Sure enough, the wagon turned up the next day. Skarnu warily approached. The driver said what he was supposed to say. Skarnu gave the countersign. The driver nodded. Skarnu climbed aboard. The driver flicked the reins and clucked to the horses.
They got to the village a day and a half later. By then, Skarnu thought his fundament was turning to stone. The driver seemed undisturbed. He even chuckled at the old man's hobble with which Skarnu made for the house that served as the underground's nerve center.
The woman he'd met there at his last visit let him in. She gave him bread and beer, which were both welcome, and let him sit down on a soft chair, which at the moment seemed almost as fine as falling into Merkela's arms. He let out a long sigh of pleasure before asking, "I'm to meet someone?"
"So you are," she said. "Let me go upstairs and get them. I'll be back directly." Skarnu was perfectly content for her to take as much time as she wanted. He could have sat in that chair forever without minding in the least. But she came back, far too soon to suit him fully, with a couple of men dressed in the shabby homespun of farmers- dressed much as he was, as a matter of fact.
He had to heave himself to his feet to greet them. His back groaned when he rose. But then, to his astonishment, he discovered he recognized both newcomers. "Amatu! Lauzdonu! I thought you were dead."
"No such luck," said Lauzdonu, the taller of the two. He grinned and pumped Skarnu's hand.
"We were both flying dragons down in the south when the collapse came," Amatu added.
"I knew that," Skarnu said. "That's why I thought you'd bought a plot."
"Came close a few times," Lauzdonu said in the offhand way of a man who had indeed had death brush his sleeve a time or two. "The Algarvians had too many dragons down there- nothing like a fair fight."
"They had too much of everything all over the place," Skarnu said bitterly.
"That they did," Amatu agreed. "But when the surrender order came, neither one of us could stomach it. We climbed on our dragons and flew across the Strait of Valmiera to Lagoas, and we've been in Setubal ever since." His lip curled. "They're Algarvic over there, too, but at least they're on our side."
Skarnu remembered that Amatu had always been a snob. Lauzdonu, who had somewhat more charity in him, put in, "Aye, they kept fighting even when things looked blackest."
"Well, so did you two," Skarnu said. "And so did I." And if more Valmieran nobles had, we'd have given Mezentio's men a harder time, he thought. But most of them, and a lot of the kingdom's commoners, had made their accommodations. Inevitably, his sister sprang to mind yet again. To force the thought of Krasta down, he asked, "And what are you doing here on the right side of the Strait again?"
Their faces, which had been smiling and excited, closed down again. Skarnu knew what that meant: they had orders they couldn't talk about. Lauzdonu tried to make light of it, saying, "How's that pretty sister of yours, my lord Marquis?"
"My lord Count, she's sleeping with a redhead." Skarnu's voice went flat and harsh.
Lauzdonu and Amatu both exclaimed then, the one in surprise, the other in outrage. Lauzdonu strode forward to lay a sympathetic hand on Skarnu's shoulder. Skarnu wanted to shake it off, but made himself endure it. Amatu said, "Something ought to happen to her, and to her lover, too."
"I wouldn't mind," Skarnu said. "I wouldn't mind at all." He eyed the two nobles he'd known in Priekule. "You may have to talk to me sooner or later. They brought me here to go with you, wherever it is you're going."
"Better you than that leviathan-rider who fetched us from Lagoas," Amatu said. "He told us he was a Sib, but he could have passed for an Algarvian any day."
"It'll be good to have you along," Lauzdonu said. "After all, it's been going on three years since we left. We don't know who's alive, who's dead… who chose the wrong bloody side." He patted Skarnu again.
"Where are you going?" Skarnu asked. "I won't ask what you'll do when you get there, but I do need to know that."
"Zarasai," Lauzdonu answered. Amatu's lip curled again. To him, any town that wasn't the capital really wasn't worth visiting. Lauzdonu seemed to have a clearer understanding of the way things worked: "If we go to Priekule, somebody will betray us to the Algarvians."
"That's why I haven't gone back," Skarnu agreed. He nodded to the two of them. Priekule, then Setubal- they'd been spoiled, and they didn't even know it. "You'll find the rest of the countryside isn't so bad. And" -he turned serious- "you'll find you do better if you don't let on that you've got noble blood."
"Commoners getting out of hand, are they?" Amatu said. "Well, we'll tend to that once we've beaten the Algarvians, by the powers above."
"I'm surprised you didn't take your dragons up to Jelgava," Skarnu murmured. "You'd have felt right at home there." Amatu stared at him in annoyed incomprehension. Lauzdonu snickered and then tried to pretend he hadn't. Jelgavan nobles had long since given themselves a name for reaction. That Amatu couldn't hear how he sounded warned that he would indeed have fit right in.
Lauzdonu said, "Skarnu knows how things work these days, better than we do."
"I suppose so," Amatu spoke grudgingly.
"Zarasai." Skarnu spoke in musing tones. "Well, among other things, that's a good place to monitor the ley lines coming down toward the coast from the north and west."
