Out of the Darkness

were before the war. I’m sorry.” He took her hand. “I wish they could be, but it’s not going to happen.”

“I know,” Vanai answered. “There are some things that, once you break them, you can’t put them back together again.”

That held nothing but truth. The ancient Kaunian population of Forthweg- more ancient here than the Forthwegians themselves-would never be the same again. Ealstan caught Vanai to him. “One thing, though,” he said. “Because we met, I’m the luckiest fellow in the world.”

She kissed him. “You’re sweet. I wonder if we would have met anyhow. We might have. I came to Gromheort every now and then. And we-”

“We both knew about that oak grove where we found each other in mushroom season,” Ealstan broke in. “We really might have.”

“My grandfather wouldn’t have approved. He didn’t approve,” Vanai said. “In peacetime, that might have mattered more.”

“I hope not,” Ealstan said.

“So do I,” Vanai said. “But we don’t know. We can’t know. A lot of dreadful things have happened the past six years. I’m just glad we’ve got each other.”

This time, Ealstan kissed her and hugged her to him. “I am, too.”

Vanai let out a small laugh. “You’re very glad, aren’t you?” she said, and reached between them to show how she knew.

“And getting gladder every second, too,” Ealstan told her. She laughed again. He started undoing her tunic. As often as not, that seemed to wake up the baby. Not tonight, though. He teased her nipple with his tongue. Her breath sighed out. In a bit, Ealstan poised himself above her. Not too long after that, he was as glad as he could possibly be that they had each other.

Count Sabrino, former and forcibly retired colonel of dragonfliers, had a roof over his head and, for the most part, enough to eat. In occupied, devastated Trapani, that made him a lucky man indeed. As lucky as an aging cripple can be, anyhow, he thought sourly. Day by day, his crutches seemed more a part of him.

Some men who’d lost a leg preferred a wheeled chair to crutches. Sabrino might have, too, in the Trapani he’d known before the war: a city of paved boulevards and smooth sidewalks. On the rubble-strewn, cratered streets of the Algarvian capital these days, such chairs got stuck too easily to seem practical to him.

He saw enough mutilated men, of all ages from barely bearded to older than he was, to have plenty of standards of comparison. Each one was an emblem of what Algarve had gone through. Taken together, they made a searing indictment of the darkness through which his kingdom had passed.

He stopped into a tavern not far from his home and ordered a glass of wine. The tapman’s right arm stopped just below his shoulder: no possible hope of fitting him with a hook. But he handled the glass and the wine bottle with his remaining hand as well as anyone possibly could.

When Sabrino praised him, he let out a short, bitter burst of laughter. “It’s not quite what you think, friend,” he said. “I’m well off, if you want to call it that-you see, I’ve always been left-handed.”

“If what you kept is more useful to you than what you lost, that is good fortune,” Sabrino agreed. “Plenty of people have it worse.”

“If a whole man said something like that to me, I’d punch the son of a whore in the nose-with my left hand, of course,” the tapman said. “But you, buddy, you went through it, too. I’ll take it from you. Where’d you get hurt?”

“Not far west of here, not long before the war ended,” Sabrino answered. “I was on a dragon, and it got flamed out of the sky. Some of the flame got my leg, too, and so.. .” He shrugged, then politely added, “You?”

“On the way to Cottbus, the first winter of the war in the west,” the other cripple told him. “A flying chunk of eggshell tore the arm almost all the way off, and the healers finished the job. The same burst killed two of my pals.”

Sabrino shoved a silver coin across the bar to him. “Have a glass of whatever you care for, on me.”

“I usually don’t, not when I’m working.” But the tapman dropped the coin into the cash box. “Powers below eat it, once won’t hurt. Thank you kindly, friend. You’re a gentleman.” He poured himself a shot of spirits, then took a shiny new copper coin from the box and gave it to Sabrino. “I wouldn’t cheat you-here’s your change.”

Sabrino looked at the coin. It showed the profile of a plump man with a receding chin, not the strong, beaky image that had been stamped onto Algarve’s currency for so many years. “So this is the new king, is it?” he said.

“If you believe the Unkerlanters, he is,” the tapman answered. “Me, I don’t know why they don’t just put King Swemmel’s face on the money and have done with it.”

That would have been my face there, if I’d told Vatran aye, Sabrino thought as he put the copper in his beltpouch. It was a strange notion, and not one he’d had in the sanatorium bed when the Unkerlanter general came to call on him. He finished his wine, picked up his crutches (which he’d leaned against the side of the bar while he perched on a stool and drank), left the tavern, and made his slow way home.

When he got there, he found his wife more excited than he’d seen her in years. “Powers above, Gismonda, what’s going on?” he asked, wondering what sort of calamity could have upset her so.

But it turned out to be a different kind of excitement. “You may be able to get your leg back,” she said dramatically.

“What?” He shook his head. “Don’t be silly. I’m an abridged edition these days, and I’ll stay that way as long as I last.”

“Maybe not,” Gismonda said. “One of my friends-Baroness Norizia, it was, whose husband got killed outside Durrwangen-heard about this new healer called Pirello. He’s supposed to be able to restore lost limbs by sorcery. Something to do with the law of similarity. Norizia didn’t know just what. What she knows about wizardry would fit in a thimble, believe me, my darling. Pirello has something or other, though.”

“The law of similarity,” Sabrino said musingly. He looked down at himself. His surviving leg was indeed very similar to the one he’d lost. A clever mage might be able to use that resemblance. Or. . “Odds are he’s just a quack preying on maimed men.” Sabrino didn’t want to let himself feel hope.

“Maybe.” Gismonda was every bit as cold-blooded, perhaps more so. But she went on, “Shouldn’t you talk to him anyhow? What have you got to lose?”

“Money,” Sabrino answered. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. How much would I give to have my leg back, really and truly? The answer didn’t take long to form. Anything at all. “Might be worth seeing him, just to find out.”

Gismonda snapped her fingers. “I remember now what Norizia called it. An elixir, that’s what he uses. A miracle elixir, she said.”

“It would take a miracle,” Sabrino said, “and miracles aren’t what magecraft is all about. Still. .” He shrugged, as well as he could with crutches bearing so much of his weight. “I may as well take a look.”

“I’ll send one of the servants over to Norizia’s and see if she knows where the fellow’s offices are,” Gismonda said.

From the word the servant brought back, the healer did business not far from the wreckage of the royal palace. Once the carriage had taken Sabrino to that part of town, finding his place of business proved easy. Broadsheets praising Pirello’s miracle elixir were plastered to walls and fences.

Veterans missing arms and legs-and one man short his left ear-filled Pirello’s waiting room. Sabrino gave his name to a pretty receptionist he wouldn’t have minded knowing better, then eased himself down into a chair and got ready to wait till everyone ahead of him had seen the healer.

Before long, though, the receptionist gave him an inviting smile and said, “Count Sabrino? Master Pirello will see you now.”

Sabrino struggled to his foot. Other mutilated men gave him sour looks, for which he didn’t much blame them. His own suspicions flared. He hadn’t given the receptionist his rank. How did Pirello know it? He’s likely a mage, after all, Sabrino thought. And his own name and station hadn’t been unknown in Trapani before the war. Still, he wasn’t the only Sabrino around, either. If he knows I’m a noble, maybe he thinks he can pry more money out of me than from ordinary men who‘ve had bad luck. If I can get my leg back, though. .

“Here you are, your Excellency,” the girl said. Her kilt was very short, showing off shapely legs. “Go right