Rulers of the Darkness

No matter how sleepy she was, Merkela noticed that. "Ha!" she said: not laughter but an exclamation. "That isn't funny."

"I didn't think it was," Skarnu replied. A new thought crossed his mind. "Powers above! How do you suppose people with twins or triplets manage?"

Merkela noticed that, too. "I don't know," she said. "They probably just go mad, wouldn't you think?" She yawned again. Skarnu started to answer, but checked himself when her breathing grew slow and regular. She had the knack for falling asleep at once- or maybe, taking care of Gedominu, she was too weary to do anything else.

Gedominu woke once more in the night, and then again at first light. That left Skarnu shambling and red-eyed from lack of sleep, and Merkela a good deal worse. As she put a pot on the wood-burning stove to make tea, she said, "It might have been simpler just to let the Algarvians catch us."

She'd never said anything like that while they were on the farm. But then, she hadn't had to contend with a new baby while they were on the farm, either. Skarnu went over and set a hand on her shoulder. "Things will straighten out," he said. "Sooner or later, they have to."

"I suppose so." Even though Gedominu lay in the cradle, awake but quiet, Merkela sounded anything but convinced. When she waved her arm, she almost hit Skarnu and she almost hit a couple of walls; the flat wasn't very big. That, to her, was part of the problem. She burst out, "How do townsfolk stand living cooped up like this all their lives? Why don't they run screaming through the streets?"

Her farmhouse hadn't been very large, either, but when she looked out the windows there she saw her fields and meadows and the trees across the road. When she looked out the one small, grimy window here, all she saw were the cobbles of the street below and, across that street, another block of flats of grimy yellowish brown bricks much like the ones here.

"Erzvilkas isn't much of a town," Skarnu said with what he reckoned commendable understatement, "and this isn't much of a flat, either. We'll do better as soon as we get the chance. For now, though, we're safe from the redheads, and that's what matters most."

Merkela only grunted and poured two mugs of tea. She took a jar of honey and spooned some into her mug, then passed it to Skarnu, who did the same. He sipped the hot, sweet, strong brew. It drove back the worst of his weariness.

But it couldn't drive away his worries. They'd escaped the Algarvians, aye. That wasn't the same as saying they were safe from them. Skarnu knew as much, whether Merkela did or not. When Merkela fled the farm, she'd left everything behind. Algarvian mages could use her clothes or her cooking gear and the law of contagion to help find her. You didn't have to be a mage to know that objects once in contact remained in contact. Fortunately, you did have to be a mage to do anything about it.

Algarvian mages were spread thin these days. The war wasn't going so well for the redheads. Maybe they wouldn't worry so much about one renegade Valmieran noble. In the larger scheme of things, Skarnu wasn't that important. So he hoped they would reckon the odds, anyway.

It all boiled down to, how badly did they want him? He sighed. The other side of the coin was, they were liable to want him quite a bit with both his sister and Amatu howling for his blood. He didn't dare get too sure he was safe.

Merkela's thought followed a different ley line. After another sip of tea, she said, "How long can they keep holding down our kingdom? Sibiu is free again, or just about."

"Aye, I think so." Skarnu nodded. "The news sheets would talk more about the fighting there if it were going better for Algarve. But the Sibs didn't free themselves: Lagoas and Kuusamo beat King Mezentio and took the kingdom away from him. And it's a lot easier to invade some islands in the middle of the sea than to put soldiers ashore on the Derlavaian mainland."

For a moment, Merkela looked as if she hated him. "I want to be free again," she said. "I want that so much, I'd-" Before she could say what she might do, Gedominu started to whimper. Merkela laughed ruefully. "Nobody who wants to be free should ever have a baby." She picked him up and held him in the crook of her elbow. Maybe that was what he wanted, for he quieted down.

"Where'd that honey jar go?" Skarnu got up and opened it. He tore a piece off a loaf of black bread, dipped it in the honey, and ate it. Back before the war, he would have turned up his nose at the idea of such a breakfast. Now he knew that any breakfast at all was a long way toward being a good one.

"Fix some of that for me, too, would you?" Merkela said. Skarnu nodded and did. Gedominu stared up at his mother, as if trying to understand what she'd just said.

His intent expression made Skarnu start to laugh. "The world must be a demon of a confusing place for babies," he remarked as he handed Merkela the bread and honey.