“I’ll be good!” Uto sounded as desperate as a bureaucrat caught with his hand in the till. Leino’s footsteps coming up the hall announced the imminence of the tragedy ahead. Uto ran off to try to tackle him. “My leviathan!”
Following her son, Pekka wished her sister’s husband had never bought Uto the stuffed toy. But if Olavin hadn’t given him that one, he would have grown attached to some other stuffed animal: he had a good many. “It’s over. It’s done,” Leino told him. “Go back to your room till you can go around without snot and tears dribbling down your face.”
“I won’t ever stop crying! Not ever!” Uto shouted, but off he went. A silence, as of a battlefield after the fighting has moved on, filled the front room.
“Whew!” Leino said, and made as if to wipe sweat from his forehead. “I’m going to get myself a thimble of brandy. I’ve earned it. That could have been him crashing down as easily as the shelf, you know.”
“I certainly do,” Pekka said. “As long as you’re heading back toward the kitchen, pour me one, too, will you? Sooner or later, I’ll think about putting the pantry to rights, but not just yet.”
Noisy grief still came from Uto’s room. Some of it was real, some sent forth at the top of the little boy’s lungs to make his parents as unhappy as he was. Leino and Pekka both ignored him. Her sister and brother-in-law lived next door; if they heard Uto making a horrible racket, they would figure he had it coming, not that his parents were thrashing him to within an inch of his life.
Leino came back with two shots of pear brandy. He handed one to Pekka, then raised the other high. “Here’s to all of us living through another one.”
“I’ll gladly drink to that,” Pekka said. The pear brandy ran down her throat like sweet fire. She glanced over toward the stuffed leviathan, now lying dejected above the hearth, and started to laugh. But the laughter didn’t want to come: she was thinking not only of Uto’s outburst but also of the disaster the Algarvians had visited upon Yliharma. She’d come through that, and so had her sorcerous colleagues, but far too many in the capital hadn’t.
Something of what was going through her mind must have shown on her face, for Leino said, “I’m glad you lived through that one,” and gave her a hug.
“You’re not the only one,” she said fervently. She held Leino for a moment, just doing that, not thinking about anything else. But then, even with his arms around her, she shook her head. “So much work wasted. If only they’d chosen to wait another day. But they didn’t, and so ...” She shrugged.
Leino squeezed her again, then let her go. He still didn’t know exactly what she was working on but had no trouble figuring out that it was something important. He did his best to reassure her, saying, “I still don’t believe the Algarvians know or care what you’re about.”
“Why?” she demanded. “How can you know, any more than I can?”
“Oh, I don’t know,” he admitted, “but I still don’t believe it. And I’ll tell you why: look how many talented mages they must be using to forge the spells that use the life energy they release when they kill Kaunians. And their very best mages must be busy devising those spells. How could they have anything much left to try to travel along other ley lines?”
Pekka pondered that. Slowly, she nodded. “It makes sense,” she said, but then checked herself. “It makes sense to me. Whether it makes sense in Trapani, I couldn’t begin to say.”
“If the Algarvians cared about what makes sense, they never would have started slaughtering Kaunians in the first place,” her husband said. Pekka nodded again. But Leino, like a lot of Kuusamans, had the knack of seeing the other fellow’s point of view. “I suppose they thought they’d only have to do it a couple of times, and then the war would be as good as won. But it didn’t work out that way.”
“No. Things too often don’t work out the way you think they will.” Pekka pointed down the hall. “That’s what Uto found out just now.”
“He’s quieted down some,” Leino said in no small relief.
“He couldn’t stay that loud for very long, not even for his leviathan,” Pekka said. “A good thing, too, or he’d drive us all mad.” She cocked her head to one side, listening. “He’s very quiet. I wonder if he’s fallen asleep in there.”
“Either that or he’s getting ready to burn the house down and doesn’t want us bothering him till after the fire starts.” Leino sounded as if he were joking, but also as if he wouldn’t necessarily put it past his son.
Pekka found herself sniffing. When she realized what she was doing, she made a face at her husband. “Uto!” she called. “What are you doing in there?”
