“Of course it’ll be as I say,” Ansovald answered smugly. He thrust a thick finger out at Hajjaj. “Now, as long as you’re here-when are you going to give this Tassi bitch back to Iskakis?”
“Good day, your Excellency,” Hajjaj said with dignity, and rose to leave. “You may have a good deal to say about what goes on in my kingdom, but not, powers above be praised, in my household.” But as he walked away, he hoped that wasn’t more wishful thinking.
With nothing to do but lie on his back and eat and drink, Bembo should have been a happy man. The constable had often aspired to such laziness as an ideal, though a friendly woman or two had also played a part in his daydreams. A broken leg most emphatically had not.
It got me back to Tricarico, he thought. Oraste was right-if I’d stayed in Eoforwic, if I’d stayed anywhere in fornicating Forthweg, I’d probably be dead now. None of the news coming out of the west was good, even if the local news sheets did try to make it as palatable as they could.
What Oraste hadn’t thought about was that, even back in his own home town in northeastern Algarve, Bembo still might get killed. Kuusaman and Lagoan dragons flew over the Bradano Mountains every night-and sometimes during the day-to drop their eggs on Tricarico. Bembo wondered how long it would be before enemy soldiers started coming over the mountains, too.
“However long it is, I can’t do anything about it,” he muttered. His leg remained splinted. It still hurt. It also itched maddeningly under the boards and bandages where he couldn’t scratch.
A nurse came down the neat row of cots in the ward. The sanatorium was crowded, not just with men wounded in combat but with all the civilians hurt by falling eggs. Bembo had hoped to be something of a hero when he got back to Tricarico. Hardly anyone seemed to care, or even to notice.
“How are we today?” the nurse asked when she got to his cot.
“I’m fine.” Bembo whipped his head around, as if to see if he were sharing the bed with other men he didn’t know about. “Don’t see anyone else, though.”
He got a dutiful smile from the nurse. She looked tired. Everyone in Tricarico, or at least in the sanatorium, looked beat these days. She set a hand on his forehead. “No fever,” she said, and scribbled something on the leaf of paper in her clipboard. “That’s a good sign.”
“How are you, sweetheart?” Bembo asked. He felt good enough to notice she was a woman, and not the homeliest one he’d ever seen.
She was pretty, in fact, when she smiled, which she did now-this one had nothing of duty in it. But her brightening had nothing to do with Bembo’s charms, if any. “I got a letter from my husband last night,” she answered. “He’s in the west, but he’s still all right, powers above be praised.”
“Good,” Bembo said, more or less sincerely. “Glad to hear it.”
“Do you need to use the bedpan?” she asked.
“Well. . aye,” he said, and she tended to it, holding up the blanket on the cot as a minimal shield for his modesty. She handled him with efficiency King Swemmel might have envied, as if his piece of meat were nothing but a piece of meat. He sighed. You heard stories about nurses. … If he’d learned one thing as a constable, it was that you heard all sorts of stories that weren’t true.
“Anything else?” she asked. Bembo shook his head. She went on to the fellow in the next cot.
One of the stories you heard was how bad sanatorium food was. That one, unfortunately, had turned out to be true. If anything, it had turned out to be an understatement. What Bembo got for supper was barley porridge and olives that had seen better days and wine well on the way to turning into vinegar. He didn’t get much, either: certainly not enough wine to make him happy.
The fellow in the cot next to his was a civilian who’d got his leg broken here in Tricarico at about the same time as Bembo had over in Eoforwic. His name was Tibiano. By the way he talked, Bembo suspected he’d seen the inside of a constabulary station or two in his time. “I’ll lay you three to two the fornicating islanders send dragons over again tonight,” he said now.
“I wouldn’t mind getting laid, but not by you, thanks,” Bembo answered. Tibiano chuckled. Bembo went on, “I won’t touch the bet, either. Those whoresons come over just about every night.”
“Isn’t that the sad and sorry truth?” Tibiano agreed. “Who would’ve thunk it? We started this war to kick everybody else’s arse, not to get ours kicked. Those other bastards deserve it. What did we ever do to anybody?”
Having been in Forthweg, Bembo knew just what-or some of just what- his kingdom had done. He hadn’t talked much about that since returning to Tricarico. For one thing, he hadn’t thought anybody would believe him. For another, he would just as soon have forgotten. But he couldn’t leave that unanswered. “There are some Kaunians who’d say we’ve done a thing or two to them.” And there would be a lot more, if they were still alive.
“Blonds? Futter blonds,” Tibiano said. “They’ve always tried to keep us Algarvians from being everything we ought to be. They’re jealous, that’s what they are. Like I say, they deserve it.”
He spoke loudly and passionately, as people do when sure they’re right. Several other men in the ward lifted their heads and agreed with him. So did the young woman who was taking away their supper tins. No one had a good word to say about any Kaunians. Bembo didn’t argue. He didn’t love the blonds, either. And the last thing he wanted was for anyone to say he did. Calling an Algarvian a Kaunian-lover had always been good for starting a fight. These days, though, calling him a Kaunian-lover was about the same as calling him a traitor.
Night came early, though not so early as it did farther south. Trapani endured hours more darkness each winter night than Tricarico did, and suffered because of it. But what Tricarico went through wasn’t easy, either.
Bembo had just dropped into a fitful, uncomfortable sleep-he would have killed to be able to roll over onto his belly-when alarm bells started clanging. “Come on!” he shouted. “We’re all supposed to run down to the cellar.”
Curses and jeers answered him. Hardly any of the men in this ward could get out of their cots, let alone run. If an egg burst on the sanatorium, then it did, and that was all there was to it. Bembo cursed the bells. He’d heard them too often in Eoforwic. And the last time you heard them there, you didn’t get to a shelter, or even a hole in the ground, fast enough.
In the dark ward, somebody asked, “Where are all the fancy spells the news sheets keep promising?”
“Up King Mezentio’s arse,” somebody else answered. Bembo probably wasn’t the only one trying to figure out who’d said that. But the dark could cover all sorts of treason. At least for now, the disgruntled Algarvian had got away with speaking his mind.
Eggs didn’t start falling right away. Algarvian dowsers were good at what they did. They’d probably picked up the enemy dragons’ motion as soon as the beasts came over the Bradano Mountains. But how much good would that do without enough Algarvian dragons to go up there and knock the Kuusamans and Lagoans out of the sky? Not much, Bembo thought dismally.
As soon as eggs did begin to drop, beams from heavy sticks started probing up into the sky. But the air pirates had plenty of tricks. Along with eggs, they dropped fluttering strips of paper that drove dowsers mad: how to detect the motion of dragons when all that other motion distracted them? Because they couldn’t tell the men at the heavy sticks exactly where the enemy dragons were, the beams from those sticks struck home only by luck.
And if an egg lands right on top of this stinking sanatorium, that’ll be luck, too, Bembo thought-bloody bad luck. No one was supposed to try to drop eggs on buildings where healers worked, but accidents, mistakes, misfortunes happened.