Out of the Darkness

“Very neat,” Lurcanio said. The sarcasm got through; the judge flushed. Lurcanio went on, “No court to which to appeal, you say? May I not appeal to King Gainibu himself? I got to know him well during the occupation.” He turned out not to be quite so sottish and worthless as I thought he was, too. You never can tell.

That request seemed to catch the panel by surprise. The judges put their heads together and argued in low voices. At last, the senior judge looked up. “Very well, Colonel. You will be furnished pen and ink for this purpose.” He turned to the guards. “Take him back to his cell. Let him write what he will. Take the appeal to the king and let his will be done.”

“Aye, your Excellency,” the guards chorused. They hauled Lurcanio from his seat. He blew Krasta a kiss as they led him away. Her scowl made him smile.

He wondered whether they would bother following the judge’s orders, but they did. Lurcanio put his case as best he could. He wished he were writing Algarvian; being persuasive in a language not his own was hard. But then, how much difference would it make? Not much, he feared.

When he’d finished, he gave the appeal to the guards and asked for another leaf of paper. “What’s this one for?” one of them asked suspiciously.

Lurcanio looked at him. “I am going to fold it into a ladder, stick it out the window, climb down it, and escape,” he answered, deadpan. For a moment, the guards took him seriously; alarm flared on their faces. When they realized he hadn’t meant it, they started to get angry. He wondered if he’d earned himself a beating.

But then, to his relief, one of them laughed. “Funny boy, aren’t you?” the fellow said. “You aren’t going anywhere, not till-” He drew the edge of his hand across his throat. “Enough jokes now. Tell me what you want it for.”

“I want to write another letter,” Lurcanio said. “Your censors will read it. You will probably read it yourself. By all the signs, I will not have many more chances to write letters.”

“You’ve got that straight.” The guard thought for a moment, then shrugged. “Well, why the blazes not? If we don’t like what you write, the letter’ll never get out of gaol.”

“Exactly so.” Lurcanio bowed. “I thank you.”

He gnawed at the end of the pen when they gave him the new leaf of paper. He’d known exactly what he wanted to say to King Gainibu, even if he’d sometimes had trouble writing it in Valmieran. Here. . How do I even begin? he. wondered. But that solved itself. By the time you read this, I expect I shall be dead, he wrote. Coming out and saying that, even on paper, felt oddly liberating. He had an easier time going on from there than he’d thought he would.

The guards took away not only the letter but also the pen and the bottle of ink. “We don’t want you turning this into a stick, now,” one of them said, and laughed at his own joke.

Lurcanio dutifully chuckled, too. “If I could, I would,” he said. “But a man would have to be more than a first-rank mage to bring that off, I fear. He would have to be what the Ice People call a god.”

“Those stinking, hairy savages,” the guard said, nothing but scorn in his voice. He took the letter out of the cell. The door slammed shut. The bar thudded into place to keep it shut.

Two afternoons later, the answer from the King of Valmiera to Lurcanio’s appeal arrived. Lurcanio broke the seal and unfolded the leaf of paper. He recognized Gainibu’s script, though the writing looked less shaky than it had when the king drank himself into a stupor almost every night.