Out of the Darkness

But they didn’t think they needed to worry about what we thought. They gave Grelz an Algarvian for a king. They showed everybody they were even worse than Swemmel-and they paid for it. And now we’ll be the masters in big chunks of Algarve, and we won’t be sweet to the redheads, either.

Someone hurried into the headquarters-an Unkerlanter major. “Marshal Rather!” he called. “I’ve got important news.”

Rathar looked up from the map table. “I’m here,” he said. “What’s gone wrong now?” By the man’s tone, something had. Vatran looked up, too, sharply. He picked up his mug of tea and started to sip from it.

“Here, lord Marshal,” the newcomer said. “I’ll have to show you.” He took a couple of steps toward the map table-and then stopped and yanked his short officer’s stick from his belt and swung it toward Rathar.

The Marshal of Unkerlant had half a heartbeat to know what a fool he’d been. This is how General Gurmun died, flashed through his mind. If the Algarvians could sorcerously disguise one of their own to look like an Unkerlanter up in Forthweg, why not on their own soil, too?

But the beam never bit into his flesh. Vatran flung his heavy earthenware mug at the false major’s face. It caught him right in the teeth. He howled and clutched at himself, and his blaze went wild. Before his finger could find its way into the blazing hole again, Vatran and Rathar were both grappling with him. Rathar wrenched the stick out of his hands. The shouts and groans from the map chamber brought more soldiers rushing in. They seized the major and, after some fumbling, tied him up.

“He’s gone mad, sir,” a captain-a veritable Unkerlanter captain-exclaimed.

“No, I don’t think so,” Rathar answered. “I think if we leave him alone for a few hours, he’ll start looking like one of Mezentio’s majors, not like one of ours.” He switched to Algarvian and addressed the would-be assassin: “Isn’t that right, Major-or whatever your real rank happens to be?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” the fellow replied in Unkerlanter holding no trace of any accent save that of Cottbus-certainly no Algarvian trill. His mouth bled where the mug had caught him-and where the two Unkerlanter officers had hit him in the fight that followed.

“Aye, tell us King Mezentio didn’t send you after the marshal,” General Vatran jeered.

“He didn’t,” the man replied with a bloody grin. “King Swemmel did.”

If he aimed to produce consternation in the headquarters, he succeeded. Horrified silence fell. Rathar himself broke it, saying, “You lie. If his Majesty wants me dead, he has no need to sneak in a murderer. He could simply arrest me, and his will would be done.”

“You’d be too likely to rise against him, and the men are too likely to follow you,” the fellow said.

All that had a certain ring of truth, regardless of whether the failed assassin was what he claimed to be. All the more reason, then, for Marshal Rather to speak in ringing tones: “You lie. I am loyal, and his Majesty knows it.” He turned to his men. “Take this lying wretch away. Do nothing to him for one day except keeping him under close guard. When his looks change and show him for the Algarvian he is, let me know.”

They dragged the false major out of the headquarters. Rathar hoped with all his heart the man would show himself to be an Algarvian. If he didn’t. . The marshal didn’t want to think about that. Being possessed of a disciplined mind, he didn’t. Instead, he told Vatran, “Thank you,” and asked, “How were you so ready there?”

Vatran shrugged. “Something about the way he looked, something about the way he sounded-it didn’t feel quite right.”

“He just seemed eager to me,” Rathar said.

“Maybe that was it,” Vatran said.

Rathar wondered if he was joking. After a moment, the marshal decided Vatran wasn’t. After almost four grinding years of war against Algarve, how many Unkerlanter officers had any eagerness left? Algarvians, now.. Algarvians went into everything with panache. This fellow hadn’t looked or sounded like one, but he’d seemed enough like one to make Vatran at least wonder-and that, in turn, had ended up saving Rathar’s neck.

“Thank you,” the marshal said again.

“You’re welcome,” Vatran replied. He lowered his voice: “Now we just have to hope the lousy bugger really is a redhead.”

“Indeed,” Rathar said, and said no more. Could Swemmel have been so daft as to choose this moment to try to be rid of him? It didn’t seem likely, but the same held true for a lot of things Swemmel did.

The crystallomancer’s call came long after midnight. “He’s an Algarvian,” reported the officer charged with guarding important captives.

“Powers above be praised,” Rathar said, and slept sound the rest of the night.

Nine

Every now and then, Talsu began seeing men in Jelgavan uniform in Skrunda. He didn’t see many of them, not compared to the swarms of Kuusaman soldiers who kept going through his home town. The ones he did see roused mixed feelings in him. He was glad his kingdom showed signs of being able to defend itself again, at least with the help of its allies (he tried not to think of them as rescuers). For the Jelgavan soldiers, he felt nothing but pity. He’d been one himself. He knew what it was like.

For a while, he hoped things might have changed since the disaster that led to Jelgava’s collapse four and a half years before. After all, King Donalitu had spent most of that time in exile in Lagoas. The Lagoans had a pretty good notion of what was what. Maybe Donalitu had learned something in Setubal-though the edicts he’d issued since his return argued against it.

But the first Jelgavan officer Talsu saw strutting through the streets of Skrunda smashed his hopes. The major was young and slim and handsome, not fat and homely like Colonel Dzirnavu, Talsu’s old regimental commander. But the noble’s badge on his chest and the way he shouted and screamed at the luckless men who had to follow him made memories Talsu would sooner have forgotten come flooding back.

He didn’t say anything about the fellow to his father. Never having gone into the army, Traku didn’t know what it was like. He idealized it in his mind, too. Even after the way Jelgava collapsed proved its army anything but ideal, Talsu’s father didn’t want to hear criticism and complaints.

In whispers-the only sort of talk that gave even a hope of privacy in the crowded flat-Talsu spilled out his worries to Gailisa when they both should have been asleep. “Nothing has changed,” he said, despair in his voice. “Nothing. The same arrogant idiots still have charge of us. And if we ever have to do any fighting again-”

“Powers above keep it from happening,” his wife broke in, also whispering.

“Aye, powers above keep it from happening indeed,” Talsu agreed. “If we ever have to do any fighting again, whoever we go up against will roll over us, same as the Algarvians did. Our men will want their officers dead, and how can you fight like that?”

Instead of answering what was, Talsu was sure, an unanswerable argument, Gailisa twisted in the narrow bed they shared to kiss him. If she hoped to distract him, she succeeded. His arms went around her. Her breasts pressed against him through the thin fabric of their pyjama tunics. A moment later, she laughed very quietly. He was pressing against her somewhere, too.

He slid a hand under her tunic. She sighed, again softly, as he caressed her. His parents had the flat’s only bedroom to themselves. His sister lay sleeping in her own cot only a few feet away. If he and Gailisa wanted to make love, they had to do it stealthily. Ausra was good about staying asleep-so good, Talsu wondered whether she sometimes knew what was going on and simply pretended not to-but he didn’t want to bother her.

Gailisa stroked him, too. He kissed her and reached under her trousers. She rolled onto her back and let her legs slide open to make things easier for him. Then she slithered down the bed and unbuttoned his fly. Her mouth was warm and wet and sweet. Talsu set a hand on the back of her head, half stroking her hair, half urging her on. If she’d kept going till he exploded, he wouldn’t have minded at all.

But, after a little while, she turned her back on him. Still lying on his side, he hiked her pyjama bottoms down just far enough. She stuck out her backside, and he went into her from behind. “Ah,” she whispered.

He said her name as he began to move. She pushed back against him. The bed creaked, but less from the