Out of the Darkness

He thought about Oraste, who’d cursed him for getting wounded and escaping Eoforwic before the Unkerlanters could overrun it. He thought about fat Sergeant Pesaro, who’d stayed behind in Gromheort when he and Oraste got transferred to Eoforwic. He wondered if either one of them still lived. Not likely, he supposed, not after what had happened to the two Forthwegian cities. And even if they did, would the Unkerlanters ever let them come home again? Even less likely, he feared.

Saffa said, “I don’t think I know you at all. I was always sure what to expect from you: you’d make your bad jokes, you’d try to get your hand up under my kilt, you’d strut and swagger like a rooster in a henyard, and every once in a while you’d show you were a little smarter than you looked, the way you did when you figured out that the Kaunians here were dyeing their hair to look like proper Algarvians. But I never dreamt you had-that-underneath.”

“Before Captain Sasso ordered me west, I didn’t,” Bembo answered. “Saffa, don’t you see? Everybody who comes back alive from the west is going to have stories like mine-oh, maybe not just like mine, but the same kind of stories. Fighting that war did something horrible to Algarve, and the whole kingdom’s going to be a long time getting over it.”

“We’re going to be a long time getting over everything,” Saffa said. “What with this new king the Unkerlanters have put on the throne in the west, we’re not even one kingdom anymore.”

“I know. I don’t like that, either,” Bembo said. “For powers above only know how long, there were all these little kingdoms and principalities and grand duchies and plain duchies and marquisates and baronies and counties and whatnot here instead of a real kingdom of Algarve, and our neighbors would play them off against each other so we fought amongst ourselves. I’d hate to see that day come again, but what can we do about it?”

“Nothing. Not a single thing.” Saffa sipped at her spirits. She still studied Bembo with a wary-indeed, a frightened-curiosity he’d never seen from her before. “But, since I can’t do anything about it, I don’t see much point to worrying over it, either. You, though. . Do I want to have anything to do with you any more when you’ve-done all these things?”

Bembo pointed to the baby sleeping in her arms. “If the kid’s father was here, he’d give you the same kind of stories I did. Us constables didn’t do clean things, but neither did the army, and you can take that to the bank. Would you tell his father what you just told me?”

“I hope so,” Saffa said.

“Aye, you probably would,” Bembo admitted. “You’ve got a way of saying what’s on your mind.” He sighed. “Sweetheart, I want you to stay. You know that.”

Saffa nodded. “Of course I do. And I know why, too.” She made as if to spread her legs. “Men,” she added scornfully.

“Women,” Bembo said in a different tone, but also one old as time. They both laughed cautious laughs. He went on, “I’m not going to lie and say I don’t like bedding you. If I didn’t, would I care whether you went or not? Curse it, though, Saffa, it’s not the only reason. Would I have chased you so hard when you weren’t giving me anything if that was all I cared about?”

“I don’t know. Would you? Depends on what you had going on the side, I suppose.”

“You’re making this as hard as you can, aren’t you?” Bembo said. Saffa’s answering shrug was unmistakably smug. He stuck out his tongue at her. “Powers above, you stupid bitch, don’t you know I really like you?”

“Oh, Bembo,” she crooned, “you say the sweetest things.” He grimaced again, in a different way; he could have put that better. But she didn’t up and walk out on him, either, so maybe things weren’t so bad after all.

Skarnu liked his move to the provinces much better than he’d thought he would. He stayed busy learning what needed doing in his new marquisate and in setting to rights whatever he could. The Algarvian occupation had made endless squabbles flare up-and some had been smoldering for years. The more recent ones were usually straightforward. Some of the long-standing disputes, though, proved maddeningly complicated. They gave him a certain small sympathy for the collaborationist counts who’d preceded him as local lords.

“How am I supposed to know how to rule on a property dispute that’s been going on so long, everybody who first started quarreling about it’s been dead for twenty years?” he asked Merkela at breakfast one morning.

“That’s how things are here,” she answered. “There are quarrels older than that, too.”

“Why haven’t I seen them?” he said, sipping tea.

“People are still making up their minds about you,” Merkela told him. “They don’t want to stick their heads up too soon and be sorry for it later.”