Through the Darkness

He’d just turned onto his own street when a couple of squads of Algarvian constables tramped up it, every one of them looking as grim as any soldiers he’d ever seen. The redheads carried infantry-style sticks, not the shorter, less powerful weapons they usually used. Their eyes swung toward him in frightening unison. He shrank away from them. He couldn’t help himself. Had he given them the least excuse, they would have blazed him, and he knew it.

When he got up to his flat, Vanai exclaimed, “Powers above, what’s going on out there?”

“Riot,” he answered succinctly. “For once, you can be glad you’re holed up in here. I’m going to stay right here, too, till things quiet down or till I have to go out for food.” Only after the words were out of his mouth did he realize that sounded less than heroic. After listening to himself again, he decided he didn’t care.

Bembo and Oraste paced along the edge of the district into which Gromheort’s Kaunians and those from the surrounding countryside had been crowded. As long as the blonds stayed inside the district, everything was fine. When they didn’t, the Algarvian constables had to make them regret it.

“Supposed to be a tough time over in that Eoforwic place,” Bembo remarked. “For a couple of days there, I was wondering if they were going to stick us on a caravan and send us over there to help put out the fire.”

With a shrug, his partner answered, “Wouldn’t matter to me. If the Kaunians get out of line, we kick them around. If the Forthwegians get out of line, we kick them around, too.”

“You hate everybody, don’t you?” Bembo meant the question sardonically, but it came out sounding half admiring.

“I’m a fornicating constable,” Oraste answered. “It’s my fornicating job to hate everybody. Back in Tricarico, I hated Algarvians. I can still think of some Algarvians I hate, matter of fact.”

Bembo hoped Oraste was talking about Sergeant Pesaro. He didn’t ask, though. Had Oraste’s disdain been aimed at him, the other constable wouldn’t have hesitated to tell him so. Instead, Bembo said, “How are we supposed to win the war if the places we’ve conquered keep giving us trouble?”

His partner shrugged again. “We kill enough of those whoresons who think they’re so cursed smart, the rest will get the idea pretty stinking quick. One thing about dead men: they hardly ever talk back to you.”

A live man, a scrawny Kaunian with a leather apron over his tunic and trousers, came out of his shop and beckoned to the constables. Bembo and Oraste looked at each other. When a Kaunian actually wanted something to do with them, something fishy was liable to be going on. “What is it?” Bembo growled in his own language; if the blond didn’t speak Algarvian, the powers below were welcome to him.

But the Kaunian did, and pretty well, too: “Can you gentlemen please help me with a quarrel I am having with my neighbor?”

An unpleasant light blazed in Oraste’s eyes. Bembo understood what it meant. The Kaunian shopkeeper, perhaps luckily for him, didn’t. If Oraste decided this fellow was right--or if he could pay--his neighbor would regret it. If the neighbor had a better case--or more silver--this blond would rue the day he was born. Either way, Oraste would end up happy.

“What’s he doing to you?” Bembo asked. “Or what does he think you’re doing to him?”

The shopkeeper started to explain. A moment later, another Kaunian popped out of the shop next door and started screaming at him. This fellow’s Algarvian was worse than the first man’s, but he made up in excitement what he lacked in grammar. Bembo smiled to listen to him. Even if he didn’t talk any too well, in a way he sounded very Algarvian indeed.

Before long, both Kaunians were dropping broad hints about what they would do if only things were decided in their favor. Bembo smiled some more. This was shaping up as a profitable afternoon. And then, just when the excitable blond was about to make a real offer, Oraste gave Bembo a shot in the ribs with his elbow. The other constable pointed. “Look at that old bugger. If he’s not sneaking back after he was out when he wasn’t supposed to be, what is he doing?”

Sure enough, the silver-haired Kaunian was trying to edge past the constables and the argument and go deeper into the part of town where he was allowed to be. Since Bembo and Oraste were only paces inside the edge of that district, the Kaunian had to be coming from outside it. A schoolmaster’s logic couldn’t have cut more sharply.

“Hold up there, pal,” Bembo called to the man, who turned back to him with surprise and alarm on his face. A moment later, Bembo was surprised, too: surprised that he recognized the fellow. “It’s that old son of a whore from Oyngestun,” he said to Oraste.

“Well, kiss my arse if you’re not right,” Oraste said. “I knew he was mouthy. I didn’t know he was sneaky, too.”