Out of the Darkness

“Talk, you fornicating bastard,” the interrogator snarled. “We know all about your fornicating, too. She’ll get hers-wait and see if she doesn’t. You have this one chance, pal. Talk now or else don’t. and see what happens to you then.”

Would all his captive countrymen keep quiet? A bitter smile twisted Lurcanio’s lips. Algarvians were no less fond of saving their own skins than the folk of any other kingdom. Somebody would name him-and even if someone didn’t, how many documents had the Valmierans captured? There’d been no time to destroy them all.

“Last chance, Algarvian; very, very last,” the fellow behind the lamp said. “We know what you did. Who did it with you?”

Lurcanio felt old. He felt tired. He hurt all over. Had they been toying with him up till now, to make this seem harsher when it came? He had no answers, save that he didn’t want to die. That, he knew. “Well,” he said, “to begin with, there was …”

Sixteen

Cottbus had changed. Marshal Rathar hadn’t seen the capital of Unkerlant this gay since. Now that he thought about it, he’d never seen Cottbus so gay. Gaiety and Unkerlanters seldom went together.

He’d seen the capital gray and frightened before the Derlavaian War, when nobody knew whom King Swemmel’s inspectors would seize next, or on what imagined charge. And he’d seen Cottbus past frightened the first autumn of the war against Algarve: he’d seen it on the ragged edge of panic then, with functionaries burning papers and looking to flee west any way they could, expecting the city to fall to the redheads any day. But Cottbus hadn’t fallen, and he’d also seen it grimly determined to do to King Mezentio what he’d come so close to doing here.

With Algarve beaten, the city itself seemed on holiday. People in the streets smiled. They stopped to chat with one another. Before, they would have reckoned that dangerous. Who could say for certain whether a friend was only a friend, or also an informer? No one, and few took the chance.

Unkerlant remained at war with Gyongyos, of course, but who took the Gongs seriously? Aye, they were enemies, no doubt of that, but so what? They were a long way off. They’d never had a chance to get anywhere near Cottbus, no matter how successful they were in the field. They could have been nuisances, but no more. As far as Rathar was concerned, that made them almost the ideal foes.

What made them even more perfect as enemies was the war they were fighting against Kuusamo through the islands of the Bothnian Ocean. They’d been losing that war for some time, and pulling men out of western Unkerlant to try, without much luck, to tip the balance back their way. They’d got away with that, because Unkerlant had been busy elsewhere. Now. .

Now Rathar walked across the great plaza surrounding the palace at the heart of Cottbus. The square was more crowded than he ever remembered seeing it. Women’s long, bright tunics put him in mind of flowers swaying in the breeze. He laughed at himself. You’ll be writing poetry next.

Even inside the palace, courtiers and flunkies went about their business with their heads up. A lot of them were smiling, too. They didn’t look as if they were sneaking from one place to another, as they so often did. “Come with me, lord Marshal,” one of them said, nodding to Rathar. “I know his Majesty will be glad to see you.”

What Rathar knew was that King Swemmel was never glad to see anybody. And when he got to the anteroom outside the king’s private audience chamber, age-old Unkerlanter routine reasserted itself. He unbelted his ceremonial sword and gave it to the guards there. They hung it on the wall, then thoroughly and intimately searched him to make sure he bore no other weapons. Once they were satisfied, they passed him in to the audience chamber.

Routine persisted there, too. Swemmel sat in his high seat. Rathar sank down on his knees and his belly before his sovereign, knocking his forehead against the carpet as he sang the king’s praises. Only when Swemmel said, “We give you leave to rise,” did he get to his feet. Sitting in Swemmel’s presence was unimaginable. The king leaned forward, peering at him. In his high, thin voice, he asked, “Shall we serve Gyongyos as we served Algarve?”

“Well, your Majesty, I doubt our men will march into Gyorvar any time soon,” Rathar replied. “But we ought to be able to drive the Gongs our of our kingdom, and I think we should take a bite out of them, too.”

“Many men hereabouts have told us that Gyongyos will be utterly cast down and overthrown,” the king said. “Why don’t you, who command our armies, promise the like or even more?”

Courtiers, Rathar thought contemptuously. Of course they can promise everything: they don’t have to deliver. But I do. “Your Majesty,” he said, “I can tell you what you want to hear, or else I can tell you the truth. Which would you rather?”