Out of the Darkness

Sabrino shrugged. “Well, if he does, he does. I’ve been through too much to worry about it. Let him do what he will do.”

“This is your last word?” Vatran asked. Sabrino nodded. The Unkerlanter general sighed. “All right. I take it away with me. You are brave man. You are also fool.” There, for the first time, he almost tempted Sabrino to change his mind. If being a fool qualified a man for the kingship, he reckoned himself the best qualified sovereign Algarve had ever had.

After General Vatran left, the healer came back into Sabrino’s chamber. Curious-nosy-as any Algarvian, he asked, “What did the barbarian want?”

“He wanted to proclaim me King of Algarve,” Sabrino answered.

He waited to see what the healer would make of that. For a moment, the fellow just gaped, not sure how to take it. Then he started to laugh. “Well, I asked for that, didn’t I?” he said. “All right, your Majesty, I’ll be careful around you from now on.”

“I’m not anyone’s Majesty,” Sabrino said. “I turned him down.”

That only made the healer laugh harder. “I can see why you would have. A chap like you, you have to hold out for a really good position, eh?”

No wonder Mezentio got so testy, Sabrino thought. He ruled a whole kingdom full of people like this. I suppose I was just another little nuisance to him. Till Vatran’s offer, he’d never tried to imagine what the world looked like from the perspective of a king. Powers above! Why would anybody want the job?

Still laughing, the healer said, “Why didn’t you ask him if you could be King of Unkerlant instead? There’s a place that could really use a civilized man running things.”

“I don’t want to be King of Unkerlant.” Sabrino wondered if an Unkerlanter mage was somehow listening to every word he said. Given some of the things he’d heard about King Swemmel, he wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t want that mage hearing anything untoward. “I don’t want to be king at all, not any place.”

“Well, all right.” The healer plucked at his mustachios, which he’d managed to keep perfectly waxed throughout Algarve’s collapse, conquest, and occupation. “If it were me, though, I’d grab anything I could get.” He plucked some more. “Maybe we ought to switch you to a decoction that’s not quite so potent.”

He thinks I imagined the whole thing, Sabrino realized. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I made up the Unkerlanter general, too,” he said.

With a shrug, the healer answered, “Who knows what’s real these days?” Sabrino laughed, but it wasn’t as if the fellow didn’t have a point.

“Another letter!” Vanai said to Saxburh as she fished it out of the brass letterbox in the lobby of her block of flats. The envelope bore no return address, and was addressed to her as Thelberge. Her heart leaped when she recognized the script. “And it’s from your father!”

“Mama,” Saxburh said. She didn’t say dada so much these days. Had Ealstan been here, had she had someone to say it to, that would have been different. Vanai was sure of it.

She picked up her daughter and the jug of olive oil she’d bought. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs, and we’ll find out what he says.” She longed for the days when Saxburh would be able to walk up those stairs by herself; the baby wasn’t a lightweight any more. She wasn’t so much of a baby any more, either. She’d started taking her first few toddling steps without holding on to anything, and her first birthday was only a few days away.

Of course, she didn’t care anything about the letter. “Hat!” she said, as soon as she got back to the flat. She found her special little hat and jammed it down onto her head. “Hat!”

“That’s a hat,” Vanai agreed. She almost tore Ealstan’s letter in her eagerness to get it out of the envelope. Hello, sweetheart! Ealstan wrote. That you’re seeing this proves I’m not an Unkerlanter soldier any more. They kept me long enough to use me up, then decided they didn‘t want me with a hole in my leg.

I would like you and Saxburh to come back here to Gromheort to live. I wouldn‘t have said that before everything that happened. Eoforwic used to be the easiest place in the kingdom for your people and for mixed couples to get along. Now. . Now I don’t know how easy it will be anywhere. I wish I didn’t have to say something like that, but I’m afraid it’s true.