Rulers of the Darkness

Malindo reached out with his free hand, all wrinkled and veiny, and set it on the one Spinello used to hold his cane. "Then tell me- I beseech you, by the powers above- that what we hear of Algarve's dealings with Kaunians, dealings with the descendants of those who created this" -he wagged a finger at the cup- "is nothing but a lie, a filthy lie invented by our enemies."

Spinello couldn't nerve himself to lie to the old man. But he couldn't nerve himself to tell Malindo the truth, either. He stood mute.

Malindo sighed. He took his hand away from Spinello's. "What shall become of us?" he asked. Spinello didn't think the old man was talking to him. Malindo heaved another sigh, then slowly shuffled down the exhibit hall.

Try as he would, Spinello couldn't contemplate the cup the same way after that. The other Kaunian artifacts seemed somehow different, too. Cursing under his breath, he left the Royal Cultural Museum much sooner than he'd intended to. He wondered if he would ever be able to go back.

Two nights later, though, he hired a cab to take him through the darkened streets of Trapani to the royal palace. The last time he was wounded, he'd been too badly hurt to attend any of King Mezentio's receptions. This time, while not yet fit for field duty, he could- and did- display himself before his sovereign.

A somber servitor checked his name off a list. An even more somber mage muttered charms to test his cane before allowing him to go forward. "I haven't got a knife in there, nor a stick, either," Spinello said. "I could have told you as much, had you asked."

The mage bowed. "No doubt, your Excellency. An assassin could have told me as much, too, but he would have been lying. Best to take no chances, eh?"

"I suppose not," Spinello agreed with rather poor grace. But he added, "You didn't fret about such things when the war was new."

The mage shrugged. "Times are different now, sir." He waved Spinello past him.

Spinello went. What the fellow meant, of course, was, The war news sounded a lot better then. Who would have wanted to harm King Mezentio when Algarve's armies drove everything before them? No one, save perhaps some foreign hireling. Nowadays… Nowadays, there might well be Algarvians who'd lost enough to seek to avenge themselves on their sovereign. Spinello hoped not, but had to admit Mezentio was right to use the mage to help keep himself safe.

"Viscount Spinello!" a flunky bawled after Spinello murmured his name and rank to the man. A few heads turned his way. Most of the people already in the reception hall went on with what they were doing. A viscount limping along with the help of a cane was neither exotic nor prominent enough to be very interesting.

Officers and civilian functionaries drank and gossiped and eyed one another's women. The women drank and gossiped and eyed one another's men. And everyone, of course, eyed King Mezentio, who drifted through the room talking now with one man, now with another, or yet again with one of the better-looking women there.

After asking for a glass of wine and sipping it, Spinello looked at it in some surprise. "Something wrong, sir?" asked the servitor behind the bar.

"Wrong? No." Spinello shook his head. "But I've poured down too much in the way of Unkerlanter spirits, I think. Any drink that doesn't try to tear off the top of my skull hardly seems worth bothering with."

"Ha! That's the truth, by the powers above!" a soldier behind him boomed. The fellow also leaned on a cane, but would have been monstrous tall if straight. He wore a brigadier's rank badges, and had three gold bars under his wound badge. He went on, "After that stuff they brew from turnips and barley, wine isn't good for much but making you piss a lot."

"It does taste good," Spinello said, sipping again. For all the jolt it carried, it could have been water.

With a snort, the brigadier said, "My mistress tastes good, too, but that's not why I eat her." Had Spinello been drinking then, he would have sprayed wine over everything in front of him. As it was, he laughed loud enough to turn several heads his way.

One of those heads belonged to King Mezentio. He came over and asked, "And what is so funny here?"

"Your Majesty, you'll have to ask my superior here," Spinello answered. "He made the joke, and I would never dream of stealing it from him while he's close enough to listen to me do it."

Amusement flashed in Mezentio's hazel eyes. He turned to the brigadier, giving Spinello the long-nosed profile already familiar to him from the coins in his belt pouch. "Well, your Excellency?" Repeating himself didn't embarrass the brigadier one bit. And he made the king laugh. "Aye, that's good. That's very good," Mezentio said.