Out of the Darkness

worth salvaging.

Vorosmarty said, “You did this to us, Lagoan, your folk and the Kuusamans. Now a new starless darkness walks the earth. One day, maybe, it will stop at Setubal.”

“I hope not,” Fernao said. “I hope we are coming out of the darkness of these years just past.” Vorosmarty held his peace, but he did not look convinced. Well, he wouldn‘t, Fernao thought. Somehow, that left him less happy, less secure, than he would have liked after such a triumph.

From the crenelated battlements of his castle, Skarnu looked out over his new marquisate. The castle, on high ground, was admirably sited for defense; the traitorous Simanu and Enkuru’s ancestors had known what they were doing when they built here. Not till egg-tossers came along would anyone have had much chance of taking this place.

Merkela came up beside him and pointed to where fields ended and forest began, a mile or two away. “That was where we settled Simanu,” she said. “Good riddance to him, too.”

“Aye.” Skarnu put his arm around her. “It’s over now. We’ve won. Nobody’s at war with anybody, anywhere in the world.” He shook his head, half in sorrow, half in wonder. “And how long has it been since the last time that was so?”

His wife shrugged. She didn’t worry much about the world at large. Her worries, as usual, lay closer to home. “There are still collaborators loose. We have to smoke them out.”

“Aye,” Skarnu repeated. It did need doing, but fewer people, these days, still shared Merkela’s zeal. A lot of them wanted nothing more than to go back to living their lives as if the Derlavaian War had never happened. As day followed day, Skarnu found it harder and harder to blame them.

Merkela said, “Did you see the news sheet that came yesterday? They put that woman in the witness box against Lurcanio.” She still refused to call Krasta Skarnu’s sister. When she hated, she did a thorough job.

“I saw it,” Skarnu answered with a sigh. “At least the news of peace pushed it to the back pages. Every time I think we’ve had all the embarrassment we’re going to get from that, I turn out to be wrong.”

“It doesn’t look like they’ll summon you,” Merkela said.

“No, it doesn’t,” Skarnu agreed. “I’m not really surprised. The only dealings I ever had with the redhead were the kind the people on opposite sides in a war usually have. He played by the rules then.”

“I hope they call Vatsyunas and Pernavai,” his wife said. “They can tell the judges what the Algarvians did to Kaunians in Forthweg.”

The married couple had been aboard the ley-line caravan Skarnu and Merkela helped sabotage as it went past her farm. If that caravan hadn’t been sabotaged, all the captives aboard it would have been sacrificed for their life energy. As things were, a good many of them had scattered over the Valmieran countryside. Vatsyunas and Pernavai had worked on Merkela’s farm for a while, and had both worked with the underground, too.

“What I remember about Vatsyunas is the way he spoke Valmieran,” Skarnu said. That got a smile and a nod from Merkela. Stern as she was, she couldn’t deny Vatsyunas had sounded pretty funny. His birthspeech, of course, was classical Kaunian. He’d known not a word of Valmieran, one of the old tongue’s daughters, when he found himself here. In learning, he’d seemed like a man stuck in time halfway between the days of the Kaunian Empire and the modern world.

“He’d make himself understood,” Merkela said, “and he would be able to testify from the other side about what the redheads did to folk of Kaunian blood.”

“Aye, but would he be able to testify that Lurcanio had anything to do with the caravan he was on?” Skarnu asked.

“I don’t know,” Merkela replied, “and I don’t much care, either. All I care about is that all the redheads get what’s coming to them. I hope the soldiers in Algarve are taking plenty of hostages, and I hope they’re blazing them, too.”

She’d lost her first husband when Mezentio’s men took him hostage and blazed him. If they hadn’t seized Gedominu (after whom she’d named her son), she wouldn’t be wed to Skarnu now, and wouldn’t be a marchioness. Skarnu wondered if she ever thought about that. After a moment, he also wondered if it was true. He and Merkela had been drawn to each other before the redheads took Gedominu. What would have happened if they hadn’t?

