if that didn't satisfy him, said several things in Algarvian that certainly sounded incandescent. And Krasta, yawning again, realized she'd just told a lie, though she hadn't intended to. She'd mentioned Amatu to Viscount Valnu when they went into that place called Classical Cuisine. Which meant…
Which means I hold Valnu's life in the hollow of my hand, Krasta thought. I wonder what I ought to do with it.
Cornelu would rather have entered Tirgoviste harbor aboard his own leviathan. But the Lagoan and Kuusaman naval patrols around the harbor were attacking all leviathans without warning; the Algarvians had already sneaked in a couple and sunk several warships. And so Cornelu stood on the foredeck of a Lagoan ley-line frigate and watched the wharves and piers come nearer.
Speaking Algarvian, a Lagoan lieutenant said, 'Coming home must feel good for you, eh, Commander?'
'My kingdom no longer has King Mezentio's hobnailed boot on its neck,' Cornelu replied, also in the language of the enemy. 'That feels very good indeed.' Thinking he'd got agreement, the Lagoan nodded and went away.
The frigate glided up to its assigned berth, a pretty piece of work by its captain and the mages who kept it afloat. Sailors on the pier caught bow lines and stern lines and made the ship fast. When the gangplank thudded down, Cornelu was the first man off the ship. He'd had a new sea-green uniform tunic and kilt made up in Sigisoara town, so that he looked every inch a proper Sibian officer- well, almost every inch, for the truly observant would have noticed he still wore Lagoan-issue shoes.
He cursed when he got a close look at the harbor buildings. They'd taken a beating when the Algarvians first seized the city, and had been allowed to decay. It would be a while before Tirgoviste became a first-class port again. 'Whoresons,' he muttered under his breath.
But he had more reasons, and more urgent and intimate reasons, for cursing Mezentio's men than what they'd done to the harbor district. Three Algarvian officers had been billeted in the house his wife and daughter shared, and he feared- no, he was all too certain- Costache had been more than friendly with them.
Away from the harbor, Tirgoviste town looked better. The town had yielded to Algarve once the harbor installations fell, and the Algarvians hadn't made much of a stand here after Lagoan and Kuusaman soldiers gained a foothold elsewhere on Tirgoviste island. Cornelu didn't know whether to be grateful to them for that or to sneer at them for their faint-heartedness.
Tirgoviste town rose rapidly from the sea. Cornelu was panting by the time he began to near his own house. Then he got a chance to rest, for a squad of Kuusamans herded a couple of companies' worth of Algarvian captives past him, and he had to stop till they went by. The Algarvians towered over their slight, swarthy captors, but that didn't matter. The Kuusamans were the ones with the sticks.
A small crowd formed to watch the Algarvians tramp past. A few people shouted curses at Mezentio's defeated troopers, but only a few. Most just stood silently. And then, behind Cornelu, somebody said, 'Look at our fancy officer, back from overseas. He's all decked out now, but he couldn't run away fast enough when the Algarvians came.'
Cornelu whirled, fists clenched, fury on his face. But he couldn't tell which Sibian had spoken, and no one pointed at the wretch who'd impugned his courage. The last of the captives went by, opening the intersection again. Cornelu let his hands drop. He couldn't fight everybody, however much he wanted to. And he knew he'd have a fight a few blocks ahead. He turned back around and walked on.
Algarvian recruiting broadsheets still clung to walls and fences. Cornelu spat at one of them. Then he wondered why he bothered. They belonged to a different world- and not just a different world now, but a dead one.
He turned onto his own street. He'd envisioned knocking on the door, having Costache open it and watching astonishment spread over her face. But there she was in front of the house, carrying something out to the gutter in a dustpan- a dead rat, he saw as he got closer.
What the dustpan held wasn't the first thing he noticed, however much he wished it would have been. The way her belly bulged was.
