Out of the Darkness

“In blazes is right, sir.” Magneric, a solid officer, sounded like a man shaken to the core. “That was … a stick, I guess you’d call it. An Algarvian stick. But it was to the heaviest stick a floating fortress carries as the floating fortress’ stick would be to a footsoldier’s. A superstick, you might say. It blazed down, it blazed through, every fornicating thing it could reach. Men, behemoths, fieldworks-it went through them like a sword through a pat of lard. It was a sword, a sword of light. How can you fight something like that, lord Marshal?”

“I don’t know. There’s bound to be a way.” Rathar sounded more confident than he felt. Then he said, “It stopped, you know.”

“So it did, sir. Something must’ve gone wrong with it. But when will it start up again, and how bad will it be then?”

“I don’t know.” Rathar didn’t relish admitting that, but he wouldn’t lie to Brigadier Magneric. “Powers below eat the redheads. I hope they ate a good many of them just now.” What I really hope is that we can beat them before they get all their fancy new magecraft working the way it’s supposed to. What if they’d started trying to do something like this two years sooner? He shivered. Then a new thought occurred to him, a really horrible one. If we ever fight another war after this, will anyone at all be left alive by the time it’s done? He had his doubts.

Marchioness Krasta got out of her pyjamas and stood naked in front of the mirror, examining herself. She shook her head in dismay. She’d always prided herself on her figure, and the way men responded to it told her she had every reason to do so (although she likely would have prided herself on it any which way, simply because it was hers). But now. .

“I’m built like a tuber,” she muttered. “Just like a fornicating tuber.” She laughed, though it wasn’t exactly funny. If not for fornicating, she wouldn’t have been built this way.

Inside her belly, the baby kicked. She could see her skin stretch. Every so often, a hard, round protuberance would surface, as it were. That had to be the baby’s head. She thought she’d identified knees and elbows, too.

Looking at herself in the reflecting glass, she saw something she hadn’t noticed before. It had to have happened in the night, while she was sleeping-not that sleep came easy these days, not with the baby pressing half her insides down onto the saw blade of her spine.

“My navel!” she exclaimed in dismay. She’d always been vain about it. It was small and round and neat, as if someone with good taste and very nice fingers had poked one into the middle of her belly. No-it had been small and round and neat. Now. . Now it stuck out, as if it were the stem of the tuber she seemed to be turning into.

She poked it with her own finger. While she held it, it went back to the way it had been, or something close to that. But when she let go, it popped right back out again. She tried several times, always with the same result.

“Bauska!” she shouted. “Where in blazes are you, Bauska?”

The maidservant came into the bedchamber at a run. “What is it, milady?” The question had started while she was still out in the hallway. When she saw Krasta, she let out a startled squeak: “Milady!”

Krasta took her own nudity in stride. Bauska was only a servant, after all. How could one be embarrassed in front of one’s social inferiors? “Took you long enough to get here,” Krasta grumbled, not bothering to put an arm in front of her breasts or her bush.

“What… do you need of me, milady?” Bauska asked carefully.

“Your belly button.” Krasta tried without any luck to poke hers back in again and make it stay. “Once you had your little bastard, did it go back to the way it was supposed to be?”

“Oh,” Bauska said. “Aye, milady, it did. And yours will, too, once you have yours. And now, if you will excuse me. .” She strode out of the bedchamber.

By the time Krasta realized she’d got the glove, she was already dressed. She muttered something sulfurous under her breath. Bauska probably thought she wouldn’t notice, or that she would forget if she did. The first had been a good bet, but one the servant hadn’t won. The second was a miscalculation; Krasta had a long memory for slights.

She didn’t indulge it on the instant; it wasn’t as if she wouldn’t see Bauska again some time soon. Going down to breakfast seemed more urgent. Now that she wasn’t throwing up any more, she ate like a hog. Not all the weight she’d put on was directly connected to the baby.

Skarnu and Merkela were already sitting at the table. “Good morning,” Krasta’s brother said.

“Good morning,” she replied, and sat down herself, well away from the two of them. That didn’t keep Merkela from sending her a look as hot and burning as a beam from a heavy stick. Krasta glared back. Cow, she thought. Sow. Bitch. Hen. Amazing how many names from the farm fit the farm girl.

But she didn’t say that. Merkela didn’t just argue. Merkela was liable to come around the table and thump her. Nasty peasant slut.

Breakfast proceeded in poisonous silence. That was how breakfast usually proceeded when Krasta and her brother and his wench sat down together at table. The alternative was a screaming row, and those came along every so often, too.

The silence ended when Skarnu and Merkela rose after finishing ahead of Krasta. Merkela said, “I don’t care if that is Valnu’s baby. You were still an Algarvian’s whore, and everybody knows it.”

“Even the way you talk stinks of manure,” Krasta retorted, imitating the country woman’s accent. “And well it might-it’s a wonder your eyes aren’t brown.”

Merkela started for her. Skarnu grabbed his fiancee. “Enough, the two of you!” he said. “Too much, in fact.” Both women looked daggers at him. He rolled his eyes. “Sometimes I think the Algarvians fighting Unkerlant have it easier than I do-they don’t get blazed at from two directions at once.” He managed to get Merkela out of the dining room before she and Krasta lobbed any more eggs at each other.

My mansion, Krasta thought furiously. What’s the world coming to, when I can’t even live at peace in my own mansion? Peace anywhere around Krasta was contingent on people doing exactly as she said, but that never occurred to her.

She went into Priekule. If she couldn’t get peace and quiet at home, she would go out and buy something. That always made her feel better. When the carriage stopped on the Boulevard of Horsemen to let her out, she was as cheerful as anyone built like a tuber and resenting it could be.

Some of the shops along the boulevard had new goods in them, imports from Lagoas and Kuusamo. Krasta window-shopped avidly. Just seeing something new after the dreary sameness of the occupation was a tonic. But a good many places remained closed; on a couple of doors, the scrawl of night and fog hadn’t yet been painted over. Those shopkeepers would never come back from whatever the Algarvians had done with them.

She was looking at new jackets and feeling very large indeed when someone said, “Wasting money again, are you, sweetheart?”

There stood Viscount Valnu, his mocking grin wider than ever. Krasta drew herself up-which, with her bulging belly, made her back ache. “I’m not wasting money-I’m spending it,” she said with dignity. “There’s a difference.”

“I’m sure there must be.” Still grinning, Valnu came up, leaned forward over that belly, and kissed her on the cheek.

She was, to her surprise, thoroughly glad to get even that little throwaway kiss. It was the first sign of affection she’d had from anyone for quite a while.

Tears stung her eyes. She shook her head, angry and embarrassed at showing such emotion. It’s because you’re pregnant, she thought; this wasn’t the first time she’d puddled up for no particular reason.

Polite as a cat, Valnu affected not to see. His voice still light and cheery, he said, “And what have you been doing lately besides wasting-excuse me, besides spending-money?” Also like a cat, he had claws.

“Not much.” Krasta set a hand on her belly as a partial explanation for that. But it was only a partial explanation, as she knew. She didn’t try-it never would have occurred to her to try-to hide her bitterness: “I don’t get invited out much anymore.”

“Ah.” Valnu nodded. “I am sorry about that, my sweet. I truly am. I’ve done my best to get people to be reasonable, but it doesn’t seem to be a very reasonable time right now.”