“If you got everything you asked for, you wouldn’t think that was so cursed funny,” Saffa said hotly. Her temper would kindle on the instant, and then calm down again just as fast. Even when she was angry, she noticed people around her, which Bembo wouldn’t have done. When he gnawed on his lower lip instead of giving her a snippy answer, she asked, “What’s the matter?”
“Nothing,” he said, and limped over to a chair. He was glad to sit down; standing hadn’t been easy, and walking without a cane made him feel as if he’d fall over at every step he took with his bad leg.
Saffa knew a lie when she heard one. How many lies had she heard, from how many men? Bembo didn’t want to think about that. She gave him an exasperated look and said, “I didn’t mean to bite you there. I didn’t think I had bitten you. Why do you think I did?”
“You don’t want to know,” Bembo answered. “Believe me, you don’t.”
Before Saffa said anything, she eased her son, who’d fallen asleep, down off her shoulder and held him in the crook of her arm. Then, with her free hand, she shook a finger at Bembo. “Why don’t I? What do you think I am, a baby myself?”
“Curse it, Saffa, I don’t want to think about this stuff myself, let alone talk about it with anybody else,” Bembo said.
“What stuff?” she said.
If I got everything I asked for. . Bembo shuddered. He remembered too well the old Kuusaman mage’s eyes piercing him like swords, looking at the memories he concealed from everyone-including, as best he could, from himself. “I told you, you don’t want to know. And I don’t want to talk about it.”
Saffa got up from the couch, using her free hand to help her rise. She went into the flat’s cramped kitchen. Bembo listened to her opening cupboards in there. When she came back, she was carrying a mug of spirits, which she set on the wooden arm of Bembo’s chair. “Drink,” she said. “Then talk.”
Bembo picked up the mug willingly enough. He rarely needed a second invitation to drink. “You poured that quick,” he said. “You’re good at doing things with one hand.”
“I’d better be,” she answered. “It’s like he’s attached to me all the time.” She joggled the baby, who never stirred. “Powers above only know what I’m going to do when he gets too big to carry in one arm, though. But never mind that.” She pointed imperiously to the mug.
He drank. “Do you really want to know?” he said. The spirits weren’t what made him ask. It was much more that he hoped to perform an exorcism, or perhaps to lance a festering wound. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you.”
Saffa leaned forward. “Go on, then.”
“You know all the things the islanders and the blonds say we did?” he asked.
Her lip curled. “I’m sick of the lies they tell.”
“Those aren’t lies,” Bembo said. Saffa’s jaw fell. He went on, “As a matter of fact, they don’t know the half of it.” And he told her of clearing Kaunians out of the villages near Gromheort, of sending them off in packed ley-line caravans to the west (and occasionally to the east), of forcing them into their guarded districts in Gromheort and later in Eoforwic, and of hauling them out of those districts and loading them into caravans, too. He told of their desperation, of the bribes he’d taken and the bribes he’d turned down. By the time he got done, the mug of spirits was finished, too.
He’d fallen into the days gone by while he was talking. He’d hardly paid any attention to Saffa through most of that torrent; he’d been peering back into his time in Forthweg, not at her. Now, at last, he did. She was white, her face set. “We really did those things?” she said in a small voice. “You really did those things? You’ve hinted before, every once in a while, but-”
“No buts,” Bembo said harshly. “Don’t press me about this again, or I’ll make you sorry for it, do you hear me?”
“I’m sorry for it already,” Saffa said. “I don’t want to believe it.”
“Neither do I, and I was there,” Bembo said. “If I’m lucky, by the time I’m an old man I won’t have nightmares about it anymore. If I’m very lucky, I mean.”
Saffa eyed him as if she’d never seen him before. “You were always a softy, Bembo. How could you do … things like that?”
“They told me what to do, so I did it,” Bembo answered with a shrug. But it hadn’t been quite that simple, and he knew it. He remembered Evodio, who’d begged off pulling blonds out of houses, and who’d regularly drunk himself into a stupor because he couldn’t stand what the Algarvians were doing in Forthweg. He said, “It’s like a lot of things: after a while, you don’t think about it, and it gets easier.”
