Out of the Darkness

“I do!” Bembo exclaimed. “Remember, darling, I was in Eoforwic when all the Unkerlanters in the world came rolling east across Forthweg straight at me.” Being who he was, of course he saw the battles of the summer before, so disastrous for Algarve, in that light. He ate an almond, then went on, “And the cursed Forthwegians rose up and stabbed us in the back, too. Fat lot of good it did them--now they’ve got Swemmel sitting on ‘em instead of us, and may they have joy of that.”

“It’s all a mess,” Saffa said, which summed things up as well as any four words Bembo might have found.

“That it is,” he said dolefully, and then, when a plump woman with a pitted complexion almost stumbled over his splinted leg--which had to stick out from the table a bit--his gloom turned to spleen: “Watch it, lady!”

She glared at him. “If you were any kind of a man, you’d have let yourself get killed before all this happened.” Her wave encompassed the whole of Tricarico and, by extension, the whole of Algarve. She might have held Bembo personally responsible for the lost war.

He wouldn’t have taken that from Saffa, and he certainly wasn’t about to take it from a stranger he didn’t find attractive. “If I had anything to do with you, I certainly would have let myself get killed before I came home,” he said, and bit his thumb at her, a fine Algarvian insult.

The plump woman screeched like a wounded trumpet. She drew back a foot to kick Bembo’s bad leg. He grabbed a crutch by the wrong end and got ready to swing it like a club. Algarvians were normally the most chivalrous of men, but he wasn’t about to let anybody do that leg any more harm.

Saffa snatched up the bowl of olives and made as if to throw it at the woman. The olives glistened with oil; they would have ruined the plump woman’s kilt and frock. Bembo wondered if she didn’t find that a more dangerous threat than his makeshift bludgeon. Mumbling curses under her breath, she stalked off with her nose in the air.

“Thanks,” Bembo told Saffa.

“You’re welcome,” she said. “That stupid sow had no business coming down on you so. You did everything for the kingdom you could. What did she do? Sit around and eat cakes the whole war long, by the look of her.”

Everything I could do for the kingdom? Bembo wondered. He really had fought, and he really had kept order in foreign towns. And you sent powers above only know how many Kaunians off on their last rides. Had that helped Algarve or hurt it? Hurt it, probably, for such things made all her neighbors more certain they couldn’t afford to lose. But his superiors had ordered it, and so he’d done it.

He wished he hadn’t had that thought. He saw in his mind’s eye that horrible old Kuusaman mage who’d looked through him as if the ocean of his soul were no more than ankle-deep. What that fellow thought of him . . . No, better not to imagine what that fellow thought of him. And the Kuusaman had given him the benefit of the doubt, too. Bembo shivered even though the day was warm, almost hot. He gulped down the rest of his wine and waved for more.

Before it got there, Saffa’s eyes narrowed with anger. “Oh, that’s too much,” she said. “That really is too much.”

Bembo wondered what he’d done now, but her rage wasn’t aimed at him. She pointed. He twisted in his chair. Up the street came a couple of Jelgavan officers in tunics and trousers, looking around at Tricarico as if they’d conquered it themselves.

“Those stinking Kaunians have their nerve,” Saffa said savagely. “They shouldn’t show their faces here. It’s not like they beat us.”

“No, it isn’t,” Bembo agreed. “Even so . . .” His voice trailed off. As far as he could see, Algarvians were going to have a hard time saying anything bad about Kaunian folk, even if it was true (maybe especially if it was true), for generations to come. He saw no way to say that to Saffa, precisely because she didn’t know all the things he did. She’s the lucky one, he thought again.

She stared at the trousered blonds, looking daggers into their backs, till they went round a corner. Then she turned back to Bembo and said, “Your flat is only a couple of blocks from here, isn’t it?”

“That’s right,” he answered.

“Let’s go back there,” she said. “We’ll see what happens.” She cocked her head to one side, laughing at his flabbergasted expression. “Don’t get your hopes up too far. You don’t move very fast. I have plenty of time to change my mind.”

He knew that was true, but couldn’t hurry on his crutches no matter how much he wanted to. He spent most of the time on the way trying to remember how messy the flat was. If Saffa laughed at him for being a slob, she might not want to do anything but laugh.