Out of the Darkness

Nineteen

When the door to Lurcanio’s cell opened at a time when he wasn’t scheduled to be fed or exercised, he bit down on the inside of his lower lip. A break in routine meant trouble. He hadn’t taken long to learn that. How many captives in Algarvian gaols learned the same lesson? he wondered. More than a few: of that he had no doubt. It didn’t matter. Now it was happening to him. That mattered more than anything else in the world.

One of the Valmieran guards who came in pointed a stick at his face. “Get moving,” he snapped.

Lurcanio got moving. He moved slowly and carefully, always keeping his hands in plain sight. The guards had made it very clear that they wanted him dead. He didn’t care to give them any excuse to get what they wanted. “May I ask where we are going?” he inquired.

He got a nasty grin from that guard. Another one replied, “The judges have your verdict.”

“Very well.” Lurcanio did his best not to show the fear he felt. The judges could do whatever they pleased with him, and he had no chance of stopping them. He’d sung like a nightingale for his interrogators. Maybe that would count enough to keep him breathing. Of course, maybe it wouldn’t, too.

Bright sunlight outside the gaol made him blink. His eyes watered. Not much light leaked into his cell. The guards hustled him into a carriage that carried more iron than a behemoth. A four-horse team had to draw it. Locks clicked and snapped on the doors after he got in.

In the passenger compartment, an iron grill separated him from the guard who rode with him. As the Valmieran locked it, Lurcanio asked, “What if I were a wizard? Could I conjure my way out of here?”

“Go ahead and try,” the blond answered. “This here carriage is warded against anything a first-rank mage can do.”

Lurcanio didn’t believe him. Sorcerers were often more inventive than those who tried to stop them gave them credit for being. So were other people, come to that. Gaolers would have had an easier time were that not so. But Lurcanio himself was no wizard. He remained a captive. They hadn’t even let him clean up before hauling him off to court. He didn’t take that for a good sign.

He went into the courtroom through a hallway reserved for the accused- and even more lined with guards than usual today. When he entered, he found the place packed. Excitement filled the air. It was almost as palpable as sorcerous energy just before a major spell. The three judges, two in civilian costume, the third in uniform, strode in and took their places at the head of the courtroom. Everyone rose respectfully. Lurcanio bowed to them, as he would have done in an Algarvian lawcourt.

“Be seated,” the bailiff intoned.

The chief judge, the soldier, sat in the center. He rapped loudly for order. “We have reached a verdict in the case of the Kingdom of Valmiera against Colonel Lurcanio of Algarve,” he declared. “Is the accused present?”

“No, your Excellency. I am not here,” Lurcanio declared. The scribe recording his words gave him a reproachful look. A few people giggled. Lurcanio thought he heard Krasta’s voice. He looked around. Aye, there she was. She wants to see me pay, Lurcanio thought. She would likely get what she wanted, too.

Bang! The gavel stifled the giggles. “By speaking, the accused admits his presence,” the senior judge said. “His display of levity is out of order, and will not be tolerated again.”

“Will you do worse to me for making a bad joke than for any of the other things you claim I did while I served my kingdom?” Lurcanio asked.

“By no means, Colonel,” the judge replied. “But we will bind and gag you. If that is what you want, you have but to say the word.” He waited. Lurcanio said nothing. The judge nodded. “All right, then. Are you ready to hear the verdict of this court?”

Ready? Lurcanio thought. Powers above, no! But his dignity kept him from saying that out loud. He was sure they would bind and gag him. He was sure they would enjoy doing it, too. Refusing to give them the satisfaction, he nodded curtly. “I am ready, your Excellency, though I still insist this court has no legal jurisdiction over a soldier engaged in prosecuting a war.”

“We have rejected that argument for others, and we reject it for you as well.” The chief judge shuffled papers, then looked up at Lurcanio. “This court, Colonel, finds you guilty of facilitating the transportation of Kaunians through the Kingdom of Valmiera for the purpose of sacrifice. It also finds you guilty of facilitating the program known as Night and Fog, which seized Valmierans for the purpose of sacrifice. This court further finds that these programs constitute murder, not warfare. Accordingly, you are hereby sentenced to be blazed to death.”

Lurcanio had been braced for it. It still came like a punch in the belly. So did the baying applause from the crowd in the courtroom. “I appeal this false verdict,” he said, as steadily as he could.

“No.” The chief judge shook his head. “This court was set up to deal with cases of this kind. There is no court to which to appeal our verdict.”

“Very neat,” Lurcanio said. The sarcasm got through; the judge flushed. Lurcanio went on, “No court to which to appeal, you say? May I not appeal to King Gainibu himself? I got to know him well during the occupation.” He turned out not to be quite so sottish and worthless as I thought he was, too. You never can tell.

That request seemed to catch the panel by surprise. The judges put their heads together and argued in low voices. At last, the senior judge looked up. “Very well, Colonel. You will be furnished pen and ink for this purpose.” He turned to the guards. “Take him back to his cell. Let him write what he will. Take the appeal to the king and let his will be done.”

“Aye, your Excellency,” the guards chorused. They hauled Lurcanio from his seat. He blew Krasta a kiss as they led him away. Her scowl made him smile.

He wondered whether they would bother following the judge’s orders, but they did. Lurcanio put his case as best he could. He wished he were writing Algarvian; being persuasive in a language not his own was hard. But then, how much difference would it make? Not much, he feared.

When he’d finished, he gave the appeal to the guards and asked for another leaf of paper. “What’s this one for?” one of them asked suspiciously.

Lurcanio looked at him. “I am going to fold it into a ladder, stick it out the window, climb down it, and escape,” he answered, deadpan. For a moment, the guards took him seriously; alarm flared on their faces. When they realized he hadn’t meant it, they started to get angry. He wondered if he’d earned himself a beating.

But then, to his relief, one of them laughed. “Funny boy, aren’t you?” the fellow said. “You aren’t going anywhere, not till-” He drew the edge of his hand across his throat. “Enough jokes now. Tell me what you want it for.”

“I want to write another letter,” Lurcanio said. “Your censors will read it. You will probably read it yourself. By all the signs, I will not have many more chances to write letters.”

“You’ve got that straight.” The guard thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, why the blazes not? If we don’t like what you write, the letter’ll never get out of gaol.”

“Exactly so.” Lurcanio bowed. “I thank you.”

He gnawed at the end of the pen when they gave him the new leaf of paper. He’d known exactly what he wanted to say to King Gainibu, even if he’d sometimes had trouble writing it in Valmieran. Here. . How do I even begin? he. wondered. But that solved itself. By the time you read this, I expect I shall be dead, he wrote. Coming out and saying that, even on paper, felt oddly liberating. He had an easier time going on from there than he’d thought he would.

The guards took away not only the letter but also the pen and the bottle of ink. “We don’t want you turning this into a stick, now,” one of them said, and laughed at his own joke.

Lurcanio dutifully chuckled, too. “If I could, I would,” he said. “But a man would have to be more than a first-rank mage to bring that off, I fear. He would have to be what the Ice People call a god.”

“Those stinking, hairy savages,” the guard said, nothing but scorn in his voice. He took the letter out of the cell. The door slammed shut. The bar thudded into place to keep it shut.

Two afternoons later, the answer from the King of Valmiera to Lurcanio’s appeal arrived. Lurcanio broke the seal and unfolded the leaf of paper. He recognized Gainibu’s script, though the writing looked less shaky than it had when the king drank himself into a stupor almost every night.

