Harry Turtledove: Into the Darkness

“I think it’ll be good, coming into Ban,” Tealdo said, and pulled the serving girl down on to his lap. Her arms twined around him. Suddenly, he didn’t care whether he got supper or not.

Krasta peered into her closet, wondering what she had that was suitable to wear to a declaration of war. That problem had never before vexed the young marchioness, although her mother had surely had to make the same difficult choice at the outset of the Six Years’ War, when Valmiera and her allies last sought to invade and subdue Algarve.

Her mouth thinned to a narrow line. She could not make up her mind. She picked up a bell and rang it. Let a servant figure out the permutations. That was what servants were for.

Bauska hurried in. She was wearing a sensible gray tunic and trousers: sensible and boring. “What shall I put on to go to the palace, Bauska?” Krasta asked. “Should I be cautious with a tunic, or show our grand Kaunian heritage by wearing trousers and blouse?” She sighed. “I really fancy a short tunic and kilt, but I don’t suppose I can wear an Algarvian style when we’re declaring war on that windbag, Mezentio.”

“Not unless you care to be stoned through the streets of Priekule,” Bauska replied.

“No, that wouldn’t be good,” Krasta said peevishly. She plucked a cinnamon-flavored sweet from a gold-chased bowl on the dresser and popped it into her mouth. “Now—what should I do?”

Not being a hereditary noble, Bauska had to make her wits work. She plucked at a loose wisp of pale hair—but not so pale as Krasta’s—while she thought. At last, she said, “Tunic and trousers would show solidarity with Jelgava, and to some degree with Forthweg, though folk of Kaunian blood don’t rule there—”

Krasta sniffed. “Kaunians in Forthweg bore me to tears, with their endless chatter about being oldest of the old.”

“Those claims hold some truth, milady,” Bauska said.

“I don’t care,” Krasta said. “I don’t care at all. They’re still dull.”

“As you say, milady.” Bauska held a finger in the air. “But tunic and trousers might offend the envoys from the islands of Sibiu and from Lagoas, for their ancestors have close ties to the ancestors of the Algarvians.”

“They all spring from the same pack of barbarian dogs, you mean, even if some of them might be on our side now.” Krasta barely refrained from boxing Bauska’s ears. “You still haven’t told me what I ought to wear!”

“You cannot know till you reach the palace whether or not you have made the perfect choice,” her servant answered, mild as ever.

“It’s not fair!” Krasta cried. “My brother doesn’t have to worry about things like this. Why should I?”

“Lord Skarnu has no choice in his apparel because he wears King Gainibu’s uniform,” Bauska said. “I am sure he will make Valmiera proud of his brave service.”

“I am sure I don’t know what to put on, and you’re no help at all,” Krasta said. Bauska bowed her head. “Get out!” Krasta shouted, and the servant fled. That left Krasta alone with her choice. “I can’t get good help,” she fumed, taking gray wool trousers and a blue silk top from their hooks and putting them on.

She studied the effect in the mirror. It didn’t satisfy her, but then very little satisfied her. A few pounds lighter, a couple of inches taller… and she probably would have remained dissatisfied, though she didn’t think so. Grudgingly, she admitted to herself that the blue of her tunic set off the almost matching blue of her eyes. She belted the trousers with a rope of white gold and put a thinner rope around her neck. They played up the paleness of her hair.

She sighed. This would have to do. She went downstairs and called loudly for the carriage. Her estate had sat by the edge of Priekule for centuries, long before all the ley lines around the power point at the heart of the city were charted and exploited, and so stood near none of them. Even if it had, she would not have cared to ride a public caravan to the palace and subject herself to the stares of barmaids and booksellers and other vulgar, common folk.

She got more stares riding in the carriage, but she didn’t have to notice those; they weren’t so intimate as they would have been in the cramped confines of a caravan coach. The horses clopped along the cobblestones past square modern buildings of brick and glass (at which she sneered because they were modern); past others whose marble colonnades and painted statues imitated forms from the days of the Kaunian Empire (at which she sneered because they were imitations); past some a couple of hundred years old, when the ornate Algarvian architectural influence was strong (at which she sneered because they looked Algarvian); and past a few true Kaunian relics (at which she sneered because they were decrepit).

The carriage had just passed the famous Kaunian Column of Victory—now at last fully restored after fire damage during the Six Years’ War—when a green-uniformed fellow held up a hand to bar the way. “What is the meaning of this?” Krasta demanded of her driver. “Never mind that oaf—go on through.”

“Milady, I had better not,” he answered cautiously.

She started to rage at him, but then the first Valmieran footsoldiers started tramping through the street from which she’d been barred. The river of men in dark green trousers and tunics seemed to take forever to flow past. “If I am late to the palace because of these soldiers, I shall be very unhappy—and so shall you,” she told the driver, tapping her foot on the carpeted floor. She smiled to see him shiver; all her servants knew she meant what she said when she said things like that.

Great troops of horse cavalry and unicorn cavalry followed the infantrymen. Krasta curled her lip to see unicorns made as ugly as horses. And then she curled her lip again, for a squadron of behemoths followed the unicorns. They were ugly already, and thus did not need to be made so. Except for their horns—as long as those of the unicorns, but far thicker, and wickedly curved—they resembled nothing so much as great, hairy, thick-legged pigs. Their sole virtue was strength: each effortlessly carried not only several riders but also a heavy stick and a thick blanket of mail.

At last, men and beasts cleared the road. Without Krasta’s having to say a word, the driver whipped the horses up into a gallop as soon as he could. The carriage shot through the narrow, winding streets of Priekule, almost mowing down a couple of women unwise enough to try to cross in front of it. They shrieked at Krasta. She angrily shouted back: had the carriage hit them, she might have been late to the palace.

As things were, she did arrive in good time. A bowing servant took charge of the carriage. Another helped her alight and said, “If milady the marchioness will be good enough to accompany me to the Grand Hall …”

“Thank you,” Krasta said, words she seldom wasted on her own servitors. Here in the palace, though, she was not the ruler, nor even of more than slightly above middling rank. The gold and furs and splendid portraits of kings past reminded her of that. So did the princesses and duchesses who looked down their noses at her as she was accustomed to looking down on the rest of the world.

As soon as she saw a woman who outranked her wearing trousers, she relaxed: even if that proved a mistake, the duchess would get the blame, not she. But, in fact, more women in tunics looked nervous about their outfits than did women in trousers. Safe from censure, she let out a small, invisible sigh of relief.

Almost all the noblemen coming into the Grand Hall were in trousers and short tunics. Many of them were in uniform, with glittering badges showing both military and social rank. Krasta looked daggers at a man in a tunic and pleated kilt till she heard him speaking Valmieran with a rhythmic, trilling accent and realized he was the minister from Sibiu in his native costume.