“Shall we treat Shazli the pretender as we treated Kyot the usurper?” Swemmel asked.

  “Zuwayzi lords know how to die,” Hajjaj said, as steadily as he could. Again, he gave the king the directness Swemmel did not look to get from his own subjects: “Unkerlant has given them much practice in the art.”

  Zaban looked at him with a face the color of whey. No, no one in Cottbus spoke to King Swemmel so. Hajjaj gestured harshly. The man from the Unkerlanter foreign ministry did translate accurately; Hajjaj knew enough of his language to be sure of that. He waited on Swemmel. The Unkerlanter king might want to find out how well he died. That violated every law of diplomacy, but King Swemmel was a law unto himself.

  Swemmel hunched forward on his high seat, like a hawk about to spring into the air from a falconer’s wrist. In a voice harsh as a hawk’s, he said, “We shall dicker.” Hajjaj breathed again, but tried not to let the king of Unkerlant see him do it.

  Krasta was angry. Krasta was frequently angry, but most often at people she knew, not at whole kingdoms. Now her outrage stretched far enough to encompass all of Valmiera.

  “Will you look at this, Bauska?” She waved the news sheet in the serving woman’s face. “Will you look at it?”

  “I see it, milady.” Bauska kept as much of herself from her voice as she could, leaving Krasta next to nothing to seize on.

  But Krasta needed next to nothing. “Unkerlant has won another war,” she snarled. “The western barbarians have won two wars now, against Forthweg and against this Zuwayza place, wherever it may be. The Unkerlanters have won two wars. Has Valmiera won even one war? Has it, Bauska?”

  “No, milady,” the servant answered. But then, no doubt rashly, she added, “Unkerlant hasn’t fought the Algarvians, though.”

  Krasta tossed her head. A golden curl escaped the pins Bauska had put in her hair earlier in the morning and slid under her nose, as if she’d suddenly grown a mustache. Sniffing, she brushed it aside. Sniffing in a different way, she said, “The Algarvians are barbarians, too. They should have stayed in their forests a long time ago, and not come out to bother civilized people.” By that, of course, she meant people of Kaunian blood, her notion of civilization extending no further.

  “No doubt, milady,” Bauska said. Having got away with one additional comment, she tried another: “They may be barbarians, but they’re monstrously good at war.”

  “We’ve beaten them before,” Krasta said. “They didn’t win the Six Years’ War, did they? Of course they didn’t. Valmiera won the Six Years’ War. Oh, we had a little help from Jelgava, but we won it.” Jelgavans were of Kaunian stock, too; she acknowledged their existence. Sibian? Lagoans? Unkerlanters? They’d fought side by side with Valmiera, too. As far as she was concerned, they might as well have stayed out of the war. How it would have ended had they stayed out never entered her mind.

  “Powers above grant we win this war, too, milady,” Bauska said. “And powers above grant that your brother comes home safe from it.”

  “Aye,” Krasta said; the serving woman had hit on a way of mollifying her, at least for the moment. “As of his last letter, Skarnu was well.” She paused. She might have let it go there, but she still held the news sheet. Seeing it rekindled her anger. “Skarnu is well, but we have not broken through into Algarve. How can we hope to win this miserable, inconvenient war if we can’t break through?” Her voice rose to a shout once more.

  “Milady, I know not. How can I know? I am a maidservant, not a warrior.” Bauska bowed her head. In a barely audible voice, she asked, “Have I your leave to go, milady?”

  “Oh, very well,” Krasta said in some annoyance; she usually got more sport out of baiting her servant. Bauska retreated much faster than the Algarvian army had fallen back before Valmiera’s foes. But she did not retreat fast enough. Krasta snapped her fingers. “No. Wait.”

  “Milady?” Bauska froze near the doorway. Her voice might have been a fragment of winter wind let loose within the mansion.

  “Come here. I have a question for you,” Krasta said. The serving woman came much more slowly than she had gone. Krasta went on, “I’ve been meaning to ask you this for some little while now, but it keeps slipping my mind.”

  “What is it, milady?” Bauska still looked alarmed, which was good, and also curious, which was acceptable.

