Jaws of Darkness

Four

A blizzard howled outside the peasant hut in eastern Grelz thatColonelSabrino had taken for his own. Sabrino wondered if it would be the last blizzard of the winter: it was heavy, wet snow, not the dry, powdery stuff that fell-or sometimes just blew sideways-when the weather was even colder. Whether it proved the last blizzard or not, it was too thick for the wing of dragons he commanded to fly. And so he sat in the hut in front of a roaring fire and poured down spirits to make time go by. The peasant who’d once lived here had probably passed the winter the same way.

“One thing, anyhow,” Sabrino said, pronouncing each word with considerable care.

“What’s that, sir?”CaptainOrosio sat on another stool not far away. He had a mug of spirits, too, and he’d also emptied it more than once.

“In weather like this, even the cursed Unkerlanters can’t get their dragons off the ground,” Sabrino said.

Orosio considered that with owlish intensity. Once it had penetrated, he nodded. “You’re right, sir,” he said, as if Sabrino had given him some hidden key to the true meaning of the world. “By the powers above, you’re right.”

“Of course I am,” Sabrino said grandly. He drew himself straight on his stool, and almost fell off it. “I am a colonel of dragonfliers. Do I know these things, or do I not?”

“You’re a colonel of dragonfliers. Of course you do.” Orosio tilted back his mug and drained it. He reached for the jar that sat on the rammed-earth floor between Sabrino and him. The jar sloshed when he picked it up. Grunting in satisfaction, he poured himself a refill. After he drank, he turned- carefully-toward Sabrino. “How come you’re still a colonel of dragonfliers?”

“What’s that?” Sabrino asked.

“How come you’re still just a colonel of dragonfliers, lord Count?” Orosio said again. “You’ve got the blue blood, and powers above know you fight your wing like a mad bastard. How come you’re not a brigadier of dragonfliers, or maybe a lieutenant general of dragonfliers by now? Plenty of people who started behind you and weren’t so good to begin with are ahead of you now. It doesn’t seem fair to me.”

“Ah.” Sabrino reached out and patted Orosio on the shoulder. “You are a gentleman, my friend. Nothing less than a gentleman. But the war could go on till I was much older than I am now-which is quite old enough, believe you me it is-and I would die a colonel of dragonfliers. I suppose I ought to count myself lucky I wouldn’t die a sergeant of dragonfliers.”

“I don’t understand, sir.” Orosio sounded on the verge of tears because he didn’t understand.

There had been times when Sabrino found himself on the verge of tears because he understood altogether too well. No more, though. He was-or he told himself he was-resigned to what had happened to his career. “Do you want to know why I’m not a brigadier of dragonfliers or even a lieutenant general of dragonfliers, Orosio? It’s simple. Nothing simpler, in fact. I toldKingMezentio to his face that he was making a mistake when he started sacrificing Kaunians for the sake of sorcery, and I turned out to be right. That’s why I’m still a colonel of dragonfliers, and why I’ll be one till my dying day.” He emptied his own mug and poured it full again.

“Would you have had a better chance for promotion if you turned out to be wrong?” Orosio asked.

Sabrino shook his head. “No, not any chance at all,” he said loudly-aye, he could feel the spirits, sure enough. “It didn’t help that I turned out to be right, but it didn’t matter much, either. You tell the king he’s made a mistake and you’ve made a worse one, if you ever wanted to see rank higher than the one you owned.”

“That’s not fair. By the powers above, it’snot fair,”CaptainOrosio said with drunken insistence of his own. “You’re a free Algarvian. You’ve got as much right to tell him what’s so as he’s got to tell you.”

“Oh, aye, I’ve got the right,” Sabrino agreed. “I’ve got the right, but he’s got the might.” The jingling rhyme made him laugh-a telling measure of how drunk he was.

“Not fair,” Orosio said again. “The way things are, we need every good soldier doing everything he can.” He leaned over to pat Sabrino this time, and he too almost fell off his stool. “You’re a good soldier, sir, but you’re not coming close to doing everything you can.”

“No? You think not?” Sabrino’s laugh was loud and emphatic, too. “Right this minute, I’m doing everything I can just to sit up, same as you are.”

“Who, me?” Orosio said. “I’m fine, just fine.” To prove how fine he was, he burst into raucous song.

“That’s lovely,” Sabrino said, another telling measure of how low in the jar the level of spirits had got. He yawned enormously. “Let’s go to bed.”