Colonel Lurcanio: Greetings. I have read your appeal, King Gainibu wrote. The essence of it seems to have two parts: first, that you were only obeying the orders your superiors gave you; and, second, that you might have done far worse than you did. The first falls to the ground at once. A man who murders again and again under orders remains a murderer. As for the second, it is probably true. No, I have no doubt that it is certainly true. I would not claim that I have forgotten our acquaintance. You might indeed have done more and worse. That you did not was surely due to the fact that you wanted to keep Valmiera as quiet as you could, but does remain so. It being so, I must ask myself whether it constitutes an adequately mitigating circumstance. With some regret, I tell you that, in my judgment, it does not. Aye, you might have done worse. What you did was quite bad enough. The sentence shall stand. Gainibu, King of Valmiera.

Slowly, deliberately, Lurcanio folded the king’s letter and set it down. Nothing left now but to die as well as he could. The guards had watched him read the letter. He nodded to them. “You will not have to worry about my complaints on the quality of accommodations and the dining much longer,” he said.

“Did you really think his Majesty would let you off?” one of them asked.

Lurcanio shook his head. “No, but how was I worse off for trying?”

“Something to that,” the guard said. “Tomorrow morning, then.”

“Tomorrow morning,” Lurcanio agreed. “Can you give me something worth eating tonight? As long as I am here, I aim to enjoy myself as best I can.”

As the guards trooped out, one of them remarked, “Whoreson’s got guts.” Lurcanio felt a certain amount of pride. As soon as the door slammed shut, though, it evaporated. What difference did it make? When the sun came up tomorrow, he would stop caring-stop caring forever-what happened to him.

Time seemed to race. He’d hardly blinked before it got dark. His supper was no different from any other meal he’d had in gaol. He savored it just the same. He found himself yawning, but didn’t sleep. With experience about to end forever, he didn’t care to miss the little he had left. They wouldn‘t have brought me a woman, even if I’d asked for one, he thought. Too bad.

The sky, or the tiny scrap of it he could see through his window, began to grow light. The door opened. A squad of guards came in. Lurcanio got to his feet. “Can you walk?” the guard captain asked him.

“I can walk,” he answered, and he did, though his knees wobbled from the fear he fought not to show. They led him to a courtyard and bound his wrists and ankles to a metal pole. He could smell terror seeping out from the old bricks behind him.

“Blindfold?” asked the guard captain. Lurcanio shook his head. A dozen men aimed sticks at him. The captain raised his hand, then let it fall. The Valmierans blazed. Even as Lurcanio braced himself, he thought, How useless. He cried out once. Then it was over.

“What’s this?” Krasta asked irritably as the butler handed her an envelope on a silver tray.

“I don’t know, milady,” he answered, and did his best to vanish.

Muttering something unpleasant about the quality of help available these days, Krasta opened the envelope. It bore no return address, and she didn’t recognize the hand that had written out her name and address. She was tempted to throw the envelope away unopened, but curiosity got the better of her.

The script of the letter inside was different from that of the address-different and familiar. By the time you read this, Krasta read, I expect I shall be dead. I make no special plea for myself-what point to it? You know what you did, and you know what we did. You will try to deny it now, especially to yourself, but you went into our affair with your eyes open as wide as your legs.

“Powers below eat you, Lurcanio,” Krasta snarled. She almost tore the letter to pieces, but that first sentence kept her reading.

I have a favor to ask you-a deathbed favor, you might say, Lurcanio wrote. It has nothing to do with me, so you need feel no pain in granting it. Again, Krasta almost tore up the letter. Even beyond the grave, was the Algarvian trying to tell her what to do? Then she laughed unpleasantly. She could finish the whole wretched thing, find out exactly what he wanted, and then do just the opposite. She nodded to herself. The more she thought about it, the better that sounded.

“No one gives me orders,” she said. “No one.” She spoke louder than she had to, as if to persuade herself. For close to four years, Lurcanio had given her orders, and she’d-mostly-obeyed. She would be a long time forgetting that, however hard she tried.

You bore my son, Lurcanio wrote. Krasta’s scowl darkened. She wished she could forget that, too. The little bastard’s yowling made forgetting impossible, though. So did the shocking things being pregnant had done to her figure. For the moment, little Gainibu was mercifully asleep. Pretty soon, he would wake up and start being noisy again.

Even thinking about Lurcanio was easier than thinking about the baby. Because of the baby, because of what he’d turned out to be, she still had to wear this hot, uncomfortable wig whenever she appeared in public. Aye, Lurcanio and his bastard boy both had a lot to answer for.

What I ask you is, try to forget he is mine, the letter continued.

Krasta’s lip curled. “Not bloody likely!” she said.

Try to treat him as you would have treated him were the charming Viscount Valnu indeed his sire, Lurcanio wrote. You may think of me as you please. I made life inconvenient for you, I know, for I did not let you do just as you pleased-and what crime could be worse than that? Krasta studied his words. She suspected a cut was hiding among them, but couldn’t quite find it. Lurcanio had always enjoyed being obscure.

Moreover, he went on, you were too friendly with me during the war to suit Valmiera as it is now. This, I know, has caused you some embarrassment. You must be sure the said embarrassment is all my fault, and so you will hate me for it.

Krasta nodded savagely. “I certainly do!”

She could almost see Lurcanio shrugging. Hate me if you will, then, he wrote. I can do nothing about it in any case. But I beg you, my former dear, do not hate the baby. Nothing that has happened here is the baby’s fault.

“Oh, you lying son of a whore,” Krasta exclaimed. If little Gainibu hadn’t been born with sandy hair, people now wouldn’t think she herself had been a collaborator. Even Skarnu’s peasant cow of a wife wouldn’t have been able to keep scorning her, wouldn’t have been able to crop her hair right after she gave birth. No, Lurcanio didn’t understand much.

Or did he? I know that, with his hair as it is, he will not have an easy time in your kingdom. During the war, some Kaunians tried to disguise themselves as Algarvians by dyeing their hair red. Going in the other direction might serve the child well here, at least for a time. Later, when passions have cooled, people may be better able to accept him for what he is.

“Hmm.” Krasta read that over again. It wasn’t such a bad idea. Oh, certainly, people who knew her also knew she’d had an Algarvian bastard. But, with little Gainibu’s hair dyed a safe blond, she would be able to take him out in public. She’d never before imagined being able to do that. Her free hand touched the curls of the wig. Before too long, she would be able to shed her disguise. Her son might have to keep his up his whole life long. “And that’s your fault, Lurcanio, yours and nobody else’s,” Krasta said, as if Gainibu hadn’t come forth from between her legs.

If the boy has your looks and my wit, he may go far in the world, given any sort of chance at all, Lurcanio wrote, arrogant to the end. I hope you will give him that chance. My time is over. His is just beginning. The squiggle he used for a signature sat under his closing words.

Now Krasta did tear the letter into tiny pieces. Once she’d done so, she put them down the commode, as she’d put the sheet in her brother’s writing down the commode while the redheads still occupied Priekule. Then she would have got in trouble if Lurcanio had found Skarnu’s words. These days, if anyone found Lurcanio’s. . She shook her head. It wouldn’t happen. She wouldn’t let it happen. She watched the water in the commode swirl away the soggy paper. Gone. Gone for good. She sighed with relief.

