Out of the Darkness

Her driver gave her a bleary look when she told him she wanted to go out. He was drinking much too much these days. Krasta couldn’t even yell at him, the way she wanted to. Who could guess what would happen if she antagonized the servants? They were liable to go to her brother, and she had enough trouble with Skarnu as things were.

The day was clear and cold and crisp as the carriage rattled into the heart of Priekule. People on the streets looked shabby, but they looked happy, lively, in a way they hadn’t when the Algarvians held the city. Krasta still wasn’t used to not seeing redheads strolling along and taking in the sights. When Algarvian soldiers in Unkerlant got leave, they often came east to rest and relax in the capital of a kingdom that had, at least for a while, truly yielded to them.

No Valmieran wore kilts these days, either. They’d grown moderately popular among those who wanted to curry favor with the occupiers or just wanted to show off shapely legs. No more, though. Now, if the Algarvian-style garments weren’t thrown out, they lay at the bottom of clothes chests and in the back of closets. For a Valmieran to put on a kilt today might well be to risk a life.

“Threadneedle Street, milady,” Krasta’s driver said glumly. “Best you get out now, so I can find a place to put the carriage.”

“Oh, very well,” Krasta said. The street was crowded, not only with carriages but also with goods wagons and with a swarm of foot traffic. Tradesmen and shopgirls and riffraff like that, Krasta thought scornfully. If these are the people Bauska thinks of as everybody, powers above be praised that I have some idea of what true quality is worth.

But her maidservant had been right: plenty of the cramped little shops along Threadneedle Street sported names like for a mother and clothes for you both and even-dismayingly, as far as Krasta was concerned-maybe it’s twins. She rolled her eyes. She didn’t particularly want one baby. If she were to have two. . She wondered if Valnu could have sired one and Lurcanio the other. Wouldn’t that be a scandal? She had no idea if it were possible, and even less idea of whom to ask. Not asking anyone struck her as a pretty good plan.

Shopping here, she rapidly discovered, was different from shopping on the Boulevard of Horsemen. No fawning shopgirls guided her from one elegant creation to the next. Instead, clothes were crammed onto racks. In shops with sale! painted on their windows, getting anything took harder fighting than most of what the Valmieran army had done. Commoner women much more extravagantly pregnant than Krasta elbowed her aside to get at a pair of loose-fitting trousers or a baggy tunic they wanted. She didn’t need many lessons along those lines. Before long, she gave as good as she got, if not better. After all, wasn’t elbowing commoners aside a proper sport for a noblewoman?

The clothes were cheaper than she’d expected. They were also none too sturdily made. When she complained about that to a shopkeeper, he said, “Lady, use your head. You think you’re gonna be in ‘em long enough to wear ‘em out?”

What he said made good sense, but his tone infuriated her. “Do you know who I am?” she demanded.

“Somebody trying to waste my time, and I ain’t got it to waste,” he answered, and turned to a woman holding out some trousers to him. “You like these, darling? That’s two and a half in silver. . Thank you very much.”

Krasta didn’t buy anything there: the only revenge she could take. She did get what she needed, and she hunted down her driver, who stowed away his flask when he saw her coming. “Home,” she said, and escaped Threadneedle Street with nothing but relief.

Back at the mansion, though, Merkela happened to be walking outside when Krasta came up the drive. The farm woman’s son toddled beside her, holding her hand for balance. “What have you got in the sacks?” Merkela snapped, as if suspecting Krasta of smuggling secrets to the Algarvians.

“Clothes,” Krasta answered shortly. She had as little to do with Merkela as she could. It was either that or claw her, and Merkela would delight in clawing back.

She clawed now, with words instead of nails: “Oh, aye, for your bulging belly. At least I know who my son’s father is. Don’t you wish you could say the same?” Krasta snarled an unpleasantry at her and stalked-as well as a pregnant woman could stalk-into the mansion.

Fernao’s head ached. Like a lot of the mages at the hostel in the Naantali district, he’d had too much to drink bidding Ilmarinen farewell the night before. He looked at the mirror above the sink in his room-looked at it and winced. “Powers above,” he muttered. “My eyes are as red as my hair.”