Out of the Darkness

“This is a Kaunian war,” the Algarvian mage declared. His comrades solemnly nodded. “Everyone picks on Algarve, and so of course we have to fight back in any way we can.” The other wizards nodded again.

“War is bad enough. You made it worse,” Ilmarinen said. “You made it much worse. Is it any wonder that every other kingdom has joined together to knock you down and make sure you can never do it again? By all you’ve done, you deserve it. You almost killed me when you loosed your attack on Yliharma.”

“Too bad we failed, old man.” The Algarvian didn’t lack for nerve—but then, lacking for nerve had never been an Algarvian characteristic. “So long as we can fight back, we will, any way we can.”

“Then you had better not complain about what happens to you afterwards,” Ilmarinen said. Since he was on the side of the captors and not the captives, he took advantage of having the last word and walked out.

As soon as Bembo could get around with crutches and his splint, the healers in Tricarico threw him out of the sanatorium. He’d expected nothing else; wounded people kept flooding into the place. If the healers didn’t need to keep an eye on him, they did need the cot he was filling.

He had no flat, of course, not any more. But finding a new one wasn’t hard, not when he had silver to spend. And he did; he hadn’t used much of his salary in all the time he’d been in Forthweg, and he’d done pretty well for himself shaking down the locals. He would have landed a place even sooner than he did if he hadn’t insisted on living on the ground floor.

“Everybody wants those flats,” a landlord with none to let told him. “Fast and easy to get to the cellar when the eggs start falling.”

“I can’t go anywhere fast and easy,” Bembo said. Using crutches made it harder for him to gesture while he talked, and an Algarvian who couldn’t talk with his hands was hardly alive. “You think I want to go up and down stairs with these things?”

The landlord shrugged. “Sorry, pal. I can’t give you what I ain’t got.”

Bembo went off in a huff. He finally got a flat the next morning. Then he took a ley-line caravan over to his old constabulary station to find out where Saffa was staying these days. That took some doing; a lot of the constables there didn’t remember him and didn’t want to tell him anything. He finally got what he needed from Frontino, the warder at the gaol.

“Read any spicy romances lately?” Bembo asked him.

Frontino reached into his desk. “I’ve got a good one right here, matter of fact.” The romance, called Empress’ Passion, certainly looked good to Bembo. The cover showed a naked Kaunian woman, presumably the Empress in question, with her legs wrapped around an ancient Algarvic warrior with an improbable set of muscles. “The Kaunian Emperor, see, is going to sacrifice a bunch of Algarvian captives, till this guy”--Frontino tapped the warrior--”horns the Empress into talking him out of it. Then the captives get free and the blood really spills. I’m done--want to borrow it? The Empress, she screws up a storm.” He held the book out to Bembo.

Almost to his own surprise, Bembo shook his head. “That whole business of sacrificing ...” He looked around to make sure nobody but Frontino could hear him. “Everything they say about the Kaunians in Forthweg . . .”

“Pack of lies,” the warder said. “Enemy dragons have been dropping little broadsheets about it, so it has to be a pack of lies. Stands to reason.”

But Bembo shook his head again. “It’s all true, Frontino. Everything everybody says is true, and nobody says even a quarter of what all really went on. I ought to know. I was fornicating there, remember.”

Frontino didn’t believe him. He could see as much. He thought about arguing. He thought about breaking one of his crutches over the warder’s head, too, to let in a little sense. But that would have just landed him in the gaol. Muttering under his breath, he made his slow, hitching way out of the constabulary station and back to the ley-line caravan stop.

The block of flats next to Saffa’s and one across the street were only piles of wreckage. Bembo had to go up three flights of stairs to get to her flat. He was puffing and sweating when he finally got there. A baby wailed behind the door he knocked on.

When Saffa opened it, she looked harried--maybe her brat had been crying for a while. “Oh,” she said. “You.”

He didn’t quite know how to take that. “Hello, Saffa. I’m on my feet-- sort of.”

“Hello, Bembo.” Her smile still had some of the sour tang he remembered. So did her words: “I’m glad to see you--sort of.”

“Will you go to supper with me tomorrow night?” he asked, as if the whole Derlavaian War, including his broken leg, had never happened.

“No,” she said. But she wasn’t spitting in his eye, as she’d warned she might, for she went on, “I haven’t got anyone to watch my son then. But three nights from now, my sister isn’t working. I’ll go then.”