Harry Turtledove - Into the Darkness

“Now get to it,” said the captain, who probably hadn’t been deceived. As Leofsig started off toward the noisome trenches, the officer spoke again, this time with curiosity in his voice: “What did you do to get sent over here? The redheads mostly give this duty to Kaunians.”

“It wasn’t one of the redheads,” Leofsig said sheepishly. “It was one of our own officers. I don’t suppose I looked busy enough to suit him.”

“Seeing how you went about getting a shovel there, I can’t say I’m surprised,” the captain answered. He sounded more amused than angry; Leofsig hadn’t done anything drastic enough to deserve more punishment than latrine duty in a captives’ camp. After a moment, the captain went on, “Maybe it’s just as well you got nabbed. Seeing you, the Kaunians won’t think they’re the only ones getting stuck with the shit detail.”

“Just as well for you, maybe, sir,” Leofsig said, “but I don’t see how it’s just as well for me.”

“Go on,” the Forthwegian officer said again. “You’re not going to get me to waste any more of my time arguing with you.”

Leofsig wouldn’t have minded doing exactly that. Since he hadn’t managed it, he went off to work. He wished he could hold his nose and dig at the same time. A couple of Kaunians in trousers were already working among the slit trenches. The captain in charge of the latrines had been right; they seemed surprised to have a Forthwegian for company. Leofsig started filling in a trench. Flies rose, resentful, in buzzing clouds. Seeing he was doing the same thing they were, the Kaunians went back to it themselves. Leofsig noted that with some small relief, then forgot about them. He was working as fast as he could now, to get the job over with. If the Kaunians liked that, fine. If they didn’t, he thought, too cursed bad.

“You’ve got the wrong man, I tell you!” the prisoner shouted as Bembo marched him up the stairs of the constabulary building in central Tricarico. Bembo had clapped manacles on him; they clanked with every step he climbed.

When the prisoner’s complaints started to get on Bembo’s nerves, he pulled the club off his belt and whacked it into the palm of his hand. “Do you want to see how loud you can yell with a mouthful of broken teeth?” he asked. The prisoner suddenly fell silent. Bembo smiled.

At the top of the stairs, Bembo gave him a shove that took him into the door face first. Clucking at the prisoner’s clumsiness, Bembo opened the door and gave him another shove. This one sent him through the doorway.

The constabulary sergeant at the front desk was at least as portly as Bembo. “Well, well,” he said. “What have we here?” Like a lot of questions Algarvians asked, that one was for rhetorical effect. The next one wasn’t: “Why’d you haul in our dear friend Martusino this time, Bembo?”

“Loitering in front of a jeweler’s, Sergeant,” Bembo answered.

“Why, you lying sack of guts!” Martusino yelled. He addressed the sergeant: “I was just walking past the place, Pesaro—I swear on my mother’s grave. That last stretch of Reform did the trick for me. I’ve gone straight, I have.”

He wasn’t so persuasive as he might have been; the manacles kept him from talking with his hands. Sergeant Pesaro looked dubious. Bembo snarled. “Oh, he’s gone straight, all right—straight back to his old tricks. After I spotted him, I grabbed him and searched him. He had these in his belt pouch.” Bembo reached into his own pouch and pulled out three golden rings. One was a plain band, one set with a polished, faceted piece of jet, and one with a fair-sized sapphire.

“I never saw them before,” the prisoner said.

Pesaro inked a pen and started to write. “Suspicion of burglary,” he said. “Suspicion of intent to commit burglary. Maybe they’ll get sick of this and finally hang you, Martusino. It’d be about time, if anybody cares what I think.”

“This fat son of a sow is framing an innocent man!” Martusino cried. “He planted those rings on me, the stinking lump of dung. Like I just said, I never saw ’em before in my life, and there’s not a soul can prove I did.”

Being a constable required Bembo to take more abuse than most Algarvians would tolerate, as it let him deal out abuse with more impunity than most Algarvians enjoyed. But he took only so much. Sack of guts had come up to the edge of the line and fat son of a sow went over it. He pulled out his club again and hit Martusino a good lick. The prisoner howled.

“Struck while resisting arrest,” Pesaro noted, and scribbled another line on the form he was filling out. Martusino yelled louder than ever, partly from pain, partly from outrage. Pesaro shook his head. “Oh, shut up, why don’t you? Take him for his pretty picture, Bembo, and then to the lockup, so I don’t have to listen to him any more.”

“I’ll do that, Sergeant. He’s giving me a headache, too.” Bembo gestured with the club. “Go on, get moving, or I’ll give you another taste.”

Martusino got moving. Bembo escorted him to the recording section, to get the particulars on him down in permanent form. A pretty little sketch artist took his likeness. Bembo marveled at the way she could get a man’s essence on to paper with a few deft strokes of pencil and charcoal stick. It wasn’t sorcery, not in any conventional sense of the word, but it seemed miraculous all the same.

He also marveled at the way the sketch artist filled out her tunic. “Why won’t you go out to supper with me, Saffa?” he asked, not quite whining but not far from it, either.

“Because I don’t feel like wrestling,” Saffa answered. “Why don’t I just slap your face now? Then it’ll be as if we’d gone to supper.” She bent her head to her work.

Martusino was rash enough to laugh. Bembo trod on his foot, hard. The prisoner yelped. Bembo did his best to grind off a toe or two, but didn’t quite succeed. Saffa kept right on sketching. Such things happened all the time in constabulary stations. Sometimes worse things happened. Everyone knew that. No one saw any need to make a fuss about it.

When she was done with Martusino’s portrait, she told Bembo, “You’ll have to take the manacles off him for a little while. He needs to sign the sketch, and we’ll need fingermarks from him, too.”

One of the constables in the recording section covered Martusino with a small stick while Bembo unlocked the manacles. Unwillingly, the prisoner scrawled his name below the picture of him Saffa had drawn. Even more unwillingly, he let her ink his fingertips and set the impressions of the marks on the paper beside the sketch.

“You’re out of business for a while now, chum,” Bembo said genially. “Walk off with anything else that doesn’t belong to you, and our mages will lead us straight to your door.” The manacles closed on Martusino’s wrists again.

“I didn’t take anything this time,” the prisoner protested.

“Aye, and they get babies from out behind the fig trees,” Bembo said. He and Martusino both knew a crooked wizard could break the link between a criminal and his sketch, signature, and fingermarks. Having signature and fingermarks to go with the image, though, made breaking the link harder and more expensive for the fellow who wanted it broken.

“We’re done here,” Saffa said.

Bembo took Martusino off to the lockup. Martusino knew the way; he’d been there before. As he and Bembo drew near, the bored-looking warder hastily closed a small book and shoved it into a desk drawer. Bembo caught just a glimpse of a bare female backside on the cover. “I’ve got a present for you, Frontino,” he said, and gave the prisoner a shove.

“Just what I always wanted.” Frontino’s expression belied his words. He examined Martusino. “This isn’t the first time I’ve seen this lug, but I’ll be cursed if I can remember his name. Who are you, pal?”