“Maybe.” Saffa didn’t sound convinced. She got to her feet and went back into the kitchen. When she returned, she had another mug in hand. She set this on the little table in front of the sofa, saying, “I could use some spirits myself after that. Do you want some more while I’m still up?”
“Please,” Bembo said. “If I drink enough, maybe I’ll forget for a while.” He didn’t believe that. He wouldn’t forget till they laid him on his pyre. But his memories might at least get a little blurry around the edges.
Saffa sipped spirits before saying, “Hearing about things like that makes me ashamed to be an Algarvian.”
“Doing things like that. .” But Bembo’s voice trailed away. “It was better than going farther west and fighting the Unkerlanters.”
Only after he’d spoken did he remember what had happened to the fellow who’d sired Saffa’s son. The sketch artist’s face worked. She looked down at the baby. “I suppose so,” she whispered.
“Well, it was safer than going to fight the Unkerlanters,” Bembo amended. “Better?” He shrugged again. “I saw some real war of my own, you know, when the Forthwegians rose up in Eoforwic. That was a pretty filthy business, too. The only difference was, both sides were blazing then. You did what needed doing, that’s all.”
He thought about Oraste, who’d cursed him for getting wounded and escaping Eoforwic before the Unkerlanters could overrun it. He thought about fat Sergeant Pesaro, who’d stayed behind in Gromheort when he and Oraste got transferred to Eoforwic. He wondered if either one of them still lived. Not likely, he supposed, not after what had happened to the two Forthwegian cities. And even if they did, would the Unkerlanters ever let them come home again? Even less likely, he feared.
Saffa said, “I don’t think I know you at all. I was always sure what to expect from you: you’d make your bad jokes, you’d try to get your hand up under my kilt, you’d strut and swagger like a rooster in a henyard, and every once in a while you’d show you were a little smarter than you looked, the way you did when you figured out that the Kaunians here were dyeing their hair to look like proper Algarvians. But I never dreamt you had-that-underneath.”
“Before Captain Sasso ordered me west, I didn’t,” Bembo answered. “Saffa, don’t you see? Everybody who comes back alive from the west is going to have stories like mine-oh, maybe not just like mine, but the same kind of stories. Fighting that war did something horrible to Algarve, and the whole kingdom’s going to be a long time getting over it.”
“We’re going to be a long time getting over everything,” Saffa said. “What with this new king the Unkerlanters have put on the throne in the west, we’re not even one kingdom anymore.”
“I know. I don’t like that, either,” Bembo said. “For powers above only know how long, there were all these little kingdoms and principalities and grand duchies and plain duchies and marquisates and baronies and counties and whatnot here instead of a real kingdom of Algarve, and our neighbors would play them off against each other so we fought amongst ourselves. I’d hate to see that day come again, but what can we do about it?”
“Nothing. Not a single thing.” Saffa sipped at her spirits. She still studied Bembo with a wary-indeed, a frightened-curiosity he’d never seen from her before. “But, since I can’t do anything about it, I don’t see much point to worrying over it, either. You, though. . Do I
want to have anything to do with you any more when you’ve-done all these things?”
Bembo pointed to the baby sleeping in her arms. “If the kid’s father was here, he’d give you the same kind of stories I did. Us constables didn’t do clean things, but neither did the army, and you can take that to the bank. Would you tell his father what you just told me?”
“I hope so,” Saffa said.
“Aye, you probably would,” Bembo admitted. “You’ve got a way of saying what’s on your mind.” He sighed. “Sweetheart, I want you to stay. You know that.”
Saffa nodded. “Of course I do. And I know why, too.” She made as if to spread her legs. “Men,” she added scornfully.
“Women,” Bembo said in a different tone, but also one old as time. They both laughed cautious laughs. He went on, “I’m not going to lie and say I don’t like bedding you. If I didn’t, would I care whether you went or not? Curse it, though, Saffa, it’s not the only reason. Would I have chased you so hard when you weren’t giving me anything if that was all I cared about?”