  “When you are with your sweetheart, do you ever pleasure him by taking his member in your mouth?” Krasta asked her question as matter-of-factly as she would have asked a farmer about stockbreeding. In her mind, the differences between livestock and servants were not large.

  Bauska’s fair skin flushed bright red. She coughed and turned away, but she did not dare flee the chamber again, not unless Krasta told her she might. When at last she spoke, it was in a prim near-whisper: “Milady, I have not got a sweetheart, so I do not know what to say to you.”

  Krasta laughed in her face, knowing a servant’s evasions when she heard them. “Curse it, have you ever pleasured a man so?” she demanded.

  Bauska got even redder. Her eyes down on the floor, she said, “Aye.” Krasta had to watch the way her lips shaped the word, for she could not hear it. Then, more loudly, the servant repeated, “Have I your leave to go?”

  “No, not yet.” Krasta’s voice was sharp. Valnu, curse him—curse him horribly—had not lied to her after all. She wanted to go clean her teeth yet again. Instead, probing the depths of commoners’ iniquity, she asked, “And your friends—I suppose servants have friends—do they do likewise?”

  “Aye, milady, or I know of some who do, or who have,” Bauska answered, still looking down at the intricate pattern of birds and flowers on the thick, handwoven carpet beneath her feet.

  Krasta made an angry noise, back deep in her throat. Like most of her class, she’d always assumed commoners just fornicated, as animals did, and that other, related, delights were beyond them. Discovering she’d been wrong disgusted her. She wanted to share as little with those below her as she could.

  Something else occurred to her. “And your sweethearts—when you have them—do they pleasure your secret places with their tongues?”

  “Aye, milady,” Bauska answered in a resigned whisper. But then, in what seemed a sudden access of spirit, she added, “Not likely we’d do for them if they didn’t do for us, is it? Fair’s fair.”

  Fairness was something about which Krasta rarely had to worry, especially when dealing with servants. Her elegantly sculpted nostrils flared in exasperation. “Go on, get out of here,” she said. “What are you doing, hanging about like this?”

  Bauska left. Bauska, in fact, all but flew. Krasta hardly noticed; having dismissed the serving woman, she forgot about her till she might need her again. She thought about going into Priekule for a tour of the shops, but in the end decided not to. Instead, she had her coachman drive her to the royal palace. If she was going to complain about the way the war against Algarve was going, venting her spleen at a servant would do no good. She wanted to talk to a soldier.

  Finding the war ministry took her a while. She couldn’t simply bark demands in the palace, as she could on her estate; too many of the people going through the corridors were nobles, and they were often hard to tell from servitors in fancy dress. To avoid giving offense, Krasta had to ask polite questions, an art for which she had little inclination and scant practice.

  At last, she found herself standing in front of a desk behind which sat a rather handsome officer; a placard identified him as Erglyu. “Please sit, milady,” he said, waving her to a chair. “Will you drink tea? I regret that I am not permitted to offer you anything stronger.”

  She let him pour her a cup; she would let anyone serve her at any time, reckoning it no less than her due. As she sipped, she asked, “And what is your rank?”

  “I am a captain, milady.” Some of Erglyu’s smiling urbanity slipped. “You may read as much on the placard there.”

  “No, no, no,” Krasta said impatiently, wondering whether the war ministry wasn’t doing a better job against Algarve because it hired idiots. “What is your rank, Captain?”

  “Ah.” Erglyu’s face cleared. Maybe he’s not an idiot, Krasta thought with what passed for charity from her. Maybe he’s only a moron. The captain went on, “I have the honor to be a marquis, milady.”

  “Then we are well met, for I am a marchioness.” Krasta smiled. Erglyu might be a moron, but he was of her class. She would give him the same courtesy she granted any member of her circle, courtesy a commoner, no matter how clever, would never know. With a vivacious gesture, she said, “I want to tell you, we are going about this war altogether wrong.”

  Captain Erglyu leaned forward, his face the picture of polite, even fascinated, interest. “Oh, milady, I do so wish you would show me how!” he exclaimed. “All our best generals have been wracking their brains over it for weeks and months, and the results have not been perfectly satisfactory.”

