Out of the Darkness

Late in the afternoon, the ley-line caravan car glided to a halt. “Come on,” one of Talsu’s captors said. The other one murmured the charm that opened the door. The dungeon lay right by the ley line, out in the middle of nowhere. Talsu hadn’t expected anything else. These whoresons wouldn’t want to walk very far once they got out of the car.

Guards searched Talsu as soon as he got into the dungeon. They found nothing; the fellows who’d seized him had got it all. But they had their jobs, too, and did them. Then they threw him in a cramped little cell that held nothing but a bucket and a straw pallet. He sighed. It wasn’t as if he hadn’t been through this before.

I have to be ready for the first interrogation, he thought. They ‘II let me get hungry first-he was hungry already-and they’ll probably wake me up so I’ll be all muzzy. But I have to be ready. They’ll want to break me right then and there. If I break, I’m theirs. I can’t give in.

He made himself as comfortable as he could, and waited. A cart rattled down the corridors. Suppers, Talsu thought; he knew the sound of that cart. It didn’t stop at his cell. He sighed, disappointed but not surprised.

After darkness fell, he stretched out on the musty pallet. His growling belly kept him awake for a while, but not for too long. His dreams were nasty and confused.

The door flew open with a crash. A bright light blazed into his eyes. Two guards grabbed him and hauled him to his feet. “Come on, you!” one of them shouted. Talsu went. Had he not gone, the guards would have beaten him and then dragged him where they wanted him to go. They might-they probably would- beat him later. He was willing to put off the evil moment as long as he could.

But when they took him into the interrogation chamber, he let out a cry of horror and dismay even before they slammed him down onto a hard, backless stool. The Jelgavan major on the other side of the desk greeted him with a smile. “Hello, Talsu son of Traku,” he said. “You remember me, I see.”

Talsu shuddered. “I’m not likely to forget you,” he said. The Jelgavan major had interrogated him during his last stretch in the dungeons. Then, he’d been asking questions for King Mainardo and the Algarvians. Now he served Donalitu, as he had before the redheads invaded. Then he’d been a mere captain. Bitterly, Talsu remarked, “I see you got promoted.”

“I’m good at what I do,” the interrogator said placidly. He wagged a finger at Talsu. “Didn’t I tell you I would still be here, still doing my job, under whoever happened to be ruling the kingdom?”

“You served the Algarvians with all your heart,” Talsu said. “If that’s not treason, what in blazes do you call it?”

“Following orders,” the major replied. “I am a useful man, and known to be loyal to the king. Neither of those applies to you.” His tone sharpened. “You are charged with associating with Kugu the silversmith, a known Algarvian agent and collaborator, during the late occupation. What have you got to say for yourself?”

“You idiot!” Talsu howled, too outraged to remember where he was. “I went to Kugu trying to join the underground against the fornicating Algarvians. You know that’s true. You have to-he’s the son of a whore who betrayed me to the redheads.”

“I’m not referring to that association,” the interrogator told him. “I’m referring to the association you continued to have with him after you were released from your last period of confinement. That’s plainly treason against King Donalitu.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Talsu said. “I had to associate with Kugu then. If I didn’t, you people would have thrown me back into a cell.” He’d also arranged for the silversmith’s untimely demise, but he didn’t even bother bringing that up. He couldn’t prove it, as he’d done it by stealth and sorcery.

“That is no excuse,” the interrogator said. “You also provided the occupying authorities with the names of certain people you believed to be loyal to King Donalitu. Arrests were made as a result of your actions. Punishments were inflicted. I will have you know, this is a very serious charge.”

“Occupying authorities?” Talsu started to get up to throttle the fellow. The guards slammed him down onto the stool again. They didn’t try to keep him from talking: “What occupying authorities? You were the bastard who tormented me-and tormented my wife, too-till I gave you names. I did get into the underground, and I fought the Algarvians while you were probably still torturing people for them.”

“Subject does not deny the charges,” the major murmured, jotting a note on the pad in front of him. Talsu howled again, a wordless cry of fury. The interrogator gestured to the bully boys. They went to work on Talsu. Before long, he had plenty more reasons to howl.

Over the years, Bembo had grown used to giving orders. It wasn’t just that he’d been a constable in occupied Forthweg. He’d been a constable long before that, here in Tricarico. People jumped when he told them to jump. They did him favors to stay on his good side. He’d had no trouble getting all sorts of bribes and other sweeteners.

That was over now, and his broken leg had nothing to do with it. The leg was healing as well as it could, though it looked thin as a twig under the splints that protected it. But Algarvians didn’t give orders in Tricarico anymore. The city belonged to the Kuusamans now, and they made who was in charge very plain.

Bembo and Saffa sat at a table in a sidewalk cafe, drinking wine he would have turned up his nose at before the war and eating olives and salted almonds. Saffa’s nose-much cuter than Bembo’s-wrinkled. “What’s that stink?” she asked.

Taking everything into account, Tricarico had been lucky during the war. Devastation had mostly left it alone, and, when the town fell, it fell fast. Having been in Eoforwic, Bembo knew things didn’t have to be that way. The grinding fight there had also left him intimately acquainted with the stench in question. “That’s dead bodies,” he answered, and surprised even himself with how casually the words came out.

“Oh.” Saffa grimaced. “That’s right. Those three in the town square. I’d forgotten.”

“Naughty.” Bembo waggled a forefinger at her. “The Kuusamans don’t want you to forget. They don’t want any of us to forget. That’s why they hanged those three stupid bastards right in the middle of the square four days ago, and it’s why they haven’t taken ‘em down, too.”

“Stupid bastards?” The constabulary sketch artist let out an indignant squawk. “They were patriots, heroes, martyrs.”

“They were cursed fools,” Bembo said. “If you aren’t in the army and you blaze at the people who’ve taken your town and they catch you, this is one of the things that’re liable to happen.” He remembered some of the things that had happened in Eoforwic. Compared to those, hanging was a mercy. Saffa didn’t know about things like that, and didn’t know how lucky she was not to.

“But the Kuusamans are the enemy,” she protested.

“That’s why we have an army-or had an army,” Bembo answered. “Civilians who try to fight against soldiers are what you call free-blazers. If the soldiers catch ‘em, they’re what you call fair game.”

“They were brave,” Saffa said.

“They were bloody dumb,” Bembo told her. “They didn’t do themselves any good, and they didn’t do Algarve any good, either. We don’t have any soldiers in the field anywhere within a hundred miles of here, not any more we don’t.” He threw his hands in the air in a gesture of extravagant despair. “Powers below eat everything, we’ve lost.”

Saffa stared at him. The truth there was obvious. The little slant-eyed soldiers in the streets made it so. Maybe she somehow hadn’t realized everything it meant, though, till he all but shouted in her face. She bit her lip, blinked a couple of times, and quietly began to cry.

“Don’t do that!” Bembo exclaimed. He fumbled for a handkerchief, didn’t find one, and gave her a cafe napkin instead. “Come on, sweetheart. Please don’t do that.” He had a soft spot for weeping women. Most Algarvian men did.

“I can’t help it,” she said, dabbing her eyes. “I don’t think Salamone is ever coming home, not from fighting the horrible Unkerlanters.” Her tears came faster, harder.

Bembo muttered something more or less polite. Salamone was the fellow who’d fathered her son. She still hadn’t let Bembo into her bed, or come into his. He wondered why he bothered with her; he wasn’t usually so patient with women. Maybe it was because he’d known her before things got bad, and she was a line back to those better days. He took a pull at his wine to disguise a snort. That was an alarming thing to think about somebody all over prickles like Saffa.