Through the Darkness

Maybe the jeweler had been robbed before. Maybe he just knew how the minds of Algarvian constables worked. His expression sour, he said, “You mean you’ll make the stuff disappear for good if I don’t pay you off.”

“I never said that,” Bembo answered righteously: everyone else gathered around the dead Kaunian was listening. Being corrupt was one thing, getting caught being corrupt something else again. Still more righteously, he went on, “What you’re saying violates our regulations.”

Oraste gave him a horrible look. Having killed a robber, he wanted to make a profit on the deal, too. Fortunately, the jeweler wasn’t so naive as to take Bembo seriously. He said, “Come back to my shop, boys, and we can talk this over like reasonable people.”

Once inside the shop--which had several glass cases opened, and several others smashed--Bembo said, “All right, pal, just how reasonable do you propose to be?”

He and Oraste left without the sack of trinkets, but with a couple of gold-pieces each that hadn’t been in their belt pouches before. “If I’d thought getting rid of robbers was such good business, I’d’ve tried harder before,” Oraste said.

“If you’d listened more to me, you’d have known that,” Bembo answered. “Your trouble is, half the time you care more about smashing heads than making a good deal. This time, you got to do both.”

“What if I did?” Oraste said. “We’d better see if we can find out who that dead Kaunian sack of turds is--was. If we can get a name for him, maybe we can find out who his pals are.”

“That’s true.” Bembo gave his partner a puzzled look. Oraste wasn’t usually so diligent. “Why do you want ‘em so bad?”

“Were you born that stupid, or did you have to practice?” Oraste asked. “Whichever, you’re a champion. Why do you suppose the cursed Kaunians were after a jeweler? Just for the take? Maybe, but not bloody likely, you ask me. Who’s getting the money they’d take in from unloading those jewels? Nobody who likes Algarvians any too well, or I’m a naked black Zuwayzi.”

Bembo saw nasty, greedy men everywhere he looked. Years as a constable had taught him to do that. He didn’t see plots everywhere he looked. Here in Gromheort, maybe that meant he was missing things. “You’d look good as a naked black Zuwayzi,” he remarked.

“You’d look good as a mountain ape,” Oraste replied. “It’s about the only way you would look good.” He turned to the people who were gawking at the robber’s body. “Anybody here know this filthy Kaunian son of a whore?”

“He’s liable to come from one of the villages,” Bembo said.

But Oraste shook his head. “He’ll be a townman. You wait and see. If he wasn’t, how would his pals and him know which place to hit?” Bembo’s only answer was a grunt. He hated it when Oraste outthought him, and Oraste had done it twice in a row now.

Nobody in the crowd spoke up. Bembo said, “I know you people don’t much like Algarvians, but do you love Kaunians? Do you want them robbing you next?”

Someone said, “Isn’t that the fellow named Gippias?” Bembo didn’t see who’d chosen to open his mouth, but Oraste did. He knifed through the crowd and grabbed the Forthwegian. The man looked anything but happy about having to say more, but that was just too bloody bad. Bembo and Oraste looked at each other and nodded. They had a name. They’d find out more. And if there was a plot, they’d find out about that, too.

More and more these days, Ealstan thought of Vanai as Thelberge. Things were safer that way. Even inside their flat, they spoke more Forthwegian and less Kaunian than they had before she’d turned the botched spell in You Too Can Be a Mage into one that really did what it was supposed to do. When the spell that made her swarthy and stocky lapsed and she got her own features back for a while, he would look at her sidelong, a little curious, a little surprised. Maybe that was because he wasn’t used to seeing Kaunian looks under her dark hair-- for her hair, of course, being dyed, didn’t go back to blond. But maybe it was because he wasn’t so used to her real looks any more, too.

“Do you know what we can do?” he asked one evening after supper. “If you want to, I mean.”

Vanai set down the dirty dish she’d been washing. “No, what?”

He took a deep breath. Once he’d said what he was going to say, he couldn’t back away from it. “We could go down to the hall of laws and get married. If you want to, I mean.”

For a long moment, Vanai didn’t say anything. She looked away from Ealstan. Fear ran through him. Was she going to turn him down? But then she looked back. Tears streaked her face. “You’d marry me, in spite of--everything?” she asked. Everything, of course, boiled down to one thing: her blood.

“No,” Ealstan said. “I just asked you that to watch you jump.” And then, fearful lest she take him seriously, he went on, “I’m marrying you--or I will marry you, if you want to marry me--because of everything. I can’t imagine finding anybody else I’d rather spend the rest of my life with.”