Out of the Darkness

After the parade ended, a carriage waited to take Marshal Rathar back to the palace. Major Merovec waited in his office. Rathar set a sympathetic hand on Merovec’s shoulder: no one cared about adjutants in victory parades. No one would ever know how important a job Merovec had had or how well he’d done it, either.

Perhaps not quite no one: Merovec said, “Thank you, sir-my promotion to colonel has finally come through.”

“Good,” Rathar said. “I put that in for you more than a year ago. One thing nobody can do, though, is hurry his Majesty.”

“No, of course not,” his adjutant replied. “What do they say, though? A rising tide lifts all boats? That’s how things are right now.”

“My boat has lifted me as far as I care to rise, thank you very much,” the marshal said. He didn’t know for certain that King Swemmel could sorcerously listen to his conversations, but had to assume the king could manage it. And there was only one higher rank to which a rising tide could lift him: the one Swemmel now held. He didn’t want the king believing he aspired to the throne. Such notions, as he’d thought during the parade, were dangerous. He nodded to Merovec. “After putting up with me for so long, you deserve a promotion.”

“Thank you, sir,” Merovec said. “What rank do you suppose I’ll have when the next war comes down the ley line at us?”

“The next war?” Rathar echoed.

His adjutant nodded. “Aye, sir. The one against the islanders, I mean. Whoever wins that will have all of Derlavai in his beltpouch.”

“If it comes soon, we won’t win it,” Rathar said. “If it comes soon, they’ll serve Cottbus as they served Gyorvar, and we can’t hit back the same way. They can make us back away from whatever we try. “We’d have to.”

I hope we’d have to, the marshal thought. If Swemmel gets a sudden attack of pride, he could throw this whole kingdom down the sewer. He would have worried less with a calmer, more sensible ruler-not that Unkerlant had enjoyed a lot of calm, sensible rulers in her history.

A young lieutenant stuck his head into the office, spotted Marshal Rathar, and brightened. “There you are, lord Marshal,” he said, as if Rathar had been playing hide-and-seek. “His Majesty wants to confer with you. At once.”

At once should have gone without saying where Swemmel was concerned. Being king meant never having to wait. “I’m coming,” Rathar said. That also went without saying. Merovec saluted as the marshal left the office. As always when summoned by Swemmel, Rathar wondered if he would ever come back here again.

He surrendered his ceremonial sword to Swemmel’s guards, let them frisk him, and then abased himself before his sovereign. “You may rise,” the king said. “Did you see the Kuusaman and Lagoan vultures perched on the reviewing stand with us when you marched past?”

“Aye, your Majesty,” Rathar replied. “I noticed the islanders’ ministers and their attaches.”

“What do you think they made of our might?” King Swemmel asked.

“Your Majesty, no matter how strong we are in soldiery, we dare not cross Lagoas and Kuusamo in any serious way till we can match them in magecraft, too,” Rathar said. “They have to know that as well as we do.”

Grimly, Swemmel nodded. “And so they laugh at us behind their hands. Well, we shall set our own mages to work, as indeed we have already done, and we shall see what spying can bring us, too.”

“That will not be so easy,” Marshal Rathar said. “How can one of our people pretend to come from Lagoas or Kuusamo?”

“One of our people would have a difficult time,” the king agreed. “There are, however, some few Algarvians who speak Lagoan without a trace of accent. Some of them were Mezentio’s spies. Paid well enough-and with their families held hostage to guard against betrayal-they should serve us well, too.”

“Ah,” Rathar said. “If we can bring that off, it will serve us well.”

“Many Algarvians are whores who will do anything for money,” Swemmel said. Rathar nodded. The king went on, “Our task is to find the ones who will be able to understand what they need to learn, and to slip them into the Lagoan Guild of Mages. It may not be easy or quick, but we think it can be done. As they say in cards, one peek is worth a thousand finesses.”

Rathar laughed. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d heard King Swemmel crack a joke. Then he realized the king wasn’t joking. He nodded again all the same. Joking or not, Swemmel was right.

Nineteen

When the door to Lurcanio’s cell opened at a time when he wasn’t scheduled to be fed or exercised, he bit down on the inside of his lower lip. A break in routine meant trouble. He hadn’t taken long to learn that. How many captives in Algarvian gaols learned the same lesson? he wondered. More than a few: of that he had no doubt. It didn’t matter. Now it was happening to him. That mattered more than anything else in the world.