Authors: Harry Turtledove
“Ah, Master Fernao!” exclaimed that worthy, a plump, good-natured fellow named Brinco. “And how may I help you this, I fear, not so lovely day?”
“I should like to see Grandmaster Pinhiero for a few minutes, if such a thing be possible,” Fernao answered.
Brinco’s frown suggested that the mere thought he might have to tell Fernao no was enough to devastate him. “I cannot say with certainty whether it be possible or not, my lord,” the secretary said. He got to his feet. “If your Excellency would have the generosity to wait?”
“Of course,” Fernao answered. “How could I refuse you anything?”
“Easily, I doubt not,” Brinco replied. “But bide a moment, and we shall see what we shall see.” He vanished behind an elaborately carved oaken door. When he emerged, smiles filled his face. “Your desire shall be granted in every particular. The grandmaster says his greatest pleasure would lie in seeing you for as long as you desire.”
Fernao had known Pinhiero a fair number of years. He doubted the grandmaster had said any such thing; a grumpy
Oh, all right
was much more likely. When it came to giving pleasure, Brinco liked to set his thumb on the scale. Sometimes that annoyed Fernao. Not today. Getting any of what he wanted suited him fine. “I thank you,” he said, and went into the grandmaster’s office.
Pinhiero was about sixty, his sandy hair and mustaches going gray. He peered up at Fernao through reading glasses that made his eyes look enormous. “Well,” he growled, “what’s so important?” In public ceremonies, he could be dignity, learning, and magnificence personified. Among his colleagues, he didn’t bother with any such mask, and simply was what he was.
“Grandmaster, I’ve come across something interesting in the library—or rather, I’ve come across nothing interesting in the library, which is interesting in and of itself,” Fernao said.
“Not to me, it isn’t,” Pinhiero said. “You get as old as I am, you don’t have time for riddles any more. Spit it out or leave.”
“Aye, Grandmaster,” Fernao said, and explained what he’d found -and what he hadn’t. Pinhiero listened with no change of expression. He was famous for that. Fernao finished, “I can’t prove this means anything, Grandmaster, but if it does mean something, it means something important.” He waited to see whether Pinhiero thought it meant anything.
“Kuusamans won’t give you the time of day unless they feel like it,” the grandmaster said at last. “Come to that, they won’t give each other the time of day, either. Seven princes—cursed silly arrangement.” He glared at Fernao. “You know how much trouble you can get into by trying to reason from something that isn’t there?”
“Aye, Grandmaster,” Fernao said, wondering if that was dismissal.
It wasn’t. Pinhiero said, “Here. Wait.” He pulled from a desk drawer an unfashionably large and heavy crystal. Staring down into it, he murmured a name: “Siuntio.” Fernao’s eyes widened. The grandmaster went on, now in classical Kaunian: “By the brotherhood we share, I summon thee.” Fernao’s eyes got wider still.
The image of a white-haired, wrinkled Kuusaman formed in the crystal. “I am here, my bad-tempered brother,” he said, also in Kaunian.
“You old fraud, we’re on to you,” Pinhiero growled.
“You dream,” Siuntio said. “You dream, and imagine yourself awake.” His image disappeared, leaving the crystal only a sphere of stone.
Pinhiero grunted. “It’s big, all right. If it were smaller, he’d have done a better job of denying it. What
have
they gone and done—and will they do it to us next?” He scowled at Fernao. “How would you like to go to Kuusamo?”
“Not much,” Fernao answered. The grandmaster ignored him. He was already making plans.
Bembo assumed a hurt expression. It was, he knew, a good hurt expression. Every once in a while, it even softened the heart of Sergeant Pesaro. Any hurt expression that could soften the heart of a constabulary sergeant had to be a good one.
But it did nothing to soften Saffa’s heart. “No,” the sketch artist said. “I don’t want to take supper with you again, or go to the playhouse with you, or go strolling in the park, or do anything with you. I really don’t, Bembo. Enough was enough.”
“But why not?” Bembo thought the question was, and sounded, perfectly reasonable. An impartial listener, of which there were none outside the constabulary station, would assuredly have called it whining.
“Why?” Saffa took a deep breath. “Because even though you had a good idea and Captain Sasso liked it, you still haven’t been promoted. That’s one reason: I don’t want to waste my time with a man who isn’t a winner. And the other is, you only want one thing from a girl, and you don’t even bother hiding it.”
