Through the Darkness

Lurcanio bowed again. “I do admire your nerve. Your good sense leaves something to be desired. I am certain I am not the first to tell you this. I am just as certain I am unlikely to be the last. But I am also certain that if you embarrass me in public, I must do the same to you.” Without warning, without wasted motion, he slapped her face.

Heads whipped around at the sound of the slap. Then, very quickly, everyone pretended not to notice. Such things happened now and again. Krasta had seen them. She’d laughed at women foolish enough to get caught. Now, no doubt, other women would laugh at her.

She hated that. But she didn’t think of slapping Lurcanio back, not even for a moment. She’d slapped him once, when she still thought of him as a social inferior rather than a conqueror. He’d slapped her back then, stunning her and establishing a dominance he’d held ever since. What would he do if she dared rebel in any real way? She didn’t have the nerve to find out.

To Valnu, Lurcanio said, “As for you, sir, try your luck elsewhere.”

Valnu bowed low. He wore an Algarvian-style kilt tonight, as he often did, and he also aped Algarvian manners. “As you say, my lord Count, so shall it be.”

“Of course it shall.” Now Lurcanio sounded as smug as if Algarve truly were on top of the world in every way, as if her armies had not fallen short outside of Cottbus the winter before, as if King Swemmel’s men weren’t squeezing another Algarvian army in a mailed fist now, far off in the southwest.

He believed in himself. Because he did, he made Krasta believe in him, too. And he made her forget all about whatever it was she’d said that had so alarmed Valnu.

In the bathroom, she splashed cold water on the red mark on her cheek. Then she had to spend more time repairing her powder and paint. She got drunk afterwards, as she often did at entertainments, but stayed more circumspect than she was otherwise likely to have done.

After the driver brought her and Lurcanio back to the mansion through the cold, slippery streets of Priekule, the Algarvian went up to her bedchamber with her. That took her by surprise; she’d thought he would sleep in his own bed as a sign of his anger. Instead, he used hands and mouth to bring her to a quick, abrupt peak of pleasure. He was always scrupulous about such things.

And then he surprised her again by rolling her onto her belly. When he began, she let out an indignant squawk. “Be still,” he snapped. “Let us call this ... a salute to Valnu.”

She had to lie there and endure it. It hurt--not too much, but it did. And it humiliated her, as Lurcanio no doubt intended. When it was over, he patted her on one bare cheek and laughed a little, then dressed and left the bedchamber. Go ahead and laugh, Krasta thought. You don’t know everything there is to know, and I’ll never, ever tell you.

Exile. In essence, Skarnu had been in exile from his own way of life ever since he joined King Gainibu’s army when the war against Algarve was young and fresh and still held the possibility of glory. After he found out what that possibility was worth, he’d made another life for himself, one in most ways more satisfying than that which he’d left behind. And now he’d had that one yanked out from under him, too.

Curse you, Krasta, he thought, staring up at the badly plastered ceiling of the cheap flat the irregulars in Ventspils had found for him. If not for his sister, how would that cursed Lurcanio have known to come hunting for him? He hoped Merkela was all right, Merkela and the child she was carrying. Hope was all he could do. He didn’t dare to post her even the most innocuous letter, lest some Algarvian mage use it to track him down.

Here in Ventspils, he felt suspended betwixt and between. Back in Priekule, he’d been a person of the capital, a man of the big city, who’d enjoyed everything it had to offer. On the farm, even in Pavilosta, he’d learned to find simpler contentments: a good crop of beans in the garden, a laying hen the envy of all his neighbors, a mug of ale after a hard day’s work. And he’d learned the difference between pleasure and love, a distinction he’d never bother drawing in Priekule.

He had no work in Ventspils, not yet. He had no friends here, only a handful of acquaintances among the irregulars who’d installed him in the flat. And Ventspils, off to the east of Priekule, had to be the most boring town in Valmiera. If it wasn’t, he pitied the place that was.