Out of the Darkness

He hadn’t just told-he’d told the news sheets. People who knew her of course knew her baby had hair the wrong color. Some of them had cut her- including some who’d been at least as cordial to the occupiers as she had. But this… in the news sheets. . Every tradesman she’d ever dealt with would know she’d had an Algarvian’s bastard.

Heels clicking on the slates of the sidewalk, she hurried down the Boulevard of Horsemen to the cross street where her carriage waited. When she got there, she found her new driver reading the news sheet. She wished she still had the one who drank to while away the time. “Put down that horrible rag,” she snapped.

“Aye, milady,” the driver said, but he carefully folded the sheet so he could go on reading it later. “Shall I take you home now?” He spoke as if certain of the answer.

But Krasta shook her head. “No. Drive me to the central gaol.”

“To the central gaol, milady?” The driver sounded as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

“You heard me,” Krasta said. “Now get moving!” She sprang into the carriage, slamming the door behind her.

He took her where she wanted to go. If he hadn’t, she would have fired him on the spot and either engaged a new driver or tried to take the carriage back to the mansion herself. She was convinced she could do it: drivers certainly weren’t very bright, and they had no trouble, so how hard could it be?

Luckily for her-she’d never driven a carriage in her life-she didn’t have to find out. “Here you are, milady,” the driver said, stopping in front of a fortresslike building not far from the royal palace.

Krasta descended from the carriage and swarmed toward the gaol, an invading army of one. “What do you want?” asked one of the men at the entrance.

Were they constables? Soldiers? She didn’t know and she didn’t care. “I am the Marchioness Krasta,” she declared. “I must see one of the nasty Algarvians you have locked up here.”

Both the guards bowed. Neither of them opened the formidably stout door, though. “Uh, sorry, milady,” said the fellow who’d spoken before. “Nobody can do that without the warder’s permission.”

“Then fetch the warder here at once.” Krasta’s voice rose to a shout: “At once, do you hear me?”

If they’d read the news sheet, if they’d paid attention to her name, they might not have been so willing to do as she said. But Valmierans were used to yielding to their nobles. One of them left. He returned a few minutes later with a fellow in a fancier uniform. “May I help you, milady?” the warder asked.

“I must see Colonel Lurcanio, one of your Algarvian captives,” Krasta said, as she had before.

“For what purpose?” the warder asked.

“To ask him how he dares have the nerve to tell so many nasty, lying stories about me,” Krasta said. That the stories might be nasty but weren’t lies had entirely slipped out of her memory.

“What was your name again?” the warder inquired. Fuming, Krasta told him. “Marchioness Krasta. .” the man repeated. “Oh, you’re the one who.. ” By the way his expression sharpened, Krasta could tell he’d read the day’s news sheet himself. “You say these are lies?’ he asked.

“I certainly do say that,” Krasta answered. Saying it, of course, didn’t mean it had to be true. She dimly remembered that distinction.

The warder didn’t note it. He bowed to her and said, “All right. You come with me.”

She came. The place was grimier and smellier than she’d imagined. The warder led her to a room with two chairs separated by a fine but strong wire mesh. To her annoyance, he not only made her leave her handbag outside but also turn out her pockets and put whatever she had in them on a tray. “I’m not going to give this Algarvian anything except a piece of my mind,” she said.

With a shrug, the warder said, “These are the rules.” Against the rules, plainly, the powers above themselves contended in vain. Even Krasta, who was anything but shy about arguing regardless of whether or not she had a case, forbore to do so here. The warder said, “You wait. Someone will bring him.”

Krasta waited longer than she cared to. Staring at the wire mesh made her feel imprisoned herself. She drummed her fingers on her trouser leg, trying to fight down her annoyance. After about a quarter of an hour-it seemed much longer to Krasta-two guards brought in Lurcanio. They shoved him toward the chair on the far side of the mesh. “Here’s the whoreson,” one of them said as the other slammed the door.

Instead of sitting down on the hard chair, Lurcanio bowed to Krasta. “Good day, milady,” he said in his musically accented Valmieran. “Have you come to gloat, or perhaps to throw nuts to the monkey in the cage? I could use the nuts. They do not feed me very well-which, considering how you Valmierans stuff yourselves, is doubly a crime.”

“How dare you tell the news sheets you fathered my boy?” Krasta demanded. “How dare you?”

“Well, did I not?” Lurcanio asked. “I surely had more chance than anybody else. But did Valnu or whoever get there at the right time?”