“Only the stars know why Unkerlanters do things.” But Istvan frowned, too. “When they don’t do what they usually do, you wonder what they’re up to, like you said.”
“You’d better, too, if you want to keep the stars shining on you,” the company commander answered. He started to say something else, but coughed a couple of times instead. “Smoke’s getting thick.”
“Aye, it is.” Istvan’s eyes stung and watered. He pointed east. “It’s coming from that way, too. Maybe Swemmel’s men are burning themselves up, and that’s why they aren’t using their egg-tossers.” He laughed, then coughed himself. “Too much to hope for.”
“No doubt it is,” Tivadar said, “but we have to-”
Before he could tell Istvan what the Gyongyosians had to do, a couple of his countrymen burst out of the woods ahead. Istvan almost blazed them for Unkerlanters. But Swemmel’s men didn’t wear leggings or bushy yellow beards, and they didn’t yell, “Fire!” at the top of their lungs in his language, either.
While Istvan was gaping, Captain Tivadar rapped out, “Where? How bad?”
“Bad,” the men said in the same breath. One of them added, “The accursed goat-eaters have fired the whole forest against us.” And then, without waiting for any more questions, they both dashed off toward the west.
Istvan and Tivadar stared at each other. While they were staring, the breeze-no, more than a breeze now, a freshening wind-blew thick smoke into their faces. They both coughed, and both looked as if they wished they hadn’t. Istvan heard other shouts of, “Fire!” He also heard more Gyongyosian soldiers plunging through the woods, fleeing the flames.
And then he heard the fire itself, crackling with insane glee. A moment later, he saw it through the branches and brambles ahead: a wall of flames, licking up tree after tree and advancing on him as fast as a man could walk. He turned to Tivadar. “What do we do, sir?”
“We-” The company commander bit back whatever he’d been about to say and answered, “We fall back. What else can we do? It’ll cook us if we stay.” He shook his fist at the fire, and at the Unkerlanters behind it. “May the stars never shine on them! Who would have thought to use fire as a weapon of war?”
Whoever had thought of it had had a good idea. Istvan didn’t need to order his squad away from the flames; he had to work to keep them from fleeing like so many panicked horses. He had to work to keep panic from sinking its teeth into him, too. The fire was frightening in a way war wasn’t. It wasn’t trying to kill him; it was just doing what it did, and the only thing he could do about it was run.
Run he did, hoping he could go faster than the flames. Behind him-ever closer behind him, it seemed-trees turned into torches. Smoke got thicker and thicker, till he could hardly breathe, could hardly tell in which direction he should run. Away from the flames-that was all he knew.
At last, when he was beginning to wonder how much farther he could run, he plunged into the bog from which he’d emerged earlier that day. He slogged into the mud, rejoicing at what he’d cursed then. Now the fire had trouble following. He shook his fist at it, as Tivadar had shaken his fist at the Unkerlanters who’d started it. When the flames died down, he and his comrades would go forward again. And what would King Swemmel’s men have waiting for them then?
For the first time in a very long while, the Marchioness Krasta made the acquaintance of someone who not only could outshout her but paid no attention to her desires whatever. Her maidservant Bauska’s bastard by the Algarvian Captain Mosco, a girl the mother had named Malya, howled as loud as she wanted whenever she wanted.
“Powers above,” Krasta complained to Colonel Lurcanio. “You’d think the mansion would be big enough to shield me from the racket of a squalling brat, but it isn’t. Doesn’t she ever shut up?”
“She is in training to become a woman,” Krasta’s lover replied in Valmieran with only a slight trilling accent. She glared, which only made the Algarvian nobleman laugh. He said, “Perhaps we will go out to supper tonight. Then you will not have to listen to this noise that so distresses you.”
“Good,” Krasta said. “Anything to get away. And Bauska is just useless- useless, I tell you. If this is what having a baby does to a woman, I’m glad I haven’t had any.”
