Darkness Descending

alive.

“Bauska!” she shouted when she got back into her own section of the mansion. “Curse it, you lazy slut, where are you hiding?”

“Coming, milady,” the maidservant said, hurrying down the stairway and up to her. She was very pale and gulped as if hoping her stomach would stay quiet. As far as Krasta was concerned, she’d been next to useless since Captain Mosco put a loaf in her oven. Gulping again, she said, “How may I serve you?”

“Fetch me my wolfskin jacket,” Krasta said, enjoying the prospect of sending Bauska back upstairs. “I am going to go for a walk on the grounds here.”

“You are, milady?” Bauska sounded astonished. Walking the grounds was not Krasta’s usual idea of amusement. The only good Krasta usually saw in having wide grounds, as a matter of fact, was in keeping neighbors at a nice, respectful distance. But she was feeling contrary today, all the more so after than unsatisfactory conversation with Lurcanio.

And so she snapped, “I certainly am. Now get moving.” With a sigh, Bauska trudged up the stairs to get the jacket. She gave it to Krasta and gave her a reproachful look with it. That was wasted; Krasta never noticed it.

Fastening the wooden toggles on the wolfskin jacket, Krasta went outside. She exclaimed as the cold bit at her cheeks and nose, but neither of the Algarvian sentries at the front door stirred an inch. She cursed their indifference under her breath.

The skins in the jacket came from Unkerlant; few wolves survived farther east in Derlavai. Krasta patted the soft gray sleeve. At the moment, she quite enjoyed wearing something from Swemmel’s kingdom. She wished she could throw that in Lurcanio’s face, but knew she didn’t dare. He got quite stuffy where what he saw as Algarve’s honor was concerned.

Snow crunched under her shoes. It was a couple of days old; soot from the countless coal and wood fires in Priekule had already streaked it with gray. Everything was cold and quiet, so quiet she could hear the scream of a dragon high overhead. The Algarvians kept a couple of them in the air above Priekule all the time, to give warning of Lagoan raiders. The Lagoans didn’t fly north very often. Krasta sniffed. She scorned Valmiera’s former allies even more than she did its conquerors. The Algarvians, at least, had proved their strength.

She walked on, getting chillier with every step in spite of the wolfskin jacket. The Algarvians had to be mad to want to fight a war in Unkerlant in the wintertime. They should have settled down where they were and waited till spring. Next time I meet a general at some feast or other, maybe I’ll tell him so, Krasta thought. Some people just can’t see what’s in front of them.

What was in front of her were more snow-covered grounds and bare-branched trees. In the summer, the trees screened Priekule from her sight. For the most part, that suited her fine; the city had altogether too many commoners in it for her to want to look at it very much.

Now, though, the spires of the royal palace and the taller, paler shaft of the Kaunian Column of Victory were plainly visible. Inside the palace, King Gainibu drowned his humiliation in spirits. Krasta didn’t care to dwell on Gainibu. A king, as far as she was concerned, shouldn’t be a sot.

That left the Column of Victory to draw her eye. There it stood, as it had since the days of the Kaunian Empire, proud and fair and beautifully carved . . . and Algarvian soldiers patrolled the park whose centerpiece it was, and all of Priekule, and all of the Kaunian kingdom of Valmiera.

Sudden unexpected tears stung her eyes. Her eyelashes started to freeze together. Angrily, she knuckled them. Foolishness, she thought. She was getting by. She was doing better than getting by. With an Algarvian protector, the hardships that had hold of the kingdom hardly touched her.

She nodded. She was looking at things the right way. The redheads had won the war, and nothing that happened in far-off Unkerlant could have anything to do with that. She was certain she was right there. Why, then, did the tears keep trying to come back?

Before she could find an answer--or, more likely, stop looking for one--a couple of Algarvians mounted on unicorns came trotting up the road from Priekule. One of the unicorns still bore some splotches of the dun-colored paint that had made it harder to spot during the fighting. The other was the white to which even clean snow could only aspire.

Both riders slowed to leer at Krasta. Most times, she would have withered them with a glance colder than .the weather. Now, oddly, she welcomed their attention. She welcomed any attention. The smile she gave them was just this side of an invitation to a lewd act in the snow.

“Well, hello, sweetheart!” one of them said in accented Valmieran. “Whose girl you being? You being anybody’s girl?”

“My companion is Colonel Lurcanio,” Krasta