Harry Turtledove - Rulers of the Darkness

He said, "I'm keeping my hands to myself." To prove as much, he clasped them behind his back. "Dressed the way you are, though, you can't expect me not to look."

"I am a Kaunian in Forthweg," Doldasai said. "How can I possibly expect anything?" She didn't even sound bitter- just very tired.

Bembo said, "Powers above, if you don't like the life you're living, why don't you get your hands on the charm that makes you people look like Forthwegians? Then you could just disappear."

Doldasai stared at him, perhaps for the first time noticing the person inside the uniform. "You say this?" she asked. "You say this, a constable of Algarve? You tell me to break the law your own people made?" She dug a finger in one ear, as if to be sure she heard correctly. Her nails were carefully trimmed and painted the color of blood.

"I did say it, didn't I?" Bembo spoke in some surprise. Maybe, by doing something like that for her, he could take a tiny step toward making up for all the Kaunians he'd forced into their tiny district or simply sent west. Maybe, too, he'd just been staring at the pink-tipped breasts so plainly visible through the thin silk of her tunic. He shrugged. Now that the words were out of his mouth, he made the best of them: "You could do it, you know. Who'd be the wiser?"

"Curse you," she muttered in classical Kaunian before going back to Bembo's language. "Every time I steel myself to see you Algarvians as nothing but pricks with legs, one of you has to go and remind me you're people, too." She set a hand on his arm, not provocatively but in a friendly way. "Kind of you to say that. Kind of you to think that. But I can't."

"Why not?" Bembo asked. "Seems like about every third Kaunian around has already done it. More, for all I know."

Doldasai nodded. "True. But your folk don't hold hostage the parents of most Kaunians in Gromheort. They have way to make sure of my… good behavior. And so, you see, I can't just disappear."

"That's…" Bembo didn't want to say what he thought it was. He could hardly denounce his own officers to a woman whose looks proclaimed her an enemy of Algarve. What he did say was, "Tell me where they're at and I'll see if I can't get 'em moved into the regular Kaunian district. After that- well, if you look like everybody else around these parts, who's going to ask any questions?"

Now the Kaunian courtesan frankly gaped. "You would do that… for a blond?" She didn't make him answer; she might have been afraid of the result. She might have been wise to be afraid, too. Instead, she hurried on, "If you do that- if you can do that- I'll give you anything you want." She shrugged. Bembo watched, entranced. She said, "What difference would one more time make, especially if it was the last?"

"If you think I'll go all noble and say, 'You don't have to do that, sweetheart,' you're daft," Bembo said. Doldasai nodded; she understood such deals. Bembo went on, "Now, where are they?"

"They're quartered in Count Brorda's castle- the place where your governor rules now," she answered. "Their names are Daukantis and Feliksai."

Bembo started to say he didn't care what their names were, but then realized knowing might be useful. Instead, he asked, "Do you know whereabouts they are in the castle?"

"Aye." Doldasai told him. He made her repeat it so he had it straight. She did, and then said, "Powers above bless you. For you to do such a thing-"

He reached out and caressed her. She let him do it. "Believe me, sweetheart, I know why," he told her. And I'm not going to risk my neck for theirs, either, he thought. If it's easy, fine. If it's not… I copped a feel, anyhow. Aloud, he went on, "There are rooms above a tavern called the Imperial Unicorn, a couple of blocks inside the Kaunian district. You know the place?" Her eyes showed she did. Bembo said, "Wait for me there. We'll see what I can do, and we'll see what you can do."

Back in Algarve, the great stone pile that lay at the center of Gromheort would have been labeled quaint. Here in Forthweg, the adjectives chilly, ugly, and gloomy more readily sprang to mind. Soldiers and bureaucrats bustled this way and that. Nobody bothered noticing a plump, redheaded constable. To Bembo's vast relief, the sentry in front of Daukantis and Feliksai's door was a soldier he'd never seen before, not a fellow constable. With a nasty smile, he said, "I've come for these Kaunian buggers. They're going straight back in with the rest of their stinking kind."

Very possibly, nobody'd told the sentry why the blonds were being held. He didn't argue. He didn't make Bembo sign anything or ask his name and authority. He just grinned wolfishly, opened the door, and said, "They're all yours. Good riddance to 'em."

No one paid any attention to a constable marching a couple of Kaunians along in front of his stick, either. Once Bembo got them out of the castle, he murmured, "Now they don't have a hold on your daughter any more." They gaped and then started to weep. That was nothing out of the ordinary, either.

At the edge of the Kaunian quarter, another constable waved to Bembo and called "Caught a couple, did you? You lucky whoreson!" Bembo waved his hat with typical Algarvian braggadocio.

Like the ancient Kaunian Empire, the tavern called the Imperial Unicorn was a sad shadow of its former self. Bembo took Doldasai's father and mother upstairs. She was pacing the narrow hallway there. She looked from Bembo to Feliksai and Daukantis and back again in astonished disbelief. "You really did it," she whispered, and then flew into her parents' arms.

"Bargain," Bembo said pointedly.

"Bargain," Doldasai agreed. She took her mother and father into one of the little rooms, then came out and took Bembo into another one. "For what you just did, you deserve the best," she said, and proceeded to give it to him. If she didn't enjoy it herself, too, she was a better actress than any courtesan he'd known. Her pleasure might have been set off more by her parents' rescue than his charms, but he thought it real even so.

And his own pleasure, as he left the Kaunian district, was more than merely physical. He hadn't quite done a good deed for the sake of doing a good deed, but he'd come a lot closer than usual, close enough to leave his conscience as happy as the rest of him, which was saying a great deal.

"Come on, boys, get yourselves ready," Major Spinello told the troopers in his regiment. "We've been kicking the Unkerlanters' arses for almost two years now. We'll go right on doing it, too, won't we?"

The Algarvian soldiers cheered. Some of them waved their sticks in the air. What a liar I'm turning into, Spinello thought. He hadn't told a lie, or not exactly. If his countrymen hadn't won victory after victory, he and the regiment wouldn't have been here deep in northern Unkerlant.

But Swemmel's men could kick, too. Every time he took off his tunic to bathe, the puckered scar on the right side of his chest reminded him of the truth there. Had that beam caught him in the left side of the chest, it wouldn't have left a scar. It would have killed him outright. And the Unkerlanter campaign against Sulingen had come too close to killing all the Algarvian armies in the southern part of King Swemmel's domain. It hadn't, though. Like Spinello, they'd been badly scarred. Like him, too, they kept battling.

"All right, then," he told his men. "We'll go forward for King Mezentio, powers above bless him. And we'll go forward because there aren't any Unkerlanters on the face of the earth who can stop us."

He got more cheers from the men. Even some of his officers applauded. Captain Turpino didn't look altogether convinced. Turpino, in fact, looked about to be ill. He didn't lead with speeches. He was always at the head of his company when an attack went in, and that seemed to be enough for him. Spinello led from the front, too, but he remained convinced that getting the most from his soldiers was also a sorcery of the sort the universities didn't teach to mages.