After the Downfall

He wondered whether the Bucovinans would take away his small comforts again and remind him he was a prisoner. For that matter, he wondered whether he would find out how ingenious the local torturer was. If you told your captors things they didn’t want to hear, you had to expect to pay the price.

Drepteaza really hadn’t wanted to hear that he loved Velona. For that matter, neither had Velona. It would have been funny if it hadn’t put his ass in a sling. Hell, it was pretty funny anyhow.

They went on feeding him, and the food stayed better than the prison slop he’d had before. Somebody – maybe Drepteaza, maybe Lord Zgomot, maybe just Rautat – was in a merciful mood, at least as far as that went. Not expecting any mercies, Hasso was grateful even for small ones.

He spent the next several days wondering whether small ones were the only ones he’d get. The natives who brought him food didn’t speak to him, and didn’t answer when he tried to speak to them. Neither did the ones who emptied his chamber pot.

And nobody else showed up. Drepteaza didn’t come in to teach him more Bucovinan. Rautat didn’t come in with guards to escort him around Falticeni. They let him stew in his own juices instead.

I’m not going to stop feeling what I feel about Velona, he thought. I’m not going to forget my oath to Bottero. Some more time went by. I hope I’m not, anyway.

He did what he’d done before: he slept as much as he could. The long, cold winter nights lent themselves to that. To sleep, perchance to dream … If he wasn’t too hungry and he wasn’t too cold, why not? He couldn’t turn on the radio or even curl up with a good book.

At first, he didn’t dream much, or didn’t remember what he dreamt if he did. He’d never paid a whole lot of attention to his dreams, so that didn’t worry him. And even if he had been, the clout in the head he’d taken might have scrambled his brains worse than he knew.

When he did start noticing what he dreamt, that was enough to make him sit up and wonder what the hell was going on. All the dreams had the same theme: somebody was looking for him, trying to talk to him. He had no idea who or why. The dreams didn’t seem threatening. That was as much as he was willing to say about them, even to himself.

When, after a couple of weeks, Drepteaza did start giving him lessons again, he mentioned them to her. He tried first in his very basic, very bad Bucovinan. When that failed, he switched to Lenello. She heard him out with her usual thoughtful air. Once he finished, she said, “I will pray, and see if that does anything.”

It didn’t, not as far as Hasso could tell. She listened gravely when he told her so, then promised to speak to Rautat about it. The veteran underofficer came up to Hasso and winked at him. “I know what you need,” he said.

“Do you?” Hasso said. “I don’t.” Rautat thought that was the funniest thing he’d ever heard.

Hasso found out why a couple of nights later, when a reasonably good-looking Bucovinan woman came into his room without any guards escorting her. “My name is Leneshul,” she said in fair Lenello. “They say you have been without pleasure too long. I can give you some.” As matter-of-factly as if she were going to wash dishes, she pulled her top off over her head and tugged her skirt and drawers down to the floor. “Do I suit you?” she asked, standing naked – and she was naked, not nude – before him. “You can have someone else if I don’t.”

Part of him wanted to tell her to leave and not to ask anyone else to come in her place. But he was almost painfully aware of how very long he’d gone without. It didn’t have to mean anything – just relief and, as she’d said, some momentary pleasure. “You’ll do,” he told her, and got out of his own clothes.

He wasn’t sure she enjoyed it, but he wasn’t sure she didn’t. She was certainly limber and uninhibited. He rode her the first time. After they finished, she sucked him hard again and straddled him. He squeezed her small, firm breasts as she bucked up and down. She threw back her head and groaned. If she came, it was right then. He knew he did a moment later.

“There,” she said, leaning down to brush her lips across his. “Is that better?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. She laughed throatily.

He slept without dreams that night. Drepteaza asked him about it at their language lesson the next morning. She seemed pleased at his answer. “Rautat was clever,” she said. “More clever than I was. You may have Leneshul any night you please – or another woman, if you’d rather.”

What about you? Hasso wondered. Drepteaza was cool, almost cold, as if she had no idea how pretty she was. That made the prospect of heating her all the more exciting. But she looked at him as if he were a side of beef. If he offended her, she could do anything she wanted to him. He kept his big mouth shut … about that, anyway.

“Leneshul is all right,” he told her.