A moment later, almost on cue, little Gainibu started to cry. Krasta gritted her teeth. As far as she could see, a baby’s cry was good for nothing but driving all the people within earshot out of their minds. Her first impulse, as always, was to turn around and get out of earshot as fast as she could. This once, though, she resisted that and went into the baby’s bedroom instead.

Gainibu’s wet nurse looked up in surprise. She was changing the baby’s soiled linen and wiping his bottom. Krasta’s nose wrinkled. Gainibu had done something truly disgusting. “Hello, milady,” the wet nurse said. She deftly finished the job of cleaning and changing and picked up Krasta’s son. The baby smiled and gurgled. The wet nurse smiled, too. “He’s not a bad little fellow, even if. .” She caught herself. “He’s not a bad little fellow.”

“Let me have him,” Krasta said.

“Of course, milady.” The wet nurse sounded astonished. Krasta had hardly ever said anything like that before. “Be careful to keep a hand under his head. It’s still a little wobbly.”

“I’ll manage.” Krasta took her son from the other woman. He smiled up at her, too. Before she knew what she was doing, she smiled back. He tricked it out of me, she thought, almost as if realizing a grown man had seduced her. When she smiled at him, Gainibu laughed and wiggled. “He likes me!” Krasta said in surprise. Because she had no use for the baby, she’d thought he wouldn’t care for her.

“He likes everybody,” the wet nurse said. “He’s just a baby. He doesn’t know anything about how mean people can be.” She held out her hands. “Let me have him back, please. I was going to feed him after I got him cleaned up.”

“Here,” Krasta said. The wet nurse undid her tunic and gave the baby her right breast. Gainibu sucked eagerly. Krasta’s breasts were dry again, though they still seemed softer and slacker than they had before she gave birth. Not till now, hearing the small, happy noises Gainibu made, had she wondered whether nursing him might have been a good thing. She shook her head. When he came out with hair sandy, not blond, she’d wanted him dead. Nurse him herself? No, no, no.

As casually as she could, Krasta asked, “Do you suppose he’s still too young to dye his hair?”

“Dye his. .? Oh.” The wet nurse blinked, then saw what Krasta was aiming at-what Lurcanio had been aiming at, though she wasn’t about to admit it. The other woman said, “I don’t know, milady. You might ask a healer about that. But when he gets a bit bigger, I’m sure it wouldn’t hurt. And it would make things easier for him, wouldn’t it?”

“It might,” Krasta said. “I’m sure it would make things easier for me. I could show him in public without worrying about all the dreadful things that happen to … people with babies that have the wrong color hair.” Her own convenience came first. That looking like everyone else might be better for little Gainibu was also nice, but distinctly secondary.

“Sooner or later, things will ease up,” the wet nurse predicted. “People will get excited about something else, and then they won’t care so much about who did what during the war. That’s how it works.”

“I hope so,” Krasta said fervently. “As far as I’m concerned, people have made much too big a fuss about that already.”

The wet nurse nodded sympathetically. Maybe she’d had an Algarvian boyfriend during the occupation. For all Krasta knew, she might have a little bastard at home herself. The wet nurse said, “Plenty of women were friendly with the redheads. That was just how things were back then. A baby? A baby was bad luck.”

“He certainly was,” Krasta said, giving her son a venomous stare. If he’d looked the way he was supposed to, or if he hadn’t come along at all, she wouldn’t have had nearly the troubles she’d had.

But the wet nurse said the same thing Lurcanio had: “It’s not really his fault, milady. He can’t help what he looks like.”

“I suppose not,” Krasta said reluctantly.

“And he is a nice little baby,” the wet nurse went on. “Doing what I do, I see plenty of the little brats. He’s sweeter than most. I think dyeing his hair is a good idea. You must be very clever, to have thought of that. If he looks like everybody else, he should be able to get on fine.”

“Maybe,” Krasta said. No, she wasn’t about to admit that dyeing Gainibu’s hair hadn’t been her idea. If the wet nurse thought it was clever, she would take credit for it. Lurcanio? She snapped her fingers. By the time you read this, I expect I shall be dead. She didn’t miss him. On the contrary; as long as he’d lived, she’d had to remember she hadn’t always been able to do exactly as she pleased. Few thoughts could have been less pleasant to her.

“Let me have Gainibu again,” she said. The wet nurse burped the baby before handing him to her. Krasta peered down into his little face. But for the color of his hair, he did look like her, as best she could tell.

He smiled again and then, without any fuss, spit up on her. The wet nurse hadn’t burped him quite well enough. For once, Krasta didn’t get angry. She kept studying the baby. With blond hair, he might do after all.

If the boy has your looks and my wit, he may go far in the world. Krasta shook her head. She’d flushed those words down the commode. Since they were gone, they couldn’t possibly be true. . could they?

Leudast stood on the farther slopes of the Elsung Mountains, looking west into Gyongyos. No matter what his superiors said, he’d never expected to come so far so fast. He’d never expected the Gongs to lie down and surrender, either. He’d fought them before, and knew they didn’t do things like that. But they had.

He also knew the Unkerlanters’ onslaught hadn’t been the only thing that made Gyongyos quit. Every new rumor said something different and horrible had happened to Gyorvar. Leudast didn’t want to believe any of the rumors, because they all sounded preposterous. But if something truly dreadful hadn’t happened to their capital, would the Gyongyosians have thrown in the sponge? He didn’t think so.

His regiment had come far enough that, right at the edge of visibility, he could see the mountains sloping down toward the lowlands farther west still. He could also see the green in the bottom of a good many valleys. The Gongs, he’d heard, recruited a lot of their soldiers from such places. Unkerlant’s broad, almost endless plains yielded many more men. He wasn’t sure the average Unkerlanter made as ferocious a warrior as the average Gyongyosian, but that hadn’t turned out to matter.

Captain Dagaric came up to stand beside him and look at the vast expanse of rock and snow and greenery. After staring a while in silence, Dagaric asked, “Do you know what you’ll do next, Lieutenant?”

“No, sir,” Leudast admitted. “I’m afraid I don’t. I’ve been in the army a long time.” It wasn’t forever. It only felt that way.

“Aye, you’ve been in the army a long time,” the regimental commander agreed. “If you were still a common soldier or a sergeant, I wouldn’t worry about it so much. But you’re an officer now, and you haven’t been an officer all that long. You ought to think about it.”

“I have been thinking about it, sir,” Leudast replied. “If I weren’t an officer, I’d be on my way home now. “Well, trying to get home, anyhow. But. . You don’t mind my saying so, you’re dead when they blaze you, regardless of whether you’re a sergeant or a lieutenant.”

“That’s so,” Dagaric said. Had he tried to deny it, Leudast would have ignored everything else he said. The captain went on, “A couple of things for you to think about, though. For one, nobody’s going to be blazing at you for a while. After what we just went through, do you think anyone wants another war any time soon?”

Who can tell, with King Swemmel? But Leudast didn’t trust Dagaric far enough to say that out loud. He did say, “You’ve got a point.”

“You bet I do,” Dagaric told him. “And my other point is, we need good officers, and you are one. Common soldiers and underofficers are conscripts. Officers are the glue that holds things together, especially in peacetime. Losing you after all you’ve done, all you’ve learned, would be a shame.”

“I’m still thinking, sir.” From his days as a common soldier and an under-officer, Leudast knew better than to come right out and tell a superior no.

“You should also remember, Marshal Rathar has his eye on you,” Dagaric said. “Who knows how high you could rise with him behind you?”

