Out of the Darkness

“Lurcanio? No doubt he was,” Valnu replied. The bow he gave Merkela was distinctly mocking. “And you’re learning cattiness fast. You’ll make a splendid noblewoman, no doubt about it.” He grinned. She spluttered. He went on, “But I still mean what I said. Krasta held my life in the hollow of her hand. She knew what I was, knew without the tiniest fragment of doubt after the late, unlamented Count Amatu met his untimely demise after dining at her mansion. Yet even if she did know, neither Lurcanio nor any of the other redheads learned of it from her. More: she helped make them believe I was harmless. So I beg both of you, do have such patience with her as you can.”

He sounded unwontedly serious. Merkela’s eyes blazed. Getting her to change her mind once she’d made it up was always hard. Skarnu said, “We have a while to think about it. Her baby’s not due for another couple of months. If it looks like you-”

“It will be the handsomest-or loveliest, depending-child ever born,” Valnu broke in.

“If it’s a little sandy-haired bastard, though …” Merkela’s voice was as cold as the winter winds that blew up from the land of the Ice People.

“Even then,” Valnu said. “There’s a difference between going to bed with someone for love and doing it from. . expediency, shall we say?” By his tone, he was intimately acquainted with every inch of that debatable ground.

But he didn’t persuade Merkela. “I know how far I will go,” she said. “I know how far everybody else will go, too.” She didn’t quite turn her back on Valnu, but she might as well have.

And Skarnu thought she was likely to be right. In a newly freed Valmiera where everyone was doing his best to pretend no one had ever collaborated with Mezentio’s men, bearing a half-Algarvian child would not be tolerated. The only reason Bauska had had as little trouble over Brindza as she’d had was that her bastard daughter seldom left the mansion. A servant and her child could hope to remain obscure. A marchioness? Skarnu doubted it.

“A pity,” Valnu murmured.

“How much pity did the Algarvians ever show us?” Merkela said. “How much did they show anyone of Kaunian blood? Did you ever meet any of the Kaunians from Forthweg who got away from them? You wouldn’t talk of pity if you had.”

Valnu sighed. “There is some truth in what you say, milady. Some, I have never denied it. Whether there is quite so much as you think.. ”

Merkela took a deep, angry breath. Skarnu didn’t want to see a quarrel-no, more likely a brawl-erupt. Maybe that was the disease of responsibility, as Valnu had said. Whatever it was, he had to move quickly-and delicately. Calming Merkela when her temper was high had the same potential for disaster as trying to keep an egg from bursting after its first spell somehow failed. Mistakes could have spectacularly disastrous consequences.

Here, though, he thought he had the answer. He said, “Shall we set our wedding day for about the time when Krasta’s baby is due? Whatever happens then, we’ll upstage her.”

That distracted Merkela, as he’d hoped. She nodded and said, “Aye, why not?” But she wasn’t completely distracted, for she added, “It will also help quiet the scandal if she does have a little redheaded bastard.”

“Maybe some,” said Skarnu, who’d hoped she wouldn’t think of that.

Merkela’s frown was thoughtful now, not angry-or not so angry. “As far as Krasta’s concerned, we shouldn’t muffle the scandal. We should shout it. As far as you’re concerned, though-”

“As far as the whole family is concerned,” Skarnu broke in. “Whoever that baby’s father is, it’s first cousin to little Gedominu, you know.”

His fiancee plainly hadn’t thought of that. Neither had Skarnu, till this moment. “They’ll have to live with it all their lives, won’t they?” Merkela murmured. Skarnu nodded. A bit later, and more than a bit reluctantly, so did she. “All right. Let it be as you say.”

“Do invite me,” Valnu cooed. “After all, I may be an uncle.”

Merkela hadn’t thought of that, either. Skarnu said, “We wouldn’t think of doing anything else. We’ll need someone to pinch the bridesmaids-and maybe the groomsmen, too.”

“You flatter me outrageously,” Valnu said. And then, pouring oil on the fire, he asked, “And will you invite the aunt, too?”

Skarnu wanted to hit him with something. But Merkela merely sounded matter-of-fact as she answered, “She wouldn’t come anyhow. I’m only a peasant. I don’t belong. I could be a traitor, so long as I had blue blood. That wouldn’t matter. But a farm girl in the family …”

“Is the best thing that ever happened to me.” Skarnu slipped his arm around her waist.

Valnu said, “Nobles wouldn’t be nobles if we didn’t fret about such things. It could be worse, though. It could be Jelgava. Jelgavan nobles make ours look like shopkeepers, the way they go on about the glory and purity of their blood.”

With a certain venomous satisfaction, Merkela said, “It didn’t keep their noblewomen from lying down for the redheads, did it?”