Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

Not caring to dwell on that, Krasta attacked the buttery omelette. She gobbled down three or four bites before she paused to listen to what her body was telling her. She gulped. Spit flooded into her mouth. The room seemed to spin.

“Are you all right, my dear?” Lurcanio asked. “You look a little green.”

“I’m fine,” Krasta said. More cautiously than she had before, she ate another couple of bites of egg and ham and cheese. That was a mistake. She knew it was a mistake as soon as she finished-which was a bit too late. She gulped again. This time, it didn’t help. “Excuse me,” she said in a muffled voice, and bolted from the table.

She got where she was going barely in time to keep from making the disaster worse. When she returned to the table, her mouth still burned and tasted nasty in spite of her having rinsed it again and again. She looked at the omelette and shuddered. She wouldn’t have one again any time soon.

ColonelLurcaniogave her another bow. “Are you all right?” he asked again, this time with more concern in his voice. Krasta managed a wan nod. Lurcanio waved to the servant. “Bring your lady some plain bread.” The man hurried off to obey. Lurcanio’s gaze swung back to Krasta. “I take it thisdoes mean you will be having a child?”

“Aye,” she said dully, and then, “You don’t sound surprised.”

“I’m not,” he answered. “Not after I noted the way the veins stand out so much more than usual in your breasts the other night.”

“Did you?” Krasta said-after letting out a small, indignant squeak. Everyone around her paid more attention than she did. She hadn’t noticed any changes in her breasts, except that they were more tender than usual.

“I did indeed.” Lurcanio raised an eyebrow. He waited for the servant to give Krasta the bread and depart, then said, “Tell me-is it mine?”

“Of course it is!” Krasta said indignantly, doing her best not to show the alarm that blazed through her. Taking a wary bite of bread helped. She gulped again as she swallowed, but the bread, unlike the omelette, seemed willing to stay down. “Whose else could it be?” she added, in tones suggesting the only possible answer wasno one.

“That scrawny viscount we should have executed comes to mind.” Lurcanio smiled at Krasta. She wished he hadn’t; the curve of his lips reminded him how little luck she’d ever had trying to outmaneuver him.

“Nonsense!” she said. “I never did!”I’m only off by one, she thought. That’s hardly worth noticing. True-under most circumstances. Here, though, the difference betweennever andonly once might prove all too noticeable.

Lurcanio sipped his tea. It evidently tasted fine to him. He shrugged an elaborate, ever so Algarvian shrug and made a steeple of his fingertips. “I am a patient man,” he said. “I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. For nine months, I am willing to give you the benefit of the doubt. After that, I will know, one way or the other. If the baby bears some passing resemblance to me, well and good. If not, milady, you will be sorry. I am not one who appreciates a cuckoo’s egg being raised in his nest. Do I make myself clear?”

“Unpleasantly so,” Krasta said. “Most unpleasantly so, in fact.” She ate more bread. Sure enough, it sat quiet in her stomach. That made it easier for her to sound like her usual haughty self as she went on, “I assure you, I have told you the truth.”Some of it -I hope.“If you are going to be boring about this business…”

Lurcanio threw back his head and laughed: guffawed, in fact. “Not at all, milady. By no means.” To Krasta’s amazement, he sounded as if he meant it. “I told you I would give you the benefit of the doubt, and so I shall. If I say even a word to you between now and the day, you may bring me up as sharply as you like.”

“I’ll remember that,” Krasta said. “I’ll hold you to it, too.”

“Fair enough.”ColonelLurcanio nodded. “But you must also remember the rest of what I said, because I am going to hold you to that. And I think I shall give you one more thing to remember.”

“Which is?” Krasta did her best to keep on sounding haughty. The alternative was sounding frightened, which would not do at all.

The Algarvian officer pointed at her, aiming his right forefinger as he might have aimed a stick, “Nothing is to happen to the child until such time as we are able to know what needs to be known. If anything should happen before that time, I shall make all the assumptions you least wish me to make, and I shall act on them. Isthat plain, milady?”

Curse you, Lurcanio, Krasta thought. What he’d just forbidden would have been the most convenient arrangement all the way around-except that he’d just forbidden it. “Aye,” she said coldly. “And will you let your wife know you’ve sired a brand new bastard?”

“I may,” Lurcanio replied, “if it turns out I have. And now, if you will excuse me, I have work to do.” He rose, bowed once more, and departed.

Krasta quietly cursed him again, this time for being so invulnerable, so impenetrable. A moment later, she started to giggle. If only I’d been impenetrable myself. I wouldn‘t have anything to worry about then. She wanted to call Lurcanio back so she could tell him the joke. Even as things stood, he would have laughed. She was sure of it. But she sat where she was and didn’t say a word.

Kolthoum looked at Hajjaj and slowly shook her head. With a sigh, she said, “You really are going to have to do something about this impossible situation, you know.”

“Of course I am,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister agreed. “But I have no idea what. I am most open to suggestions.”

He hoped his senior wife would have some. He and Kolthoum had been together for half a century. He told anyone who would listen that she was wiser than he. Few Zuwayzin seemed to want to hear that. As happened so often, the truth made people nervous. They dealt with him, so they wanted to think he had all the answers.

“As I see it,” Kolthoum said, “you have four choices.”

“Really?” Hajjaj said, his surprise altogether genuine. “Try as I would, I could find only three. Tell me, my dear, by all means tell me. Now you truly have my interest.”

His wife laughed. Her body shook. She’d never been a famous beauty, and she’d put on flesh over the years. Hajjaj didn’t care. He’d never cared. She understood him perfectly. He couldn’t say that about anyone else in the world. She began to tick off points on her fingers: “First, you could send Tassi back toMinisterIskakis. That would make him stop screaming at everyone fromKingShazli down to the Zuwayzin who walk past the Yaninan ministry.”

“Well, so it would,” Hajjaj said. “It would also probably be dangerous for Tassi. She didn’t show up on my doorstep-she didn’t show up naked on my doorstep-because she was madly in love with Iskakis. You know that as well as I do. She was just a bauble to him. And how will he use her, now that she’s offended him by running off and showing the world a side he wanted hidden away?”

“Every word of that is true,” Kolthoum said. “Which brings me to the next possibility-sending her to Marquis Balastro. He would take good care of her.”

“For a while-till he got bored,” Hajjaj said. Kolthoum laughed, though neither of them thought it was funny. “But he and Tassi have already quarreled. And if he flaunts her to infuriate Iskakis-and he will, being an Algarvian-he’ll just make things between Algarve and Yanina worse than they are already. They’re both supposed to be our allies, you know. I can’t think of anything Yanina can do to hurt our kingdom, but I can think of plenty of thingsKingTsavellas might do to hurt Algarve.”