Darkness Descending

“Tired,” she answered at once. “If you have a baby, you’re tired. You can’t be anything else. And times have been hard. No pay, no pension, no money to hire a nurse to take care of Brindza so I could make money on my own.” She shook her head. “Tired,” she repeated.

“I wish I could have let you know sooner that I was all right,” Cornelu said. “Some . . . friends of mine were finally able to post that note.” He wondered if the Lagoan raiders were still on the island. He had no way to know, not now.

“I almost fell over in a faint when I recognized your script,” Costache said. “And then the other notes started.”

“They wouldn’t have, but I got stranded here.” Cornelu shook his head. “Poor Eforiel took all the energy from an egg.”

“Ah, too bad.” Costache also shook her head. She sounded sad. But she did not understand, not really. No one but another leviathan-rider could have understood. Cornelu had been more intimate with his wife, but not a great deal.

Intimate with his wife ... It had been so long. He took a last swig from the second mug of ale. “Can we go home now?” he asked, confident he knew the answer.

But, to his astonished chagrin, Costache shook her head again. “I dare not bring you home,” she said. “I have three Algarvian officers billeted on me. They have been correct in every way,” she added hastily, “but if you came there, you’d go into a captives’ camp the instant you walked through the door.”

“Three Algarvian officers?” Cornelu echoed in tones that couldn’t mean anything but, Three men I have to kill. He thought pain and outrage would choke him. Clapping a hand to his forehead, he exclaimed, “Has it come to this, then? Do I have to make an assignation to sleep with my own wife?” He barely remembered to keep his voice too low for the fishermen to hear him.

“Aye, I fear it has come to that, and even assignations won’t be easy,” Costache answered. Cornelu felt the veins of his neck tighten with fury: fury at the Algarvians, fury at her, fury at everything that kept him from taking what he’d wanted so much for so very long. Before he could bellow like a bull, Brindza woke up and started to cry. Costache gave Cornelu a weary smile. “And here you have one of the reasons assignations won’t be easy.” She scooped the baby out of the carriage.

Cornelu stared at his daughter. He did his best not to see her only as an obstacle standing between him and taking Costache to bed. She looked back at him out of eyes that might have been her mother’s. With some effort, he smiled. She turned her face back toward Costache, as if to ask, Who is this person? What she did say was, “Mama?”

“She’s shy with strangers right now,” Costache said. “People say they all are at this age.”

Iam not a stranger! Cornelu wanted to shout. Iam her father! That was true, but Brindza had no way of knowing it. A new thought cut him like a dagger from out of the night: Iwonder if she’s shy with the Algarvians living, in my house.

“I’d better go,” Costache said. “They will be wondering where I am at this hour.” She leaned forward and brushed Cornel us lips with her own. “Keep writing to me. We’ll meet again as soon as we can.” Brindza up on one shoulder, she pushed the carriage with the other, as she’d obviously had practice doing. She used the carriage to butt the door open. It closed behind her. She was gone. Cornelu sat by himself in the eatery, more alone in his hometown than he had been in exile in Setubal.

As soon as Bembo walked into the constabulary station in Tricarico, Sergeant Pesaro’s face warned him something was wrong. The plump Algarvian constable searched his conscience like a man ransacking his belt pouch for spare change. Rather to his surprise, he found nothing.

But, no matter how innocent he was, or thought he was, Pesaro--who was much rounder than he--pointed a fleshy finger at him and growled, “You had to be so cursed smart, didn’t you?”

“What? When?” Bembo asked. “Usually you call me an idiot.” The only time he could remember being smart lately was catching Kaunians with their hair dyed. He hadn’t got in trouble for that; he’d earned a commendation. Even pretty little Saffa had liked him--for a bit.

“You are an idiot,” Pesaro said. “Even when you’re smart, you’re an idiot.”

“Tell me what you’re talking about, anyhow,” Bembo said, starting to get angry now. “I’d like to know what kind of idiot I am.”

Pesaro shook his head. His flabby jowls wobbled. “I’ll leave it to Captain Sasso. No patrols today, except for a few lucky bastards. The rest of us have to assemble at midmorning. Then you’ll find out.”