Out of the Darkness

“Oh, dear,” Hajjaj said, in lieu of something stronger and more pungent.

“Do we get rid of ‘em on the sly?” Ikhshid asked. “Do we hand ‘em over to Swemmel’s men to show what good boys we are? Or do we let ‘em stay?”

“The first thing you’d better do is get them away from Najran,” Hajjaj replied. “If the Kaunians settled there find out they’ve landed, we won’t have to worry about this set of exiles for long.”

“Mm, you’re right about that,” General Ikhshid agreed. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What do we do with ‘em, or to ‘em?”

“I don’t know,” Hajjaj said distractedly. “By the powers above, I really don’t. If Ansovald finds out they’re in the kingdom, he’ll spit rivets, and so will King Swemmel. From their point of view, it would be hard to blame them.”

“I understand,” Ikhshid said. “That’s why I called you here.” He suddenly looked worried. “Or should I have gone straight to the king instead?”

“I’ll talk things over with him,” Hajjaj promised. “We won’t do anything final till he approves it.”

“I should hope not,” Ikhshid said. “But what do you think we ought to do?”

“I don’t like handing over fugitives. It goes against every clan tradition. I don’t like killing them, either,” Hajjaj said.

“Neither do I, but I also don’t like getting caught with them here,” Ikhshid said. “And we’re liable to. You know it as well as I do. They don’t speak our language, they aren’t brown, they are circumcised, they’ve got red hair, and they wrap themselves in cloth all the time.”

“Details, details,” Hajjaj said dryly, and startled a laugh out of the army commander. The Zuwayzi foreign minister went on, “My recommendation is to take them to some inland village--Harran, say--and do our best to keep word of them from blowing back here to Bishah. If we can stash them off to one side for a while, things may calm down before they’re discovered.”

“If.” Ikhshid freighted the little word with a great weight of meaning.

“General, if you have a better idea, I should be delighted to hear it,” Hajjaj said.

“I don’t,” Ikhshid replied at once. “I just wondered if you had the nerve to try and get away with that. We’ll be in a ton of trouble if the Unkerlanters find out about it.”

He wasn’t joking. If anything, he was understating what might happen. Even so, Hajjaj answered, “We’re still a free kingdom--after a fashion. Let me take this to the king. As I said, he’ll have the final decision.” Shazli seldom overruled him. This once, he might.

“Good luck,” Ikhshid said.

“Thanks. I fear I’ll need it.” Hajjaj hoped he could talk Shazli around. No matter what the circumstances, he had trouble with the idea of giving anyone over to the Unkerlanters.

Krasta adjusted the wig on her head. As far as she was concerned, the hair in the wig wasn’t nearly so fine or so golden as her own. The miserable thing was also cursedly hot. But she wore it from the moment she got up in the morning till she went to bed. It hid the shame of the shearing Merkela had given her, and let her go out into Priekule without reminding the world she’d bedded an Algarvian during the occupation. Being able to hold her head up counted for more than comfort.

Her son--her sandy-haired son, her bastard son, the proof of exactly what she’d been doing--started yowling in the room next to her bedchamber. She’d hired a wet nurse and a governess to look after the little brat, whom she’d named Gainibu in the hope that the King of Valmiera would hear of it and understand it as an apology of sorts. As a matter of fact, thus far she’d hired two governesses and three wet nurses. For some reason, they had trouble getting along with her.

After a little while, the racket stopped. Krasta didn’t go in to check on the baby. She supposed the wet nurse was giving him her breast. But she was doing her best to pretend, even to herself, that she’d never had him. His wails didn’t make that easy, but she’d always been good at deceiving herself.

She had money in her pockets. She had a new driver, one who didn’t drink. She could escape the mansion, escape the baby she didn’t want to acknowledge, go into Priekule, and come back with things. What they were hardly mattered. While she was buying them, she didn’t have to think about anything else.

But, just as she left the bedchamber and headed for the stairs, the butler-- the new butler--came up them toward her. (She was offended that so many of her servants had chosen to go south with Skarnu and his peasant slut of a new wife, but she’d never dwelt on why they might have decided to leave her service.)

“Milady, Viscount Valnu is here to see you,” the new butler said.

“I certainly am,” Valnu himself agreed from the hallway below. “Come down here, sweetheart, so I can see you.”