Leudast gave a truly thoughtful nod. In the army as anywhere else, whom you knew counted for at least as much as what you knew. That he should know the Marshal of Unkerlant-and that Rathar should know him-still left him astonished. No denying that Dagaric had a point. Officers without patrons were liable to watch their careers wither. He wouldn’t have to worry about that. But…

“Sir, I don’t know that I want to be a soldier at all,” Leudast said. “This isn’t my proper trade.”

“Well, what is your proper trade? Farmer?” Dagaric asked, and Leudast nodded again. The regimental commander snorted. “Do you really want to see nothing but your own village-whatever’s left of it-the rest of your days? Do you really want to push a plow behind an ox’s arse every year till you fall over dead?”

“It’s what I know,” Leudast answered. “It’s about the only thing I do know.”

Captain Dagaric shook his head. “You’re wrong, Lieutenant. You know soldiering. You were in the army at the start, and you came out alive at the end. Have you got any idea how unusual that is? Millions of men know farming. Not very many have experience to match yours.”

He was probably right. The only trouble was, Leudast didn’t want most of the experience he had. He knew how lucky he was to have come through all the dreadful fighting he’d seen with only two wounds. But the wounds weren’t all of it-in many ways, weren’t the worst of it. Terror and hunger and cold and exhaustion and filth and the agony of friends. . Did he want to stay in a trade that only promised more of the same?

Something else occurred to him, too, something that had been in the back of his mind ever since the Gyongyosians yielded. “Sir, there was this girl, back in a village in the Duchy of Grelz.” Would Alize even remember who he was if he showed up there now, or would she be married to some local man? Plenty of wartime romances didn’t mean a thing once the war was done. Some did, though. No way to find out which sort was which without going back there and seeing how things stood.

“A girl, eh?” Dagaric said. “You serious about her, or are you just looking for another excuse?”

“I’m serious, sir. I don’t know if she is. I’d have to go back to Leiferde to find out.”

“In peacetime, you know, a married officer isn’t necessarily at a disadvantage,” Dagaric remarked. “And who knows? She may be looking for a way to get off the farm and out of her village.” He rubbed his chin. “I’ll tell you what. You want to court her, do you?”

Leudast nodded. “Aye, sir, I do.”

“You don’t need to resign your commission to do that,” Dagaric said. “I think the most efficient thing to do would be to give you, oh, a month’s leave so you can sort out your personal affairs. At the end of that time, you’ll have a better notion of what you want to do-and you’ll have an officer’s travel privileges to get to this Leifer-wherever-in-blazes-it-is. Does that suit you, Lieutenant?”

“Aye, sir! Thank you, sir!” Leudast said, saluting. The military ceremonial let him hide his astonishment. Dagaric really must want me to stay in the army, or he wouldn’t go so far out of his way to help me. He still wasn’t sure he wanted to remain a soldier, but knowing his superior wanted him to was no small compliment.

Leave papers in his beltpouch, he was two days in a wagon making his way back to the nearest ley line. Then he spent another nine days traversing Unkerlant from west to east, as he’d gone across the kingdom from east to west not so long before. The month of leave Dagaric had given him suddenly seemed less generous than it had when he’d got it: it left him about ten days in and around Leiferde.

He found he could tell exactly how far the Algarvians had come. All at once, the countryside took on the battered look with which he’d grown so familiar during the war. How long would it take to repair? So many men were gone. Every glimpse he got of life in the fields confirmed that. The old, the young, the female: they labored to bring in the harvest. He shivered anew when the ley-line caravan passed through Herborn, the capital of the Duchy of Grelz. There among those ruins King Swemmel had boiled false King Raniero of Grelz alive. Thanks to me, Leudast thought, and wondered if he would ever get the smell of Raniero’s cooking flesh out of his nostrils.

Leiferde wasn’t on a ley line, but didn’t lie far from one. Leudast needed only half a day to get to the village. After so long cooped up on the wagon and the caravan, getting down and using his own legs felt good. The sun was sliding down the sky toward the western horizon when he strode up the dusty main street. Women peered at him from their vegetable plots and herb gardens. “A soldier,” he heard them murmur. “What’s a soldier doing here now?”

He knocked on the door at Alize’s house. He’d hoped she would open it herself, but she didn’t. Her mother did-a woman who looked much the way Alize would in twenty years or so. “Hullo, Bertrude,” Leudast said, pleased he remembered her name.

The woman’s jaw dropped. “Powers above!” she exclaimed. “You’re that lieutenant. How are you, your Excellency?” She curtsied.

“I’m fine, thank you.” Leudast had never said he was a nobleman. On the other hand, he’d never said he wasn’t. He asked the question that needed asking: “Is Alize anywhere about?”

“She’s out in the fields. She’ll be back for supper,” Bertrude answered. “That shouldn’t be long, sir. Won’t you come in and share what we have?”

“If it’s not too much trouble, and if you have enough,” Leudast said. “I know how things are these days.”

But Bertrude shook her head. “It’s no trouble at all, and we’ve got plenty,” she said firmly. “Come have something to drink while you wait.”

Leudast found the world a rosier place after pouring down most of a mug of spirits. He was fighting to stay awake when Alize and her father, Akerin, walked in. “Leudast!” Alize said, and threw herself into his arms. Her face against his shoulder, she added, “What are you doing here?”

“With the war over, I came back,” he said simply. It had been a long time since he’d had his arms around a woman, even longer since he’d had them around one who wanted to be held.

Alize stared at him. “Men say they’ll do that all the time. I didn’t think anybody really would, though.”

“Here I am,” Leudast said. She seemed glad to see him. That made a good start.

Before he could go on from there, Bertrude broke in: “Supper’s ready.” Leudast sat down with Alize and her mother and father. The stew Bertrude served was full of oats and beets, not wheat and turnips, as it would have been in Leudast’s village in the north. Mutton was mutton, though Bertrude flavored it with mint rather than garlic. Nothing at all was wrong with the ale she gave him to go with the supper.

After he’d eaten, Alize said, “I hoped you’d come back. I didn’t really think you would, but I hoped so. Now that you have come, what exactly do you have in mind? It can’t be just. . you know.”

You can’t have me for the sport of it, she meant. Leudast nodded. He’d already understood that. He said, “I came to wed you, if you’ll put up with me.”

“I think I can,” Alize said with a smile. Leudast grinned with relief; he hadn’t known how she would answer, though he wouldn’t have returned to Leiferde if he hadn’t had his hopes.

Her father asked, “You aim to settle down here and farm, then?”

The question went to the nub of things. “That depends,” Leudast said. “I might, but then again, I might not. My other choice is staying in the army. The way the world looks, there’ll always be jobs for soldiers.”

“That’s so,” Akerin said, and Bertrude’s head bobbed up and down. Alize’s father asked another question: “How do you aim to make up your mind?”

“Well, if you really want to know, a lot of it depends on what your daughter wants.” Leudast looked to Alize. “If you’d sooner stay in Leiferde, I know how to farm, or I did up north. It can’t be too different here.” He realized he’d just shown he was no noble. Shrugging, he went on, “Or if you’d rather be a soldier’s wife. .” Again, he shrugged the Unkerlanter peasant’s businesslike shrug, so different from the fancy Algarvian variety. “I can do that, too.”

“Go to a city?” Alize breathed. “Maybe even to Cottbus?” Her eyes glowed. “I’ve seen enough of a farming village to last me the rest of my days. However life turns out in a town, it has to be easier there than here.”