“Nothing,” he answered, as sweetly as he always did when he didn’t feel like admitting what he was up to. He wasn’t asleep, anyhow. And he couldn’t get into too much mischief in his own room, or Pekka hoped not. She sniffed again. No, she didn’t smell smoke.
Someone knocked on the door. As she wouldn’t have done if she and Leino hadn’t been talking about the Algarvians, Pekka looked out the window before she worked the latch. No redheaded assassins stood out there on the snowy walk: only her sister Elimaki and Olavin, the giver of the stuffed leviathan. They went back and forth with Pekka and Leino all the time. Elimaki took care of Uto when the two mages worked, too.
Olavin had sharp eyes. He spotted the leviathan on the mantel and said, “Oh, dear. What’s my nephew gone and done now?”
“Tried to destroy the pantry,” Leino answered. “He almost did it, too.”
“Can’t have that,” Olavin agreed. “You’d need to borrow from me to put things right if he really did do the job.” He was one of Kajaani’s leading bankers.
“Maybe we could put Uto up as collateral,” Leino said. Pekka gave him a severe look. That was going too far--and Pekka happened to know he’d been a terror when he was a little boy, too.
“Anyhow,” Olavin said, “can you turn him loose long enough to let me say good-bye?”
“Good-bye?” Pekka and Leino exclaimed in the same breath. “Where are you going?” Pekka added.
“Into the service of the Seven Princes,” her brother-in-law answered. “They’re going to put a uniform on me, fools that they are.” He shrugged. “I’d just get men killed if I tried to lead them in the field, but I ought to make a decent paymaster. I hope so, anyhow.”
“Don’t listen to him when he goes on like that,” Elimaki said. “He’s so proud, it’s a wonder his tunics still fit him.” She sounded proud, too, proud and worried at the same time.
“A lot of people are serving the Seven these days,” Pekka said. “Algarve might have done better to leave Yliharma alone. We would have got ready to fight slower than we are now.”
Leino set a hand on her shoulder. “The two of us have been in the service of the Seven for a while now.” She nodded. Leino raised his voice: “Uto! Come out and say good-bye to Uncle Olavin.”
Out Uto came, as sunny as if he’d never been in trouble. “Where are you going, Uncle?” he asked.
“Into the army,” Olavin answered.
“Wow!” Uto’s eyes glowed. “You have to kill lots of Algarvians for me, because I’m still too little.”
“I’ll do what I can,” Olavin said solemnly. Elimaki squeezed his hand and didn’t seem to want to let go. Pekka sighed. She wished war--she wished everything--were as simple as it looked through the eyes of a six-year-old child.
Krasta was in a vile temper this morning. Krasta was in a vile temper a good many mornings. Had she tried to justify herself--unlikely, since she was convinced she had a perfect right to her moods--the Valmieran noblewoman would have denied the peevish fury with which she faced the world was her fault. Other people’s failings inflamed her. Had those around her done better--which is to say, done exactly what she wanted--she was convinced she would have been mild as milk. She’d always been good at fooling herself.
At the moment, the failings exercising her were her maidservant’s. The woman had had the presumption not to ap
pear the instant Krasta called. “Bauska!” she shouted again, louder and more sharply this time. “Confound it, where are you hiding? Get in here this instant, or you’ll be sorry.”
The door to her bedchamber opened. In came the serving woman, moving as fast as she could with a bulging belly that warned she would be having the baby inside before long. “Here I am, milady,” she said with an ungainly curtsy. “How may I serve you?”
“Took you long enough,” Krasta grumbled. Bauska’s belly cut no ice with her, not when a half-Algarvian bastard was growing in there. Said bastard’s father was Captain Mosco, Colonel Lurcanio’s aide. That left Krasta half scornful, half jealous: Bauskas Algarvian lover was younger and handsomer than her own, even if of lower rank.
“I am sorry, milady.” Bauska dipped her head. She’d suffered through a great many of her mistress’ moods. “I was on the pot, you see.” She put her hands on her swollen abdomen; her smile had a wry edge to it. “Seems like I’m on the pot all the time these days.”