“Aye, let’s,”CaptainOrosio said, not that the hut boasted any real beds. Instead, it had benches against the wall, on which the Unkerlanter peasants who lived there had been wont to throw pillows and blankets and themselves.

Those pillows and blankets were long gone, as were the Unkerlanter peasants. Sabrino did not miss them. For one thing, the hut already boasted a generous oversupply of lice and bedbugs and fleas. For another, the dragonfliers were wearing the furs and leathers in which they rose high with their mounts. Those were warm enough to take the measure of even an Unkerlanter winter.

Sabrino lay down. So did Orosio. The wing commander heard Orosio start to snore. Then weariness and spirits rolled over him like an avalanche, and he heard nothing more for a long time.

When he woke up, he was lying on the floor by the bench. He had no recollection of falling off, but he must have done it. Orosio remained where he’d lain down. He was still snoring, too. The horrible noise made Sabrino wince.

Everything, just then, made Sabrino wince. The fire had died into embers, but even their faint red glow seemed too bright for his eyes. His head throbbed as if eggs were bursting inside it. “Powers above,” he muttered. Talking hurt, too. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d done such a thorough job of damaging himself with spirits.

He started to crawl toward the jar, then gathered himself, got to his feet, and walked over to it. He poured some spirits-not too much-into his mug and swallowed as if he were swallowing medicine. His outraged stomach tried to rebel, but he sternly refused to let it. After the first dreadful shock, the spirits started cutting into his hangover instead of making it worse.

Had he been an Unkerlanter peasant, he probably would have gone from hangover remedy straight into another drunk. He was tempted to do that anyway, but shook his head, which also hurt. The blizzard might end. If the dragons hadn’t frozen out there, he might have to fly. Flying hung over was painful; he’d done that a few times. Flying drunk

… Flying drunk was asking to get killed. He might have felt like death, but he didn’t feel like dying.

He shook Orosio. The squadron leader groaned, but then went back to snoring. Sabrino shook him again. Orosio opened one eye, which was redder than the embers in the hearth. “Go away,” he croaked. His eyelids slid shut again.

“Duty,” Sabrino said.

“Futter duty,” Orosio answered. “I’m not fit for it, anyway. Can’t you see I’m diseased? I need a healer.”

“I know what you need.” Sabrino poured some more spirits into a mug. It was the one from which he’d drunk, but he wasn’t worrying about the niceties just then. And the gurgle and splash got Orosio’s attention. The squadron leader opened both eyes. He sat up. When Sabrino held out the mug to him, he took it and gulped the spirits.

“Powers above, that’s foul stuff,” he said, and then, a moment later, “Let me have some more.”

“No.” Sabrino shook his head again, which made him wish it would fall off. “The idea is to cure you, not to start you down the slope again.”

“Oh, I’m cured,” Orosio said in hollow tones. “Into shoe leather, I think. I’m going to swear off spirits forever, or at least until the next time I feel like getting drunk again.” He eyed the jar in Sabrino’s hand. “A little more?”

“No,” Sabrino repeated, and shoved the stopper into the jar again. He sat down beside Orosio: his legs didn’t want to hold him up any more. “I didn’t take any more for myself than I gave you-enough to take the edge off things, but that’s all.”

“You’re a hard, cruel man, Colonel.” Orosio grimaced. “I’ve got demons ringing bronze bells in my head.”

“I know what you mean.” With an old man’s spraddle-legged shuffle, Sabrino walked to a window. He felt like a very old man just then. When he undid the leather lashings that held the shutter closed, he looked out on swirling white. “The snow hasn’t let up.”

“Good,” Orosio said. “Maybe we’ll be somewhere close to human before we have to fly again. Right now, I don’t think the undertakers did much of a job embalming me.”

“You embalmed yourself, same as I did,” Sabrino answered. “I wonder how many men in the wing have gone and done the same.”

“Nothing elseto do in this miserable place,” Orosio said. “Nothing to do on this whole front but drink and fly. If we can’t fly, that only leaves one thing.” He cast a longing eye at the jar of spirits.

“Don’t remind me.” Sabrino’s laugh was half real amusement, half something darker, something grimmer. “When I’m drunk, I keep looking around for my wife to hit, the same as any Unkerlanter peasant would.” He laughed again. “I wouldn’t really hit Gismonda, mind you; she’d have the law on me in nothing flat. But if Fronesia were here…”

“But she’s notyour mistress anymore,” Orosio said. “Didn’t you tell me she’d taken up with a major of footsoldiers?”