Her father and mother didn’t argue with her. In fact, they nodded solemnly. Leudast thought her likely right, too. He also nodded. “All right, then,” he said. “I’ll stay a soldier.” Captain Dagaric would be pleased. Marshal Rathar might be pleased. Leudast wondered if he’d be pleased himself. That depends on how long peace lasts, he thought. Of course, if war came again, a peasant village near Unkerlant’s eastern border wasn’t safe, either. But if war came again, was any place at all safe? One way or another, he’d find out.

After supper, Ealstan tried to read the news sheet and play with Saxburh at the same time. That didn’t work very well, because he couldn’t give either one of them his full attention. The news sheet didn’t care. His daughter did. “Dada,” she said, and managed to put a distinct note of reproach in her voice.

“You’re fighting a losing battle, son,” Hestan said.

“What other kind is there, for a Forthwegian?” Ealstan answered. That earned him one of Hestan’s slow smiles.

When he was talking to his own father, he wasn’t paying attention to Saxburh, either. “Dada,” she said again, and tugged at his hand. Laughing, he picked her up. She grabbed for his beard.

He managed to fend her off. “No, you can’t do that,” he told her. “That hurts.”

Hestan said, “You got some pretty good handfuls of mine in your day.”

“If I did, she’s giving you your revenge.” Ealstan tickled Saxburh, who squealed. “Aren’t you?” She squealed again.

“If you’re going to play with her, may I see the news sheet?” Vanai asked. Ealstan spun it across the room to her. As soon as Vanai started to read, Saxburh scrambled down off Ealstan’s lap, toddled over to her, and started batting at the news sheet. “Cut that out,” Vanai said. Saxburh didn’t. Vanai rolled her eyes. “She doesn’t want anybody reading-that’s what it is.”

“Maybe she thinks we’ll get too excited when we see that King Penda vows he’ll come back to Forthweg,” Ealstan said.

“Not likely,” Vanai exclaimed. “Who’d want him back, after he led the kingdom into a losing war?”

“That’s the line the story takes,” Ealstan said.

“I’m surprised the news sheet mentioned his name at all,” Hestan said.

“It takes the same tone Vanai did,” Ealstan repeated. “The feeling it wants to give is, Oh, he can’t possibly be serious, and who would care even if he were? It’s not a headline or anything-it shows up at the bottom of an inside page. That’s one more way to show nobody thinks Penda’s very important any more, I guess.”

His father musingly plucked at his beard. “You know, that’s clever,” he said after he’d thought it through. “If they just ignored Penda, people would hear about this vow of his anyhow, and they’d think, King Beornwulf is afraid. See how he’s trying to hide things? This way, they’ll go, Well, Beornwulf is king now, and Penda can make as much noise as he wants off in Lagoas. Aye, clever.”

“Mama!” Saxburh said indignantly, and swatted at the news sheet.

“You know you’re not supposed to do that,” Vanai said. “Are you getting fussy? Are you getting sleepy?”

“No!” Saxburh denied the mere possibility, and burst into tears when her mother picked her up.

“Most babies don’t start saying no till they’re a few months older than that,” Hestan remarked. “Of course, my granddaughter is naturally very advanced for her age.”

“I wish she were advanced enough to stop making messes in her clothes,” Ealstan said. “Is she dry?”

Vanai felt the baby and nodded. “I think she’ll go to sleep, too,” she said, putting the critical word in classical Kaunian so Saxburh wouldn’t follow it. But she’d done that once too often; her daughter had figured it out, and cried harder than ever. Vanai looked half pleased-one day, she did want Saxburh to learn the language she’d grown up speaking-and half annoyed. “There, there. It’ll be all right.” She rocked the little girl in her arms. Saxburh didn’t think it was all right; she went on wailing. But the wails grew muffled as her thumb found its way into her mouth. After a little while, they stopped.

“Almost like the quiet after the fighting’s over,” Hestan said.

Ealstan shook his head. “No,” he said positively. “That’s different.”

His father didn’t argue. He just shrugged and said, “You’d know better than I, I’m sure. How’s your leg these days?”

“It’s getting better. It’s still sore.” Ealstan shrugged, too. “When the rainy season comes, I’ll make a first-rate weather prophet.”

“I’m sorry about that. I’m more sorry than I can tell you,” Hestan said. “But I’m glad you’re still here to be able to predict bad weather before it comes.”

“Oh, so am I,” Ealstan said. “I’ll tell you what gravels me, though.” He laughed at himself. “I know it’s a small thing, especially when you set it against all the evil that came during the war, but I wish I’d been able to finish my schooling. First the Algarvians watered everything down, and then I had to leave.” He glanced over at Vanai, and at Saxburh, who’d started snoring around that thumb. “Of course, I learned a good many other things instead.”

His wife was wearing her swarthy Forthwegian sorcerous disguise. She turned pink even so. “Everyone learns those lessons, sooner or later,” she said. “I think it’s very fine that you want to learn the others, too.”

Her grandfather had been a scholar, of course. Considering how badly he and she had got along, it was a wonder she didn’t hate the whole breed. But Kaunians had often looked down their noses at Forthwegians as being ignorant and proud of it. Vanai had never said any such thing to Ealstan, which didn’t mean she didn’t think it from time to time: not about him, necessarily, but about his people.

Hestan said, “If there hadn’t been a war, I was thinking about sending you to the university at Eoforwic, or maybe even to the one at Trapani. I doubt either of them is still standing these days, and powers above only know how many professors came through alive.”

“Trapani,” Ealstan said in slow wonder. “If there hadn’t been a war, I would have wanted to go there, too. That’s very strange. The only thing I’d want to do now is drop an egg on the place. It’s had plenty, but one more wouldn’t hurt.” He eyed his father. “Sending me to a university would probably ruin me as a bookkeeper, you know.”

“Bookkeepers make more than professors ever dream of,” added Vanai, sharply practical as usual.

Hestan shrugged. “I do know both those things. But a man who can dream should get his chance to do it. A careful man-which you’ve always been, Ealstan-doesn’t need to be rich; he gets by well enough with a little less. Not having the chance to do what you really want can sour you for life.”

Vanai carried Saxburh off and put her to bed. When she came back, she asked, “You’re not talking about yourself, are you, sir? You don’t seem soured on life, if you don’t mind my saying so.”

“Me? No.” Hestan sounded a bit startled. “Not really, anyhow. But then, I’ve been lucky with my wife and-mostly-lucky with my children. That makes up for a good deal, believe me.”

“I believe you,” Ealstan said, and looked at Vanai in a way that made her turn redder than she had before.

His father smiled that slow smile. “That isn’t what I meant, or not all of what I meant, though I expect you’ll have a hard time believing me when I say so. But the truth is, I like moving numbers around. Maybe, if I’d had a chance, I’d be moving them around in different ways from those a bookkeeper uses. But if I tried to tell you I’m pining for a scholarly career I never had, that would be a lie.”

Elfryth ducked her head into the dining room. “I just looked in on Saxburh. She’s so sweet, lying there asleep.”

“Sure she is,” Ealstan said. “She’s not making any noise.”

His mother sniffed indignantly. His father chuckled and said, “Spoken like the proper sort of parent: a tired one.”

“Stop that, Hestan,” Elfryth said. “What were you saying there about telling lies?”

“I was telling them about running off and joining a traveling carnival when I was young,” Hestan answered, deadpan. “Everything went fine till the elephant stepped on me. I used to be a much taller man, you know.”