No way to know. Would they have kept on holding back? Or would they have lain together even with Gedominu still there? What would he have done if they had? Looked the other way? Maybe-he’d been twice Merkela’s age. But maybe not, too. He might have come after both of them with a hatchet… or with a stick.

Skarnu shrugged. It hadn’t happened. It belonged in the vague, ghostly forest of might-have-beens, along with such things as Valmiera holding her own against Algarve and magic being impossible. They might be interesting to think about, but they weren’t real and never would be.

Merkela said, “I’m going down to tend to the herb garden.”

“All right,” Skarnu answered, “but don’t you think the cook’s helper could handle the job well enough?”

“Maybe, but maybe not, too,” his wife said. “I’m sure I know at least as much about it as she does, and I don’t care to sit around twiddling my thumbs all day. I was taking care of an herb garden as soon as I was big enough to know how. Why should I stop doing it now?”

Because noblewomen don’t do such things. Because it makes the servitors nervous when they do. Skarnu might have thought that, but he didn’t say it. It made sense to him. He knew it would have made perfect sense to Krasta. But he also knew it would have been meaningless to Merkela. As she’d said, she’d worked since she got big enough to do it. Stopping because her social class had changed was beyond her mental horizon.

Come to that, Skarnu himself had been more useless back in Priekule before the war than he was here and now. He looked out over his domain. Everything he could see, near enough, was his to administer. True, that would have meant more a few centuries earlier, when being a marquis was like being a king in small. King Gainibu held the ultimate authority here these days, and Skarnu was no rebellious vassal.

But he still had low justice in this domain-subject to an appeal to the king’s courts, but such appeals were rare. And he was doing his best to get to the bottom of real cases of collaboration, and to make sure people didn’t launch false accusations to pay back old enemies. He’d fined a couple of people for doing exactly that, and dared hope the rest would get the message.

High overhead, a goshawk called out: “Kye-kye-kye!” The hawk had a better view than Skarnu did, and better eyes, too. In the old days, Skarnu thought, I might have flown a bird like that at game. Falconry, though, was one thing of which he knew nothing. He laughed softly. I have enough trouble keeping Merkela’s feathers unruffled.

That was a joke, but it also held no small amount of truth. His wife was as she was, and nothing he could do would change her very much. He’d taken a while to realize that, but was convinced he’d touched truth there. So far as he could tell, Merkela hadn’t tried very hard to make him over. Maybe that showed good sense. Maybe it just showed she’d been married once before.

He waved up toward the goshawk. The bird, of course, paid him no attention. It rode the breeze that ruffled his hair. The air was its element, as the ground was his. “Good hunting,” he called to it, and he went down the spiral stair to his own proper place.

They made them turn this way so attackers would have the wall hampering their right arms, while defenders could freely swing their swords, he thought. Even in the long-gone days, they worried about tactics.

When he came down into the main hall, Valmiru the butler said, “I’m glad to see you, your Excellency.” His tone implied, I’d have come to get you if you’d stayed up there much longer.

“Are you?” Skarnu asked suspiciously. Any time a servitor used a tone like that, it made him doubt he was glad to see the said servitor. “What’s gone wrong now?”

Valmiru gave him an appreciative nod. “A gentleman-a country gentleman- requests a few moments of your time.” He coughed. “His request was, ah, rather urgent, your Excellency.”

A junior servant piped up: “He said he’d whale the stuffing out of anybody who got in his way. He’s drunk as a lord, he is.” Then, realizing he hadn’t picked the best simile, he gulped. “Begging your pardon, your Excellency.”

“It’s all right.” Skarnu turned to the butler. “And what is this. . country gentleman’s name, and why does he want to see me so badly?”

“He called himself Zemaitu, sir,” Valmiru answered. “He would not tell me precisely what he wants. Whatever