Darkness Descending

spite of herself, she shivered. No one else she had ever met could put her in fear like that. Very quietly, the Algarvian said, “If you are foolish enough to speak such words again, you will regret them to your dying day. Do you understand me?”

He is a barbarian, Krasta thought. That brought with it another shiver of fright. With the fright, not for the first time, came a surge of desire. The bedchamber was the only place where she had any control over Lurcanio, though even there she had less than she would have liked, less than she would have had with most men. Luckily for the way she thought of herself, the idea that she amused her Algarvian lover never once entered her mind.

“Do you understand me?” Lurcanio asked, more softly still.

“Aye,” she said with an impatient nod, and turned away. Lurcanio had a wife; Krasta knew that. The woman probably amused herself back in Algarve the same way as her husband was doing here in Priekule. Algarvian slut, Krasta thought, and did not dwell on what others might call her for lying with Lurcanio.

“Well, then, is there anything else?” Lurcanio said, now in the tones he used when he wanted to get back to his work.

Instead of answering, Krasta walked out of his office. He didn’t laugh to speed her going, as he’d been known to do. Instead, he seemed to forget about her as soon as she started to leave, an even more daunting dismissal. She strode past Captain Gradasso. He tried to put some compliments into classical Kaunian; she didn’t stay to listen to them.

With a sigh of relief, she returned to the part of the mansion that still belonged to her and her retainers. When she saw Bauska, she frowned. But the frown didn’t last long. Here, after all, was another chance to pay back the maidservant for bedding the redhead she would have preferred to the one she had. Of course, now she would have to maintain the brat after it was born, but still. . . . “Come here,” she called. “I have news for you.”

“What is it, milady?” Bauska asked.

“Your precious captain is off getting chilblains in Unkerlant,” Krasta answered.

Bauska had always been very fair. Since getting pregnant, she’d become paler yet; she was not one of those women who glowed because of the new life within them. Now she went white as the wall behind her. “No,” she whispered.

“Oh, aye,” Krasta said. “Don’t you dare faint on me, either; there’s too much of you to catch. I have it straight from Lurcanio, and he has himself a new aide, a fiddle-faced son of a whore who mumbles in the ancient language. If you plan on taking this fellow to bed, too, you’ll need to bring along a lexicon.”

That did make Bauska turn red. “Milady!” she cried reproachfully. “They’ve sent Mosco off to be killed, and that’s all you can say?”

Krasta disliked any histrionics but her own. “Maybe he’ll come back after the Algarvians finally beat Unkerlant,” she said, trying to calm the servant or at least make her shut up.

Bauska astonished her by laughing in her face. “If the Algarvians were going to beat Unkerlant just like that”--the serving woman snapped her fingers--”why do they all dread being sent west so much?”

“Why? Because they aren’t lucky to stay in Priekule anymore, of course,” Krasta answered. Bauska rolled her eyes. If she hadn’t been carrying a baby, Krasta would have hauled off and belted her for her insolence. As things were, it was a near-run thing. “Get out of my sight,” the noblewoman snarled, and Bauska lumbered away.

Staring after her, Krasta muttered a curse. What a ridiculous notion, that the Algarvians might not win the Derlavaian War! If they’d beaten Valmiera, they would surely smash the Unkerlanter savages . . . wouldn’t they? To hold sudden confusion and worry away, Krasta shouted for her driver and headed off to the Boulevard of Horsemen to shop.

Spring came early, up in Bishah. The only real mark of it was that the rain that came occasionally during fall and winter stopped altogether. The weather would have done for high summer in more southerly lands. But the breezes that blew down off the hills and onto the capital of Zuwayza promised far more heat ahead. Hajjaj knew the promise would be kept, too.

He had, at the moment, other sorts of heat with which to contend. He had eaten sweet cakes with King Shazli, drunk date wine, and sipped delicately fragrant tea. That meant that, by Zuwayzi custom old as time, the king could at last begin talking business. And Shazli did, demanding, “What are we to do now?”

The Zuwayzi foreign minister wished his sovereign would have chosen almost any other question. But Shazli was still a young man--only about half Hajjaj’s age--and sought certainty where his minister had long since abandoned it. With a sigh, Hajjaj answered, “Your Majesty, our safest course still appears to be the one we are following.”

King Shazli reached up and tugged at the golden circlet he wore to mark his rank. It was his only mark of rank; it was,