Jaws of Darkness (82 page)

But that wasn’t it, or wasn’t the biggest part of it, anyway.
If I do it, will the stars still shine on me? Or will they cast me into eternal blackness once I die?

Then Borsos said something loud enough for him—and for the whole barracks—to hear: “No, by the stars! I’ll have no part of it!” The dowser sprang to his feet and hurried out of the building.

Istvan let out a loud, long sigh of relief. He didn’t care who heard him, not right then he didn’t.
The stars be praised!
blazed through his mind.
They’ve arranged things so I don’t have to betray my countrymen. Truly they are as kindly as people say.
Even his cot all at once felt more comfortable than it had.

But he soon discovered the stars intended other things than keeping him happy. Captain Frigyes called, “Come over here a moment, Sergeant Istvan.”

“Sir?” Istvan said, his heart sinking. He would sooner have gone into battle again in the trackless forests of western Unkerlant than climb to his feet and walk over to the corner of the barracks hall where Frigyes and Norandino the Algarvian sat.

Captain Frigyes nodded to him in a friendly way, which only worried him more. “Now, Sergeant,” the company commander said, “I’ve been telling Norandino here that you’re a man with good sense.”

“He has indeed. His praise of you would make the stars blush in the sky,” Norandino said. That praise made Istvan blush. So did the redhead’s whole manner of speaking. Gyongyosian was a language in which a man said what he meant and had done. The Algarvian turned it into something that sounded flowery and unnatural.

When Istvan merely stood mute, Frigyes pressed ahead: “You’ve said you know Major Borsos, haven’t you?”

He knew perfectly well Istvan had said that. Istvan couldn’t deny it now, however much he wanted to. “Aye, sir,” he said unhappily, and said no more.

Captain Frigyes beamed at him. “Splendid!” He sounded almost as flowery as Norandino. “Then you won’t mind talking him into seeing what’s good sense, will you?”

“I don’t know, sir,” Istvan answered, more unhappily still. “I really don’t know what you’re talking about, sir.” That was a great thumping lie, but how he wished it were the truth!

“We want to do to Kuusamo all we can—is that not true?” Norandino said. “And we see only one way of doing anything at all to Kuusamo on this miserable little island. Is that not also true?” He made everything he said seem not only true but obvious.

Istvan had his doubts about what was true. To him, nothing seemed obvious except that Frigyes was daft. Daft or not, Frigyes was also his superior. And so, instead of saying what he thought, he just shrugged.

Norandino looked disappointed. “Oh, my dear fellow,” he began, as if he were Istvan’s close kin.

“I’ll handle this,” Frigyes broke in. He aimed a forefinger at Istvan as if it were a stick. “You swore an oath. Are you ready to live up to it, or not? Answer me straight out, Sergeant.”

“Sir, I wasn’t a captive then, stowed away where I couldn’t do Ekrekek Arpad or Gyongyos any good,” Istvan said.

Frigyes eyed him with cold contempt. “Begone, oathbreaker. Believe me, I can find someone else to make Borsos see what needs seeing, do what needs doing. And as for you, Sergeant, as for you … May the stars forget you as you have forgotten them.” Istvan stumbled away, shame and joy warring in his heart.

Eighteen

A
sharp, peremptory knock on the bedchamber door woke Krasta in the middle of the night. “Who is it?” she asked muzzily, though only one person was likely to presume on her so. And even he had his nerve, waking her out of a sound sleep.

Sure enough, Colonel Lurcanio spoke from the hallway: “I am a commercial traveler, milady. Can I interest you in a new laundry soap?”

With a snort, Krasta got out of bed and walked to the door. The waistband of her pyjama trousers was getting tight. Her belly had finally started to bulge. Before long, she would have to start wearing a larger size—
and then do it again and again, until I finally have this baby,
she thought with more than a little annoyance.

