After the Downfall

Her jaw set, as if she were taking a blow she hoped she was braced for. “I wondered whether that was so,” she said softly, as much to herself, Hasso judged, as to him. She made herself stand straight. “And what does the wizard want?”

“To get me back for the Lenelli.” Hasso answered with the truth. That was what Aderno had wanted, anyway, till Velona found out Hasso was laying a Grenye woman. Now they probably both wanted him trussed and roasted and served up with an apple in his mouth like a suckling pig.

“They think you know things,” Drepteaza remarked. Hasso kept quiet, which struck him as the safest thing he could do just then – not that anything seemed very safe at the moment. The priestess eyed him. “But these are bad dreams for you. Elyash said you screamed tonight: screamed like a man over hot coals, he told me.”

And how did Elyash know what a man sounded like when he hung over hot coals? Better not to inquire, chances were. “This is a bad dream tonight, yes,” Hasso said.

“Why?” Drepteaza asked.

Hasso wondered whether he ought to evade that question. As much as Velona didn’t like native women, Drepteaza didn’t like Velona. The Lenello woman had already tried to fry his brains from the inside out. What would the Bucovinan woman do? Did he want to find out?

On the other hand, what exactly did he scream when he woke up? Did the guards hear it? Did it have Velona’s name in it? If he lied and Drepteaza found out, what would she do then? Again, did he want to find out?

He decided he didn’t. Hell had no fury like a woman scorned? How about a woman hoodwinked? And so, carefully, he said, “Velona is – was – in this dream.”

“Oh, really?” No, the Bucovinan priestess didn’t like that, not even a little bit. She didn’t like anything that had anything to do with Velona. But her frown was more one of concentration than of fury – Hasso hoped so, anyhow. “You like Velona, though. You love Velona.” Drepteaza made it sound indescribably perverse. “Why do you say seeing her was bad? And why did she appear in the dream in the first place?”

Drepteaza might be a native woman who only came halfway up Hasso’s chest. That didn’t mean she was a fool. Oh, no – on the contrary. How many people in Hasso’s world had come to grief by equating the two? The Fuhrer had in Russia. The Wehrmacht officer hoped he wouldn’t make the same mistake himself, not when she’d picked two vital questions.

He answered them in the opposite order from which she’d asked them: “She appears because she wants – wanted – to get me back to Drammen.” The past tense mattered here. He kept using it: “And seeing her was bad because she … got angry because of Leneshul.”

“She did, did she?” Drepteaza laughed. “That’s the funniest thing I ever heard. What does she expect you to do when you’re here and not with her and you won’t be going back to her? Sit around and play with your dick all the time?”

Hasso didn’t care for the sound of and you won’t be going back to her. Nothing he could do about it, though. And Velona probably did expect him to do just that, or else to live in the glorious memories of her. Life didn’t work that way, but he thought it was what she expected.

Maybe Drepteaza did, too, for she shook her head and exclaimed, “The nerve of that woman!” She really did sound indignant.

“Sorry to bother you,” Hasso said.

“Don’t worry about it. I wouldn’t have missed this for the world.” Drepteaza paused, just when Hasso thought she would get in her last little dig and go back to bed. Maybe it was only a trick of the dim, unreliable lamplight, but suddenly she looked much older and much more worried. In a voice that tried to stay casual but didn’t quite succeed, she asked, “You don’t have anything to do with magic, do you?”

Rautat had asked him that before, but this time the question took him by surprise. If he’d been expecting it, he could have said, Of course not, and that would have been that. But what came out of his mouth was, again, the exact and literal truth: “I can do a little, but I don’t know much about it.”

“You … can … do … a … little.” He never forgot how Drepteaza spaced out the words, or how enormous her eyes seemed. That was also partly a trick of the light, yes, but it seemed somehow more. She stabbed out a finger at him. “Why didn’t you say so before?”

“What good does it do you? You can’t trust me. Even if you could trust me, I’m not a quarter trained. I’m not a quarter of a quarter trained. What I know is this.” Hasso held his thumb and index finger close together. “What the Lenelli know is this” He threw his arms wide.

Drepteaza’s eyes narrowed now, narrowed dangerously. She didn’t believe him. “But they wouldn’t care about you if you didn’t know things we don’t.”

“Neither would you,” he pointed out.