Through the Darkness

Bembo advanced on the Kaunian. So did Oraste. Behind them, the two shopkeepers both exclaimed. The constables ignored them. “All right, pal,” Bembo said. “What were you doing sliding through the parts of Gromheort where you’re not supposed to go?”

“I was looking for word of my granddaughter,” the Kaunian answered in his slow, precise Algarvian. “I am concerned for her safety.”

Oraste laughed. “She’s a Kaunian, right, same as you are? None of your buggers are safe. You sure aren’t safe, old man.” He pulled his bludgeon off his belt and twirled it by its leather thong.

The scar where Bembo had struck the Kaunian on the road from Oyngestun to Gromheort was still bright pink. If he needed another lesson, Oraste looked eager to arrange it. The Kaunian licked his lips. He saw what was on Oraste’s face, too. One of his hands slid into a trouser pocket. Coins jingled. He said, “You never really saw me outside this quarter, did you?”

“I don’t know,” Bembo answered. “I haven’t decided yet.”

Although the Kaunian had proved pretty dense before, he had no trouble figuring out what that meant. He gave Bembo and Oraste enough silver to make them decide they hadn’t seen him sneaking back after all. And then, showing he really could learn, he got out of there in a hurry, to keep the constables from beating him even after he’d paid them.

They turned back to the two Kaunian shopkeepers, only to discover the blonds had made up their quarrel. Oraste hefted his bludgeon. “I ought to bloody both of you for wasting our time,” he growled.

Both the shopkeepers started jingling coins. Bembo, a mild enough sort most of the time, wouldn’t have got so much out of them. They were, however, plainly scared to death of Oraste--and they couldn’t very well bribe him without bribing Bembo, too. The plump constable’s belt pouch grew full and nicely rounded.

“That wasn’t so bad,” he said as he and Oraste returned to their beat. Behind them, the two Kaunians started shouting at each other again. Bembo still had a miserable time following their language, but he thought the excitable one was berating the other for calling the constables.

Oraste spat on the cobblestones. “Oh, aye, it’s some silver,” he said, “but what can we spend silver on? Not much, not in this rathole of a town. I’d sooner have broken some heads.”

“You can always spend money in a tavern,” Bembo said. “If you feel like it, you can break heads in a tavern, too.”

“It’s not the same,” Oraste said. “Breaking heads in a tavern is just brawling. If I do it on the job, I get paid for it.”

Bembo had known a fair number of constables with that attitude, but few so open about it as Oraste. Preferring bribes to brawls, Bembo said, “There’ll be other chances. The way we’ve stuffed all these Kaunians into this little tiny stretch of town, they’re going to be at each other’s throats all the time, so we’ll get plenty to do.”

Oraste looked down a cross street toward the heart of the Kaunian district in Gromheort. The blonds had set up a market along both sides of the street, which was too narrow to begin with. Bembo wondered what they sold one another; none of them could have had very much.

“Aye, they are packed pretty tight,” Oraste allowed. “I just hope there’s no pestilence that starts going through ‘em.”

“Why?” Bembo said in some surprise; his partner usually showed no concern whatever for Kaunians. “Because the pestilence might spread to us, you mean?”

“Oh, that, too,” Oraste said, though he didn’t seem to have thought of it himself. “But what I mostly meant is, a pestilence would kill off the lousy blonds before we got the chance to use their life energy against the Unkerlanters or wherever else we need it.”

“Oh,” Bembo said. “That’s true.” And so it was, even if his stomach did a slow flipflop every time he thought about it. “I wish we could have beaten King Swemmel without using magic like that.”

“So do I, on account of it would have been easier on us,” Oraste said. “But the more Kaunians we get rid of, the better off everybody’ll be after we finally win the war. They’ve been stepping on our faces for too long. Now it’s our turn.”

Bembo couldn’t disagree, not out loud. Oraste would have thought him a slacker or, worse, a closet Kaunian-lover. He wasn’t. He had no use for the blonds. He hadn’t back in Tricarico, and he didn’t here in Gromheort, either. But he was too easygoing to enjoy massacre.

A couple of other constables came out of the district in the company of six or eight young Kaunian women. Half the women looked sullen and bitter, the other half anywhere from resigned to happy. “Where are you taking them?” Bembo called.

“Recruits for a soldiers’ brothel,” one of his countrymen answered. He turned back to the women, saying, “Don’t any of you worry about a thing. By the powers above, you’ll have plenty to eat, and that’s no lie. Got to keep you good and plump to give the boys somewhere nice to lay down.” One of the women translated for the others. A couple of them, the skinnier ones, nodded.