“It certainly does,” Krasta snapped. She suspected Bauska of camping on the pot so she wouldn’t have to work. She knew all about servants’ tricks. Well, the wench was here now, so Krasta could get some use out of her. “I’m going to wear these dark green trousers today. Pick out a tunic that goes with them for me.”
“Aye, milady,” Bauska said, and waddled to the closet where Krasta kept her tunics (she had another one for trousers). After pawing through them, she held out two. “Would you rather have the cinnamon or the gold?”
Left to her own devices, Krasta would have dithered for an hour, maybe more, fuming all the while. Faced with a simple, clearcut choice, though, she was all decision. “The gold,” she said at once. “It plays up my hair.” She stepped out of the thin silk tunic and trousers in which she’d slept--leaving them on the carpet for Bauska to pick up--and got into the more substantial daywear. That done, she let her maidservant brush out her shining blond locks. After studying her reflection in a gilt-edged mirror, she nodded. She was ready to face the morning.
Bauska hurried downstairs ahead of her to let the cook know she would want a cheese-and-mushroom omelette with which to break her fast. She wasn’t wild about mushrooms. She wanted them as much to annoy Lurcanio as for any other reason; like most Algarvians, he had no use for them at all. She intended to dwell lovingly on them when she saw him, almost as if she were a mushroom-mad Forthwegian.
After the omelette and a slice of sweet roll stuffed with apples and a cup of tea, she went into the west wing of the mansion. She might as well have entered another world. Kilted Algarvians dominated--messengers bringing word of doings all over Priekule, clerks making sure those words went to the right official or file, and soldiers and military police who turned words into action.
The redheads eyed her as she went by--she would have been disappointed, or more likely insulted, if they hadn’t--but kept their hands to themselves. Unlike those Algarvian louts on the Avenue of Horsemen, they knew without having to be told whose woman she was.
But when she got to the antechamber in front of Colonel Lurcanio s office, the officer there was not Captain Mosco but a stranger. “You are the marchioness, is it not so?” he said in slow, careful classical Kaunian, and rose from his seat to bow. “I do not speak Valmieran, I am sorry to say. Do you understand me?”
“Aye,” Krasta answered, though her own command of the classical tongue was considerably worse than this redhead’s. “Where are, uh, is Mosco?”
The Algarvian bowed again. “He is not here.” Krasta could see that for herself; her temper kindled. Before she could say anything, though, the officer added, “I am replacing him. He is not returning.”
“What?” Krasta exclaimed--in Valmieran, for she was startled out of classical Kaunian.
With yet another bow, the Algarvian said, “Colonel Lurcanio will be making it plain to you. I am to tell you you are to go in to him.” He waved her through the antechamber, bowing one last time as he did so.
Even before Lurcanio looked up from the memorandum he was drafting, Krasta demanded, “Where’s Captain Mosco?”
Lurcanio set down his pen. As the stranger in Mosco’s place had before him, he got to his feet and bowed. “Come in, my dear, and sit down. You are here, and I am here, and that is more than we can say for the unfortunate captain.”
“What do you mean?” Krasta asked as she sat in the chair in front of his desk. “Has something happened to him? Is he dead? Is that what that fellow out there meant?”
“Ah, good--you made some sense of Captain Gradasso’s Kaunian,” Lurcanio said. “I wasn’t sure how much you would be able to follow. No, Mosco is not dead, but aye, something has happened to him. He won’t be here again, I fear, not unless he is luckier than seems likely.”
“Did he have an accident? Did footpads set on him?” Krasta scowled. “I hate it when you beat around the bush.”
“And, if it suits you, you hate it when I don’t,” Lurcanio replied. “Still, I will answer your questions: no and no, respectively. Although I suppose you might call what happened to him an accident, a most unfortunate accident. He has been ordered to the west, you see, to Unkerlant.”
“What will he do about the baby when it comes?” Krasta asked: as always, what affected her sprang most readily to her mind.
One of Lurcanio’s eyebrows twitched sardonically. “I doubt that is the first thing on his mind right now,” the Algarvian colonel said. “I only guess, mind you, but I would say he is most worried about not getting killed and next most worried about not freezing to death. In all the time he has left over from that, he may possibly give a thought to the little bastard yet to come. On the other hand, he may not, too.”
