to send her stalking out again, elegantly straight nose high in the air. Jewelers hardly ever showed anything new. And the clothes. . . She’d occasionally worn kilts back in the days when Valmiera and Algarve were at peace, but only trousers--proper, traditional Kaunian garments--ever since. These days, though, more and more clothiers were showing kilts for both men and women. She knew people who wore them. She couldn’t make herself do it.
After walking out of one such display, she angrily strode along the Boulevard of Horsemen: tall, lean, arrogant. A news-sheet vendor called, “Fierce Algarvian counterattack in Unkerlant! Read all about it!”
Krasta stomped past him. She didn’t care two figs about Unkerlant. Out there in the distant west, it might have been on the far side of the moon as far as she was concerned (the same held true for virtually the entire world outside of Priekule). She did know mild surprise that the Algarvians hadn’t conquered it yet, as they had every other kingdom they’d assailed. But the details of the fighting mattered not at all to her.
A few days farther on, she paused, staring at three words whitewashed onto the window of a confectioner’s shop: NIGHT AND FOG. The shop was closed. It looked to have been closed for some little while. She wondered when, or if, it would open again.
Another vendor, peddling a different news sheet, waved it in her face. Krasta impatiently pushed past him and strode on down the sidewalk. She decided she wished after all that the Algarvians had taken Cottbus. Then the war would have been over, or as near as made no difference. After that, maybe the world could have started coming back to normal.
A couple of Algarvian soldiers, cloaked against the chill of Priekule’s winter, strode up the street toward her. They both leered shamelessly; as far as the occupiers were concerned, any woman was fair game. Krasta stared straight through them, as if they didn’t exist. They doubtless didn’t know she was a noblewoman and wouldn’t have cared had they known--what were the ranks of the conquered to the conquerors?
One of them proved as much: still undressing Krasta with his eyes, he spoke in bad Valmieran: “Sleeping with me, sweetheart?” He reached under his cloak and shook his belt pouch. Coins jingled and clinked.
Krasta’s temper kindled, as it had a way of doing. “Powers below eat you, you son of a whore,” she said, slowly and distinctly--she wanted to make sure he understood. “May it rot. May it fall off. May it never stand again.”
She started by the soldiers. The one who hadn’t spoken grabbed her by the arm--maybe he understood some Valmieran, too. He did; he said, “Not talking like that, bitch.” His trilling accent grated on her ears.
“Take your hands off me,” she told him, ice in her voice.
“I don’t thinking so,” he said with a nasty smile. “You insulting us. You paying for that.”
He was one of the conquerors, all right, used to doing whatever he wanted with and to Valmieran women. Later, Krasta realized she should have been afraid. At the time, only fury filled her. “Take your hands off me,” she repeated. She had a trump to play, and played it without hesitation: “I am the woman of Colonel Lurcanio, the count of Albenga, and not for the likes of you.”
That did the trick. She’d been sure it would. The Algarvian soldier let go of her arm as if magecraft had suddenly turned it red-hot. He and his comrade both hurried away, babbling ungrammatical apologies.
Nose in the air again, Krasta went on down the Avenue of Horsemen. Triumph filled her narrow soul--hadn’t she just given those boors a lesson in whom they might annoy? Had she been more introspective, she might have realized that defending herself by proclaiming she was a prominent occupier’s mistress only showed how low Valmiera had fallen. Such insight, though, was beyond her, and probably would be for all her days to come.
She kept on walking to the end of the boulevard full of expensive shops: farther than she’d intended, but she needed to burn off the rage with which the arrogant Algarvians had filled her. Arrogant herself, she recognized no one else’s right to be that way--except Lurcanio’s, and he intimidated her far more than she was willing to admit.
At the end of the Boulevard of Horsemen was one of Priekule’s many parks, the grass dead and yellow now, with muddy ground showing through here and there. Trees sent bare branches reaching toward the cloudy sky, as if they were so many skeletons supplicating the powers above. Pigeons and sparrows begged for crumbs from the few people who sat on benches by the brick walkways, probably because they had nowhere better to go.
In the center of the park towered the Kaunian Column of Victory. The marble column had stood there for more than a thousand years, since the days of the Kaunian Empire. How many years more than a thousand it had stood there, Krasta couldn’t have said. She hadn’t done well in history--or in many other subjects--at the series of finishing schools and academies she’d attended till everyone gave up on her education. She did know the victory it celebrated was of civilized imperials over the Algarvian barbarians who even in those ancient days had swarmed out of their forests to
