Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

“It is war.” Lurcanio’s shrug was less extravagant-less Algarvian-than usual. He got up, came around the desk, and took Krasta in his arms. As he kissed her, his hands roamed her body. She wondered if he would want her to flip up his kilt; she’d done that a couple of times here. She wouldn’t have minded doing it again-the danger of discovery often excited her. But Lurcanio let her go. With a last pat, he said, “Go on. Enjoy yourself. Be glad you can.” He returned to his paperwork.

Krasta needed no more urging to do what she already intended to do anyhow. Before she left, though, she went around behind the desk, bent beside Lurcanio, and teased his ear with her tongue for a moment. If he preferred work to her, she wanted to remind him of a little of what he’d be missing. Then, laughing, she hurried away before he would grab her.

Her driver smelled of spirits. He often did. Krasta didn’t worry about that overmuch. Even if he was drunk, the horse remained sober. “Take me to the Boulevard of Horsemen,” she said. When she went into Priekule, she most often went to the street with the capital’s finest shops. The driver nodded. He probably would have taken her there even had she said she wanted to go somewhere else, because he was used to heading there, waiting for her, and drinking while he waited.

As it had ever since the Algarvians marched into it, Priekule looked sad and gray. Buildings needed paint and a scrubbing they weren’t likely to get any time soon. A lot of the people on the street seemed to need paint and a scrubbing, too: they shambled along, lacking the will or the energy to do anything more. Some of the Valmieran women, by contrast, wore altogether too much paint, and wore either trousers that might have been painted onto their backsides or Algarvian-style kilts that barely covered those backsides. Some of them had caught the redheaded soldiers they were obviously after, too.

Krasta sneered. She’d caught a redheaded soldier, too, but she didn’t usually let herself think of it that way.

Now that she was here, she wondered why she’d come. To get away from the mansion for a while, she supposed. But the Boulevard of Horsemen wasn’t what it had been. Shop windows displayed mostly junk, and often old junk at that. The only shops with plenty of new items on display were the booksellers, hardly Krasta’s favorite haunts. Just because she could read and write didn’t mean she felt she had to very often.

But then she sawViscountValnu flipping through some volume or other inside a bookstore. She tapped on the glass. Valnu looked up. His smile illuminated his long, bony face. He fluttered his fingers at her, then did a proper job of waving, urging her to come in.

She did, though she felt at least as out of place as she would have walking into a brothel. “Where are my spectacles?” she exclaimed, careless as usual of the proprietor behind his counter. “Don’t I have to have spectacles?”

“Not you, darling,” Valnu murmured in a husky voice that enchanted women-and also Algarvian officers of a certain inclination. He kissed her on the cheek. “Youare a spectacle, so you don’t need to wear any.”

“You should talk,” Krasta said: He was wearing a kilt himself, one that showed off as much leg as those of any of the slatterns on the street. “What are you doing here?”

“Eating beans,” Valnu answered. “What else is there to do at a bookseller’s?” He started to put away the tome he’d been looking at.

Krasta took it from him before he could slide it back on the shelf. “The Kaunian Empire and the Barbarians of the Southwest,” she read from the front cover, and started to laugh. “Don’t let your redheaded friends know you look at such things.”

ViscountValnulaughed, too. “It shall be my deep, dark secret, believe me.” He rolled his blue, blue eyes, as if to say no one could possibly take him seriously.

And then Krasta remembered something that had shaken Priekule-had certainly shaken her-not long before. “Don’t let your redheaded friends know about Amatu, either,” she said, this time in a lower voice. Amatu, who’d gone over from the Valmieran underground to the Algarvians, had been ambushed and murdered on his way home from a supper with Krasta and Lurcanio. Valnu had known beforehand he would be there.

The viscount’s smile never wavered. “You’d better keep quiet, my dear, or you’ll go the way he did,” he said.

“That could happen to you, too, you know,” she answered with a smile of her own. “If I had an accident, Lurcanio would learn everything.” That was a lie, but Valnu couldn’t prove it.

He condescended to raise an eyebrow. “Maybe we should talk further.”

“Aye.” Krasta nodded. “Maybe we should.”

MarshalRatharwished he were back at the front, still commanding the Unkerlanter armies battling to drive the Algarvians out of the Duchy of Grelz. There, he was lord of all he surveyed: who dared go against the wishes of the second most powerful man in all the Kingdom of Unkerlant?

One man dared, and no one in Unkerlant, not even MarshalRathar – perhaps particularly not MarshalRathar -presumed to disobeyKingSwemmel ’s express command. And so Rathar found himself back in Cottbus, far from the fighting, all too close to the king. The maps in his office-the maps whose moving gray- and red-headed pins showed the fight going well in the south and not badly in the north-did little to ease his spirit. If anything, they reminded him what he was missing.

Running a hand through his iron-gray hair, he glared at his adjutant. “I feel like a caged wolf, Major, nothing else but.”

MajorMerovecshrugged. “I’m sorry, lord Marshal,” he replied, not sounding sorry at all. He’d spent the whole war in Cottbus, in the vast royal palace. Rathar didn’t doubt his courage, but he’d never had to show it. He went on: “The king will surely be glad to have your advice.”

Swemmel was never glad to have anyone’s advice. MajorMerovec andMarshalRathar both knew that perfectly well. They both also knew how deadly dangerous saying anything else would have been.

A young lieutenant whose clean, soft rock-gray tunic and clean, soft features said he’d never done any real fighting, either, came into the office and saluted Merovec and Rathar. He said, “Lord Marshal, his Majesty bids you sup with him this evening, an hour past sunset.” Having delivered his message, he saluted again, did a smart about-turn, and strode away.

“A signal honor,”MajorMerovec murmured, “and a signal indication of the king’s trust in you.”

“Aye.” Rather against his will, Rathar found himself nodding. Supping with Swemmel meant being trusted enough to hold a knife (no doubt it would prove a small, dull, blunt knife, but a knife nonetheless) in his presence. Considering how the guards searched everyone granted audience with the king, considering how Rathar had to leave his marshal’s sword on hooks in the antechamber before passing through, Swemmel had chosen to show him favor. By evening, the palace would be buzzing with the news.

Rathar shrugged. Maybe I misjudged him, he thought. My guess was that he recalled me from Grelz to keep me from winning too many victories, to keep me from getting too popular. I don’t want his throne, curse it. But if I tell him I don’t want it, he’ll only worry more that I do.

When he walked through the hallways of the palace on his way to supper, courtiers bowed low before him. They were smooth, sleek, confident creatures these days, altogether unlike the frightened lot of two and a half years before. When Cottbus looked like falling to the Algarvians, a lot of them had fled west. For good or ill, they were back. To those of lower rank, being second most powerful in the kingdom seemed little different from being most powerful. Rathar knew better, but also knew no one would believe he knew better.