Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Skarnu spread his hands helplessly. “I heard the same thing you did. Who knows? Maybe Lurcanio was lying to me when he said what he said. I wouldn’t put it past an Algarvian.” He flicked the reins. “Or maybe this fellow didn’t know what he was talking about. I can’t tell you. AllI know is, she’s been with Lurcanio since the redheads marched in, and she never seemed unhappy about it that I heard.”

So I have been given to understand. That was how Lurcanio had answered when Skarnu asked if Krasta’s baby was his: not a ringing endorsement of her fidelity. Krasta had collected lovers like beads on a string in the days before the war. Who hadn’t, back then? Why would she have changed since? She was constant, even in things like inconstancy.

As they went deeper into Priekule, Merkela’s eyes got bigger and bigger. “It’s so huge,” she said. “I never believed a city could be this size.”

She’d thought the provincial towns in which they’d stayed were a match for the capital. Now she was finding out otherwise. Skarnu kept looking around, too; he hadn’t been here for a long time. Something was wrong. At last, he put his finger on it: “The Kaunian Column of Victory is gone! You could see it from almost anywhere in the city.”

“You already knew the redheads knocked it down,” Merkela pointed out.

“I knew,” he said, “but I hadn’t seen it.”

A bonfire blazed on a street corner. Skarnu could still see some of the Algarvian signs burning there: signs that had directed Mezentio’s soldiers to theaters and eateries and, no doubt, brothels as well. No longer, Skarnu thought. Never again.

But then another thought went through his mind. My sister is a whore, no matter what that fellow said. He shook his head. I have no sister.

A downcast woman who’d been shaved bald walked by. People whistled and jeered at her: “Mattressback!” “Algarvian slut!” “Stinking bitch!” She seemed to shrink in on herself even more, trying to become invisible.

“She deserves worse than that,” Merkela said, her voice and eyes cold as the land of the Ice People.

“Maybe she’ll get it, too,” Skarnu said, which seemed to satisfy her.

After what seemed both a very long time and hardly any time at all, they came to the mansion on the outskirts of town. An Algarvian signpost still stood at the entranceway, directing Mezentio’s men, Skarnu supposed, toColonelLurcanio and whatever he’d done. But then he forgot about that, for Merkela whispered, “You… lived here?”

“Aye,” Skarnu answered, and saw the astonishment on her face. “And will again-and so will you, if you want to. If you don’t, we’ll live somewhere else. But first we have some business to finish.” He heard his own grimness.

He hitched the carriage in front of the house and handed Merkela down. Then he strode to the door. She followed, little Gedominu in her arms. He hammered at the door with the knocker.

A maidservant opened. She looked half nervous, half haughty. Haughty won. “What do you want?” she demanded, almost as sharply as Krasta might have.

Skarnu knew what she saw: a weatherbeaten man in the clothes of a farmer, with a peasant woman and a brat in tow. What she didn’t see washim. “Hello, Bauska,” he answered, making his voice milder than he’d first intended. “I want to see my sister.” He said the words once more, even if they felt like a lie in his heart.

Bauska’s eyes kept widening till they seemed to fill her whole face. “My lord Marquis,” she whispered, and dropped a curtsy of the sort Skarnu hadn’t seen since the Algarvians overran Valmiera. “Come with me sir, and-?” She looked a question toward his companions.

“Merkela, my fiancee,” Skarnu said. “Gedominu, my son and heir.”

Bauska’s eyes got wider still. Skarnu hadn’t thought they could. The servant led him inside. He’d forgotten how big the place was. What had he done with all this space? Merkela’s eyes were almost as wide as the maidservant’s.

A pretty little girl, perhaps three years old, ran by with a doll under her arm. Pretty, aye-but with hair closer to bronze than to gold, and with cat-green eyes. Merkela hissed something under her breath. Harshly, Skarnu asked, “Is she Krasta’s, too?”

“No, my lord,” Bauska answered quietly. She went pale first, then red. “She’s mine. Her name is Brindza.”

Merkela started to snarl something. Skarnu shook his head. “Later,” he said. “First things first.” A little to his surprise, she nodded. They followed Bauska into a drawing room. There sat Krasta and, to Skarnu’s surprise, ViscountValnu. The man from the patrol had known whereof he spoke after all. And Valnuwas a big blaze among the underground leaders in Priekule, playing the most dangerous of double games with the redheads.

“Skarnu!” Krasta exclaimed, springing to her feet. She knew him, at any rate. Her belly bulged, just a little. “Welcome home!” She threw her arms around him and kissed him on the cheek. Then she pointed to Merkela. “Who is your… friend?”

“My fiancee,” Skarnu corrected, and gave Merkela’s name again, and Gedominu’s. His voice like iron, he went on, “I stayed with my own kind, you see.”

Krasta glared at him. He looked back stonily, expecting a tantrum from her and not about to put up with one. But she surprised him. One hand went to that bulging belly; the forefinger of the other pointed at Valnu. “Nothing wrong with the blood of my child, not with him as the father.”

“Him?”Skarnu’s eyes swung to Valnu in astonishment. The fellow with the stick had said friendly, butthat friendly? “You?”

“So I have been given to understand,” Valnu said-the exact same words Lurcanio had used. Where Lurcanio had sounded bedeviled, though, he merely seemed amused.

“But… But…” Merkela seemed about to burst from the outrage trapped inside her that now, against all expectations, couldn’t escape.

“I will add that there have been times when the marchioness proved most useful to those opposing Algarve,” Valnu said.

Which means there were also times when she wasn‘t, Skarnu thought. But, plainly, he couldn’t just throw Krasta out of the mansion into the cold, perhaps with her head shaved, as he’d intended doing. She saw as much, too, and looked as smug as a mouse with a hole too deep for the cat’s paw. That made him want to slap her all over again. We’ll find out, he thought, but couldn’t help sighing. We won’t find out for quite a while, curse it.

If Ealstan could have blazed the Algarvian major with his eyes, the man would have fallen over dead. The redhead ignored him and all the lesser Forthwegian rebels who stood behind Pybba. He bowed to Pybba, as he might have bowed to a fellow noble in Trapani. “My superiors have agreed to the terms you propose, sir,” he said in good Forthwegian.

“All right,” Pybba answered heavily. “All right, powers below eat you. We give over the fight, and you treat the men who surrender as proper captives.”

“Better than you deserve, in my opinion,” the Algarvian said. “My superiors feel otherwise, however, and so…” He shrugged one of his people’s theatrical shrugs. “The truce will hold till tomorrow noon. At that time, you shall come forth from your holes-those you have left. Anyone who does not yield himself up to us at noon tomorrow shall be reckoned a bandit, and we shall treat him as one when we catch him.” He sliced a thumb across his neck.

They’d been doing that all along. Maybe they’d decided it made the rebels fight harder. If treating the Forthwegians as war captives let Mezentio’s men regain their grip on Eoforwic, that must have seemed a worthwhile bargain to them.

“Curse you,” Pybba said. The Algarvian only bowed again. Then he turned his back and marched away through the wreckage of the Forthwegian capital.