got to work.

As far as Colonel Lurcanio could tell, the Valmierans didn’t know much about interrogation and were doing their level best to forget everything they could about what had happened to their kingdom while the Algarvians occupied it. The officer posturing at him now was a case in point.

“No,” Lurcanio said with such patience as he could muster. “I did not rape Marchioness Krasta. I had no need to rape her. She gave herself to me of her own free will.”

“Suppose I tell you the marchioness herself has given you the lie?” the officer thundered, as if trying to impress a panel of judges.

“Suppose you do?” Lurcanio said mildly. “I would say-I do say-she is lying.”

“And why should we prefer your word to hers?” the Valmieran demanded. “You have more to gain by lying than she does.”

“If you care about the truth there, you might really try to find it,” Lurcanio said. “You could ask Viscount Valnu what he knows, for instance.”

As he’d hoped it would, that knocked the interrogator back on his heels. Valnu was a hero of the underground, so his word carried weight. And Lurcanio’s guess was that he, unlike Krasta, wouldn’t lie for the fun of it. Also, interrogating someone else meant the Algarvians might not try to question Lurcanio himself under torture or under sorcery. He hadn’t raped Krasta, but they might find plenty of other things for which to put a rope around his neck.

The officer said, “Viscount Valnu cannot know the truth.”

“Indeed,” Lurcanio agreed. “Only Krasta and I can know the truth. But Valnu will know what Krasta said to him about what we did, and I have no doubt she said a great deal: getting her to stop talking has always been much harder than getting her to start.”

“When will you give over your slanders of the decent citizens of Valmiera?” the officer demanded indignantly.

“For one thing, truth is always a defense against a charge of slander,” replied Lurcanio, who feared other charges awaited against which he had no defense. But he intended to make his captors squirm as long as he could, and so went on, “As for dear Krasta, considering some of the things we did, I am not altogether sure she is one of your precious ‘decent citizens of Valmiera.’ Still, I will tell you she enjoyed them all, whether decent or not.”

“How dare you say such things?” the Valmieran officer gabbled.

Lurcanio hid a smile. He didn’t play by the rules the victors thought they’d set up. He didn’t act afraid, and he wasn’t apologetic. That confused the blonds. As long as they were confused, as long as they had trouble deciding what to do about-and to-him, he wasn’t too bad off. If they did decide. . “How dare she say such things about me?” he returned, sounding as indignant as he could. “I, at least, am telling the truth, which she certainly is not.”

“You were her lover at the same time as you were trying to hunt down and kill her brother, the illustrious Marquis Skarnu,” the officer said, as if he’d scored a point.

“Well, what if I was?” Lurcanio answered. “That may have been in poor taste, but you will have precious few men left in a kingdom if you set about killing everyone guilty of poor taste. And Skarnu was in arms against my kingdom, as he himself would be the first to tell you. He was, in fact, in arms against my kingdom after King Gainibu surrendered. What do you people do to Algarvians captured in arms against your occupying armies? Nothing pretty, and you know it as well as I.”

“That has nothing to do with what you tried to do to Skarnu,” the Valmieran said.

“Of course it does, you foolish little man,” Lurcanio said. “If you are too dense to see it, I hope they take you away and give me an interrogator with the sense to understand plain speech in his own language.” That was the last thing he wanted, but the officer didn’t need to know it.

“If you insult me here, it will only go harder for you,” the blond warned, flushing with anger.

“Ah. Splendid!” Lurcanio gave him a seated bow. “I thank you for admitting that what I did and did not do during the late war has in fact nothing to do with what will happen to me.”

“I said nothing of the sort!” The Valmieran turned redder still.

“I beg your pardon.” Lurcanio bobbed his head once more. “That was what it sounded like to me.”

“Guards!” the officer said, and several Valmieran soldiers took one step forward from the places against the wall where they’d stood. The interrogator pointed to Lurcanio. “Back to his cell with this one. He’s not ready to tell the truth yet.”

A Valmieran sergeant pointed his stick at Lurcanio’s belly. “Get moving,” he said. Him Lurcanio obeyed without backtalk and without hesitation. A confused or frightened ordinary soldier was liable to get rid of his confusion and fear by blazing. Games that tied the earnest and rather stupid interrogator in knots would be useless or worse against a man for whom simple brutality solved so many problems.

We thought simple brutality could solve the problem of the underground, Lurcanio thought as he marched along in front of the guards. Were we any more clever than a simple sergeant? Valmieran captives snarled curses at him when he went past their cells. He strode by as if they didn’t exist. They threw things less often then. They weren’t supposed to have anything to throw, but he knew those rules could bend when authorities wanted something unfortunate but also unofficial to happen to a captive.

Today, he reached his own cell unscathed. The door slammed behind him.

