slurred Algarvian: “Leave me alone and I will extend you the same privilege.”
“Leave you alone?” Oraste got up once more. “Powers below eat me if I will, you louse-ridden ...”
“Wait!” Bembo grabbed Oraste before his partner could try to kick the drunk again. A light had gone on in his mind, however dark his surroundings remained. “I think he’s a mage.”
“A mage, a stage, an age, an outrage,” the drunken Kaunian said, still in Algarvian. “If I were sober, I could do great things. If I were sober, I could . . . could . . .” He brought his hands up to his face and began to weep. Through his sobs, he went on, “But it is not enough. It could not be enough. Nothing could be enough.” He looked up at the constables. “For you,
“Let’s get out of here,” Bembo whispered urgently. “I don’t want to tangle with a mage, even a drunk one, even a lousy one. Tangling with mages uses up a lot of constables.”
Oraste let Bembo lead him a few paces away, but then shrugged off his comrade. “That Kaunian sorcerously assaulted me,” he declared, as if before a panel of judges. “He has to pay the price.” He whirled around and pointed his stick at the drunken blond sorcerer.
But the Kaunian wasn’t there. Bembo stared. It wasn’t as if the fellow were hiding in the dead grass; it was as if he’d never been there. Only the lingering stink of vomit and Bembo’s memory said anything different.
Oraste said, “Nothing’s enough for us Algarvians, eh? I’ll show that blond what nothing’s all about.” And he blazed at the place where the Kaunian had been--the place where, Bembo realized, the Kaunian still had to be.
A shriek said his beam had found the mark. An instant later, the Kaunian reappeared--wounded, he couldn’t keep holding the masking spell. Oraste blazed him again. The blond jerked as if struck by lightning when the beam bit him.
With what was plainly dying effort, the mage pointed toward the two constables and began intoning a spell in Kaunian. Bembo understood only a couple of words of it, but knew it had to be a curse. Now he blazed at the drunken mage, too, and his beam caught the Kaunian in the face. With a last groan, the mage sank back and lay very still.
“That’s the way,” Oraste said, and thumped him on the back. “See? You are good for something after all.”
“Oh, shut up,” Bembo answered. “You think I want to go around with a wizard’s last curse on me, you’re daft. But it never would have happened if you’d let him alone in the first place.”
“He deserved what he got,” Oraste said. “Powers above, he deserved more than he got.”
“We’ll have to tell Pesaro about it when we get back to the barracks,” Bembo said. His stomach was lurching unpleasantly. He’d never killed a man before.
Oraste let out a couple of grunts probably meant for laughter. “Pesaro’ll give us each a shot of brandy, tell us we did good, and put us to bed--and you know it as well as I do, too.”
He was probably right. But Bembo’s stomach did another few lurches. Now that he thought about it--something he tried not to do--he’d sent plenty of Kaunians off to certain death. Blazing the drunken mage still felt different. He couldn’t pretend here, as he did there, that he really hadn’t had anything to do with their deaths. Blazing a man in the face left no room for doubt about what happened.
On the other hand, the Kaunian mage might--would--have harmed Bembo and Oraste if Bembo hadn’t blazed him. The Kaunians he hauled out of villages or off the streets of Gromheort hadn’t done anything to him or to anybody else.
Bembo shook his head. Thinking about it was much too complicated--and too unpleasant, too. “Let’s go,” he said. “We’ll get out of here, we’ll finish our beat, and then we’ll go back to the barracks. The carrion there won’t be going anywhere till somebody comes and picks it up after we report in.”
“Now you’re talking sense,” Oraste said. “Come on. Shake a leg.”
The rest of the park was quiet. Even so, Bembo was glad to escape it. He didn’t know whether he’d been been talking sense or not. Like any constable with an ounce of brains or more than two weeks’ experience, he craved quiet shifts. He’d hoped for one tonight, hoped and been disappointed.
Other constables patrolled the perimeter of the quarter where Gromheort’s Kaunians had to live, but Bembo and Oraste came near that perimeter as they neared the end of their beat. “Won’t be long,” Oraste said. “I aim to do some serious sleeping once we get in.”
Yawning, Bembo nodded. Morning twilight was beginning to paint the eastern sky gray and pink. He yawned again. He didn’t