She’d opened the door before she realized she could have told Lurcanio to go to the powers below. If he suddenly took it into his head to want her at whatever ghastly hour this was, she was ready to give herself to him, no matter how much she might resent it later. Till she knew him, she’d never imagined a man could intimidate her so. No one else had ever come close.

There he stood in full uniform, from boots to jaunty hat complete with jaunty plume. Instead of taking her in his arms, he swept off the hat and bowed. “Good-bye, my sweet, and as much good fortune to you as you deserve, or perhaps even a little over that. Because of you, I have enjoyed Priekule a good deal more than I thought I would.” He bowed again.

Krasta swallowed a yawn instead of yielding to it: another measure of how much of an edge Lurcanio had on her. Her wits were still working slower than they might have, whether she showed the yawn or not. “What do you mean, good-bye?” she asked.

Lurcanio smiled. “What most people mean when they use the word. ‘Farewell’ is a synonym, I believe.” But his amusement slipped then, and he defined himself more precisely: “I mean that I am leaving Priekule. I mean that Algarve is leaving Priekule. Perhaps I will come back one day, if the fortunes of war permit.”

“You’re … leaving?” Krasta said. “Algarve is… leaving?” He’d warned her that might happen, but she hadn’t believed it, not down deep.

“I said so. It is the truth,” Lurcanio answered. “Long before the sun rises, I shall be gone.”

“But what am I going to do?” Krasta exclaimed—as usual, she came first in her own thoughts.

Her Algarvian lover shrugged. “I expect you will manage. You have a knack for it—and you are pretty enough to let you get away with a lot that would be intolerable from some other woman.” He stepped forward and slid his hand under the waistband of her trousers. Instead of fondling her as he’d done so many times, though, he let his palm rest on her belly. “If by some accident the baby does turn out to be mine, try not to hate it on that account.” He brushed his lips across hers, then hurried down the stairs without a backward glance.

Krasta took a step after him, but only one. She recognized futility when it hit her in the face. Lurcanio wouldn’t stop for her or for anyone else. She turned around and went to the bedchamber window. A small swarm of carriages waited there. Lurcanio came out and said something in his own language as he got into one. The Algarvian drivers flicked their reins. The carriages rattled away. Krasta watched till the last one vanished into predawn darkness.

How many Algarvians were leaving Priekule now, by carriage and on horse- and unicornback and aboard ley-line caravans gliding west? Thousands? Tens of thousands? Krasta couldn’t begin to guess. The question nonetheless had an answer.
All of them.
Lurcanio had said so.

What would Priekule be like without redheads strutting through it?

Krasta could hardly imagine. It had been too long.
More than four years,
she thought with sleepy wonder. She lay down again. Of itself, her own hand went where Lurcanio’s had lain only moments before.

Only a little bulge under there—no sound at all, of course. No movement, either, or none to speak of. She thought she’d felt the baby stir once or twice, but she wasn’t sure. “Why aren’t you Valnu’s?” she whispered to her belly. “Maybe you
are
Valnu’s. He had the first chance that day, after all.”

By the time she’d fallen asleep, she was more than halfway to convincing herself the Valmieran viscount
had to
be the baby’s father.

Rain on the roof woke her—rain on the roof and the sounds of a raucous celebration downstairs. She muttered something vile under her breath. Since she’d started carrying that baby—Viscount Valnu’s baby; of course it was Viscount Valnu’s baby—she’d needed all the sleep she could get, and an extra hour besides. She started to shout for Bauska, then checked herself. She could hear her maidservant making a racket along with the rest of the help, and Bauska wasn’t likely to hear her.

Muttering more unpleasantries, she got out of bed, threw on some clothes (the trousers weren’t stylish, but they weren’t tight, either, which counted for more), and emerged from her bedchamber. Having emerged, she slammed the door behind her. That should have been plenty to make the servants downstairs grow quiet on the instant.

It should have, but it didn’t. Somebody—was that, could that possibly have been, her driver?—howled out a suggestion for King Mezentio that had to be the foulest thing she’d ever heard in her life, and she’d heard a good deal. A moment later, one of the cooks topped it. Everyone down there roared laughter.

