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.
“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.
