Through the Darkness

Krasta didn’t laugh. Colonel Lurcanio, she’d learned, was as touchy about his dignity as a cat. She did say, “I wish Lagoas didn’t have to wait.”

“We had . . . plans for Setubal. They did not work out quite as we would have wished.” Lurcanio shrugged. “Such is life.”

Something in his voice warned Krasta against asking questions about what sort of plans the Algarvians had had. Plans like the ones my brother wrote about? she wondered. She didn’t want to believe that. If what Skarnu had written was true, she walked arm in arm with a murderer, or at least with an acquiescing accomplice to his kingdom’s murders.

One thing, at least: Lurcanio hadn’t asked her any questions lately about her brother. And, though he’d left the mansion two or three times in the past few weeks, he’d always come back on the grumpy side. That told her he hadn’t caught Skarnu--if he’d gone out hunting her brother. It also told him he hadn’t caught some young, pretty Valmieran commoner, which relieved her nearly as much.

Once they’d passed into the palace through doors and curtains, Krasta paused and blinked till she got used to the explosion of light within. Beside her, Lurcanio was doing the same thing. With a wry chuckle, he said, “The lamps in this palace were made for happier, safer times, I fear.”

“Well, then, Algarve should go on and win the war--I’ve told you that already,” Krasta said. “That would bring back the good times--some of them, anyhow.” Things wouldn’t be so good as they had been if the Algarvians kept on occupying Valmiera, but Krasta didn’t know what she could do about that.

“Aye, you have told me that.” Lurcanio’s voice was sour. “What you have not told me is exactly how to gain the victory. That would be helpful, you know.”

When the war was young, before Valmiera was overrun, Krasta had come to the palace to present her ideas on winning the war to King Gainibu’s soldiers. They hadn’t listened to her, and what had their failure to listen got them? Only defeat. She wasn’t shy about speaking her mind to Lurcanio now: “The first thing you ought to do is quit fighting over that stupid Sulingen place. Powers above, how long can a battle for one worthless Unkerlanter city go on, anyhow?”

“Sulingen is not worthless. Sulingen is far from worthless,” Lurcanio answered. “And the battle shall go on until we have won the victory we deserve.”

“Sounds like foolishness to me,” Krasta said with a sniff. Having delivered her pronouncement, she stalked down the hall with her nose in the air. Lurcanio had to hurry after her, and couldn’t give her any more of his cynical retorts. She didn’t miss them; she’d already heard too many of that sort.

With her nose in the air, she got the chance to appreciate the ornate paintings on the ceiling of the hallway. Some looked back to the time of the Kaunian Empire; others showed Kings of Valmiera and their courts from the days when her kingdom was strong and the Algarvians to the west weak and disunited. Those days were gone now, worse luck. The paintings, though, were only to be properly seen with one’s nose in the air. To Krasta, that in itself justified the aristocratic attitude.

A Valmieran functionary checked her name and Lurcanio’s off the list of guests for King Gainibu’s reception. That cheered Krasta; at her previous visit, a redhead had done the job. But, before she could twit Lurcanio about this tiny sign of Valmieran autonomy, an Algarvian came up to check what her countryman had done. Again, she kept quiet.

She’d been in this hall many times, including the evening when Gainibu, along with representatives from Jelgava and Sibiu and Forthweg, declared war on King Mezentio. And now the Algarvians occupied all those kingdoms, and only lands that had stayed neutral then still carried on the fight. A lesson lurked there somewhere, but Krasta could not find it.

She and Lurcanio got into the receiving line that snaked toward King Gainibu--and toward the Algarvian soldiers and pen-pushers who really ran Valmiera these days. Lurcanio said, “We must be early--his Majesty is hardly even weaving yet.”

That was cruel, which didn’t make it wrong. From even a little distance, Gainibu looked every inch a king: tall, erect, handsome, the chest of his tunic glittering with decorations--most of which were earned in the Six Years’ War, not honorary. Only when Krasta got closer did she note the glass of brandy in his left hand and the broken veins in his nose and eyes that said it was not the first such glass, nor the hundred and first, either. She’d seen the king far deeper into the bottle than this. Here, now, he still showed traces of the man he’d once been. That wouldn’t last through too many more brandies.

“Marchioness Krasta,” the king said. Aye, he was better than usual--he didn’t always remember who she was. Gainibu turned his watery--or spirituous--gaze on Lurcanio. “And the marchioness’ friend.”