Rulers of the Darkness

The frigate glided up to its assigned berth, a pretty piece of work by its captain and the mages who kept it afloat. Sailors on the pier caught bow lines and stern lines and made the ship fast. When the gangplank thudded down, Cornelu was the first man off the ship. He'd had a new sea-green uniform tunic and kilt made up in Sigisoara town, so that he looked every inch a proper Sibian officer- well, almost every inch, for the truly observant would have noticed he still wore Lagoan-issue shoes.

He cursed when he got a close look at the harbor buildings. They'd taken a beating when the Algarvians first seized the city, and had been allowed to decay. It would be a while before Tirgoviste became a first-class port again. "Whoresons," he muttered under his breath.

But he had more reasons, and more urgent and intimate reasons, for cursing Mezentio's men than what they'd done to the harbor district. Three Algarvian officers had been billeted in the house his wife and daughter shared, and he feared- no, he was all too certain- Costache had been more than friendly with them.

Away from the harbor, Tirgoviste town looked better. The town had yielded to Algarve once the harbor installations fell, and the Algarvians hadn't made much of a stand here after Lagoan and Kuusaman soldiers gained a foothold elsewhere on Tirgoviste island. Cornelu didn't know whether to be grateful to them for that or to sneer at them for their faint-heartedness.

Tirgoviste town rose rapidly from the sea. Cornelu was panting by the time he began to near his own house. Then he got a chance to rest, for a squad of Kuusamans herded a couple of companies' worth of Algarvian captives past him, and he had to stop till they went by. The Algarvians towered over their slight, swarthy captors, but that didn't matter. The Kuusamans were the ones with the sticks.

A small crowd formed to watch the Algarvians tramp past. A few people shouted curses at Mezentio's defeated troopers, but only a few. Most just stood silently. And then, behind Cornelu, somebody said, "Look at our fancy officer, back from overseas. He's all decked out now, but he couldn't run away fast enough when the Algarvians came."

Cornelu whirled, fists clenched, fury on his face. But he couldn't tell which Sibian had spoken, and no one pointed at the wretch who'd impugned his courage. The last of the captives went by, opening the intersection again. Cornelu let his hands drop. He couldn't fight everybody, however much he wanted to. And he knew he'd have a fight a few blocks ahead. He turned back around and walked on.

Algarvian recruiting broadsheets still clung to walls and fences. Cornelu spat at one of them. Then he wondered why he bothered. They belonged to a different world- and not just a different world now, but a dead one.

He turned onto his own street. He'd envisioned knocking on the door, having Costache open it and watching astonishment spread over her face. But there she was in front of the house, carrying something out to the gutter in a dustpan- a dead rat, he saw as he got closer.

What the dustpan held wasn't the first thing he noticed, however much he wished it would have been. The way her belly bulged was.

She dumped the rat into the gutter, then looked up and saw him. She froze, bent out over the street, as if a sorcerer had turned her to stone. Then, slowly and jerkily, she straightened. She did her best to put a welcoming smile on her face, but it cracked and slid away and she gave up trying to hold it. When she said, "You came back," it sounded more like accusation than welcome.

"Aye." Cornelu had never imagined he could despise anyone so much. And he'd loved her once. He knew he had. But that made things worse, not better. So much worse. "Did you think I wouldn't?"

"Of course I did," Costache answered. "Nobody thought the Algarvians would lose the war, and you were never coming home if they won." She dropped the dustpan: a clatter of tin. Her hands folded over her swollen stomach. "Curse you, do you think I'm the only one who's going to have a baby on account of Mezentio's men?"

"No, but you're mine." Cornelu corrected himself: "You were mine. And it wasn't as if you thought I was dead. You knew I was still around. You saw me. You ate with me. And you still did- that." He pointed to her belly as if it were a crime somehow separate from the woman he'd wooed and married… and lost.

"Oh, aye, I saw you." Scorn roughened Costache's voice till it cut into Cornelu like the teeth of a saw. "I saw you filthy and unshaven and stinking like the hillman you were pretending to be. Is it any wonder I never wanted anything to do with you after that?"

He clapped a hand to his forehead. "You stupid slut!" he shouted. "I couldn't very well go around in uniform then. Do you think I wanted to end up in a captives' camp, or more likely blazed?"