Out of the Darkness

do.’“

“I do, then,” Krasta said with a toss of her head.

“Having sworn, the witness may enter the box,” the military judge intoned. When Krasta had taken her place, he went on, “You are the Marchioness Krasta, sister to Marquis Skarnu?”

“That’s right,” she answered.

“And, during the late war, you were mistress to the Colonel Lurcanio, the defendant here?”

However much Krasta wished she could deny it, she had to nod and say, “Aye, I was.” Lurcanio could give her the lie if she did say no, and doubtless would take malicious glee in doing just that. She scowled at him. She’d been so sure Algarve had won the Derlavaian War. Mezentio’s men had beaten Valmiera, hadn’t they? What else was there? Five years ago, she hadn’t thought there was anything else. She’d learned differently since.

After rustling a couple of leaves of paper to find the name, the chief judge asked, “And Colonel Lurcanio is the father of your son, Gainibu?”

If Krasta had wished she could deny the one, she wished even more that she could deny the other. But it wasn’t Lurcanio who would give her the lie if she did: it was her own son’s sandy, all too un-Valmieran hair. As venomously as she could, she said, “Aye,” again.

“I note, milady, you are not on trial here,” the judge said. “We seek information against the Algarvian. Now, to resume: being Lurcanio’s mistress, you yielded yourself to him of your own free will?”

. “Not always,” Krasta exclaimed. “Why, there was this one time when he-”

Lurcanio burst out laughing, a coarse, rude, raucous laugh. “You deserved that, you miserable bitch,” he said. “I caught you rubbing up against Valnu. He must have been tired of boys that day, but I wanted to remind you he liked them at least as well as he liked you.”

All three judges rapped furiously with their gavels. All three of them were red-faced. One of the civilians said, “The recorder will expunge that from the transcript of this proceeding.”

“For the most part,” the military judge resumed, “you did yield yourself of your own free will to Colonel Lurcanio? Is that correct, Marchioness?”

“I suppose so,” Krasta said, most unwillingly.

“Very well, then,” the judge said. “You being his willing mistress, do you believe you were in his confidence? Did he trust you enough to talk to you of his affairs?”

“If he’d had affairs and I found out about them, I wouldn’t have let him touch me, the miserable whoreson.” Krasta tossed her head again. Did they think she had no pride at all?

Several people laughed, which puzzled and angered her. The judges gaveled them to silence. The senior man, the one in uniform, said, “That is not what I meant. What I meant was, did he talk to you about his duties during the occupation?”

“To her!. Powers above, sir, do I look so foolish?” Lurcanio said. “I am affronted that you should ask such a thing.”

His tone told Krasta she should have been angry at him again, but she couldn’t see why. He’d told the truth. “No, he didn’t talk to me about anything like that,” she answered. “Why would he have? I can’t imagine anything more boring.”

The judges put their heads together. Krasta leaned toward them, as she would have tried to eavesdrop on any conversation near which she found herself. Here, she had no luck. One of the civilian judges asked, “Did this Algarvian ever mention to you his work in transporting Kaunians to the south coast of this kingdom for the purpose of slaying them and utilizing their life energy?”

“Oh. That!” Krasta said. If I tell them he talked about it, I can hurt him. She saw that very clearly. “Aye, he told me all about that. He bragged about it, in fact, over and over again.”

“That is not the truth,” said a nondescript little man in the front row.

“Marchioness Krasta, you swore an oath of truthfulness and were informed of the penalties involved in violating the said oath,” the military judge said. “The mage has informed us that response was untruthful. Perhaps your error was accidental. I shall give you one-and only one-chance to revise your testimony, if you care to do so.”

“What was the question again?” Krasta asked. The judge repeated it. Resentfully, Krasta said, “I suppose I was wrong. I suppose he didn’t talk about it.” The boring little man nodded.

With almost simultaneous sighs, the judges put their heads together again. The man in uniform asked, “Did Colonel Lurcanio ever speak to you about the Algarvian edict called Night and Fog?”

“No,” Krasta said after giving the mage a dirty look.

“Did he ever speak to you about the way Algarve treated captives from the underground it captured?”

“No,” Krasta said. “But he wouldn’t do anything to save the Kaunian Column of Victory when the redheads knocked it over.”

“That is also a crime against Kaunianity,” one of the civilian judges said. “Still, evidence suggests he was not a primary perpetrator.”

“We had hoped the Algarvian might have been more forthcoming with you,” the other judge in black said.

“I was forthcoming in her, not with her,” Lurcanio said with a nasty grin.

“And you weren’t half as good as you think you were, either!” Krasta squealed furiously, while the judges banged their gavels again and again. That little mage in the first row stirred, but Krasta fixed him with such a glare, he kept his mouth shut.

“That will be quite enough of that,” the military judge declared. “Very well, Marchioness Krasta, you may stand down from the witness box. As my colleague said, we hoped you might have more to offer.”

“Oh, I have plenty to offer,” Krasta said. “I hope you blaze him. He has his nerve, dragging my name through the dirt.”

“Marchioness, when you chose to sleep beside him for four years, you dragged your own name through the dirt to a degree greater than anyone else could have done. You are dismissed.”

Outside the courtroom, Krasta expected another swarm of vicious news-sheet scribblers. But they had vanished, as if a wind had risen and blown away a pile of rubbish. Instead, news-sheet hawkers were out in force, all screaming out the identical headline: “Gyongyos surrenders! Derlavaian War ends!”

“Isn’t it splendid, milady?” Krasta’s driver said as he handed her up into the carriage. “The war’s finally over!”

“Aye, splendid,” she said. Part of her really meant it. The rest was irked: the end of the war had forced her out of public notice. True, the notice would have been unflattering. But if no one noticed her at all, how could she be sure she really existed?

Fernao peered down from his perch behind the dragonflier. Once this journey was done, he hoped with all his heart never to travel on dragonback again. He’d set out from Kihlanki in easternmost Kuusamo six days before, and had island-hopped his way east across the Bothnian Ocean. He wasn’t quite saddlesore, but he wasn’t far from it, either. The dragons and dragonfliers had changed several times a day. He lacked that luxury, and remained his weary self.

They’d flown over the Balaton Islands earlier in the day. Now, at last, they passed above the narrow sea separating the Balatons from the Gyongyosian mainland. Gyorvar lay not far ahead.

A Gyongyosian dragon rose to meet the newcomer. Seeing the beast, gaudy in red and yellow and blue and black, relieved Fernao and alarmed him at the same time. The Gongs were supposed to send up a dragon to meet him and guide him to a working dragon farm outside shattered Gyorvar. They were supposed to, aye. But what if this weren’t the appointed beast, but a lone-wolf dragonflier intent on whatever revenge he could get from a Kuusaman dragon and a Lagoan mage? Because the Gyongyosians were a warrior race, such worries went through Fernao’s mind as the other dragon neared. They’d surrendered, but did they really mean it?

Then the Gong on the dragon’s back waved and pointed southeast. Fernao and his dragonflier waved back. The dragonflier whacked his mount with a goad. After a couple of bad-tempered screeches, it followed the Gyongyosian beast.

Tawny-bearded dragon handlers secured the Kuusaman beast to a spike: dragon farms the world around operated on similar principles. Fernao slid down from his perch on the dragon’s back and looked around. The grass