“Pity the beast didn’t squash the silliness out of you, too,” Elfryth observed.

Vanai looked from Ealstan’s father to his mother and back again. “Is that where we’ll be in twenty years?” she asked.

Ealstan didn’t answer. He didn’t know. Elfryth said, “Either something like this or you’ll shout at each other all the time. This is better.”

“I think so, too,” Vanai said.

Hestan asked, “Are you still interested in going on to the university, Ealstan? We could probably afford it if you are.”

“I don’t know,” he answered. “I never even graduated from the academy.”

“You can always find ways around things like that.” His father spoke with great assurance.

“Maybe,” Ealstan said. “The other thing, though. . Well, you said it yourself. I’ve got a family to worry about now-and I think I’ve been pretty lucky there, too.” Having a wife and child would make his life as a student more complicated. Having a Kaunian wife and half-Kaunian child might make his life as a student much more complicated. That wasn’t anything he could say to Vanai.

“It does make a difference, doesn’t it?” Hestan said, and Ealstan nodded.

As Ealstan and Vanai lay down together that night, she said, “If you want to be a scholar, we could make it work, I think.”

He shrugged. “Things aren’t the way they were before the war. They’re never going to be the same as they were before the war. I’m sorry.” He took her hand. “I wish they could be, but it’s not going to happen.”

“I know,” Vanai answered. “There are some things that, once you break them, you can’t put them back together again.”

That held nothing but truth. The ancient Kaunian population of Forthweg- more ancient here than the Forthwegians themselves-would never be the same again. Ealstan caught Vanai to him. “One thing, though,” he said. “Because we met, I’m the luckiest fellow in the world.”

She kissed him. “You’re sweet. I wonder if we would have met anyhow. We might have. I came to Gromheort every now and then. And we-”

“We both knew about that oak grove where we found each other in mushroom season,” Ealstan broke in. “We really might have.”

“My grandfather wouldn’t have approved. He didn’t approve,” Vanai said. “In peacetime, that might have mattered more.”

“I hope not,” Ealstan said.

“So do I,” Vanai said. “But we don’t know. We can’t know. A lot of dreadful things have happened the past six years. I’m just glad we’ve got each other.”

This time, Ealstan kissed her and hugged her to him. “I am, too.”

Vanai let out a small laugh. “You’re very glad, aren’t you?” she said, and reached between them to show how she knew.

“And getting gladder every second, too,” Ealstan told her. She laughed again. He started undoing her tunic. As often as not, that seemed to wake up the baby. Not tonight, though. He teased her nipple with his tongue. Her breath sighed out. In a bit, Ealstan poised himself above her. Not too long after that, he was as glad as he could possibly be that they had each other.

Count Sabrino, former and forcibly retired colonel of dragonfliers, had a roof over his head and, for the most part, enough to eat. In occupied, devastated Trapani, that made him a lucky man indeed. As lucky as an aging cripple can be, anyhow, he thought sourly. Day by day, his crutches seemed more a part of him.

Some men who’d lost a leg preferred a wheeled chair to crutches. Sabrino might have, too, in the Trapani he’d known before the war: a city of paved boulevards and smooth sidewalks. On the rubble-strewn, cratered streets of the Algarvian capital these days, such chairs got stuck too easily to seem practical to him.

He saw enough mutilated men, of all ages from barely bearded to older than he was, to have plenty of standards of comparison. Each one was an emblem of what Algarve had gone through. Taken together, they made a searing indictment of the darkness through which his kingdom had passed.

He stopped into a tavern not far from his home and ordered a glass of wine. The tapman’s right arm stopped just below his shoulder: no possible hope of fitting him with a hook. But he handled the glass and the wine bottle with his remaining hand as well as anyone possibly could.

When Sabrino praised him, he let out a short, bitter burst of laughter. “It’s not quite what you think, friend,” he said. “I’m well off, if you want to call it that-you see, I’ve always been left-handed.”

“If what you kept is more useful to you than what you lost, that is good fortune,” Sabrino agreed. “Plenty of people have it worse.”

“If a whole man said something like that to me, I’d punch the son of a whore in the nose-with my left hand, of course,” the tapman said. “But you, buddy, you went through it, too. I’ll take it from you. Where’d you get hurt?”

“Not far west of here, not long before the war ended,” Sabrino answered. “I was on a dragon, and it got flamed out of the sky. Some of the flame got my leg, too, and so.. .” He shrugged, then politely added, “You?”

“On the way to Cottbus, the first winter of the war in the west,” the other cripple told him. “A flying chunk of eggshell tore the arm almost all the way off, and the healers finished the job. The same burst killed two of my pals.”

Sabrino shoved a silver coin across the bar to him. “Have a glass of whatever you care for, on me.”

“I usually don’t, not when I’m working.” But the tapman dropped the coin into the cash box. “Powers below eat it, once won’t hurt. Thank you kindly, friend. You’re a gentleman.” He poured himself a shot of spirits, then took a shiny new copper coin from the box and gave it to Sabrino. “I wouldn’t cheat you-here’s your change.”

Sabrino looked at the coin. It showed the profile of a plump man with a receding chin, not the strong, beaky image that had been stamped onto Algarve’s currency for so many years. “So this is the new king, is it?” he said.

“If you believe the Unkerlanters, he is,” the tapman answered. “Me, I don’t know why they don’t just put King Swemmel’s face on the money and have done with it.”

That would have been my face there, if I’d told Vatran aye, Sabrino thought as he put the copper in his beltpouch. It was a strange notion, and not one he’d had in the sanatorium bed when the Unkerlanter general came to call on him. He finished his wine, picked up his crutches (which he’d leaned against the side of the bar while he perched on a stool and drank), left the tavern, and made his slow way home.

When he got there, he found his wife more excited than he’d seen her in years. “Powers above, Gismonda, what’s going on?” he asked, wondering what sort of calamity could have upset her so.

But it turned out to be a different kind of excitement. “You may be able to get your leg back,” she said dramatically.

“What?” He shook his head. “Don’t be silly. I’m an abridged edition these days, and I’ll stay that way as long as I last.”

“Maybe not,” Gismonda said. “One of my friends-Baroness Norizia, it was, whose husband got killed outside Durrwangen-heard about this new healer called Pirello. He’s supposed to be able to restore lost limbs by sorcery. Something to do with the law of similarity. Norizia didn’t know just what. What she knows about wizardry would fit in a thimble, believe me, my darling. Pirello has something or other, though.”

“The law of similarity,” Sabrino said musingly. He looked down at himself. His surviving leg was indeed very similar to the one he’d lost. A clever mage might be able to use that resemblance. Or. . “Odds are he’s just a quack preying on maimed men.” Sabrino didn’t want to let himself feel hope.

“Maybe.” Gismonda was every bit as cold-blooded, perhaps more so. But she went on, “Shouldn’t you talk to him anyhow? What have you got to lose?”

“Money,” Sabrino answered. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. How much would I give to have my leg back, really and truly? The answer didn’t take long to form. Anything at all. “Might be worth seeing him, just to find out.”

Gismonda snapped her fingers. “I remember now what Norizia called it. An elixir, that’s what he uses. A miracle elixir, she said.”

“It would take a miracle,” Sabrino said, “and miracles aren’t what magecraft is all about. Still. .” He shrugged, as well as he could with crutches bearing so much of his weight. “I may as well take a look.”

“I’ll send one of the servants over to Norizia’s and see if she knows where the fellow’s offices are,” Gismonda said.