"What are you talking about?" Amatu sounded impatient, in a way that reminded Skarnu achingly of Krasta. Lauzdonu murmured in the other returned exile's ear. "Oh." Amatu's nod was reluctant, too, even after he got the point. Skarnu wondered what he'd done to make the irregulars hate him enough to saddle himself with these two. Maybe it's their revenge on me for being of noble blood myself. He sighed. The Algarvians were the only people on whom he wanted that much revenge.
A Valmieran waiter fawned on Colonel Lurcanio- and, incidentally, on Krasta, too. Krasta expected servile deference from commoners. So did Lurcanio: servile deference of a slightly different sort, the deference of the conquered to their conquerors. Since he got it here, he seemed happy enough. In fact, he seemed happier than he had for quite some time.
"The war news must be good," Krasta ventured.
"Better, at any rate," Lurcanio allowed. "Even if the cursed Unkerlanters did keep us from retaking Durrwangen, they won't be doing anything much for some weeks. General Mud has replaced General Winter over there, you see."
"No, I don't see." Krasta's voice had an edge in it. "What are you talking about? Why do you always talk in riddles?"
"No riddle," he said, and then paused while the waiter brought him white wine and Krasta ale. When the fellow scurried off again, Lurcanio resumed: "No riddle, I say, merely mud, a great, gluey sea of it. And when the fighting starts again, it will be on our terms, not King Swemmel's." He raised his wineglass. "To victory!"
"To victory!" Krasta sipped her ale. Part of her- she wasn't sure how much, and it varied from day to day, sometimes from minute to minute- even meant it. An Algarvian triumph in the west would justify everything she'd done here, and the Unkerlanters were surely uncultured barbarians who deserved whatever happened to them. The other things an Algarvian triumph in the west would mean…
This time, Krasta gulped at the ale. She didn't want to think about that.
She was relieved when the waiter brought the dinners they'd ordered: beef ribs in a creamy gravy with spinach in cheese sauce and boiled beans for her, a trout sautйed in wine and a green salad for Lurcanio. He stared at her plate in some bemusement, remarking, "I have never understood why Valmierans aren't round as footballs, considering what you eat."
"You complain about things like that almost every time we go out," Krasta said. "I like the way my kingdom cooks. Why aren't Algarvians all skin and bones, if they eat the way you do?"
Lurcanio laughed and mimed taking a sword in the chest. Like so many of his countrymen, he had a gift for pantomime. Even though Krasta had been feeling gloomy, his antics made her smile. He had charm when he chose to use it. And he also had frightful severity when he chose to use that. The combination kept Krasta off balance, never quite sure where she stood.
Before long, he'd reduced his trout to nothing but a skeleton with head and tail still attached. "It's looking at you," Krasta said with more than a little distaste. "Those boiled eyes staring up…"
"You, milady, have never seen combat," Lurcanio answered. "If you had, you would not let something so small as a fish head get in the way of your appetite." Under the table, his hand found her leg, well above the knee. "Of any of your appetites," he added.
Krasta sighed. She knew what that meant. Lurcanio never raised a fuss if she kept him out of her bed of an evening. But she didn't dare do it very often. If she did, he was liable to find someone else who wouldn't. That would leave her without an Algarvian protector. Spring was in the air, but the thought filled her with winter. The occupiers answered to themselves, and to themselves alone. Without an Algarvian by her side, what was she? Fair game, she thought, and shivered.
"Are you cold, milady?" Colonel Lurcanio asked. Startled, Krasta shook her head. Lurcanio's smile put her in mind of that of a beast of prey. "Good. You are well advised not to be cold." She sighed again.
After supper, Lurcanio's driver threaded his way through the dark streets of Priekule to a theater not far from the palace. The play, like so many showing these days, was a comedy of manners from a couple of centuries before: nothing in it that could offend anyone, Valmieran or Algarvian. Nothing political, at any rate; the manners it featured were mostly bad, including an inordinate number of cuckoldings. Lurcanio laughed his head off.
"Do you think infidelity is funny?" Krasta asked, not without malice aforethought, as they headed for the exit.
"That depends," Lurcanio replied with a splendid Algarvian shrug. "If it happens to someone else, most certainly. If I give the horns, all the more so. If I have to wear them- and if I have to notice I am wearing them- that is another business altogether. Do you understand me?"
"Aye," Krasta said coldly. He'd made her very unhappy when he caught her kissing Viscount Valnu. She didn't want that to happen again. If she decided to stray once more, she knew she dared not get caught.
She was moodily silent on the ride back to the mansion on the edge of town. Lurcanio affected not to notice. That, Krasta knew, was an act. It was a good act, and would have been better had he not been so conscious of how good it was.
When they got there, Lurcanio went up the stairs to Krasta's bedchamber with the easy familiarity of a man who had visited it many times before. His manner in the bedchamber sometimes struck her as a good act, too, again slightly marred by his being aware of how good it was. But he succeeded in giving her pleasure as well as taking his own. Things could have been worse. Lurcanio occasionally made it plain that they could have been worse. What he'd done with her, to her, after catching her with Valnu… Such things had been against the law in Valmiera, and still were, she'd heard, in Jelgava.
Afterwards, Lurcanio dressed quickly. "Sleep well, my sweet," he said. "I know I shall." Even his yawn was as calculated, as theatrical, as anything she'd seen on the stage earlier in the evening.