  “I should say they have not,” Krasta said. “What we need to do is strike the redheaded barbarians such a blow, they will flee before us as they did in the ancient days. I can’t imagine why we haven’t done it yet.”

  “Neither can I, not when you put it so clearly.” Erglyu reached into his desk and pulled out several sheets of paper, a pen, and a squat bottle of ink. “If you would but give the kingdom the benefit of your insight, I am certain all Valmiera will soon hail you as its benefactress and savior.” He pointed to a table and chair—both of severely plain make—set against a side wall of his office. “Perhaps you would be kind enough to set forth your strategic plan in as detailed a form as you can, that I may share it with my superiors.”

  “I will do that.” Krasta took the writing tools and went over to the table. Once there, though, she stared down at the first blank leaf with the same angry despair she’d always known in the women’s finishing academy. After gnawing on the end of the pen, she wrote, We need to hit the Algarvians as hard as we can. We need to do it where they do not expect it.

  She started to add something more, then savagely scratched it out. More pen gnawing followed. She sprang to her feet and slapped the piece of paper on to Captain Erglyu’s desk. He glanced down at it, then said, “I am certain King Gainibu himself will be grateful to you for what you have done here today.”

  “Why can’t anyone else in the kingdom think clearly?” Krasta demanded. Without waiting for an answer, she headed out toward her carriage. She noticed she’d got ink on one finger. With a snort of annoyance, she rubbed it off.

  Ten

  LEOFSIG WAS becoming, if not thrilled about latrine duty, at least resigned to it. It was nasty, smelly work, but no harder than chopping wood or any number of other assignments in the captives’ camp. Both his Algarvian captors and his Forthwegian superiors seemed content to make him the token Forthwegian on the largely Kaunian latrine crew.

  He made the best of it, or tried. His own Kaunian had grown rusty since his escape from school. When he’d first tried speaking it again, the lean blonds had smiled among themselves and, more often than not, replied in Forthwegian. But he’d persisted. He’d never be mistaken for a Kaunian when he opened his mouth, but these days he was even getting a good notion of how to use the optative mood, which had always baffled him even when his masters drilled it into him with a switch.

  Having his cot next to Gutauskas in the barracks helped in getting the Kaunian captives on the latrine crew to accept him. So did his continued enmity with Merwit. If Merwit called him a Kaunian-lover, he wore what was meant for an insult as a badge of pride.

  One day, as he was covering over a stinking slit trench, Gutauskas came up to him with a gleam in his blue-gray eyes. “You know, stale piss is a good bleach,” the Kaunian said in his own language. Leofsig had not learned the Kaunian word for piss in school; latrine duty was educational in all sorts of ways. Gutauskas went on, “Maybe we should dye your hair blond. Do you think you would look like one of us if we did?”

  “Oh, indeed—without a doubt,” Leofsig answered. He pointed to the stinking slit into which he was shoveling dirt. “And shit”—another word he hadn’t picked up in school—“will turn your hair brown. Do you think you would look like a Forthwegian if I flung you in there?”

  “It could be,” Gutauskas said imperturbably. “We have been known to call Forthwegians dungheels, just as Forthwegians have their own pleasant names for us.” He cocked his head to one side, waiting to see how Leofsig would take that.

  With a shrug of his broad shoulders, Leofsig said, “Everyone calls his neighbors names. Why, I would bet even the Unkerlanters aren’t too efficient”—he had to drop into Forthwegian for that, being unable to come up with the Kaunian word—“to call their neighbors names.” He rolled his eyes to show he intended sarcasm.

  Gutauskas nodded. “I would bet you are right: you prove it with your own speech, in fact. So tell me, would you sooner dwell in that part of Forthweg occupied by the Algarvian barbarians or the portion occupied by the Unkerlanter barbarians?”

  “I would sooner no one occupied Forthweg,” Leofsig answered.

  “That was not one of the choices offered,” Gutauskas said in the quietly mocking way that so often set Forthwegians’ teeth on edge.

  By then, though, Leofsig had grown used to it. He gave the question serious thought; it was more interesting than what he had been doing. At last, he said, “It is likely easier for your people under the Unkerlanters, for my people under the Algarvians.”