“I am a man.” Bembo struck an affronted pose. “Of course I want that.”
“You aren’t listening—and why am I not surprised?” Saffa said. “It’s the only thing you really want from me. You wouldn’t care about anything else I did, as long as I gave you that. And because you’re like that, it’s the one thing you’ll never, ever get from me.”
She turned away from him and headed for the stairs, putting a little something extra in her walk to give him a hint about what he might be missing. “How about next week?” Bembo called after her. “Suppose I ask you again next week?”
Saffa climbed the stairs. Bembo automatically tried to look up her kilt, but she kept her arms close to her sides to hold it down. She went into the station and closed the door. Then she opened it, looked out at him, smiled sweetly, and said, “No.” Still smiling, she closed the door again.
“Bitch,” Bembo muttered. “Miserable bitch.” He trudged toward the stairway himself.
What I really need,
he thought,
is a Kaunian hussy like the ones in the romances I’ve been reading. They don’t tell a man no. All they ever do is beg for more. They can’t get enough of a strong Algarvian man.
He scowled. All the Kaunians in Tricarico had gone into camps. He’d helped put them there, and he hadn’t even had the chance to have any fun while he was doing it. Life wasn’t fair, no doubt about it. Those Kaunian sluts were probably giving the camp guards all they wanted and then some, in exchange for whatever tiny favors they could get out of them.
When Bembo came into the station, Sergeant Pesaro laughed at him. He’d have bet the sergeant would. “She flamed you down like a dragon attacking from out of the sun, didn’t she?” Pesaro said.
“Ahh, she’s not as fancy as she thinks she is,” Bembo growled. “Tell me one thing she’s got that any other broad doesn’t.”
“You by the short hairs,” Pesaro said, which was crude but unfortunately accurate. The sergeant went on, “Well, my boy, you can do your mooning over her on patrol today.”
“I thought I could get caught up on my paperwork!” Bembo exclaimed in dismay. “If I don’t get caught up on my paperwork cursed soon, Captain Sasso’s going to have me for supper.”
“Not as much fun as Saffa having you for supper, that’s certain,” Pesaro said, “but it can’t be helped. I’ve got a couple of men down with the galloping pukes, and somebody’s got to go out there and make certain none of our wonderful law-abiding citizens decides to walk off with the Kaunian Column in his belt pouch.”
“Have a heart, Sergeant.” Bembo gave Pesaro the famous wounded look.
It didn’t work this time. “You’re going out,” the sergeant said implacably. “You’re my first replacement in, though, so you do get to pick whether you want to head over to the west side or to Riversedge.”
Bembo was almost indignant and glum enough to choose to patrol the thieves’ nest down by the waterfront—almost, but not quite. “I’ll take the west side,” he said, and Pesaro nodded, unsurprised. Pointing to the city map on the wall behind the sergeant, Bembo asked, “Exactly which route am I stuck with?”
“You’ll get stuck with Riversedge if you don’t quit your griping,” Pesaro said. He turned his swivel chair, which squeaked under him. “You get number seven.” He pointed. “Plenty of fancy houses, and you shouldn’t have too much to do unless you flush out a sneak thief.”
“Could be worse,” Bembo admitted. “Could be better, but could be worse, too.” From him, that was no small concession. “Better than Riversedge, anyhow.” And that, as he knew fair well, was no small understatement.
Pesaro wrote Bembo’s name on a scrap of paper and pinned it to patrol route number seven. “Get moving,” the sergeant told him. “That part of town, they want to know they’ve got a constable on the job all the time. If they don’t, they get on the crystal and start breathing fire at us.”
“I’m going, I’m going,” Bembo said. In a way, he was glad to escape the station. If he sat at a desk and did paperwork, he’d keep watching
Saffa and she’d keep sneering at him. But the paperwork really did need doing. If he didn’t get caught up soon, Captain Sasso would have some pointed and pungent things to say to him.
Curse it, I was going to get it done—well, most of it, anyhow,
he thought. No help for that now.
His breath smoked when he went outside. Snow gleamed on the peaks of the Bradano Mountains to the east, but rarely got down to Tricarico. Before the war, rich people had gone up into the mountains for the privilege of playing in the snow. Now that Algarve ruled on both sides of the mountains, they could go up again. Folk from farther south would wonder why they bothered, though. As a matter of fact, Bembo wondered why they bothered. He’d seen just enough of snow to know he didn’t want to see more.
