Darkness Descending

“I am afraid I have not,” Colonel Lurcanio answered with what sounded like real regret. “Captain Skarnu, Marquis Skarnu, is not known to have been slain. He is not known to have been captured. He is not known to have been among those who surrendered after King Gainibu capitulated. It could be--and for your sake, my lovely lady, I hope it is--that the records of capture and surrender are defective. It would not be the first time.”

“What if they aren’t?” Krasta asked. Lurcanio did not reply. After a few seconds, she recognized the expression on his long, somber face as pity. “You think he’s dead!” she exclaimed.

“Milady, there at the end, the war moved very swiftly,” the Algarvian officer replied. “A man might fall with all his comrades too caught up in the retreat to bring him with them. Our own soldiers would have been more concerned with the Valmierans still ahead than with those who could endanger them no more.”

“It could be so.” Krasta did not want to believe it. But, with most of a year passed since she’d heard from Skarnu, she had a hard time denying it, too. As was her way, when a painful fact stared her in the face, she looked in another direction: in this case, around Priekule. “I don’t see so many Algarvian soldiers on the streets these days, I don’t think.”

“You are likely right,” Lurcanio said. “Some of them have gone west to join in the fight against King Swemmel.”

“He’s a nasty sort,” Krasta said. “He deserves whatever happens to him and so does his kingdom.” Civilization, as far as she was concerned, did not run west of Algarve. Not so long before, she would have said it did not run west of Valmiera.

Someone shouted at her from a dark side street: “Algarvian’s hired twat!” Running footsteps said the fellow who’d yelled had not lingered to note the effects of his remark. In that, no doubt, he was wise. Had she been able to catch him, Krasta would not have been gentle.

Colonel Lurcanio patted her leg, a little above the knee. “Just another fool,” he said, “so take no notice of him. I do not need to hire you, do I?”

“Of course not.” Krasta tossed her head. Had Lurcanio offered her money for the use of her body, she would have thrown everything she could reach at him. He’d done nothing of the sort. He’d simply made her afraid of what might happen if she said no. (She chose not to dwell on that; she did not care to think of herself as afraid.)

“Ah, here we are,” Lurcanio said a little later, as the carriage came up to the palace. “An impressive building. The royal palace in Trapani is larger, but, I think, less magnificent. One can imagine ruling all the world from here.” After that praise, his laughter sounded doubly cruel. “One can imagine it, but not all that one can imagine comes true.” He descended from the carriage and handed Krasta down. “Shall we pay our respects to your king, who does not rule all the world from here?” He laughed again.

“I came here the night King Gainibu declared war against Algarve,” Krasta said.

“Then he still ruled some of the world from here,” Colonel Lurcanio said. “He would have done better to keep silent. He would have gone on ruling some of the world. Now he has to ask the leave of an Algarvian commissioner before he takes a glass of spirits.”

“If Algarve hadn’t invaded the Duchy of Bari, he wouldn’t have had to declare war,” Krasta said. “Then everything would still be as it was.”

Lurcanio leaned over and brushed his lips across hers. “You must be an innocent. You are too decorative to be a fool.” He began ticking points off on his fingers. “Item: we didn’t invade Bari; we took back what was ours. The men welcomed us with open arms, the women with open legs. I know. I was there. Item: Valmiera had no business detaching Bari from Algarve after the Six Years’ War. It was done, but, as with wizards, what one can do, another can undo. And item: things would not still be as they were.” Just for a moment, long enough to make Krasta shiver, he might have been one of his barbarous ancestors. “Had you not gone for us, we would have come after you.”

Krasta turned and looked back toward the Kaunian Column of Victory. It still stood in its ancient park, pale and proud and tall in the moonlight. Unlike during the Six Years’ War, no damage had come to it in this fight. Even so, the imperial victories it commemorated had never seemed so distant to her.

“Well,” Lurcanio said, “let us go in, then, and pay our respects to your illustrious sovereign.” He spoke without discernible irony. In the wink of an eye, he’d pulled the cloak of polished noble courtier over whatever lay beneath.

In the palace, King Gainibu’s servitors bowed to Lurcanio as they might have to a count of Valmieran blood or perhaps even as they might have to a duke of Valmieran blood. They fawned on Krasta as if she were duchess rather than marchioness, too. That went a long way toward improving her mood.