Into The Darkness

With a low bow, the coachman handed Krasta up into the carriage.

"Take me to the Avenue of Equestrians," she said, naming the street with the most shops - and the most expensive shops - in Priekule. "The corner of Little Hills Road will do. I shall expect to see you there again an hour before sunset."

"Aye, milady," the coachman said, as Bauska had done before. Some nobles let their servants speak to them in tones of familiarity. Krasta was not one to make that mistake. They were not her equals, they were her inferiors, and she intended that they remember it. The carriage went swiftly through the streets. Not much traffic was on e so them. Many common folk, Krasta knew, had had their horses and donkeys impressed into the service of the kingdom. The public caravans edly that traveled the ley lines were also far from crowded. Most of the anc-passengers aboard them were women, so many men having been sum been moned into King Gaimbu's army. Like the traffic on its thoroughfares, Priekule seemed a shadow of its e of former self. Many shops and taverns were shuttered. Some of those shutters no doubt meant the owners had gone off to war. And some shutters were up because owners wanted to save their expensive glass if Algarvian e you eggs burst in the capital of Valmiera. None had yet. Krasta was serenely hero confident none would. Workmen were piling sandbags around the base of the Kaumian Column of Victory. Cloth sheathed the carved stone. Krasta giggled, rvants thinking of lamb's-gut sheaths for other columns. A wizard walked e was around the ancient monument, incanting busily. Perhaps he was fire own proofing the cloth or otherwise sorcerously strengthening it. Valmiera could afford to do that for its treasures. Few nobles and even fewer [..com ~n*1Z moners..] could afford to do it for their private property. Snorting, the carriage pulled to a stop. Krasta stepped out on to the Avenue of Equestrians. She did not look back, nor wonder even for went, she a moment what the coachman would do till it was time to retrieve her. As far as she was concerned, he stopped existing when she no longer needed him. If he didn't start existing again the moment she required him, he would be sorry.

Shops on the Avenue of Equestrians remained open. Clerks fawned on Krasta as she strutted into a jeweler's, a milliner's, a fancy lampseller's.

The clerk in a fine tailor's shop did not fawn enough to suit her. She had her revenge: she ran the young girl ragged, trying on every pair of silk and leather and linen trousers in the place.

"And which will milady choose for herself today?" the sweating clerk asked when Krasta reclonned her own trousers at last.

"Oh, I do not care to buy today," Krasta answered sweetly. "I wasiust comparing your styles to the ones I saw the other day at the House of Spogi." Out she went, leaving the clerk, slump-shouldered with dejection, staring after her.

Setting the commoner in her place immensely improved Krasta's mood. She hurried across the street to the Bronze Woodcock, a cafe she'd always favored. An old waiter with a bushy mustache of almost Algarvian impressiveness was leading her to an empty table by the fire when a man a couple of tables away sprang to his feet and bowed. "Will you join me, Marchioness?"

The waiter paused, awaiting Krasta's decision. She smiled. "Of course

I will, Viscount Valnu," she replied. With a tiny shrug, the waiter steered her to Valnu's table. The viscount bowed again, this time over her hand.

He raised it to his lips, then let it fall. Krasta's smile got wider. "So good to see you, Viscount," she said as she sat down. "And since I hadn't seen you in a while, I thought you must have put on a uniform, as my brother has done."

Valnu took a pull at the flagon of porter in front of him. Firelight played off his cheekbones. Depending on how it struck his features, they were either beautifully sculpted or skeletal: sometimes both at once. His blood, Krasta thought, was very fine. With a wry smile of his own, he said, "I fear the rigors of the field are not for me. I am a creature of

Priekule, and could flourish nowhere else. If King Gainibu grows so desperate as to need my martial services, Valnuera shall be in desperate peril indeed."

"Porter, milady?" the waiter asked Krasta. "Ale? Wine?"

"Ale," she said. "Ale and a poached trout on a bed of saffron rice."

"And I will have the smoked sausage with vinegared cabbage," Va1nu declared. "Hearty peasant fare." He himself was neither peasantish nor hearty. As the waiter bowed, he went on, "You need not hurry the meals d on overmuch, my good fellow. The marchioness and I shall amuse ourselves [..].

Her's [..] in the meantime by talking about rank. "The waiter bowed again and had departed. [..f..] silk Krasta clapped her hands together. "That is well said!" she cried.

"Truly you are a man of great nobility indeed." clerk "I do my best," Valnu said. "More than that, I cannot do. More than that, no man can do."