Darkness Descending

A few doors past the lingerie shop stood a clothier’s Krasta enjoyed visiting. She peered past the peeling gold leaf in the window to see what new things he was displaying. If she didn’t stay up with fashion, Lurcanio might decide to buy lingerie for someone else.

She stopped and stared. The nearly military cut of the new tunics and trousers on display wasn’t what caught her eye. She had never imagined a Valmieran clothier would put kilts out for sale after Algarve beat her own kingdom in war. It struck her as indecent--no, worse, un-Kaunian.

But out of a dressing room stepped a young blond woman wearing a kilt that stopped a couple of inches above her knees and left the rest of her legs bare. “Indecent,” Krasta muttered. She’d worn kilts before the war, but now? It seemed a far more public admission of defeat than taking an Algarvian lover. But the clothier’s assistant clapped her hands in delight, while her customer reached into the pockets of the trousers she wasn’t wearing any more and paid for the kilt.

Iwon’t shop there again, Krasta thought, and walked on, discontented. She stepped into a jeweler’s, looking for earrings, but he had nothing that suited her. She reduced the shop girl to tears before leaving. That restored most of the good humor she’d lost standing in front of the clothier’s.

And then, walking up the street toward her, she saw Viscount Valnu. He waved gaily and went from a walk up to a trot. Krasta stiffened and turned away. Valnu was wearing a kilt.

“What’s the trouble?” he asked, and leaned forward to kiss her on the cheek.

She turned away again, not playfully as she so often had, but in grim earnest. “What’s the trouble?” she echoed. “I’ll tell you what’s the trouble. That’s the trouble.” She pointed in the general direction of the kilt. On a man even more than on a woman, it seemed an admission--even a celebration--of defeat.

Valnu pretended not to understand. “What, my knees?” Wicked laughter filled his thin, handsome face. “My pet, you’ve seen a great deal more of me than my knees.”

“Never on the street,” Krasta ground out.

“Oh, you have so,” Valnu said. “That time you ended up shoving me out of your carriage--we weren’t just on the bloody street, we were in it.”

“That’s different,” Krasta said, though she couldn’t have told him how. Then she asked the question that was really on her mind: “How can you stand to wear it?”

“How can I stand it?” Ever the opportunist, Valnu rested a hand on her hip. “Sweetling, the way things are, I should hardly dare not to don the kilt, wouldn’t you say? It’s protective coloration.”

Krasta might have heard the phrase once or twice, but it made no sense to her here. Impatiently, she said, “What are you talking about?”

“What I said,” Valnu answered. “You know, the butterflies that look like dry leaves when they fold up their wings and the bugs that look like twigs, all so the birds can’t eat ‘em. If I look like an Algarvian ...” His voice trailed away.

“Oh.” Krasta wasn’t the cleverest woman in Valmiera, but she saw what he meant. “They aren’t really doing that. I don’t think they’re really doing that. Lurcanio says they aren’t doing that. If they were, we’d have heard about people who went missing, don’t you think?”

“Not if they didn’t go missing from Valmiera,” Valnu said.

“We’d have heard about Jelgava, too, or the Jelgavan nobility would have, and they would have started screaming their heads off. We’d have heard that,” Krasta said. It was Lurcanio’s argument, but it had convinced her, and she made it her own.

If it didn’t convince Valnu, it made him thoughtful. “Maybe,” he said at last. “Just maybe. By the powers above, how I wish it could be true. Still and all, though”--he ran the hand that wasn’t on Krasta’s hip down his kilt--”better not to take chances. Law of similarity and all that. And don’t I look splendid?”

“You look grotesque.” Krasta exercised tact only around Colonel Lurcanio. “As grotesque as an Algarvian in trousers. It looks unnatural.”

“You say the sweetest things. I’ll tell you what it is, though.” Valnu leaned toward her, almost close enough for his tongue to touch her ear as he whispered, “It’s bloody drafty, that’s what.”

He startled a laugh out of Krasta, despite her best intentions. “Serves you right,” she said. This time, when Valnu tried to kiss her on the cheek, she let him. He went on his way cheerfully enough, but she found she could get no more pleasure out of shopping and rode back to her mansion in a glum and dour mood.

“Coming on!” an Algarvian soldier shouted in bad Unkerlanter. “More firewoods!”

“Aye, more firewood,” Garivald said, and dumped his bundle at the redhead’s feet. Every branch the Algarvians burned was one the villagers of Zossen couldn’t, but anyone who complained got blazed. No one complained, then--not where the Algarvians could hear.