Into the Darkness (35 page)

Bembo sighed. A constable who strolled into a pastry shop would surely come away with dainties full of almond paste and sweet cream and raisins and cherries, and he wouldn’t have to set a copper on the counter to get them, either. And now he wouldn’t be able to find out into which shop he should stroll. Life was full of small tragedies.

At last, after what seemed like forever but couldn’t have been longer than half that, the drill sergeant released his captives. “I’ll see you again day after tomorrow, though,” he threatened, “or maybe sooner, if the enemy does break through. You’d better hope he doesn’t, on account of they haven’t dug enough burial plots to hold all of you lugs yet.”

“Cheerful bugger, isn’t he?” Bembo said, but the pastry chef had already turned away. Bembo sighed again. He’d have to stay ignorant of where the fellow labored, at least till two days hence. With another sigh, he started back toward the constabulary station. He didn’t get time off for the militia drill; it was piled on to everything else he had to do. That struck him as monstrously unfair, but no one had asked his view of the matter. He’d received orders to report to that bellowing fiend in human shape, and he’d had to obey.

A street vendor waved a news sheet. “Black men throw Unkerlanters back again!” he shouted. “Read all about it!”

“Has King Swemmel started killing some of his generals yet, to persuade the rest to fight harder?” Bembo asked. He approved of killing Unkerlanter generals—
on general principles,
he thought with a grin at his own cleverness. For that matter, he approved of executions on general principles. He had trouble imagining a constable who didn’t.

“Buy my sheet here, and see for yourself,” the vendor answered. Bembo didn’t feel like buying a news sheet. He felt like having the fellow tell him what he wanted to know. He and the vendor traded insults, more good-natured than otherwise, till he rounded a corner.

A couple of men on the next street corner, one of them fair enough to have a good share of Kaunian blood, saw him coming and made themselves scarce. He wasn’t wearing his uniform tunic and kilt. Maybe one of them recognized his face. Maybe, too, both of them smelled him out as a constable even without seeing his uniform, even without recognizing his face. It wasn’t quite sorcery on the part of the bad eggs, but it wasn’t far removed, either.

When he walked up the stairs and into the station, Sergeant Pesaro greeted him with, “Ah, here is another one of our heroes!” No one had thrown Pesaro into the militia. He might have been able to march. On the other hand, he might as readily have fallen over dead from an apoplexy.

“A worn-out hero,” Bembo said mournfully. “If I have to do too much more of this, I’ll be a shadow of my former self.” He looked down at his belly. It wasn’t the size of Pesaro’s, but he still made a pretty substantial shadow.

“You complain so much, you might as well already be in the army, not the constabulary,” Pesaro said.

“Oh, and you’ve never grumbled in all your born days,” Bembo retorted, wagging a forefinger at the fat man behind the desk. Pesaro coughed a couple of times and turned red, perhaps from embarrassment, perhaps just because he was a fat man who sat behind a desk all day: even coughing was an exertion for him. Bembo went on, “I see in the news sheet that Zuwayza’s giving Unkerlant another clout in the head.”

“Efficiency,” Pesaro said with a laugh. “Don’t know how long those naked burnt-skins can keep doing what they’re doing, but it’s pretty funny while it’s going on.”

“So it is.” Bembo hid his disappointment. He’d hoped Pesaro would tell him more than he’d heard from the news-sheet vendor. Maybe the sergeant hadn’t felt like springing for a sheet today, either.

Then Pesaro said, “Only trouble is, I heard on the crystal this morning that we’re not the only ones who think so. Jelgava and Valmiera have sent messages to the Zuwayzi king, whatever his cursed name is, congratulating him on giving King Swemmel a hard time.”

“Can’t say I’m surprised,” Bembo answered. “When Swemmel jumped on Forthweg’s back, that meant we wouldn’t have to worry about our western front any more—or not about the Forthwegians there, anyway.”

“Oh, aye,” Pesaro said. “Not that Unkerlant’s any great neighbor to have. We’ve fought more wars with those bastards than anybody likes to remember, and it wouldn’t surprise me one bit if they were thinking about another one.”

