Rulers of the Darkness

That jerked a laugh out of Bembo. When he saw that the constables did have a mage with them, and what sort of mage he was, it stopped being funny. Bembo knew a drunk when he saw one. He'd dragged plenty of them out of the gutter- aye, and beaten a few who'd provoked him, too. This fellow was standing up, but looked as if he'd fall over in a stiff breeze. He also looked like a man with a monster hangover, an expression with which Bembo was intimately familiar.

"Listen to me, you people!" shouted the Algarvian constabulary captain who looked to be in charge of things. "We are going to get everybody out of this here building. Men, women, children- everybody. We'll clip 'em all, top and bottom."

"See?" Bembo whispered to Oraste. His partner nodded.

The captain went on, "On account of that still might not tell us what we want- these Kaunians are demon sly, they are- we've got Master Gastable here with us." He pointed to the mage, who still seemed less than steady. "He can sniff out a blond like a dog can sniff out-"

"Another dog's backside," Bembo said, and missed whatever simile the officer used.

"So we'll root 'em out if they're in there," the constabulary captain finished. "And if they're not, odds are we'll dig up some other nasty Kaunians even so. Our soldiers'll be able to use their life energy- you'd best believe that."

Use their life energy. That was a nice phrase. Bembo contemplated it and nodded. You could say something like that and not have to think at all about actually killing people. Bembo approved. He didn't like to think about killing people, even Kaunians. Sometimes it needed doing- he knew that- but he didn't like to think about it.

"Let's go!" the captain cried. The constables swarmed into the block of flats and started pounding on doors. The captain stayed out on the sidewalk. It wasn't as if he'd do any of the hard work himself. He took a flask from his belt, swigged, and passed it to Gastable the mage.

"Open up!" Bembo shouted in front of the first door he and Oraste came to. The two of them waited a few heartbeats. Then Oraste kicked in the door. The constables burst into the flat, sticks aimed and ready to blaze. But there was nobody to blaze; the place appeared to stand empty. They quickly turned it upside down, poking their noses everywhere someone might hide. They found nobody.

"Whoever lives there'll get a surprise when he comes home tonight," Oraste said cheerfully. He and Bembo didn't bother closing the door after themselves. "I wonder if he'll have any stuff left by then. No skin off my nose either way."

He pounded on the next door. A Forthwegian woman opened it. Bembo eyed her appreciatively. She had a pretty face; he thought it a pity she followed her country's fashion by wearing such a long, baggy tunic. "Out!" he said, and jerked a thumb toward the stairs leading down to the street. "Anybody else in here with you?"

She yammered at him in Forthwegian, which he didn't speak. He tried again, this time in his halting classical Kaunian. She understood that, and turned out to speak Kaunian a lot better and a lot more angrily than he did. But when Oraste pointed his stick at her face, she quieted down and got moving in a hurry.

"See?" Oraste said. "You just have to know which language to use."

They went through the flat and found an old woman snoring in bed, sound asleep despite the commotion. When they shook her awake, she cursed in Forthwegian and Kaunian. "Oh, shut up, you horrible hag," Bembo said, not bothering to waste politeness on anybody who wasn't good-looking. "Go downstairs." He managed to put that into Kaunian, and the old woman, still fuming, went.

"I hope she turns out to be a blond," Oraste said. "Serve the noisy sow right."

"She'll be steamed enough when they flip up her tunic and trim her bush." Bembo shuddered. "Checking her daughter would be fun, but her? I'm glad somebody else'll get stuck doing that."

Along with the rest of the constables, they went through the building like a dose of salts. A few coins left too visible ended up in Bembo's belt pouch. He didn't notice Oraste making up for low pay, but he wouldn't have been surprised. Once the constables had got up to the top floor, a sergeant said, "All right, let's go back down and make sure the whoresons we rousted don't give anybody any trouble."

When Bembo got down to the sidewalk again, women were screeching about getting clipped anywhere but on their heads. A man and woman who hadn't thought to dye the hair on their private parts had been separated from their neighbors. Their faces were masks of dismay; four or five Algarvian constables pointed sticks at them.

Gastable was making sorcerous passes and muttering to himself in front of a pair of men who looked like Forthwegians. They kept on looking like Forthwegians once he finished his passes, too. Did that mean they weren't disguised, or was he inept? Bembo had no answers. He suspected Gastable had no answers, either.