Out of the Darkness

“I understand,” Ikhshid said. “That’s why I called you here.” He suddenly looked worried. “Or should I have gone straight to the king instead?”

“I’ll talk things over with him,” Hajjaj promised. “We won’t do anything final till he approves it.”

“I should hope not,” Ikhshid said. “But what do you think we ought to do?”

“I don’t like handing over fugitives. It goes against every clan tradition. I don’t like killing them, either,” Hajjaj said.

“Neither do I, but I also don’t like getting caught with them here,” Ikhshid said. “And we’re liable to. You know it as well as I do. They don’t speak our language, they aren’t brown, they are circumcised, they’ve got red hair, and they wrap themselves in cloth all the time.”

“Details, details,” Hajjaj said dryly, and startled a laugh out of the army commander. The Zuwayzi foreign minister went on, “My recommendation is to take them to some inland village-Harran, say-and do our best to keep word of them from blowing back here to Bishah. If we can stash them off to one side for a while, things may calm down before they’re discovered.”

“If.” Ikhshid freighted the little word with a great weight of meaning.

“General, if you have a better idea, I should be delighted to hear it,” Hajjaj said.

“I don’t,” Ikhshid replied at once. “I just wondered if you had the nerve to try and get away with that. We’ll be in a ton of trouble if the Unkerlanters find out about it.”

He wasn’t joking. If anything, he was understating what might happen. Even so, Hajjaj answered, “We’re still a free kingdom-after a fashion. Let me take this to the king. As I said, he’ll have the final decision.” Shazli seldom overruled him. This once, he might.

“Good luck,” Ikhshid said.

“Thanks. I fear I’ll need it.” Hajjaj hoped he could talk Shazli around. No matter what the circumstances, he had trouble with the idea of giving anyone over to the Unkerlanters.

Krasta adjusted the wig on her head. As far as she was concerned, the hair in the wig wasn’t nearly so fine or so golden as her own. The miserable thing was also cursedly hot. But she wore it from the moment she got up in the morning till she went to bed. It hid the shame of the shearing Merkela had given her, and let her go out into Priekule without reminding the world she’d bedded an Algarvian during the occupation. Being able to hold her head up counted for more than comfort.

Her son-her sandy-haired son, her bastard son, the proof of exactly what she’d been doing-started yowling in the room next to her bedchamber. She’d hired a wet nurse and a governess to look after the little brat, whom she’d named Gainibu in the hope that the King of Valmiera would hear of it and understand it as an apology of sorts. As a matter of fact, thus far she’d hired two governesses and three wet nurses. For some reason, they had trouble getting along with her.

After a little while, the racket stopped. Krasta didn’t go in to check on the baby. She supposed the wet nurse was giving him her breast. But she was doing her best to pretend, even to herself, that she’d never had him. His wails didn’t make that easy, but she’d always been good at deceiving herself.

She had money in her pockets. She had a new driver, one who didn’t drink. She could escape the mansion, escape the baby she didn’t want to acknowledge, go into Priekule, and come back with things. What they were hardly mattered. While she was buying them, she didn’t have to think about anything else.

But, just as she left the bedchamber and headed for the stairs, the butler- the new butler-came up them toward her. (She was offended that so many of her servants had chosen to go south with Skarnu and his peasant slut of a new wife, but she’d never dwelt on why they might have decided to leave her service.)

“Milady, Viscount Valnu is here to see you,” the new butler said.

“I certainly am,” Valnu himself agreed from the hallway below. “Come down here, sweetheart, so I can see you.”

Krasta hurried past the butler. Valnu seemed to be the only person in all of Priekule who didn’t blame her for the way she’d lived during the occupation. Of course, he’d slept with a lot more Algarvian officers than she had; she was sure of that. But he’d done it in the line of duty, so to speak. And he didn’t run the risk of proving it to the world nine months after the fact.

He swept her into his arms and gave her a kiss. “How have you been?” he asked.

“Tired,” Krasta answered. Up in his bedroom, little Gainibu started to cry again. Krasta could hardly ignore him then, however much she wanted to. She jerked a thumb at the stairway down which the noise was wafting. “That’s why.”

“Ah, too bad,” Valnu said with sympathy that at least sounded sincere. “Have you got anything to drink, darling? I’m dry as the Zuwayzi desert.”

It was early in the day, but that worried Krasta no more than it did Valnu. “Come along with me,” she purred. “We’ll find something that suits you-and me, too.”

Something turned out to be apricot brandy. Valnu knocked back a shot of it. So did Krasta. The sweet warmth in her mouth, and in her belly, felt good. Valnu poured his glass full again, then raised a questioning eyebrow at her. She nodded eagerly. He poured for her, too. “What shall we drink to?” he asked. “That first time, we were just drinking to drinking.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Krasta said. She let more brandy slide down her throat. This time, she gave herself a refill, and, a moment later, Valnu as well. “Curse me if I know why I don’t stay drunk all the time. Then I wouldn’t have to think about. things.”

“Cheer up, my dear,” Valnu told her. “However bad it looks, it could be worse.”

“How?” Krasta demanded. As far as she could see, nothing could be worse than her being unhappy.

But Valnu answered, “Well, you could be an Algarvian, for instance: say, somebody inside Trapani. The fighting there can’t last much longer, or so the news sheets say. And the Unkerlanters don’t like redheads at all.”

That, no doubt, was true. But it was also far away. Krasta’s concerns were much more immediate. She glared at him. “Powers below eat you, why couldn’t you have had stronger seed?” she snarled. “Then I’d have a proper blond baby, and people wouldn’t want to spit at me all the time.” Her hand started to go to the wig, but she pulled it down. She didn’t want to draw that to anyone’s notice.

“I could ask you something like, why didn’t you give me more chances?” Valnu answered. “Dear Lurcanio had a lot more than I did.”

“You weren’t living here,” Krasta said. “And you couldn’t send me off and do horrible things to me if I didn’t do what you wanted.” She didn’t mention that, at the time, she’d enjoyed quite a few of the things Lurcanio had done and had had her do. That was only one more inconvenient fact to be forgotten.

“You shouldn’t complain too much, my love.” Valnu patted her hand. “After all, you didn’t have the unfortunate accident you could have.” Now he pointed up toward the nursery. “You had a different sort of unfortunate accident.”

“Unfortunate? I should say so.” Krasta drank her third brandy as quickly as the first two. “That miserable little bastard ruins everything-everything, I tell you. And the servants you can get nowadays! It’s scandalous!” Few of the newcomers were as deferential as the ones who’d been at the mansion for a long time. Like those in charge of Gainibu, a couple had quit already, but their replacements seemed no better.

“I am sorry,” Valnu said. “I’m afraid I don’t know what I can do about any of that.”

“At least you’ve tried to do something,” Krasta said. “And when you come to visit, I know you’re not coming to laugh at me or to curse me.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” Valnu sounded unusually serious-maybe it was the brandy talking. “You could have betrayed me to the Algarvians whenever you chose, except you didn’t choose.”

“No. Of course not.” Krasta shook her head. “How could I do that to someone I know socially?”

Valnu laughed, sprang to his feet, and bowed. “You are a true noblewoman, milady.” Krasta would have taken that as a pretty compliment, but he went on, “And you show you’re every bit as useless as most of the members of our class- myself included, whenever I get the chance to be useless, anyhow.”

“I’m not either useless. Don’t you dare say I am,” Krasta snapped. “You’re as mean to me as that horrible bitch my brother married.” Tears stung her eyes. She still cried much more easily than she had before getting pregnant.

“I didn’t say you were anything I’m not,” Valnu answered. “Every kingdom needs a few truly useless people,