“I don’t know. Would you? Depends on what you had going on the side, I suppose.”
“You’re making this as hard as you can, aren’t you?” Bembo said. Saffa’s answering shrug was unmistakably smug. He stuck out his tongue at her. “Powers above, you stupid bitch, don’t you know I really like you?”
“Oh, Bembo,” she crooned, “you say the sweetest things.” He grimaced again, in a different way; he could have put that better. But she didn’t up and walk out on him, either, so maybe things weren’t so bad after all.
Skarnu liked his move to the provinces much better than he’d thought he would. He stayed busy learning what needed doing in his new marquisate and in setting to rights whatever he could. The Algarvian occupation had made endless squabbles flare up-and some had been smoldering for years. The more recent ones were usually straightforward. Some of the long-standing disputes, though, proved maddeningly complicated. They gave him a certain small sympathy for the collaborationist counts who’d preceded him as local lords.
“How am I supposed to know how to rule on a property dispute that’s been going on so long, everybody who first started quarreling about it’s been dead for twenty years?” he asked Merkela at breakfast one morning.
“That’s how things are here,” she answered. “There are quarrels older than that, too.”
“Why haven’t I seen them?” he said, sipping tea.
“People are still making up their minds about you,” Merkela told him. “They don’t want to stick their heads up too soon and be sorry for it later.”
Skarnu grunted. He’d seen that sort of country caution when he’d lived on the farm with Merkela. He didn’t care to have it aimed at him, but could understand how it might be. To a lot of people in the marquisate, people who hadn’t heard about him till he came here as local lord, what was he? Just a stranger from Priekule. He wouldn’t have understood that before the war. He did now.
When he remarked on it, Merkela said, “Oh, you’ll always be that stranger from Priekule to a lot of people. After a while, though, they’ll know you’re honest even if you aren’t from here, and then you’ll hear from them.”
“All right.” He set down his cup. “Pass me the inside of the news sheet, would you? People complain about me because I’m new, do they? Well, I complain about the news sheets we get, too. By the time I see them, they’re old news.”
“Old back in Priekule, maybe,” she said. “Nobody else around here sees them any sooner than you do.”
She had a point, even if it wasn’t one he would have thought of. He was used to getting news as soon as it happened. He hadn’t been able to do that hereabouts during the war, but the war had thrown everything out of kilter. Not being able to do it for the rest of his days depressed him.
But why should it? he wondered. Merkela’s right-no one else in these parts will know more about what’s going on than I do.
His wife passed him the part of the news sheet she’d been reading. He went through it greedily; if he couldn’t get the news on time, at least he could seize all of it the news sheet offered. “Ha!” he said. “So we’re going to get some revenge from the redheads who ran the occupation? Just what they deserve, too.”
“We can’t take full revenge from them unless we go through their countryside and start grabbing people and killing them,” Merkela said. “I wouldn’t mind a bit.”
“I know,” Skarnu answered. The war itself had done that to a good deal of the Algarvian countryside, but he didn’t say so. Whatever had happened to Algarve, Merkela wouldn’t think it was enough. Skarnu had no love for the Algarvians, either, but. … He stiffened. “Well, well.”
“What is it?” his wife asked.
“One of the redheads they’ve hauled in is my nephew’s father,” Skarnu answered. Merkela needed a moment to work out who that was, but bared her teeth in a fierce grin when she did. Skarnu nodded. “Aye, they’ve got their hands on Lurcanio, sure enough.”
“I hope they hang him,” Merkela said. “What he’d have done if he ever got his hands on you-”
“We met once, you know, under flag of truce, and he honored that,” Skarnu said. Merkela waved his words away, as being of no account. Maybe she was right, too; by that time, the Valmieran underground had become a power in the land, and the Algarvians had troubles enough in other places to want to keep things here as quiet as they could. He added, “I really don’t think my sister blabbed anything special that had to do with me.”
