She hadn’t tried to catch glowworms since she was a little girl, but it didn’t turn out to be hard. Since Lurcanio was too busy with his precious work to bother coming to her bedchamber that evening, he had no way of knowing she went out into the garden and gathered half a dozen in five minutes. She carried them back into the mansion in a little marble box that had once held face powder.
When she got up the next morning, she used the handle of a brush to mash the glowworms into a revolting paste. She reasoned that would be easier to mix into a cup of wine or a mug of ale than would whole bugs. Having a pretty good notion of when the cook would be fixing Lurcanio’s breakfast, she went down to the kitchens just then.
“Aye, milady, it
“I shall carry it to him,” Krasta said. “We quarreled yesterday, and I want to show him all is forgiven.” The cook bowed again, in acquiescence. If the idea of Krasta forgiving anyone startled him, he gave no outward sign. He simply handed her the tray when it was ready, then held the door open for her so she could take it into the west wing.
Before she got there, she stirred some of the glowworm paste into Lurcanio’s ale. Watching him drink it would be revenge in and of itself, even if the spell didn’t work. But Krasta wanted it to work. Lurcanio enjoyed mocking her. If she left him impotent, she could do the mocking, and could also enjoy acting as seductive as she could, making him pant for what he couldn’t have.
Seeing her with the breakfast tray, Gradasso didn’t try to keep her out of Lurcanio’s office. “What’s this?” Lurcanio said when she came in. “Have we got a new maid?”
“Aye.” Krasta did her best to sound contrite, which wasn’t easy for her. “I was down in the kitchens, and thought I would bring you what the cook had made. And”-she looked down at her toes in pretended maidenly embarrassment-”I thought tonight you might bring me something, too.”
“Did you, now?” Lurcanio boomed laughter. “Some sausage, maybe? Is that it?” Still affecting innocence, Krasta shyly nodded. Lurcanio laughed again, and raised the mug of ale in salute. “Well, since you ask for it so prettily, perhaps I shall.” He drank. Krasta had to fight hard not to hug herself with glee. She wondered if he would notice anything odd about the taste, but he didn’t.
The rest of the day passed most happily. Krasta didn’t scream once at Bauska, not even when her maidservant’s bastard brat spent half an hour howling like a wolf with a toothache. Bauska eyed her as if wondering what was wrong. Most days, that would have been plenty to anger Krasta by itself. Today, she didn’t even notice, which made Bauska more curious and suspicious than ever.
Krasta also ate her own breakfast, and luncheon, and supper, without sending anything back to the cook. By the time evening came around, everyone at the mansion was wondering whether she was really herself-and hoping she wasn’t.
For bed, she put on almost transparent silk pajamas, slid under the covers, and waited. Not too much later, someone knocked on the door to the bedchamber. “Come in,” Krasta said sweetly. “It’s not barred.”
In came Lurcanio. He barred the door, and wasted no time taking off his tunic and kilt. When he flipped back the sheets, he paused a moment to admire Krasta in her filmy nightclothes, then got her out of them. And then, with his usual panache, he proceeded to make love to her. He had no trouble whatever. Krasta was so surprised, she let him bring her to her peak of pleasure before she realized she wasn’t supposed to be enjoying it.
“How did you do that?” she asked, still breathing a little hard.
“How?” Lurcanio leaned up on an elbow and raised an eyebrow. “The usual way. How else?” But he paid more attention to her tone than she was in the habit of giving his. “Why? Did you think I would be unable? Why would you think I might be unable?”
“Well… er … I… uh …” Krasta had seldom made heavier going of an answer.
To her mingled mortification and relief, Lurcanio started to laugh. “Little fool, did you try to curse me with impotence? I told you it was a waste of time. Soldiers are warded against much magic from real mages, let alone from lovers who work themselves into a snit because they don’t get enough attention.” He reached out and stroked her between the legs. “Did you think I paid enough attention to you just now?”
“I suppose so,” she said sulkily.
“If I were younger, I would go another round,” the Algarvian said. “But even though I am not so young, I can still pay you more attention.” He brought his face down where his hand had been. “Is this better?” he asked as he began. Krasta didn’t reply in words, but her back arched. Presently, it was a great deal better indeed.
With a weary sigh, Trasone tramped east, away from the fighting front in southern Unkerlant. “By the powers above, it sure feels good to get pulled out of the line for a few days,” he said.
“Enjoy it while it lasts,” Sergeant Panfilo answered, “on account of it won’t.”
“Don’t I know it?” Trasone said mournfully. “Aren’t enough of us to do all the job that needs doing. I hear tell there are a couple of regiments of Yaninans off on the left of the brigade, because there aren’t enough real Algarvian soldiers to hold the whole line.”
“I’ve heard that, too,” Panfilo said. “I keep hoping it’s a pack of lies.”
“It had better be.” Trasone’s tone was dark. “If the Unkerlanters start running behemoths at a bunch of lousy Yaninans with pom-poms on their shoes, you know what’ll happen as well as I do.”
“They’ll run so fast, they’ll be back in Patras day after tomorrow,” the veteran sergeant replied, and Trasone nodded. Panfilo went on, “Half the time, I think we’d do better if those buggers were on Swemmel’s side instead of ours.”
“Aye.” Trasone trudged on up the road. It was summer, and dry, so a cloud of dust, like thick brown fog, obscured his comrades more than a few yards away. That was better than slogging through mud or snow, but not much. The dead, bloated carcass of a unicorn, feet sticking up in the air, lay by the side of the road. He smelled it before he could see it. Pointing to it, he said, “I thought that was going to be soldiers, not just a beast.”
“The stink’s a little different,” Panfilo said. “Unicorns are. . sweeter, maybe.” His prominent nose wrinkled. “It’s not perfume, though, any which way.”
“Sure isn’t.” Trasone pointed ahead. “What’s the name of that town there? We just took it away from the Unkerlanters last week, and already I can’t remember.”
“Place is called Hagenow,” Panfilo told him. “Not that I care, as long as the lines in front of the brothels don’t stretch around the block, and as long as they’ve got plenty of popskull in the taverns.”
Trasone nodded. Strong spirits and loose women … he was hard pressed to think of anything else he required from a leave in the rear areas. After a moment, though, he did. “Be nice to go to sleep and not worry about waking up with my throat cut.”
“And that’s true, too,” Panfilo said. “If the dice are hot, I’ll win enough silver to make myself armor out of it when I go back.”
“In your dreams,” Trasone said, and then, remembering proper military etiquette, “In your dreams, Sergeant.”
They marched along in silence for a while, two weary, filthy men in a battalion full of soldiers just as weary and just as filthy. From somewhere up ahead, Major Spinello’s bright tenor came drifting back on the breeze. Somehow or other, Spinello kept the energy to sing a dirty song. Trasone envied him without wanting to imitate him.
Something else came drifting back on the breeze, too: a stink of unwashed humanity worse than that rising from the soldiers, along with a strong reek of nasty slit trenches. “Phew!” Trasone said, and coughed. “If that’s Hagenow, the Unkerlanters are welcome to it. I don’t remember that it smelled all that bad when we went through it before.”
“Neither do I.” Panfilo peered ahead, shading his eyes-not that that did much against the dust. Then he pointed. “Look there, Trasone, in that barley field. That’s not Hagenow, not yet. We haven’t gone over the little river
