Through the Darkness

“Well, so he is,” Lurcanio admitted. “More versatile, too, by all appearances.” He rubbed his chin. “I wonder if I made a mistake, letting him take you off that one night. Who knows what he had in mind?”

“Nothing happened,” Krasta said quickly, though she’d wanted, intended, something to happen. To keep Lurcanio from seeing that, she added, “We both might have been killed if we hadn’t gone out just before that cursed egg burst.”

“Aye, I remember thinking so at the time.” Lurcanio scratched the scar on his face he’d carried away from that night. “A lucky escape for the two of you. We never have caught the son of a whore who secreted that egg there. When we do...” His handsome features congealed into an expression that reminded Krasta why she feared to cross him.

Hesitantly, she said, “If you Algarvians worked more to make us like you and did less to--”

Lurcanio didn’t let her finish. He burst out laughing, so uproariously that people from all over The Suckling Pig turned to stare at him. Ignoring them all, he said, “My dear, my dear, my foolish dear, nothing under the sun will make Kaunians love Algarvians, any more than cats will love dogs. If we do not use the strength we have, your people will despise us.”

“Instead, you make them hate you,” Krasta said.

“Let them hate, so long as they fear,” Lurcanio said. As he had a way of doing, he waggled a finger at her. “And with that, I give you a word of advice: do not believe everything that comes to you in the daily post.”

Krasta picked up her glass of spirits, knocked it back, and signaled for a refill. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” The liquor had made her nose numb. Fear did the same to her lips. He’d made jokes about knowing what came to her before she got it. What if they weren’t jokes at all?

“Very well,” he said lightly now. “Have it your way. But you had better go right on not knowing what I’m talking about, or you will be most sorry. Do you understand what I’m telling you?”

“I think so,” Krasta answered. How did he know? How could he know? Did he have a mage monitoring her? Did the servants blab? They hadn’t sorted the afternoon post, but some of them might have seen the envelope she’d got. Did Lurcanio sort through everything that went down the commode, by the powers above? Krasta smiled. There were times when she thought he deserved to do just that.

Whatever he knew, he didn’t know everything. He didn’t know about Skarnu. He’d asked after her brother before, when she didn’t know about him, either. Whatever he knew, he hadn’t pulled all the pieces together. Krasta hoped he never would.

Ten

Marshal Rathar wished he were still at the front. Coming back to Cottbus meant coming back to King Swemmel’s constant complaints. It meant coming back to subordination, too. Away from the capital, Rathar gave orders and none dared say him nay. In Cottbus, Swemmel gave the orders. Rathar understood that very well.

He also understood why he’d been summoned to the capital. Major Merovec fiddled with the decorations pinned onto Rathar’s fanciest dress-uniform tunic. “The ministers--especially the Lagoan--will sneer at you if everything isn’t perfect,” Merovec said fussily. He sniffed. “I don’t care what anybody says: the whoreson looks like a stinking Algarvian to me.”

“He looks like an Algarvian to me, too,” Rathar answered. “There’s one difference, though: he’s on our side. Now am I pretty enough? If I am, kindly let me take my place beside the king.”

Still fussing, Merovec reluctantly stepped aside. Rathar walked from the antechamber out into the throne room. A murmur ran through the courtiers as they spied him. They wished he were at the front, too; his presence meant they had less room for jockeying among themselves.

He’d overstated things when telling Merovec he would stand beside Swemmel. The king, gorgeous in ermine and velvet and cloth of gold, sat on a throne that raised him high above the mere mortals who formed his court. That was how things were in Unkerlant: first the sovereign, then, a long way below, everyone else. But Rathar’s place was closest to the throne.

Horns blared harsh. In a great voice, a herald cried, “Your Majesty, before you come the ministers of Lagoas and Kuusamo!” And down the long way from the entrance to the throne room to the throne itself came the two diplomats. They walked side by side in step with each other, so that neither had to acknowledge his colleague as his superior.

Lord Moisio of Kuusamo bore an annoyingly ambiguous title, as far as Rathar was concerned. He wore an embroidered tunic over baggy trousers, but there his resemblance to anything Kaunian stopped. He was swarthier than any Unkerlanter, little and lithe, with narrow eyes and a nose that hardly seemed there at all. A few gray hairs sprouted from his chin: a most halfhearted beard.