“That wouldn’t surprise me, either,” Bembo said. “Everybody’s always plotting against Algarve. It’s been like that since the days of the Kaunian Empire.”

“A lot you know about the Kaunian Empire,” Pesaro said. Before Bembo could make an irate reply to that, the sergeant went on, “Talk about inefficiency—we might as well be Unkerlanters ourselves, the way we’re using constables for militiamen.”

“Make up your mind,” Bembo said. “You just called me a hero not five minutes ago.”

“I remembered something else I heard on the crystal,” Pesaro answered placidly. “A dozen captives broke out of a camp in Forthweg, and they’re on the loose in the countryside. What do soldiers know about keeping captives? About as much as constables know about fighting campaigns, that’s what. If they’re going to use constables to help the war along, they ought to use us to take captives and guard them, not to blaze away on the front line. That’d be proper efficiency.”

“Not a bad idea at all,” Bembo said. Pesaro preened as if he were a writer of romances suddenly receiving critical acclaim. With a sly chuckle, Bembo added, “I never would have expected it from you.”

“Funny,” Pesaro said. “Funny like a man walking with two canes, that’s what it is.” He could take ribbing, could Pesaro, but only so much. Bembo, evidently, had gone over the line. “Here’s another idea that isn’t bad at all,” Pesaro growled: “you getting into your uniform and doing some real work instead of hanging around and banging your gums with me.”

“All right, Sergeant. All right.” Bembo raised a placating hand. “I’m going, I’m going.” As he went, he muttered under his breath: “Fat old fraud wouldn’t know anything about real work if it paraded past him naked.”

After donning the regulation tunic and kilt, he paused in the recording section, where Saffa was sketching a portrait of a haggard-looking miscreant. Bembo thought of the little artist parading past him naked, definitely a more attractive prospect than real work. What he was thinking must have shown, too, for Saffa snapped, “Drag your mind out of the latrine, if you please.”

Bembo’s ears heated. He glared over toward the wretch whose image Saffa had been committing to paper. Had the fellow said a word—had he even smiled—Bembo would have taken out his rage on him. But the captive, wiser than Martusino, kept his mouth shut and his expression blank. Doubly baulked, Bembo walked fuming to his desk.

Plenty of forms and reports awaited him there, as was true for most constables most of the time. Bembo ignored them. He worked diligently enough when he felt like it, but not when work was forced upon him. As most Algarvians would have done, he avenged himself by disobeying. He pulled a historical romance out of his desk and started reading. “I’ll show you what I know about the Kaunian Empire,” he mumbled in Pesaro’s direction, though not loud enough for the desk sergeant—or anyone else—to hear.

Mercenaries’ Revolt,
the cover screamed in lurid red letters, with a smaller subhead reading,
Mighty Ziliante sets an empire afire!
The book showed a stalwart Algarvian, his coppery hair washed with lime to give him a leonine mane, brandishing a sword. Clinging to him was a Kaunian doxy wearing no more clothes than she’d been born with. Her hand was poised, as if about to reach under his kilt and caress what she found there.

The text lived up to, or down to, the cover. Bembo couldn’t remember a romance he’d enjoyed more.

The Kaunian Emperor had just ordered Ziliante made into a eunuch. Bembo was sure that wouldn’t happen; the virile hero had already got too many blond noblewomen’s drawers down. Which of them would rescue him, and how? Bembo read on to find out.

Eight

K
RASTA SIPPED cherry brandy laced with wormwood. A band thumped away in the background: tuba and accordion, bagpipes and thudding kettledrum. On the dance floor, Valmieran nobles swayed and spun to the loud, insistent beat.

“This is the place to be,” Valnu said, leering across the table at her. “Even if the Algarvians drop eggs on Priekule, they can’t knock the Cellar down. We’re already underground.” He giggled as if he’d said something very funny.

