Out of the Darkness

She gave him a look holding a good deal of her old vinegar. “I know what you’re thinking. You hope those savages have him for supper, and without any salt, too.”

“No such thing!” Bembo said with an indignation all the louder for being less than sincere. But then he followed it with the truth: “I wouldn’t wish getting caught by the Unkerlanters on anybody at all.”

Saffa eyed him, then slowly nodded. “You may even mean that.”

“I do!” Bembo exclaimed. “Remember, darling, I was in Eoforwic when all the Unkerlanters in the world came rolling east across Forthweg straight at me.” Being who he was, of course he saw the battles of the summer before, so disastrous for Algarve, in that light. He ate an almond, then went on, “And the cursed Forthwegians rose up and stabbed us in the back, too. Fat lot of good it did them-now they’ve got Swemmel sitting on ‘em instead of us, and may they have joy of that.”

“It’s all a mess,” Saffa said, which summed things up as well as any four words Bembo might have found.

“That it is,” he said dolefully, and then, when a plump woman with a pitted complexion almost stumbled over his splinted leg-which had to stick out from the table a bit-his gloom turned to spleen: “Watch it, lady!”

She glared at him. “If you were any kind of a man, you’d have let yourself get killed before all this happened.” Her wave encompassed the whole of Tricarico and, by extension, the whole of Algarve. She might have held Bembo personally responsible for the lost war.

He wouldn’t have taken that from Saffa, and he certainly wasn’t about to take it from a stranger he didn’t find attractive. “If I had anything to do with you, I certainly would have let myself get killed before I came home,” he said, and bit his thumb at her, a fine Algarvian insult.

The plump woman screeched like a wounded trumpet. She drew back a foot to kick Bembo’s bad leg. He grabbed a crutch by the wrong end and got ready to swing it like a club. Algarvians were normally the most chivalrous of men, but he wasn’t about to let anybody do that leg any more harm.

Saffa snatched up the bowl of olives and made as if to throw it at the woman. The olives glistened with oil; they would have ruined the plump woman’s kilt and frock. Bembo wondered if she didn’t find that a more dangerous threat than his makeshift bludgeon. Mumbling curses under her breath, she stalked off with her nose in the air.

“Thanks,” Bembo told Saffa.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “That stupid sow had no business coming down on you so. You did everything for the kingdom you could. What did she do? Sit around and eat cakes the whole war long, by the look of her.”

Everything I could do for the kingdom? Bembo wondered. He really had fought, and he really had kept order in foreign towns. And you sent powers above only know how many Kaunians off on their last rides. Had that helped Algarve or hurt it? Hurt it, probably, for such things made all her neighbors more certain they couldn’t afford to lose. But his superiors had ordered it, and so he’d done it.

He wished he hadn’t had that thought. He saw in his mind’s eye that horrible old Kuusaman mage who’d looked through him as if the ocean of his soul were no more than ankle-deep. What that fellow thought of him. . No, better not to imagine what that fellow thought of him. And the Kuusaman had given him the benefit of the doubt, too. Bembo shivered even though the day was warm, almost hot. He gulped down the rest of his wine and waved for more.

Before it got there, Saffa’s eyes narrowed with anger. “Oh, that’s too much,” she said. “That really is too much.”

Bembo wondered what he’d done now, but her rage wasn’t aimed at him. She pointed. He twisted in his chair. Up the street came a couple of Jelgavan officers in tunics and trousers, looking around at Tricarico as if they’d conquered it themselves.

“Those stinking Kaunians have their nerve,” Saffa said savagely. “They shouldn’t show their faces here. It’s not like they beat us.”

“No, it isn’t,” Bembo agreed. “Even so. .” His voice trailed off. As far as he could see, Algarvians were going to have a hard time saying anything bad about Kaunian folk, even if it was true (maybe especially if it was true), for generations to come. He saw no way to say that to Saffa, precisely because she didn’t know all the things he did. She’s the lucky one, he thought again.