“He promised to support that baby, or we would let his wife know about the games he was playing,” Krasta snapped. “If you think we won’t do that.. .”
Lurcanio’s shrug was a masterpiece of its kind. “He will do as he will do, and you and your wench will do as you will do,” he answered. “I don’t know what else to say--except that, should you find yourself with child, do not seek to play these games with me.”
Krasta’s head came up. “Are you saying you have no honor? Honest of you to admit it.”
Lurcanio got to his feet and set his hands on the desk, leaning across it toward her. He wasn’t much taller than she, but somehow made it seem as if she were looking up at him from out of a valley. In spite of herself, she shivered. No one else she had ever met could put her in fear like that. Very quietly, the Algarvian said, “If you are foolish enough to speak such words again, you will regret them to your dying day. Do you understand me?”
He is a barbarian, Krasta thought. That brought with it another shiver of fright. With the fright, not for the first time, came a surge of desire. The bedchamber was the only place where she had any control over Lurcanio, though even there she had less than she would have liked, less than she would have had with most men. Luckily for the way she thought of herself, the idea that she amused her Algarvian lover never once entered her mind.
“Do you understand me?” Lurcanio asked, more softly still.
“Aye,” she said with an impatient nod, and turned away. Lurcanio had a wife; Krasta knew that. The woman probably amused herself back in Algarve the same way as her husband was doing here in Priekule. Algarvian slut, Krasta thought, and did not dwell on what others might call her for lying with Lurcanio.
“Well, then, is there anything else?” Lurcanio said, now in the tones he used when he wanted to get back to his work.
Instead of answering, Krasta walked out of his office. He didn’t laugh to speed her going, as he’d been known to do. Instead, he seemed to forget about her as soon as she started to leave, an even more daunting dismissal. She strode past Captain Gradasso. He tried to put some compliments into classical Kaunian; she didn’t stay to listen to them.
With a sigh of relief, she returned to the part of the mansion that still belonged to her and her retainers. When she
saw Bauska, she frowned. But the frown didn’t last long. Here, after all, was another chance to pay back the maidservant for bedding the redhead she would have preferred to the one she had. Of course, now she would have to maintain the brat after it was born, but still. . . . “Come here,” she called. “I have news for you.”
“What is it, milady?” Bauska asked.
“Your precious captain is off getting chilblains in Unkerlant,” Krasta answered.
Bauska had always been very fair. Since getting pregnant, she’d become paler yet; she was not one of those women who glowed because of the new life within them. Now she went white as the wall behind her. “No,” she whispered.
“Oh, aye,” Krasta said. “Don’t you dare faint on me, either; there’s too much of you to catch. I have it straight from Lurcanio, and he has himself a new aide, a fiddle-faced son of a whore who mumbles in the ancient language. If you plan on taking this fellow to bed, too, you’ll need to bring along a lexicon.”
That did make Bauska turn red. “Milady!” she cried reproachfully. “They’ve sent Mosco off to be killed, and that’s all you can say?”
Krasta disliked any histrionics but her own. “Maybe he’ll come back after the Algarvians finally beat Unkerlant,” she said, trying to calm the servant or at least make her shut up.
Bauska astonished her by laughing in her face. “If the Algarvians were going to beat Unkerlant just like that”--the serving woman snapped her fingers--”why do they all dread being sent west so much?”
“Why? Because they aren’t lucky to stay in Priekule anymore, of course,” Krasta answered. Bauska rolled her eyes. If she hadn’t been carrying a baby, Krasta would have hauled off and belted her for her insolence. As things were, it was a near-run thing. “Get out of my sight,” the noblewoman snarled, and Bauska lumbered away.
Staring after her, Krasta muttered a curse. What a ridiculous notion, that the Algarvians might not win the Derlavaian War! If they’d beaten Valmiera, they would surely smash the Unkerlanter savages . . . wouldn’t they? To hold sudden confusion and worry away, Krasta shouted for her driver and headed off to the Boulevard of Horsemen to shop.
Darkness Descending Page 59