Tartly, Merkela answered, “I suppose the next thing you’ll tell me is that she doesn’t have a sandy-haired little bastard, too.”
Skarnu coughed and reached for the teapot to pour himself another cup. He couldn’t tell her anything of the sort, and they both knew it. He sipped his tea and concentrated on reading the news sheet. “They’re charging him with brutality during the occupation, and with sending Valmierans off to be sacrificed.”
“They will hang him, then, and a good thing, too,” Merkela declared, “for he did do those things. If he’d caught you, Mezentio’s men would have used your life energy, and they would have been glad to do it.”
In fact, Skarnu doubted that. He suspected the redheads would have killed him right away if they’d got hold of him. In their shoes, that was what he would have done with a dangerous captive, and he knew he’d proved himself dangerous. But he didn’t argue with his wife. Even if she was wrong as to details, she was right about the bigger picture.
She asked, “Do you suppose they’ll call you back to the city to testify against him?”
“I don’t know. I hadn’t thought of that.” He read on, then clicked his tongue between his teeth in annoyance. “Curse him, he’s bragging in the news sheet about fathering Krasta’s baby. That’ll do the family name a lot of good.”
“You see?” Merkela said with something like triumph. “You and Valnu had doubts about who did what, but the redhead hasn’t got any.”
“He hasn’t got any he’s admitting, anyhow,” Skarnu said. “In his place, I’d likely be trying to embarrass us as much as I could. I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s why he claims the baby for his own.”
“Whatever reasons he’s got, he’s right,” Merkela said.
Since Skarnu couldn’t very well argue with that, he buried his nose in the news sheet again. Glancing up over the top of it, he saw the triumphant look on Merkela’s face. He let out a silent sigh. His wife despised his sister, and nothing in the world looked like changing that. He’d hoped at first that time might, but thought himself likely to be disappointed there. That might eventually matter very much-but even if it did, he failed to see what he could do about it.
Instead of bringing it up and starting an argument, he found another story in the news sheet to talk about: “The last little Algarvian army in Siaulia has finally surrendered.”
That made Merkela raise her eyebrows. “I didn’t even notice,” she said. “What took the whoresons so lon
g?”
Laughing, Skarnu wagged a finger at her. “That’s not how a marchioness talks.”
“It’s how I talk,” Merkela said. “And you didn’t answer my question.”
“They stayed in the field a long time and caused a lot of trouble,” Skarnu said. “Not a lot of real redheads in the army there, of course-most of the soldiers are natives from the Siaulian colonies. And they lost their last crystal a while ago, so nobody here on Derlavai could let them know Algarve’d given up. The Lagoan general up there let the Algarvian brigadier in charge keep his sword.”
“I know where I’d have let him keep it-right up his. .” Merkela’s voice trailed off as she realized that wasn’t fitting language for a marchioness, either.
“By everything the news sheets said, the Algarvians fought a clean war up there,” Skarnu said.
“I don’t care,” his wife replied. “They’re still Algarvians.” To her, that was the long and short of it.
Servants cleared away the breakfast dishes. Skarnu went out to the reception hall. “Good morning, your Excellency,” Valmiru said. The butler bowed low.
“Good morning to you, Valmiru,” Skarnu said. “What’s on the list for today?” The servitor was doing duty for a majordomo, and handling the job well.
“Let me see, sir,” Valmiru said now, taking a list from a tunic pocket and donning spectacles to read it. “Your first appointment is with a certain Povilu, who accuses one of his neighbors, a certain Zemglu, of complicity with the Algarvians.”
“Another one of those, eh?” Skarnu said with a sigh.
“Aye, your Excellency,” Valmiru replied, “although perhaps not quite of the ordinary sort, for Zemglu has also lodged a charge of collaboration against Povilu.”
“Oh, dear,” Skarnu said. “One of those? How many generations have these two families hated each other?”
“I don’t precisely know, sir-one of the disadvantages of coming here from the capital,” Valmiru replied. “I had hoped you might be familiar with the gentlemen from your, ah, earlier stay in this part of the kingdom.”
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