“This is the place to be because it’s the place to be,” Krasta replied with a shrug. Had the Cellar been built atop the Kaunian Column of Victory, she still would have frequented the nightspot. Anyone who was, or who had pretensions of being, someone came here. People who weren’t someone looked on from a distance and envied. That was the way the world worked.

Valnu lifted his mug of porter. “So good to find you thinking as clearly as ever.” Malice flavored the affection in his voice as the wormwood embittered Krasta’s sweet brandy. “I hope your brother is still safe, there in the west.”

“He was well, last letter I had from him.” Krasta tossed her head, sending pale gold curls flying: old imperial styles had suddenly become the rage. “But this is too much talk about the war. I don’t want to think about the war.” The truth of the matter was, she didn’t want to think at all.

“Very well.” Valnu’s smile turned him into the most charming skull Krasta had ever known. “Let’s dance, then.” He got to his feet.

“All right, why not?” Krasta said carelessly. The room spun a little as she rose: that spiked brandy was potent stuff. She laughed as Valnu slid an arm around her waist and guided her out on to the floor.

Valnu was a thoroughgoing predator. His principal virtue was that he never pretended to be anything else. As he and Krasta danced, his hand slid from the small of her back to close on the smooth curve of her left buttock. He pressed her tight against him, so tight that she could not possibly doubt he had more than dancing on his mind.

She might have loosened some of his white, pointed teeth for him because of the liberties he took with her noble person. She contemplated it, in fact, as well as she could contemplate anything in her rather fuddled state. But his mocking smile said he was waiting for her to do just that. Except when making sure commoners stayed in their place, she hated doing anything someone else expected of her. And, she realized, she was feeling randy herself. She’d decide later how far she intended to let him go. For the moment, she simply enjoyed herself.

And it wasn’t as if she were the only woman in the Cellar whose companion was feeling her up on the dance floor. It was not a place to which women who minded being rumpled in public commonly came.
I can always blame it on the brandy,
she thought. But she didn’t really need to blame it on anything. She did as she pleased. No one could make her do anything else.

The music stopped. Krasta set her hand on the back of Valnu’s head and pulled his face down to hers. She kissed him, open-mouthed. He tasted of porter: bitter, but not so bitter as the wormwood in her brandy. Halfway through the kiss, she opened her eyes. Valnu was staring at her. He was so close, his features blurred, but she thought he looked astonished. She laughed, down deep in her throat.

He broke the kiss and twisted away. Now she had no trouble reading his expression. He was angry. Krasta laughed again. He must have realized he’d gone from predator to prey, realized it and not cared for it at all. “You’re a fire-breather, aren’t you?” he said, his voice rougher than usual.

“What if I am?” Krasta tossed her head again, as she had back at the table. She pointed toward the musicians. “They’re going to start again in a minute. Do you want to dance some more, or have we already done everything we can do standing up?”

Valnu did his best to rally. “Not quite everything,” he answered, more self-collected now. Bold as brass, he reached out and cupped her breast through the fabric of her tunic. His thumb and forefinger unerringly found her nipple. He teased it for a few seconds, then let her go.

Maybe he hadn’t understood how hot and reckless Krasta was feeling. Maybe she hadn’t realized it herself, not till those knowing fingers further inflamed her. She reached out, too, at a lower level.

Had he pulled off his trousers and lain down on the floor, she might have mounted him then and there. Such things were said to happen at the Cellar now and again, though Krasta had never seen them there. But Valnu, after shaking himself like a wet hound, went back to the table in four or five long strides. Krasta followed him. Her cheeks burned. Her heart raced. She breathed quickly, as if she’d just run a long way.

Valnu gulped the porter left in his mug. He was looking at Krasta as if he’d never seen her before. “Brimstone and quicksilver,” he muttered, more to himself than to her. “Dragon-bitch.”

After what she’d drunk, she took it as a compliment: indeed, she never thought to wonder whether it might be anything else. Her own goblet, smaller than the earthenware mug from which he’d drunk, held brandy yet. She poured it down. An egg might have burst in her belly. But warmth flowed out of it: to her face, to her breasts, to her loins.