Hearing that laughter, Krasta shivered a little. That laughter didn’t hold mirth—or rather, not mirth alone. A hunger for vengeance lived there, too. With the Algarvians gone like so many thieves in the night, where would that hunger feed?

“And the same to the twat upstairs!” someone else yelled, which brought more laughter and several cries of agreement. Krasta shivered again. She’d just had her question answered for her. She wished she knew who’d shouted that last. She would have dismissed him at once, and with a bad character, too.

A moment later, though, she squared her shoulders and marched down the stairs. Those were
servants
down there, after all, and who of noble blood could take servants quite seriously?

They were sitting—some sprawling—around the big dining-hall table, eating her food and swilling down her ale and brandy. Abrupt silence fell when they saw her standing in the doorway. “Here is the twat upstairs,” she said crisply. “Now, what do you intend to do about it?”

That should have cowed them. Before the war, it surely would have. Even now, it almost did—almost, but not quite. After that silence stretched, it tore. One of the women pointed at her and said, “Filthy whore! She’s got an Algarvian baby growing in her belly!”

Those weren’t roars that rose from the servants now. They were growls— fierce, savage growls. Krasta wondered if she should have left Priekule with Lurcanio. She wondered if he would have taken her. Too late to worry about any of that. If she didn’t face down the servants this very minute, she would never get another chance. She might never get a chance to do anything else, ever again.

“Smilgya, you’re sacked,” she said. “Take whatever you have and go.”

“You can’t tell me what to do any more,” Smilgya screeched, “not when you’ve been spreading your legs for the redheads all this time. Whore! Traitor!”

There sat Bauska, gulping ale and nodding vigorously. Krasta almost sacked her, too, but came up with something better instead: “How is Brindza this morning, Bauska? And what do you hear from Captain Mosco?”

Bauska flushed scarlet. Her half-Algarvian bastard daughter was almost three years old now. The other servants—some of them, anyhow—stared at her, not at Krasta. They’d come to take Brindza for granted. Suddenly they had to remember her mother had had a redheaded lover, too.

And she wasn’t the only one, either. Smiling spitefully, Krasta said, “How many women here haven’t bedded an Algarvian or two? You all know the truth.” She didn’t know the truth herself, but she’d heard a lot of gossip.

When no one came back with an immediate sharp retort, her smile got wider and more spiteful still. Then, in a shrill voice, Smilgya said, “
I
never did, by the powers above!”

“I believe
that,”
Krasta replied with flaying contempt: Smilgya was chunky, fifty-five or so, and homely. She let out a shriek of fury, but some of the other servants—mostly men—laughed at her. Krasta pressed an advantage she knew she might not keep for long: “I told you—you’re dismissed. Get out of my house.”

Smilgya looked around for support. She didn’t see so much as she’d expected. Springing to her feet, she cried, “I wouldn’t work for anyone who sucked up to the redheads—who sucked off the redheads—like you did, not any more I wouldn’t.” She stormed away, adding, “I hope your Algarvian bastard is born with the pox, and I hope you’ve got it, too.”

Krasta set a hand on her belly again. This time, she tried to forget Lurcanio’s hand resting there in the middle of the night. “That’s not an Algarvian bastard in me,” she said.
I
hope it’s not.
Doing her best to ignore her own thought, she went on rapidly: “It’s Viscount Valnu’s, and you all know what he did to the redheads, and how they almost killed him for it.”

“That’s not what you’ve been saying,” Bauska pointed out.

“Well, what if it isn’t?” Krasta tossed her head. “Would
you
have told Lurcanio you’d been with another man, and a Valmieran at that? Or told your Captain Mosco, when you were riding his prong? I doubt it very much, my dear.”

Bauska looked daggers at her. She didn’t care about that. She cared about stopping what felt like a peasant uprising from years gone by. Someone chose that moment to hammer on the front door with the old bronze knocker there. That helped distract the servants, too.