Out of the Darkness

No one had ever formally released Skarnu from his service in the Valmieran army. And, unlike most of his countrymen, he’d never given up the fight against the Algarvians. And so, when he proposed to Merkela that he wed her while wearing a captain’s uniform, she nodded. “That’s how I first saw you, you know, coming toward the farmhouse with Raunu at your side,” she said.

Remembering what he’d gone through during his kingdom’s inglorious collapse almost five years before, he answered, “I hope I’ll be cleaner at the ceremony than I was then.”

Merkela laughed. Laughter came easy for her now that she’d finally proved right about Krasta. It was as if she’d won a brand-new victory against the Algarvians long after they’d left Priekule. And so, in a way, she had. Skarnu could have felt victorious about his own sister, too. He didn’t. All he felt was sad. Krasta had made the wrong choice, and now she was paying for it. Hundreds, thousands, of women across Valmiera and Jelgava had paid as much. A good many men who’d collaborated with the redheads had paid or would pay far more.

“Tomorrow,” Merkela murmured. She laid a fond hand on Skarnu’s arm. “It still hardly feels real. It feels like something out of one of the fairy tales my grandmother would tell me when I was a little girl.”

“You had better get used to it, milady,” Skarnu said solemnly, “for it’s the truth.” That he was marrying at all still struck him as surprising. That he was marrying a commoner would have seemed treason to his class before the war.

Little Gedominu, who was toddling around the bedchamber they shared, fell down. The damage, obviously, was anywhere from minimal to imaginary, but he wailed, “Mama!” and started to cry anyway.

Merkela scooped him up. “It’s all right,” she said. After a moment or two in her arms, it was all right, too. Skarnu wished his own hurts were so easily fixed. That thought had hardly crossed his mind when Merkela flicked one of those hurts. She ruffled Gedominu’s fine, golden hair and murmured, “You look the way you’re supposed to. That’s more than anybody can say about your nasty little cousin.”

Skarnu sighed. He wished Krasta’s baby had looked like a proper Valmieran. That would have taken the taint of scandal off the whole family. As things were, he sighed and said, “It’s not the baby’s fault.”

“It certainly isn’t,” Merkela agreed. “It’s her fault.” She still didn’t want to call Krasta Skarnu’s sister. Ever since they’d first learned Krasta was keeping company with a redhead, they-and Merkela especially-had denied Skarnu even had a sister. That was harder now that they were living in the same house with Krasta, but Merkela managed. She went on, “She was going to name the baby Valnu.”

“Too bad she couldn’t,” Skarnu said. “Sooner or later, these things have to come to an end.”

“Not yet, by the powers above,” Merkela declared. “When she had Lurcanio’s bastard, I told her she should name it for him.”

Skarnu sighed. “That doesn’t help, you know. Krasta’s going to be your sister-in-law whether you like it or not.” He held up a hand. “You don’t. You’ve told me. You don’t need to tell me again. Just remember, Valnu put in a good word for her. He’d be dead if she’d opened her mouth at the wrong time. Then there wouldn’t have been any doubt who the baby’s father was.”

“She opened her mouth at plenty of the wrong times,” Merkela said. While Skarnu was still spluttering over that, his fiancee added, “If she’d done it once more, she wouldn’t have had the little bastard in the first place.” That only made Skarnu splutter again.

In the end, he decided not to push the argument. He wasn’t going to change Merkela’s mind. Part of him-not half, but close to it-agreed with her, anyhow. What he most wanted now was to get through the wedding ceremony without any fresh scandal. Enlisting Merkela in that effort was bound to be futile. Trying to enlist Krasta in it was bound to be worse than futile. Skarnu had spent a lot of time away from home, but not so much that he didn’t know what to do in such cases.

He approached Valmiru, who nodded wisely. “You are holding the ceremony out of doors, is it not so?” the butler said. When Skarnu agreed that he was-he could hardly deny it, not with the pavilion already up behind the mansion- Valmiru nodded again. “Very well. I shall make a point of allowing no physical disruption. I cannot necessarily promise there will be no commotion from within the house, however.”

“I understand that. Believe me, Valmiru, I’ll be grateful for anything you can do-and I’ll make it worth your while, too,” Skarnu said. The butler’s expression didn’t change in any way Skarnu could have defined, but he contrived to look pleased nonetheless. They were indoors. Skarnu looked up at the sky even so. “It had better not rain, that’s all I’ve got to say.”