Through the Darkness

“What if I do?” Valnu answered with an expressive shrug. “Variety is the life of spice--isn’t that what they say?” He gave her a limp-wristed wave and some malice of his own: “I wouldn’t say it to your precious Lurcanio, I’ll tell you that.”

Where Krasta had been intent on cuckolding her Algarvian lover, now she found herself defending him: “He knows what he’s doing, as a matter of fact.”

“What if he does?” Valnu shrugged again, almost as an Algarvian might have done. And he was wearing a kilt--Krasta had noticed when he rose to greet her. Pointing to her, he went on, “But do you know what you’re doing?”

“Of course I do.” Doubt was not among the things that troubled Krasta. Again, she might have said more without the waiter’s interruption, but he distracted her by setting the ale on the table.

“Aye, you always know.” Valnu’s smile, instead of being hard as it had been a moment before, seemed strange and sweet, almost sad. “You’re always so sure--but how much good does that do you, with the avalanche thundering down on all of us?”

“Now what are you talking about?” Krasta asked impatiently. “Avalanches! There aren’t any mountains around Priekule.”

Viscount Valnu sighed. “No, not literally. But you know what’s happening to us.” Seeing Krasta’s blank look, he amplified that: “To our people, I mean. I know you know about that.” He studied her.

She didn’t think to wonder how he knew. “It’s pretty bad,” she agreed. “But it’s worse over in the west--and won’t it get better if the miserable war ever ends?”

“That depends on how the war ends,” Valnu replied, a distinction too subtle to mean much to Krasta. The waiter set her plate of pork and cabbage in front of her. “Put it on my bill,” Valnu said as she dug in.

“You don’t need to do that,” Krasta said. “I outrank you, after all.”

“Nobility obliges,” Valnu said lightly. He regained his leer. “And how obliging do you feel like being?”

“Are you an Algarvian officer, to think you can buy me with a lunch?” Krasta retorted. They flirted through the meal, but she didn’t go to a hostel with him. Mentioning Algarvian officers made her think of Lurcanio again, and she found she simply did not have the nerve to be deliberately unfaithful to him. Someone will have to sweep me off my feet, she thought, and wondered how she could arrange that.

Thirteen

Skarnu enjoyed going into Pavilosta with Merkela. In his days in Priekule, he’d scorned such little market towns like any city sophisticate. Had he stayed in Priekule, he was sure he would have gone right on scorning them. After some weeks on a farm out in the countryside, though, Pavilosta’s few bright lights--taverns, shops, gossip in the market square--seemed to shine all the brighter.

To Merkela, Pavilosta was the big city, or as much of it as she’d ever known. “Look--the ironmonger’s has some new tools in the front window,” she said. She was familiar enough with what he usually displayed to recognize the additions at once.

Since Skarnu wasn’t, he just nodded to show he’d heard. A couple of doors past the ironmonger’s was a cordwainer’s, but no new boots stood in his window. Nothing at all stood in his window, in fact. But three words had been whitewashed across it, with savage strokes of the brush: NIGHT AND FOG.

“Oh, a pox,” Skarnu said softly.

“Aye, curse the Algarvians for taking him off and--” Merkela paused. She glanced over to Skarnu. “It’s worse than that, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “He was one of us, all right. If they made him disappear, that’s one thing. If they squeezed him first, that’s something else--something worse.”

“Will they come after us next, do you think?” Merkela asked.

“I don’t know,” Skarnu answered. “I can’t know. But we’d better be ready to disappear or fight before long.” He’d been striking blows at the Algarvian occupiers for a couple of years, ever since he’d sneaked through their lines instead of surrendering. But they could strike back, too. The day he forgot that would be the day of his ruination.

“I want to fight,” Merkela said, ferocity filling her voice.

“I want to fight, too--if we have some chance of winning,” Skarnu said. “If they land on us in the middle of the night, though, and paint NIGHT AND FOG on the front door--that’s not fighting. We wouldn’t have a chance.”

Merkela walked along for a while, kicking at the slates of the sidewalk. She muttered a curse under her breath. Skarnu muttered one even more quietly under his. When she got into one of these moods, sometimes he had everything he could do to keep her from trying to murder the first Algarvian soldier she saw. He understood why, but knew she needed the restraint if she wanted to go on fighting the redheads.

But then, to his surprise--indeed, to his astonishment--she spoke in much milder tones than she’d used before: “You’re right, of course.”