“Even so.” Lurcanio scratched at the new pink scar on his forehead, one of the souvenirs of the concealed egg that had burst at a Valmieran noble’s mansion. The redheads still hadn’t arrested anyone for that. Krasta wished they would. For one thing, the egg might have harmed her, too. For another, Lurcanio grew quite tediously dull when he tried to track the culprit, whoever he was.
“Where shall we go?” Krasta asked, trying to decide what she felt like eating.
“I had in mind the Imperial,” Lurcanio answered. “I’ve seen talk about that place in romances two hundred years old. It would be a shame not to get to know it while I am in Priekule.”
“All right,” Krasta said. “I’ve heard the service is slow there, though.” Normally, she hated anything that smacked of delay, but now she brightened. “So much the better. The longer I’m away from the baby, the better I’ll like it.”
“Babies are enjoyable-in moderation,” Lurcanio said.
Krasta thought babies were enjoyable, too-at a distance, preferably a distance of several miles. With the prospect of supper before her, her mind turned to more important things. “What shall I wear?” she murmured. She couldn’t make up her mind down here in Lurcanio’s office; she needed to see what was in her closet. Making her excuses to the Algarvian, she hurried back to her own wing of the mansion and upstairs to her bedchamber.
For a wonder, Malya wasn’t screeching her head off. That let Krasta go through her wardrobe in peace. But it didn’t make her any more decisive than she would have been otherwise. She had so many clothes, she needed help narrowing down her choices.
“Bauska!” she shouted. If the brat was taking a nap, Krasta’s serving woman could start earning her keep again. When Bauska didn’t come right away, Krasta called for her again, even louder.
Malya started to cry. Krasta cursed. Bauska came into her bedchamber a moment later, carrying her daughter and wearing a resentful expression. Reproach in her voice, she said, “She
“If she was asleep, you should have come in here faster,” Krasta answered, a retort that made perfect sense to her. She glowered at Bauska. The serving woman was still doughy and fat, with a pale face marred by purple circles under her eyes. Malya woke her up all the time. Malya sometimes woke Krasta, too, which infuriated the marchioness.
“How may I serve you?” Bauska asked through clenched teeth. She rocked the baby back and forth in the cradle of her arms.
“Help me pick an outfit,” Krasta said. She’d given that order any number of times before. Bauska was efficient about obeying it. Once she’d got Krasta to choose a pair of dark green trousers, picking three tunics that went with them let her mistress decide which one she wanted: a coppery shade brighter than that of Lurcanio’s hair, which was going gray. As Bauska withdrew, Krasta pursued her with words: “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
It was, in fact, easy enough that she could have done it herself. But what point to having servants if you didn’t use them?
When she came downstairs, Colonel Lurcanio beamed and kissed her hand. “Do you see?” he said. “You can, if you put your mind to it, look lovely even without making me wait.”
“I don’t want you to take me for granted,” Krasta answered. And that was true in ways she hoped Lurcanio didn’t fully grasp. If she began to bore him, all he had to do was crook a finger to get himself another mistress. That was how things were in occupied Valmiera these days. Of course, he might also crook his finger so if she angered him, a point that didn’t cross her mind.
He laughed now. “I may do many things,” he said, “but I would never be so rash as to do that. Let’s go.”
As always, Krasta missed the bright lights Priekule had shown before the war. Lurcanio’s driver, an Algarvian like his master, got lost a couple of times, and finally had to ask a patrolling Valmieran constable for directions to the Imperial. Even when he got there, Krasta wasn’t sure he had; the restaurant, like every other building in the capital, remained dark on the outside to make things difficult for Lagoan dragons.
The entry hall was dark, too. Only after a servitor closed the door did he open the black curtains at the other end of the hall. The sudden brilliance he revealed made Krasta’s eyes water, almost as if she’d looked up at the noonday sun.
Lurcanio blinked a couple of times, too. As a fawning waiter escorted Krasta and him to the table, he said,