A bar outside the cell thudded down. The sergeant muttered a charm to keep anyone from magically tampering with the bar. Lurcanio wished he were a mage. He shrugged. Had he been, he would have gone to a more sorcerously secure prison than this one.

As cells went, he supposed his wasn’t so bad. It was certainly better than the ones his own folk had given Valmieran captives during the war. His cot was severely plain, but it was a cot, not a moldy straw pallet or bare stone. His window had bars, but it was a window. He had a privy, not a stinking slop bucket. He would have fired any cook who gave him food like the stuff he got here, but he did get enough to hold hunger at bay.

But what did this mild treatment mean? Did he have some chance of getting back to Algarve because the Valmierans weren’t sure of exactly what he’d done? Or were they keeping him comfortable now because they knew how harsh they would soon be with him? He didn’t know. By the nature of things, he couldn’t know. Brooding over it would have gone a long way toward driving him mad, and so he did his best not to brood. His best wasn’t always good enough.

Presently, they fed him again. Light leaked out of the sky. He had no lamp in the cell. The hallways had lamps, but not much light came through the small window in the door. He lay down and went to sleep. This was an animal sort of life, and he tried to store up rest against a time when he might badly need it.

Somewhere in the middle of the night, the door flew open. Guards hauled him out of bed. “Come on, you son of a whore!” one of them growled. Another gave him a roundhouse slap in the face that snapped his head back.

Ah, he thought as they hustled him along the corridors to a room where he’d never gone before. At last, the gloves come off. He was afraid-he would have been an imbecile not to be afraid-but he was oddly relieved, too. He’d been waiting for a moment like this. Now it was here.

The guards slammed him down onto a hard stool. A bright light blazed into his face. When he involuntarily looked away, he got slapped again. “Face forward!” a guard shouted.

From behind that blazing lamp, a Valmieran rasped, “You were the one who sent some hundreds of folk of Kaunian blood south to the Strait of Valmiera to be slain for your kingdom’s foul sorceries.”

“I do not know anything about-” Lurcanio began.

Yet another slap almost knocked him off the stool. “Don’t waste my time with lies,” warned the blond behind the lamp. “You’ll be sorry if you do. Now answer my questions, you stinking, worthless sack of shit. You were the one who sent those people to die.”

It wasn’t a question. That didn’t matter. What mattered was that the Valmierans knew how to play the game of interrogation after all. His head ringing, the taste of his own blood in his mouth, Lurcanio fought to gather himself. If he admitted the charge, he was a dead man. That much he could see. “No,” he said through bruised and cut lips. “I was not the one.”

“Liar!” the interrogator shouted. One of the guards punched Lurcanio in the belly. He groaned. For one thing, he couldn’t help himself. For another, he wanted them to think him hurt worse than he was. “So you weren’t the one, eh?” the Valmieran sneered. “A likely story! Well, if you say you weren’t, who was? Talk, powers below eat you!”

That question had as many eggs buried in it as a field on the western front. Another slap encouraged Lurcanio not to take too long answering. He didn’t know how much the Valmierans knew. He didn’t want to betray his own countrymen, but he didn’t want the charge sticking to him alone, either. He’d had something to do with sending blonds south, but he was a long way from the only one.

“Our orders came from Trapani,” he said. “We only followed-”

This time, the slap did knock him off the stool. He thudded down onto stone. The guards kicked him a few times before they picked him up. The interrogator, still unseen, said, “That won’t work, Algarvian. Aye, those whoresons in Trapani’ll get the axe for what they did. But you don’t get off for following orders. You know the difference between war and murder. You’re a big boy.”

“You are the victors,” Lurcanio said. “You can do with me as you please.”

“You bet your balls we can, redhead. You just bet,” the Valmieran gloated. “But weren’t you listening? You’ve got a chance-a skinny chance, but a chance-of saving your lousy neck. Name names, and we just might be happy enough with you to keep you breathing.”

Is he lying? He probably is, but do I dare take the chance? Lurcanio thought, as well as he could think with pain pouring through him. And if I name the names of others-or even if I don t-who will be naming me? One more thing he didn’t care to dwell on.

“Talk, you fornicating bastard,” the interrogator snarled. “We know all about your fornicating, too. She’ll get hers-wait and see if she doesn’t. You have this one chance, pal. Talk now or else don’t. and see what happens to you then.”

Would all his captive countrymen keep quiet? A bitter smile twisted Lurcanio’s lips. Algarvians were no less fond of saving their own skins than the folk of any other kingdom. Somebody would name him-and even if someone didn’t, how many documents had the Valmierans captured? There’d been no time to destroy them all.

“Last chance, Algarvian; very, very last,” the fellow behind the lamp said. “We know what you did. Who did it with you?”

Lurcanio felt old. He felt tired. He hurt all over. Had they been toying with him up till now, to make this seem harsher when it came? He had no answers, save that he didn’t want to die. That, he knew. “Well,” he said, “to begin with, there was …”