Out of the Darkness

“Curse it, Saffa, I don’t want to think about this stuff myself, let alone talk about it with anybody else,” Bembo said.

“What stuff?” she said.

If I got everything I asked for. . Bembo shuddered. He remembered too well the old Kuusaman mage’s eyes piercing him like swords, looking at the memories he concealed from everyone-including, as best he could, from himself. “I told you, you don’t want to know. And I don’t want to talk about it.”

Saffa got up from the couch, using her free hand to help her rise. She went into the flat’s cramped kitchen. Bembo listened to her opening cupboards in there. When she came back, she was carrying a mug of spirits, which she set on the wooden arm of Bembo’s chair. “Drink,” she said. “Then talk.”

Bembo picked up the mug willingly enough. He rarely needed a second invitation to drink. “You poured that quick,” he said. “You’re good at doing things with one hand.”

“I’d better be,” she answered. “It’s like he’s attached to me all the time.” She joggled the baby, who never stirred. “Powers above only know what I’m going to do when he gets too big to carry in one arm, though. But never mind that.” She pointed imperiously to the mug.

He drank. “Do you really want to know?” he said. The spirits weren’t what made him ask. It was much more that he hoped to perform an exorcism, or perhaps to lance a festering wound. “If you really want to know, I’ll tell you.”

Saffa leaned forward. “Go on, then.”

“You know all the things the islanders and the blonds say we did?” he asked.

Her lip curled. “I’m sick of the lies they tell.”

“Those aren’t lies,” Bembo said. Saffa’s jaw fell. He went on, “As a matter of fact, they don’t know the half of it.” And he told her of clearing Kaunians out of the villages near Gromheort, of sending them off in packed ley-line caravans to the west (and occasionally to the east), of forcing them into their guarded districts in Gromheort and later in Eoforwic, and of hauling them out of those districts and loading them into caravans, too. He told of their desperation, of the bribes he’d taken and the bribes he’d turned down. By the time he got done, the mug of spirits was finished, too.

He’d fallen into the days gone by while he was talking. He’d hardly paid any attention to Saffa through most of that torrent; he’d been peering back into his time in Forthweg, not at her. Now, at last, he did. She was white, her face set. “We really did those things?” she said in a small voice. “You really did those things? You’ve hinted before, every once in a while, but-”

“No buts,” Bembo said harshly. “Don’t press me about this again, or I’ll make you sorry for it, do you hear me?”

“I’m sorry for it already,” Saffa said. “I don’t want to believe it.”

“Neither do I, and I was there,” Bembo said. “If I’m lucky, by the time I’m an old man I won’t have nightmares about it anymore. If I’m very lucky, I mean.”

Saffa eyed him as if she’d never seen him before. “You were always a softy, Bembo. How could you do … things like that?”

“They told me what to do, so I did it,” Bembo answered with a shrug. But it hadn’t been quite that simple, and he knew it. He remembered Evodio, who’d begged off pulling blonds out of houses, and who’d regularly drunk himself into a stupor because he couldn’t stand what the Algarvians were doing in Forthweg. He said, “It’s like a lot of things: after a while, you don’t think about it, and it gets easier.”

“Maybe.” Saffa didn’t sound convinced. She got to her feet and went back into the kitchen. When she returned, she had another mug in hand. She set this on the little table in front of the sofa, saying, “I could use some spirits myself after that. Do you want some more while I’m still up?”

“Please,” Bembo said. “If I drink enough, maybe I’ll forget for a while.” He didn’t believe that. He wouldn’t forget till they laid him on his pyre. But his memories might at least get a little blurry around the edges.

Saffa sipped spirits before saying, “Hearing about things like that makes me ashamed to be an Algarvian.”

“Doing things like that. .” But Bembo’s voice trailed away. “It was better than going farther west and fighting the Unkerlanters.”

Only after he’d spoken did he remember what had happened to the fellow who’d sired Saffa’s son. The sketch artist’s face worked. She looked down at the baby. “I suppose so,” she whispered.

“Well, it was safer than going to fight the Unkerlanters,” Bembo amended. “Better?” He shrugged again. “I saw some real war of my own, you know, when the Forthwegians rose up in Eoforwic. That was a pretty filthy business, too. The only difference was, both sides were blazing then. You did what needed doing, that’s all.”