Darkness Descending

“I am sick now and then, milady, but I am not ill,” her servant said. “And I have no need to go to a physician. The moon has told me everything I need to know.”

“The moon?” For a moment, the words meant nothing to Krasta. Then her eyes widened. That explained it. “You are with child!”

“Aye,” Bauska said, and again blushed faintly. “I have been sure now for the past ten days or so.”

“Who’s the father?” Krasta asked. If Bauska presumed to tell her it was none of her business, she promised herself the maidservant would regret it for the rest of her life.

But Bauska did nothing of the sort. Looking down at the carpet, she whispered, “Captain Mosco, milady.”

“You are carrying an Algarvians bastard? A cuckoo’s egg?” Krasta said. Not raising her eyes, Bauska nodded. Anger shot through Krasta, anger oddly mixed with envy: she’d thought from the beginning that Mosco, who was years younger than Lurcanio, was also better looking. “How did it happen?”

“How?” Now Bauska did look up. “In the usual way, of course.”

Krasta hissed in exasperation. “That is not what I meant, and you know it perfectly well. Now, then--have you told this fellow what he’s done to you?”

Bauska shook her head. “No, milady. I have not dared, not yet.”

“Well, you are about to.” Krasta seized her maidservant by the arm. Had she been just a little more provoked, she would have seized Bauska by the ear. As things were, she gripped Bauska tightly enough to make the servant whimper. Krasta ignored that; she was used to ignoring protests from her servants. Bauska whimpered again when Krasta marched her down the stairs and into the wing of the mansion the Algarvians occupied. Krasta ignored that, too.

A couple of the clerks who helped administer Priekule for King Mezentio looked up from their desks as the two Valmieran women went by. They eyed Krasta (and Bauska, too, though Krasta paid no attention to that) far more brazenly than Valmieran commoners would have dared to do. Their leers had infuriated Krasta at first. Now she accepted them, as she accepted so much of Algarvian rule.

“But there are limits,” she muttered. “By the powers above, there are limits.” Bauska made a questioning noise. Krasta went right on ignoring her.

She knew where Captain Mosco worked: in an antechamber outside the larger room that served these days as Colonel Lurcanio’s office. Mosco was speaking into a crystal mounted on a desk undoubtedly plundered from a Valmieran cabinetmaker’s shop. He murmured something in Algarvian. As the image in the crystal faded away, he rose and bowed and shifted into his accented Valmieran: “How lovely to see you, ladies--and twice as lovely to see you both together.”

Oh, he was smooth. Bauska smiled and curtsied and started to say something sweet--exactly what the situation didn’t call for, as far as Krasta was concerned. What the situation did call for seemed plain enough. “Seducer!” Krasta shouted at the top of her lungs. “Betrayer of innocence! Defiler of purity!”

That made all the officious Algarvian clerks--or at least the ones who understood Valmieran--stare through the doorway at her with something other than lust on their minds. It also brought Colonel Lurcanio out into the antechamber. It did not, however, much abash Captain Mosco. Like so many of his countrymen, he had crust. With another bow, he said, “I assure you, milady, you are mistaken. I am no defiler, no betrayer, no seducer. I assure you also”--he looked insufferably male, insufferably smug--”no seduction was necessary, not with the lady your maidservant being at least as eager as I.”

Krasta glared at Bauska. She was perfectly willing to believe the commoner wench a slut. With some effort, though, she remembered that was neither here nor there. She had considerable practice sneering, and put that practice to good use. “Lie however you please,” she said, “but all your lies will not explain away the child this poor woman is carrying.”

“What is this?” Lurcanio said sharply. Mosco stared, then kicked at the carpet. He still looked very male, but now like a sulky small boy caught after he’d broken a fancy vase he should have handled carefully.

“Speak up!” Krasta told Bauska, and squeezed the maidservant’s upper arm--which she’d never let go of--harder than ever.

Bauska whimpered yet again, then did speak, in a very small voice: “Milady tells the truth. I will have a baby, and Captain Mosco is the father.”

Mosco had wasted no time recovering his aplomb. With an extravagant Algarvian shrug, he said, “Well, what if I am? That’s what comes of poking, every now and then anyhow.” He turned to Lurcanio. “It’s not as if I’m the only one, my lord Count. These Valmieran women spread their legs at a wink and a wave.”