She stared at the trousered blonds, looking daggers into their backs, till they went round a corner. Then she turned back to Bembo and said, “Your flat is only a couple of blocks from here, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” he answered.

“Let’s go back there,” she said. “We’ll see what happens.” She cocked her head to one side, laughing at his flabbergasted expression. “Don’t get your hopes up too far. You don’t move very fast. I have plenty of time to change my mind.”

He knew that was true, but couldn’t hurry on his crutches no matter how much he wanted to. He spent most of the time on the way trying to remember how messy the flat was. If Saffa laughed at him for being a slob, she might not want to do anything but laugh.

She raised an eyebrow at the state of the front room when he opened the door, but said only, “I expected worse.” And she did go into the bedchamber with him, and, he being hampered by the splint, she rode him as if he were a racing unicorn. But that was a race they both could win-and, by the way she threw back her head and cried out at the end, they both did.

Then she sprawled down onto him, her breasts soft and firm against his chest. “Ask you something?” he said, running his hand along the sweet curves of her back down toward her bottom.

One of Saffa’s eyebrows quirked upward. The smile she smiled down at him was lopsided, too. “It can’t be that one, and I didn’t know you knew any other questions.”

His hand paused on her backside and pinched, not too hard. She squeaked. Bembo said, “I didn’t even need to ask that one. You asked me instead, remember?”

“Well, maybe I did,” she said, and bent down to kiss the end of his nose. He’d wondered if she would bite instead, but she didn’t. “All right, Bembo- what’s your other question?”

“I was just wondering why,” he answered. “Not that I’m not not happy you did”-he kissed her this time-”but how come? You’d been telling me no for so long, I’d kind of got used to it.”

“Maybe that’s why you hadn’t been pestering me so much lately,” Saffa said. But it was a serious question, and after a small pause she gave it a serious answer: “We’ve really lost. There’s nothing we can do about it. Seeing those cursed Jelgavans walking along like they owned the town gave me a kick in the teeth. Salamone isn’t coming home. I’ve got to start over somewhere.”

“And I’m it?” Bembo said. It might have been a serious answer, but it was a long way from flattering.

But Saffa nodded. “And you’re it.” This time, her smile held fewer barbs. “Better than I thought you’d be, too.”

“Thanks-I suppose,” he said. She laughed. He hadn’t slipped out of her, and felt himself growing hard once more. He began to move, slowly and carefully. “Shall we try again, then?”

“So soon?” Saffa sounded surprised.

“Why not?” Bembo answered grandly. The only reason why, of course, was that he’d been so very long without. He didn’t have to tell her that, though. And she didn’t seem displeased. After a while, she seemed very pleased indeed. Bembo knew he was.

Colonel Lurcanio sat beneath an oak tree just coming into full leaf and contemplated the death and ruination of his kingdom and its army. He didn’t think the Unkerlanters were in Trapani yet, but he didn’t know how much longer his countrymen could hold them away from the capital. The last few reports coming by crystal from Algarve’s greatest city had held a note of frantic desperation under their defiance. The past couple of days, no reports at all had come from Trapani: enemy mages were blocking the emanations. That didn’t strike him as a good omen.

“It wouldn’t have mattered,” he muttered. Even if King Mezentio had personally appealed to him to come to the capital’s rescue, he couldn’t have obeyed his sovereign. A good-sized Algarvian army remained in the field here in the southeastern part of the kingdom, but it was cut off from the rest of Algarve by the Lagoans and Kuusamans. Having bypassed it, the islanders seemed content to leave it alone so long as it didn’t make a nuisance of itself.

Captain Santerno came up to Lurcanio. The combat veteran didn’t bother saluting. Lurcanio didn’t bother reproving him. Without preamble, the captain said, “Sir, how in blazes are we going to get out of this mess?”

“That’s a good question, Captain,” Lurcanio replied. “As best I can see, there’s no way. If you want to tell me