Out of the Darkness

He got a nice round of applause. And I know what a liar I am, he thought. Aye, plenty of the locals had opposed Mezentio’s men. But plenty hadn’t. Several women in the crowd still had their hair shorter than most because they’d been shorn after the Algarvians withdrew. A good many men had done a good deal of business with the occupiers. But he didn’t want to dwell on that part of the past.

“I fought the Algarvians, as you did,” he said. “Whatever I can do to protect you from your enemies, I will do. Now you may know that King Gainibu appointed me to this place. But I will also tell you that I will do whatever I can to protect you from the king, should he ever act unjustly. That’s a noble’s duty to his people, and I’ll do everything I can to meet it.”

More cheering, this louder and more enthusiastic. In the old days, nobles really were a shield against royal power--not least because dukes and counts and such didn’t care to give up any power of their own. Things weren’t so easy for the nobility nowadays; kings were stronger than they had been. But the pledge was worth making.

He made another pledge: “I won’t be a scourge on your womenfolk, however much I admire them. And I admire them so much, I married one of them.”

He waved to Merkela, and kept waving till she finally waved back. That got him a different sort of applause, warmer and more sympathetic. What went through his mind was, I’ll take whatever I can get. He hopped down from the high seat and gave the peasant who’d boxed his ear one goldpiece and three of silver. The amount was as traditional as everything else in the ceremony. He wondered how it had first been set, and how long ago. No one seemed to know.

People came up to clasp his hand, to congratulate him--and to start asking him for judgments on their problems and quarrels. Time after time, he said, “Let me find out more before I answer you.” That seemed to satisfy most of the would-be petitioners, but not all.

Merkela said, “You did very well.”

“Thanks,” Skarnu answered. “Now in another twenty years I’ll stand up there and make myself another speech. Till then, no thanks.”

“But isn’t that part of what being a marquis is about?” Merkela asked. “Even a son of a whore like Enkuru would do it every so often. ‘My people,’ he would call us, as if he owned us. But we liked to come into Priekule to listen to him. It gave us a break from what we did every day.”

Skarnu thought about that. Back in Priekule, nobles were common as dirt. Remembering some of the people in the capital, Skarnu knew the resemblance didn’t end there. And, with King Gainibu at the apex of the social hierarchy, one count or marquis more or less didn’t matter much.

Here in the countryside, things were different. People here won’t ever meet the king or even see him. So who’s at the top of the column, then? I am, by the powers above. I’m the one everybody’s going to be looking at.

Slowly, he nodded. “You’re right,” he told Merkela. “I’m going to have to get out there and show myself, even if I don’t much want to do it.”

“It needs doing,” she said seriously.

“All right,” Skarnu said. “But that means you’re going to have to get out and show yourself a lot, too. After all, you’re the main connection I’ve got to this part of the kingdom. You’re the one who’s lived here all her life. You’ll have to help me.”

Merkela had been smiling when she told Skarnu he’d need to face the people. The smile slipped when he suggested she needed to do it, too. The shoe pinched differently on her foot. Even if she needed a moment to gather herself, though, she nodded, too. Skarnu had expected that she would. He put his arm around her. Of one thing he was abundantly certain: she didn’t run away from anything.

Sabrino’s mother had died while he was fighting in the Six Years’ War. He’d got compassionate leave to go home and see her laid on her pyre, but he hadn’t been there during her last illness. His father had lived another fifteen years before passing away from a slow, painful wasting disease. He remembered going into the sickroom one day and realizing what he saw on the old man’s face was death.

He looked at Algarve now. What he saw on his kingdom’s face was death.

Not far west of his wing’s dragon farm, the last Algarvian army holding the Unkerlanter hordes back from Trapani was breaking up. That it was breaking up didn’t surprise him. If anything, the surprise lay in how long it had held together and how badly it had hurt Swemmel’s soldiers. His wing, with a paper strength of sixty-four dragons, had eight ready to fly right now. They’d flown and flown and flown. They’d done everything they could, despite exhaustion, despite being without cinnabar. Every Algarvian in uniform had done everything he could.