From the word the servant brought back, the healer did business not far from the wreckage of the royal palace. Once the carriage had taken Sabrino to that part of town, finding his place of business proved easy. Broadsheets praising Pirello’s miracle elixir were plastered to walls and fences.

Veterans missing arms and legs-and one man short his left ear-filled Pirello’s waiting room. Sabrino gave his name to a pretty receptionist he wouldn’t have minded knowing better, then eased himself down into a chair and got ready to wait till everyone ahead of him had seen the healer.

Before long, though, the receptionist gave him an inviting smile and said, “Count Sabrino? Master Pirello will see you now.”

Sabrino struggled to his foot. Other mutilated men gave him sour looks, for which he didn’t much blame them. His own suspicions flared. He hadn’t given the receptionist his rank. How did Pirello know it? He’s likely a mage, after all, Sabrino thought. And his own name and station hadn’t been unknown in Trapani before the war. Still, he wasn’t the only Sabrino around, either. If he knows I’m a noble, maybe he thinks he can pry more money out of me than from ordinary men who‘ve had bad luck. If I can get my leg back, though. .

“Here you are, your Excellency,” the girl said. Her kilt was very short, showing off shapely legs. “Go right in.”

“Thanks,” Sabrino said. She beamed at him. He wondered if he ought to ask her name. Later, he thought. A hitching step at a time, he went into Pirello’s sanctum.

It was lined with books, though not all of them had anything to do with healing or sorcery. The mage-or is he just a mountebank? Sabrino wondered- sprang from his chair and bowed himself almost double. “Your Excellency! What a privilege to meet you!” he cried. He was about thirty, with his mustaches and chin beard waxed to spikes. Plainly, he’d never missed a meal. “I hope I can help you.”

“I hope you can, too,” Sabrino said. “I’ve heard about something to do with the law of similarity, and about some elixir of yours, and I decided to see what’s going on here. What have I got to lose?”

“Exactly so, your Excellency. Exactly so!” Pirello beamed, as if Sabrino had been clever. “Do sit down, sir. I will tell you what I do. I will tell you in great detail, in fact.” And he did. He went on and on and on, and grew more technical the longer he spoke.

Not all of what he said made sense to Sabrino, who wondered how much of it would have made sense to a first-rank mage. Before long, he held up a hand and said, “Enough, sir. Cut to the chase. You can help me, or else you can’t. If you can, how long will it take and how much will it cost?”

“Between the spell and the elixir, which of course stimulates the regenerative faculty, you should see results-the beginning of results, I should say-within two months,” Pirello replied. “As for the fee, I am the soul of reason. You pay me a third when I begin and the balance when completely satisfied.” The price he named wasn’t cheap, but wasn’t exorbitant, either. “I would charge less, sir, but for the rare and costly ingredients in the miracle elixir, gathered from the land of the Ice People, from Zuwayza, from the most inaccessible and exotic islands of the Great Northern Sea. . ”

“It sounds impressive.” It sounded, in fact, a little too impressive for Sabrino to trust it fully. “How did you learn about this sorcery and your precious elixir, if I may ask?”

“Of course you may. I am the soul of truth as well as reason,” Pirello said. “As the war neared an end, I was working on spells to help hold back the Unkerlanters. I realized that one of them-reversed, you might say-could prove a boon to mankind rather than a bane. Further research-and here we are.”

“Here we are,” Sabrino echoed. It had a certain amount of plausibility to it. As Sabrino knew to his own horror, Algarve had trotted out all sorts of desperate spells in the last days of the war. It could have been as Pirello claimed, no doubt of that. It could have been, but not necessarily. Sabrino found another question: “How long have you had this place open?”

“Not quite a month, sir,” Pirello replied.

“All right.” Grunting with effort, Spinello rose from the chair. “I may be back in a month or two, then. We’ll see how things go.”

“You have no confidence in me!” Pirello wailed. “I am insulted. I am outraged. I am furious. You have made me into a cheat, a criminal, a man without honor. In your mind, sir, this is what I am. Oh, the indignity of it!” He made as if to rend his garments.

Sabrino shook his head. “No, I’m just careful. I lived through the war. I want to see how things go before I jump in. Good day.”

Behind him, Pirello expostulated volubly. The more the mage squawked, the less Sabrino trusted him. He made his slow way out of the office, past the receptionist-who’d stopped smiling at him-and out onto the street. His driver helped him up into the carriage. “Take me home,” he said.

“Well?” Gismonda asked when he got back.

“He’s a fraud,” Sabrino answered. “I think he’s a fraud, anyhow. If he’s still in business six weeks from now, maybe I’m wrong.”

Five weeks and three days after his visit to Master Pirello, news sheets- which had happily displayed his advertising-reported that his establishment was suddenly empty, as was the account he’d set up at a nearby bank. A warrant had been sworn out for his arrest, but the occupying authorities seemed more inclined to laugh at the Algarvians than to go after the trickster.

“Well, you were right,” Gismonda said with a grimace.

“So I was. I’ve still only got one leg, but I’ve still got all my silver, too.” Sabrino sighed. “But oh, how I wish I’d been wrong!”

Hajjaj eyed Tassi reproachfully. “You are extravagant, you know. You should come to me before you order jewels for yourself.”

The Yaninan woman stamped her foot, which made her pale, dark-tipped breasts jiggle invitingly. “They were pretty. I wanted them. I got them,” she replied in the throatily accented Algarvian she still spoke far better than Zuwayzi.

“You should have asked me first,” Hajjaj repeated. “I am happy to give you a refuge here-”

Tassi twitched her hip. “I should hope so!”

“I did not let you stay here on account of that,” the retired Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “I let you stay here on account of your trouble with Minister Iskakis. I am an old man: I make no bones about it. That does not matter to me nearly so much as it would have thirty years ago. And there is something you should know.”

“And that is?” Tassi asked ominously.

“I divorced a wife not so very long ago-a young wife, a pretty wife, a wife most enjoyable in bed-because she spent more than she should have, because she thought she could take advantage of me,” Hajjaj said. “I sent her back to her clan-father. I would send you away, too. You need to understand that, and to believe it.”

“You wouldn’t do such a thing to me.” She sounded very sure of herself. As if by accident, she scratched her hipbone. Hajjaj didn’t believe in accidents- certainly not in this one. The motion, he was sure, was aimed at guiding his gaze toward her patch of pubic hair. She’d noticed him noticing it; it stood out against her paleness much more than a darker-skinned Zuwayzi woman’s did. Aye, she knew what her weapons were, and used them.

But those weapons wouldn’t save her here. Hajjaj had to convince her of that. “Wearily, he said, “You had better listen to me. I enjoy you. I am not infatuated with you. That I did not want Iskakis to punish you does not mean I am. You may not do whatever you like in my house. I do not have to keep you here, and I will not if I decide you abuse my hospitality. Have you got that?”

Tassi studied him. At last, she dipped her head-and then, a moment later, nodded. “You mean this, I think.”

“You had best believe I mean it.” Hajjaj nodded, too.

“How can you be so cold?” the Yaninan woman exclaimed.

“I ran my kingdom’s affairs the whole of my adult life,” Hajjaj said. “Did you think I would not be able to run my own?”

“But you ran your kingdom’s affairs here.” Tassi touched a painted fingernail to her forehead. “Your own affairs-those belong here.” Her finger came to rest near her left nipple.

“I find less difference between the two than you seem to,” Hajjaj said. “If my wits tell me my heart is making me act like a fool, why should I go on doing it?”