  “Aye, I think you are right,” the Kaunian agreed, “for the Algarvians have us to despise, which keeps them from despising you quite so much.” He waited while Leofsig threw a couple of shovels’ worth of dirt into the slit trench, then went on, “Perhaps around midnight tonight, you will need to make a call of nature, as I shall.”

  “Will I?” Leofsig scratched his head. “I knew you Kaunians were an orderly, regular folk, but I didn’t realize you were as regular as all that.” Gutauskas said nothing, but kept looking at him with head cocked slightly to one side. Leofsig scratched his own head again. In a romance about the Six Years’ War, he would have figured out right away what the Kaunian was trying to tell him. At least he’d figured out Gutauskas was trying to tell him something. He said, “Well, who knows? Maybe I will.”

  Gutauskas still didn’t say anything. He went off and started digging a new slit trench. Leofsig went back to covering over the one at which he’d been working. He didn’t move any faster than he had to. The Algarvians didn’t feed him enough to make him want to move very fast—and latrine duty wasn’t the sort of work that fired a man’s enthusiasm anyhow.

  At last, as sunset drew near, he stowed his shovel in the rack and lined up for the meager supper that made a perfect accompaniment to his meager breakfast and meager dinner. He got a small slab of brown bread and a bowl of cabbage-and-turnip soup with a few small floating bits of salt pork so fatty it might as well have been lard. He also got a small cup of what the Algarvians insisted was beer. By the way it tasted, it might have come straight from the latrine trenches.

  He drank it anyway. He ate and drank almost anything he even vaguely suspected of containing nourishment. He’d seen men pop their own lice into their mouths. He hadn’t fallen that far himself, but he knew he might. All too often, his belly ached like a rotting tooth. He cherished the hour or so after each meal, when that ache drew back and waited for a while.

  After supper, the captives formed up in front of their barracks hall for the day’s final roll call and count. For a wonder, the Algarvian guards managed to get the same number twice running, which satisfied them. Their leader spoke in bad Forthwegian: “You going in now. You no coming out till morning roll call unless you pissing, you shitting. You trying any other come-outings …” He drew a finger across his throat. Leofsig wished that finger were the sharp edge of a knife.

  Along with the rest of the men from his barracks, he went inside. Some of them clumped into little groups to talk. Others diced for money or, more often, for food. A few wrote letters or read the handful they’d been allowed to receive. By far the largest number lay down on their cots to rest or sleep away as much time as their captors allowed them.

  Merwit glared at Leofsig in the dim lanternlight. Leofsig glared back. They were both too hungry and tired to do anything more than glare -and neither was eager to go up before the Algarvian authorities. That would mean half rations for sure, and whatever other punishments the redheads chose to add. Such delights made good behavior seem sensible even to Merwit.

  The bruiser eventually rolled over and started to snore. Leofsig wanted to go to sleep, too; every fiber of his being cried out for it. If he did doze off, he’d miss whatever Gutauskas had in mind for midnight. If he didn’t, he’d be a wreck tomorrow. Which had the greater weight? Not nearly sure he was doing the right thing, he feigned sleep instead of falling headlong into it.

  Gutauskas came back to his own cot. He’d been talking in a low voice with the few other Kaunians in the hall, as he usually did before the guards came in and blew out the lanterns. His breathing soon grew slow and regular. Had he fallen asleep?

  Leofsig watched him out of half-closed eyes that kept wanting to slide all the way shut. No strip of moonlight shone on the barracks floor to let Leofsig gauge the hour even roughly; the moon, nearing new, would not rise till a little before the sun did. How, Leofsig wondered resentfully, is Gutauskas supposed to know when it’s midnight, anyway?

  He got angry enough at the Kaunian captive to keep himself a little less sleepy than he might otherwise have been. And at last, at an hour that might have been midnight or might not, Gutauskas rose from his cot and walked toward the barracks door, which was always open—and which, at the moment, let a chilly breeze into the hall.

  Heart pounding, Leofsig got to his feet and walked out into the night after Gutauskas. If anyone challenged him, he intended to curse the Kaunian for waking him and making him get up in the middle of the night. But no one did. Yawning, he stumbled toward the latrines.