After the Downfall

Several days later than Hasso thought it should have, the Bucovinan army moved west from Falticeni. He used the time as well as he could. He made sure every pot of gunpowder and every metal shell the army was taking with it had a little bit of dragon bone inside or on it. Accidents could still happen: a spark, a fire. You treated gunpowder with the proper respect and made those as unlikely as you could. And now he’d magicproofed the powder, too. Or he hoped like anything he had.

He began to believe the dragon bones would do what he wanted them to do. Aderno and Velona hadn’t come close to troubling him since he started wearing his dragon-fang amulet. He didn’t believe they weren’t trying to bother him anymore. They had every reason to hurt him if they didn’t kill him. If they couldn’t… then the amulet was working the way he had in mind.

By now, almost everybody in Lord Zgomot’s army wore an amulet. Artisans with saws and thongs had turned them out as fast as they could. Hasso knew Zgomot wore one himself: he’d given one to the Lord of Bucovin himself, and watched him put it on under his tunic. Zgomot wore a different tunic today on horseback, but the bulge was still there.

“I tried to shoot you last year,” Hasso said, riding up alongside him.

“Yes, I know,” Zgomot answered. “You killed one of my guards, and wounded two more.”

“You don’t hold it against me?” Hasso asked.

“If you had killed me, I would hold that against you,” Zgomot said. Hasso laughed, as much in surprise as for any other reason – the Lord of Bucovin didn’t make jokes, even wintry ones, very often. Zgomot went on, “As things stand, no. You were on the other side. You were doing what you could for Bottero. I might fault your taste, but not your loyalty. If you tried to shoot me now, I would hold that against you – and I would have good reason to, I think.”

“So do I, Lord,” Hasso said quickly. “I have no reason to do that.”

“Well, I hope not,” Lord Zgomot said. “We are giving you as much as we can. And I hope you stay happy with Drepteaza, and I hope she stays happy with you. I spent a lot of time worrying about that.”

“I know, Lord,” Hasso replied. Zgomot had damn near ordered her to go to bed with him for what the Reich would have called national-security reasons. The only problem was, Drepteaza didn’t take orders like that worth a damn. Hasso thanked whatever gods happened to be in business locally that she’d eventually found reasons of her own. He said, “I am very happy. I hope Drepteaza is, too.”

“She cannot be too unhappy, or she would drop you. She has a mind and a will of her own,” Zgomot said, which paralleled Hasso’s thoughts of a moment before only too well. The native continued, “I have tried to ask her a time or two, but she does not always tell me all of what she thinks. She does not always tell anyone all of what she thinks.”

Hasso nodded; it wasn’t as if he hadn’t also noticed that. “She is her own person, yes. I like the person she is.”

“So do I, though not, I daresay, the same way.” Zgomot smiled one of his crooked, knowing smiles. “Since you came to this world, you have been lovers with two women with minds of their own. Well, not all of Velona’s mind is her own, since part of it belongs to the Lenello goddess, but you know what I mean. Attracting two women of that sort is a compliment to you.”

“I would like it better if one of them didn’t keep trying to kill me, Lord,” Hasso said.

“Indeed. I can see how that might be so. But I assure you that you would like it less if they both did. If both of those two went after a man at the same time, I do not think he would last long.”

“Neither do I,” Hasso said, which was the truth. When he was coming back from trying to re-defect to the Lenelli, he’d had similar thoughts about Bottero and Zgomot. He couldn’t make it here without one of them, not unless he aimed to go into the king business himself. And he didn’t. He might like to carry whatever they gave you here instead of a Generalfeldmarschall’s baton, but he had not the slightest desire to wear a crown.

Yes, if Bottero and Zgomot both wanted him dead, dead he would be. If Velona and Drepteaza both wanted him dead, dead he would be, too. He suspected he would enjoy dying a lot less in that case.

Suppose Velona didn’t want him dead. Suppose she wanted him back. What would he do then? If he had any brains, he would stay with Drepteaza even so. If he had any brains … Being with Velona had nothing to do with brains. You went with Velona for the same reason a test pilot climbed into a new fighter plane’s cockpit – to see what kind of thrills it would give you next. And Velona’s thrills were a hell of a lot more exciting than any you could get from a lousy airplane.

Hasso shook his head. It was dead. It would never come back to life. He might miss it – he did miss it. If he spent all his time mooning over what was lost, he would lose sight of what he had. What he had was pretty goddamn special, too.