Darkness Descending

He smelled smoke. No matter how moist the forest was, all the blazes and bursting eggs had set it afire. He dug harder than ever, but wondered even as dirt flew whether he was doing anything more than digging his own grave. He also wondered whether anyone, Unkerlanter or Gyongyosian, would come out of the forest alive.

As Krasta came downstairs from her bedchamber, Colonel Lurcanio was pacing back and forth in the hall at the bottom of the stairway. His green eyes sparked as he glared up at her. “What took you so long, milady?” he growled. But then, however unwillingly, he bowed over her hand and kissed it. “You do look very lovely tonight, I must say, which almost makes the delay worthwhile.”

Had he left off the almost, Krasta would have known she’d created just the effect she wanted. Lurcanio was difficult--sometimes impossible--to manage. But she didn’t wish she’d got Captain Mosco instead, not anymore. Off in the trackless wilds of Unkerlant. . . She didn’t want to think about that.

“I’m sure your driver will be able to get us to the reception in good time,” she said. “He doesn’t dawdle over everything, the way mine does.”

“He is an Algarvian, and he is a soldier,” Lurcanio said. The angry rumble had left his voice; Krasta decided he’d put it there to see if he could make her afraid. This time, it hadn’t worked. And he didn’t push it, either, as he sometimes did. He slipped his arm around her waist. “Let us be off, then.”

His driver was indeed an Algarvian and a soldier. The fellow proved that by leering at Krasta as Lurcanio handed her up into the carriage. He was tall and young and handsome, but surely had no breeding at all. Krasta did not believe in rutting with her social inferiors.

Lurcanio spoke to the driver in their own language. The driver nodded, flicked the reins, and got the horses going. Despite what Krasta had said about him, he didn’t drive very fast, not when all the streets of Priekule were lit only by a sinking crescent moon. Lagoan dragons didn’t fly up to the capital of occupied Valmiera very often, but the Algarvians made things as hard as they could for tliem on principle.

Taking advantage of the darkness, Lurcanio set a hand on Krasta’s leg just above the knee and slowly slid it higher and higher along her thigh. “You’re in a bold mood tonight,” she said, amused.

“I am in a happy mood tonight,” Colonel Lurcanio declared, and moved his hand higher still. “And do you know why I’m in a happy mood tonight?”

“I can think of a reason,” Krasta said archly, setting her hand on his.

He chuckled. “Oh, that, too, my dear,” he said, “but I can get that anytime I want.”

Her back stiffened. “Not from me, you can’t. Not if you talk that way.”

“If not from you, then from someone else. Finding it isn’t hard, not in a conquered kingdom.” Lurcanio sounded annoyingly smug. The trouble was, Krasta knew he was right--and if she threw him out of her bed in a fit of pique, she would be left without an Algarvian protector. When she didn’t rise to his bait, Lurcanio went on, “No, the chief reason I am happy tonight is that we have smashed the attack the Unkerlanters made on our positions south of Aspang.”

“Good,” Krasta said, though she couldn’t have found the city on a map to save herself from the headsman’s axe.

“Oh, aye, it is,” Lurcanio replied. “Swemmel’s men spent most of the winter smashing us, which is the main reason Captain Mosco’s bastard will likely never see his--or even her--father. Had they kept on smashing us now that spring has come, it would have been a great deal less than amusing.”

“They’re only Unkerlanters, after all,” Krasta said.

Lurcanio nodded. “Even so. And they are once more proving they are only Unkerlanters, if you take my meaning.”

Krasta didn’t, not altogether. She didn’t trouble herself to go looking for it, either. Instead, she craned her neck for a better look at the skyline. “It still seems wrong not to have the Column of Victory standing tall and white and pretty there.”

“It wouldn’t be lit up now, not in wartime.” Lurcanio could be annoyingly precise. “Maybe one day King Mezentio will build a new and grander column in its place: an Algarvian Column of Victory, to last for all time, not just a paltry double handful of centuries.”

“In Priekule? That would be--” For once, Krasta remembered in the nick of time who and what her companion was, and swallowed a remark that would have got her in trouble with Lurcanio.

A few minutes later, the carriage pulled up in front of the mansion that belonged to Sefanu, the Duke of Klaipeda’s nephew. The duke had commanded Valmiera’s beaten army in the war against Algarve. He’d since retired to his country estates. His nephew was quite happy playing host to the occupiers.