She dumped the rat into the gutter, then looked up and saw him. She froze, bent out over the street, as if a sorcerer had turned her to stone. Then, slowly and jerkily, she straightened. She did her best to put a welcoming smile on her face, but it cracked and slid away and she gave up trying to hold it. When she said, 'You came back,' it sounded more like accusation than welcome.
'Aye.' Cornelu had never imagined he could despise anyone so much. And he'd loved her once. He knew he had. But that made things worse, not better. So much worse. 'Did you think I wouldn't?'
'Of course I did,' Costache answered. 'Nobody thought the Algarvians would lose the war, and you were never coming home if they won.' She dropped the dustpan: a clatter of tin. Her hands folded over her swollen stomach. 'Curse you, do you think I'm the only one who's going to have a baby on account of Mezentio's men?'
'No, but you're mine.' Cornelu corrected himself: 'You were mine. And it wasn't as if you thought I was dead. You knew I was still around. You saw me. You ate with me. And you still did- that.' He pointed to her belly as if it were a crime somehow separate from the woman he'd wooed and married… and lost.
'Oh, aye, I saw you.' Scorn roughened Costache's voice till it cut into Cornelu like the teeth of a saw. 'I saw you filthy and unshaven and stinking like the hillman you were pretending to be. Is it any wonder I never wanted anything to do with you after that?'
He clapped a hand to his forehead. 'You stupid slut!' he shouted. 'I couldn't very well go around in uniform then. Do you think I wanted to end up in a captives' camp, or more likely blazed?'
Instead of answering right away, Costache looked all around, as if to see which neighbors were likely drinking in the scandal. That also seemed to remind her of the dustpan, which she picked up. 'Oh, come inside, will you?' she said impatiently. 'You don't have to do this in front of everyone, do you?'
'Why not?' Cornelu slapped her in the face. 'Don't you think you deserve to be shamed?'
Her hand flew to her cheek. 'I think…' She grimaced- not with pain, he thought, but with disgust, and not self-disgust- disgust at him. 'What I think doesn't matter anymore, does it? It never will anymore, will it?' She walked up the path to the house, not caring, or at least pretending not to care, whether Cornelu followed.
He did, still almost too furious to speak. In the front room, Brindza was playing with a doll- the gift of an Algarvian officer? Of the father of her half brother or sister to come? Cornelu's own daughter shied away from him and said, 'Mama, who is the strange man in the funny clothes?'
'Brindza, I am your father,' Cornelu said, but he could see that didn't mean anything to her.
'Go on back to your bedroom now, sweetheart,' Cornelu told her. 'We'll talk about it later.' Brindza did as she was told. Cornelu wished Costache would have done the same. He looked down at himself. Sibian naval uniform- funny clothes? Maybe so. Brindza might never have seen it before. That spoke unhappy volumes about the state of Cornelu's kingdom.
Costache went into the kitchen. He heard her getting down goblets, and knew exactly the cupboard from which she was getting them. He knew which cupboard held the wine and ale and spirits, too. Costache came back carrying two goblets full of wine. She thrust one of them at him. 'Here. This will be bad enough any which way. We may as well blur it a little.'
'I don't want to drink with you.' But Cornelu took the goblet. Whether with her or not, he did want to drink. He took a big swig, then made a face. 'Powers above, that's foul. The Algarvians sent all their best vintages here, didn't they?'
'I gave you what I have,' Costache answered.
'You gave everybody what you have, didn't you?' Cornelu pointed at her belly as he finished the wine. Costache's mouth tightened. He went on, 'And you're going to pay for it, too, by the powers above. Sibiu's free again. Anyone who sucked up to the Algarvians' -he started to say something else along those lines, but the thought so infuriated him, he choked on the words- 'is going to pay.'
She just stood there, watching him. She has nerve, curse her, he thought angrily. 'I don't suppose I could say anything that would make you change your mind,' she observed.
'Ha!' He clapped a hand to his forehead. 'Not likely! What'll you tell me, how handsome the Algarvian was? How good he was?'