“Because your heart drives you! Because you are passionate!”

She meant it. Hajjaj was sure of that. He shook his head even so. “I would rather be right.”

“Right?” Tassi scornfully tossed her head. “Wouldn’t you rather be happy?”

Hajjaj thought about that. “I am happy-or as happy as I can be with Unkerlant too strong in this land. If you mean, do I want to be head over heels in love. . well, no. I have too many years and the wrong temperament for that.” His chuckle was rueful. A good many of his own countrymen thought him cold-blooded, too.

Tassi snorted, but she also nodded again, this time without using a Yaninan gesture first. “I will remember,” she said, and turned again. Walked wasn’t quite the word; the twists her bare backside made did their best to refute everything Hajjaj had told her.

He chuckled. Enjoying someone in bed wasn’t the same as falling in love with her-or with him, Hajjaj supposed. He’d needed more than a few years to reach that conclusion, but he was convinced of it now.

And besides, he thought, any woman who wants to make me fall head over heels in love with her isn‘t going to have much chance to do it, because I’m already head over heels in love with someone else.

How Kolthoum would laugh if he told her that! And why shouldn’t she laugh? Her temperament was much the same as his own. That was one reason why he loved her, why the two of them fit like foot and sandal, why he wondered how he might go on living if anything happened to her. Arranged marriages didn’t usually work out so. Then again, from what he’d seen, marriages springing from first fruits of passion didn’t usually work out so, either. Every once in a while, you get lucky.

He rose to his feet and left the library. He wasn’t much surprised when Tewfik came up to him a few minutes later and said, “You put a flea in her ear, did you, young fellow?”

No one could have overheard his conversation with Tassi. But Tewfik might have been as much prophet as majordomo. Hajjaj was convinced the old man knew what went on well before it happened. “I hope I did,” Hajjaj said now. “Maybe she’ll listen. Maybe she’ll go on thinking she can do just as she pleases, the way Lalla did.”

“She’s smarter than Lalla,” Tewfik said.

“I think so, too,” Hajjaj said. “I hope she is, for her sake. I don’t want to give her back to Iskakis, but if she makes me not want to have her around, either. . ”

“Pity Marquis Balastro didn’t want to keep her,” Tewfik said. “Pity Balastro got himself hauled down to Unkerlant, too. You could have sent her to him if he hadn’t.”

“For one thing, he didn’t want her any more. That was part of the reason she came here, if you’ll recall,” Hajjaj said. The majordomo nodded. Hajjaj also thought it a pity the Algarvian minister to Zuwayza had been sent down to Unkerlant. Had that not happened, he wouldn’t have been a retired diplomat himself. But… “A great pity Balastro got taken away. Swemmel’s men blazed him, you know.”

“I had heard that, aye, sir. Most unfortunate.”

“I’m sure the marquis would be the first to agree with you,” Hajjaj said.

Tewfik coughed. “If I may say so, sir, it is perhaps not the worst of things that the Unkerlanters’ passion for vengeance should be aimed mostly at our late allies and not at us.”

“Passion indeed,” Hajjaj said-one more dangerous exercise of it. “And I fear you are right there, too, as you usually are.”

The majordomo made a self-deprecating gesture. Inside, though, he would be preening. Hajjaj had known him all his own life, and was sure of it. But his praise of Tewfik hadn’t been hypocritical. Had the Unkerlanters wanted to avenge themselves on Zuwayza as they were avenging themselves on Algarve, he might have been blazed alongside Balastro.

He wondered why Swemmel was so much more intent on punishing the redheads. Maybe there was some sense in Unkerlant that the Zuwayzin had had good reason for waging the war they did. After all, the Unkerlanters had invaded Zuwayza before the war with Algarve started. King Shazli owed them as much revenge as he could get, and if he lined up with the Algarvians to grab it, then he did, that was all.

Or maybe I’m imagining things, Hajjaj thought. If I’m giving Swemmel a sense of justice, that’s bound to be senility creeping up on me.

“If I may make a suggestion, sir?” Tewfik said.

“By all means,” Hajjaj said.

“You really should get the roofers out here, sir, before the fall rainy season begins,” the majordomo said. “If the powers above be kind, they may perhaps find some leaks before the rain makes them obvious.”

“And if they don’t find any, they’ll start some, to give them business later.” Hajjaj hated roofers.

“Chance we take,” said Tewfik, who did not admire them, either. “If we don’t have them out, though, the rain is bound to show us where the holes are.”

“You’re right, of course,” Hajjaj said. “Why don’t you see to it, then?”

“I’ll do that, sir,” Tewfik said. “I expect they’ll be out in the next few days.” Ancient and bent, he shuffled away.

Hajjaj stared after him. What exactly was that last supposed to mean? Had the majordomo already summoned the roofers, and was he getting retroactive permission for it? That was what it sounded like. Hajjaj shrugged. He’d run Zuwayza’s foreign affairs for a generation, aye. Tewfik had been running this household a lot longer than that.

What will happen when he finally falls over dead? Hajjaj wondered. His shoulders went up and down in another shrug. He wouldn’t have been at all surprised to find Tewfik outlasting him. The majordomo seemed as resistant to change as the hills outside Bishah.

For a moment, that thought cheered Hajjaj. Then he frowned. What would happen to these hills if someone unleashed on them the appalling sorcery the Kuusamans and Lagoans had used against Gyorvar? Nothing good: Hajjaj was sure of that. The more he heard about that spell, the more it frightened him. He’d thought the first reports to come in to Bishah no more than frightened exaggerations, but they’d proved less than the dreadful reality. He’d never before known rumor to fall behind truth.

He’d heard Minister Horthy’s aides had had to keep watch on the Gyongyosian minister day and night, to make sure he didn’t slay himself. Hajjaj didn’t know whether that was true; he did know Horthy hadn’t been seen in public since Gyongyos surrendered to the islanders and to Unkerlant.

He sighed. So many things that had once seemed as changeless as these hills looked different, doubtful, dangerous, in the aftermath of the Derlavaian War. For as long as he’d been alive, Algarve had been the pivotal kingdom in the east, the one around which events revolved, the one toward which her neighbors looked with awe and dread. That had remained so even after she lost the Six Years’ War.

No more. Hajjaj was sure of that. It wasn’t just that Mezentio’s kingdom had been shattered, with one king in Algarve propped up by the islanders, the other by Swemmel of Unkerlant. But Algarve had shattered herself morally as well. No one could look toward her now without disgust. That marked a great change in the world.

Would everyone turn to Unkerlant, then? Swemmel surely ruled the most powerful kingdom on the mainland of Derlavai. Would Yaninans and Forthwe-gians and Zuwayzin and even Algarvians start shouting, “Efficiency!” at the top of their lungs? The notion made Hajjaj queasy, but where else would folk look?

Kuusamo, maybe, he thought. Kuusamo and Lagoas were the only kingdoms that could hope to hold any sort of balance against Unkerlant. Kuusamo isn’t even a kingdom, not really, Hajjaj reminded himself. How does it hold together under seven princes? Somehow it managed, and more than managed. Its soldiers had done more than the Lagoans to beat Algarve in the east, and it had also beaten Gyongyos even without the final sorcery. Aye, Kuusamo was a place to watch.

Hard to have a vicious tyranny like Unkerlant’s with seven lords in place of one, Hajjaj thought. And anything else, he was sure, made a better choice than Swemmel of Unkerlant.