Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 383

"Why, so I am, dear," Bembo said. "I couldn't have put it better, or even so well, myself." He flirted with her till she got off the caravan car a couple of hours later. That made him snap his fingers in disappointment; if she'd stayed on till Tricarico, something interesting might have developed.

He let out a long sigh of pleasure, like that of a lover returning to his beloved, when the conductor called, "Tricarico, folks! All out for Tricarico!" He grabbed his bag and hurried down onto the platform of the depot. It was, he saw, the platform from which he'd left for Forthweg a couple of years before. He kicked at the paving stones as he left the depot and hurried out into the city- his city.

There were the Bradano Mountains, indenting the eastern skyline. He didn't have to worry about blond Jelgavans swarming out of them, as he had in the early days of the war. He didn't have to worry about Jelgavan dragons anymore, either.

And there was a cab. He waved to it. The driver stopped. Bembo hopped in. "The Duke's Delight," he told the hackman, naming a hostel he'd have no trouble affording. He'd had to give up his flat when he went off to the west.

"You'll be from around these parts," the driver said, flicking the horse's reins.

"How do you know?" Bembo asked.

"Way you talk," the fellow answered. "And nobody who wasn't would know of a dive like that." Bembo laughed. He also got the last laugh, by shorting the driver's tip to pay him back for his crack.

Once he'd got himself a room at the hostel, Bembo walked down the hall to take a bath, then changed into wrinkled civilian clothes and went back out to promenade through the streets of Tricarico. How shabby everything looks, he thought. How worn. That took him by surprise; after so long in battered Gromheort, he'd expected his home town to sparkle by comparison.

As he'd seen on his caravan journey across Algarve, few men between seventeen and fifty were on the streets. Of those who were, many limped or were short a hand or wore an eye patch or sometimes a black mask. Bembo grimaced whenever he saw men who'd come back from the war something less than a full man. They made him feel guilty for his free if not especially graceful stride.

After so long looking at dumpy Forthwegian women and the occasional blond Kaunian, Bembo had thought he would enjoy himself back in his home town. But his own countrywomen seemed tired and drab, too. Too many of them wore the dark gray of someone who'd lost a husband or brother or father or son.

Powers above, he thought. The Forthwegians are having a better time of it than my own folk. For a moment, that seemed impossible. Then, all at once, it made sense. Of course they are. They're out of the war. They aren't losing loved ones anymore- well, except for the Kaunians in Forthweg, anyhow. We have to go right on taking it in the teeth till we finally win. Lurid broadsheets shouted, THE KAUNIANS STARTED THIS WAR, BUT WE WILL FINISH IT! Others cried, THE STRUGGLE AGAINST KAUNIANITY NEVER ENDS! They were pasted on every vertical surface, and gave Tricarico most of what little color it had. People hurried past them head down, not bothering to read.