Muttering at his unfortunate fate, he trudged west. A team of gardeners with long-handled shears trimmed the branches of the trees surrounding a home that probably cost as much as he would make in twenty years. He sighed. He lived in a flat even less prepossessing than Saffa’s.
He started to walk by the tree trimmers, then stopped and took a second look at them. He whistled, a low note of surprise, and stepped off the sidewalk and on to the expanse of close-cropped grass that fronted the mansion. Swinging his club as he advanced on the gardeners, he did his best to put on a brave show.
They didn’t need long to notice him; he wanted to be noticed. The boss of the crew came toward him. “Something wrong, Constable?” he asked. His shears, when you got down to it, made a more formidable weapon than Bembo’s bludgeon.
“Wrong? I don’t know about that, pal,” Bembo answered. “But some of those people you’ve got working for you”—he pointed to the ones he meant—“they’re women, aren’t they? I’ve got pretty fair eyes, I do, and I know a woman when I see one. I know I’ve never seen one trimming trees till now, too.”
“Well, maybe you haven’t,” the gardener allowed. “Half my workers have gone into the army. The work doesn’t go away, even if the men do. And so—” He turned to the women he’d hired. “Dalinda, Alcina, Procla—knock off for a bit and come say good day to the constable here.”
“Good day, Constable,” they chorused, smiling at him.
“Good day, fair ladies,” he answered, sweeping off his hat and bowing to each of them in turn. Dalinda wasn’t particularly fair, and was brawnier than most of the men still working for the master gardener. Procla wasn’t anything special, either. Alcina, now, Alcina was worth bowing to. Seeing her sweaty from pruning branches made Bembo wish he’d got her sweaty in a different way. Smiling back at all of them, but at her in particular, he asked, “And how do you like men’s work?”
“Fine,” they said, all together again, so much in unison that Bembo wondered if the gardener had hired them from a singing group that had fallen on hard times.
“Isn’t that something?” the constable said, and gave the head gardener a poke in the ribs with his elbow. “Tell me, pal—does your wife know how you’ve managed to keep your crew going?”
“Now, Constable,” the fellow answered with a nudge and a wink of his own, “do I look that foolish?”
“Not a bit of it, friend, not a bit of it,” Bembo said, chuckling. “But, of course, the municipal business licensing bureau does know you’ve changed the conditions under which you’re operating?”
Had the master gardener said aye, Bembo would have given up and gone on with his patrol. But the man only frowned a little and said, “I hadn’t imagined that would be necessary.”
Bembo clicked his tongue between his teeth and looked doleful. “Oh, that’s too bad. That’s really too bad. Those boys are sticklers, aye, they are. Why, if they were to find out what you were up to, if I were to tell them …” He looked up at the sky, as if he’d forgotten what he was saying.
“Perhaps we can come to an understanding,” the master gardener said, hardly even sounding resigned. He knew how the game was played, and he’d given Bembo an opening. Taking the constable aside, he asked, “Would ten suit you?”
They haggled for a while before meeting at fifteen. Bembo said, “By the powers above, I’ll settle for ten if that one wench—Alcina—feels like being friendly.”
“I didn’t hire her out of a brothel, so I’ll have to ask her,” the gardener said. “If she turns you down, I’ll pay you the extra silver and you can buy what you want.”
“That’s fair,” Bembo agreed.
The gardener went back to Alcina and spoke to her in a low voice. She looked back toward Bembo. “Him?” she said. “Ha!” She tossed her head in fine contempt.
“That costs you another five,” Bernbo growled at the gardener, his ears burning. The other man knew better than to argue with him. He paid out the silver without another word. Bembo took it and stalked off, pleased and angry at the same time. He’d made a profit, but if he’d been a little luckier, he could have had fun, too.
At last, as much by accident as any other way (or so it seemed to him), the Lagoans had given Cornelu an assignment he actually wanted to have. Looming out of the mist ahead of him and Eforiel was Tirgoviste harbor.
He thanked the powers above for the mist. Without it, he would have had a much harder time approaching his home island. The Algarvians patrolled much more alertly than the Sibian navy had—which was one huge reason why King Mezentio’s men ruled in Sibiu these days.
Turning back to the Lagoans Eforiel carried, he asked, “All good?” He would never be truly fluent in their language, but he was beginning to be able to make himself understood.