Out of the Darkness

But asking the right question didn’t do him a bit of good, for Saffa ground out, “Fiametta told Adonio what you did, and Adonio brought the lovely news back to the station, and now everybody there must know it. And if you think you’ll ever lay a finger on me again, let alone anything else-” She swung at him again.

He caught her by the wrist. When he didn’t let go right away, she tried to bite his hand. “Stop that, powers below eat you!” he said. “I can expl-”

“I don’t want to hear it,” Saffa said. “I never want to hear it. You’re not even wasting time telling me it’s all a lie.” She tried to twist away. He didn’t let go. She snarled, “You’d better turn me loose, Bembo, or I’ll really start screaming.”

“All right, bitch,” he said, “but if you try and take my head off again I promise you’ll lose teeth. Got it?” Saffa nodded warily. Even more warily, Bembo let go of her arm.

She took a quick step back. “I spent most of the night getting my stuff out of this place,” she said. “I have to see you at the station, but that’s all I have to do. As far as I’m concerned, you’re dead. Dead, do you hear me?”

“Curse it, Saffa, all I did was-”

“Screw a tart the first chance you got. No thanks, pal. You don’t play those games with me. Nobody plays those games with me.”

“But, sweetheart,” Bembo whined, “I really love you.” Did he? He doubted it, but knew he had to sound as if he did. “It was just one of those things.” He even made the ultimate sacrifice: “Darling, I’m sorry.”

“Sorry till the next time you think you can get it wet on the side. Goodbye!” Saffa hyphenated the two syllables by slamming the door so hard, the frame quivered. Bembo stood staring at it for several heartbeats. Then he walked into the flat’s little kitchen, poured himself a glass of spirits, and drank it down, all alone.

Ceorl scratched at his cheeks. He’d been doing that for days now, and cursing and fuming every time he did it. “This fornicating itch is driving me out of my mind,” he said. “I don’t know what I’m going to do about it.”

One of the Unkerlanter gang bosses-one of the few captives who ranked as Ceorl’s equal in the cinnabar mine-said, “Why don’t you cut your throat? Then we won’t have to listen to you anymore.” But even he smiled when he said it. He didn’t want trouble from Ceorl. Nobody, not captives, not guards, wanted trouble from Ceorl.

Another Unkerlanter, one less prominent in the camp hierarchy, said, “Why don’t you cut off that ugly beard? Maybe that would do some good. It sure looks like you’ve got the mange.”

“It does not,” Ceorl said indignantly. He was right, too; he had a fine, thick, curly beard. But he could have kissed that Unkerlanter-he’d been waiting for days for somebody to suggest shaving to him. He scratched again, then cursed again. “Powers above, maybe I will cut it off. Anything would be better than what I’m going through now. Who’s got a razor he can lend me?”

The gang boss said, “You’ll need a scissors first, to get that mess short enough so a razor will cut it.”

“If you say so,” Ceorl answered. “I don’t know anything about this shaving business. I really may cut my throat.”

He didn’t get the chance to find out for another couple of days. He carefully spent all that time grumbling about how his face itched. When he got a scissors and a broken piece of mirror to guide his hand, he snipped away at the whiskers he’d never done more than trim before. By the time he set down the scissors, he was shaking his head. “I really do look mangy now.”

The Unkerlanter called Fariulf handed him a straight razor and a cup of water to wet down what was left of his whiskers. “You won’t once you’re done here,” he said.

Ceorl rapidly discovered he despised shaving. He cut himself several times. The razor scraped over his face. Had he really had an itchy skin, he was sure what he was doing would only have made things worse. His hide, in fact, did itch and sting by the time he got done. He shook his head again. “People have to be out of their cursed minds to want to do this every day.” Reaching for the scrap of mirror, he added, “How do I look?”

His Unkerlanter was still foul. He knew that. People mostly understood him now, though. Somebody-somebody behind him, whom he couldn’t note- said, “You’re still ugly, but not the same way.”

Looking into the mirror, Ceorl had to admit that wasn’t far wrong. A stranger stared back at him: a man with a thrusting chin with a cleft in it, hollows below his cheekbones, and a scar above his upper lip he’d never seen before. He hadn’t shown the world his bare face since he was a boy. He looked as if he’d suddenly got five years younger. He also looked like an Unkerlanter, not a Forthwegian.

“How does it feel?” Fariulf asked.