“A major, a colonel, something like that.” Sabrino made a fist. “Well, my good fellow, what better reason to hit her than that?”

“Ah,” Orosio said, again as if Sabrino had offered him a philosophical revelation.

Sabrino wasn’t feeling philosophical. He was just feeling battered and abused. The last thing he needed was someone pounding on the door to the hut. He flinched at the racket. So did Orosio. The only way to make it stop was to open the door. When Sabrino did; he marveled at how young and clean-cut the crystallomancer looked. “Well?” he growled-softly.

The crystallomancer seemed oblivious to his fragile condition. He said, “Sir, we’ve got ten new dragons and ten new dragonfliers coming in as soon as the weather clears enough.”

“Dowe?” Sabrino said, and the youngster nodded. “Ten? Really?” Sabrino asked. The crystallomancer nodded again.

“That’s about half the strength we’ve got here now,” Orosio said.

“Aye, and it brings the wing up to something close to half-strength,” Sabrino added. Though at the start of the war he’d never imagined it would be, that was something to celebrate. He went back into the hut, poured a mug full of spirits, and thrust it at the crystallomancer. “Here,” he said. “Have a drink.”

“I’m off to the Boulevard of Horsemen,” Krasta said with as much gaiety as she could muster.

ColonelLurcaniolooked up from his paperwork, but not for long. “Try not to buy more than the carriage can carry back here,” he told her: even for one of the Algarvian occupiers, he was notably cynical.

“I was hoping one of the lingerie shops might finally have something new,” she said.

“Were you?” That got Lurcanio’s notice, as Krasta had thought it would. If it hadn’t, she would have been offended, and she would have let him know about it, too. He ran his eyes up and down her, as if imagining her in a new negligee, or perhaps being peeled out of a new negligee. “Here’s hoping they do.”

“If you come to my bedchamber tonight, maybe you’ll find out,” Krasta purred. “Maybe. If I decide to open the door and let you in.” Giggling, she hurried out of his office. “Enjoy your papers,” she called from the empty antechamber. No new adjutant had replacedCaptainGradasso, who was off somewhere in the barbarous wilds of Unkerlant.

Krasta’s driver greeted the news that he was to take her into Priekule with something less than unrestrained enthusiasm. “Oh, very well, milady,” he said. “It’ll be a bit, though: I have to get the horses ready.” When Krasta went out to the stables, she discovered, not for the first time, that getting the horses ready also involved getting his trusty flask ready.

But he still handled the carriage well enough. So long as that remained true, Krasta didn’t care if he drank. He was a commoner, after all, and what were commoners but a pack of drunks?

The lingerie shop had the same wares it had displayed the last time she’d shopped there, a few weeks before-and on her visit before that, too. She’d sneered then. Today she bought a gown of filmy blue silk that would play up her eyes-as well as some other assets. She’d seen it before, aye, butColonelLurcanio wouldn’t have.

She didn’t even harass the shopgirl while making the purchase, which proved she had something on her mind. Carrying the parcel in her hand-the silk folded up into next to nothing-she hurried out of the shop. On the sidewalk, she paused and looked around. Everything looked as normal, and as dreary, as could be.

Shoes clicking on the slates, she hurried off the Boulevard of Horsemen and onto a side street. The blocks of flats there had a look of good breeding even wartime poverty and neglect couldn’t mar. People who lived in them were people to be reckoned with. Krasta looked around again. She didn’t see any of the people who’d been on the Boulevard when she left the lingerie shop. Satisfied, she ducked into one of the blocks of flats and went up to the third floor.

It’ll be the one farthest from the stairs, she reminded herself. The hallway had carpeting thicker and softer than her mansion boasted. She knocked on the door.

ViscountValnuopened it. “Well, come in, sweetheart,” he said, smiling his bright, predatory, skeletally handsome smile. “No one followed you here, I hope?”

“I don’t think so,” Krasta said, before remembering that trusting him was liable to be even more dangerous than trusting Lurcanio. Hastily she added, “If I don’t come back, I’ve left enough behind in writing to make sure you get what you deserve.”

Smiling still, Valnu said, “I don’t believe you.” Alarm blazed through Krasta, for she was bluffing. Before she could say anything, before she could do anything, Valnu went on: “Before the war, though, you never would have had the wit to come up with the lie-so maybe it isn’t a lie. Invasions are so educational, aren’t they?”

“I don’t know what on earth you’re talking about,” Krasta snapped.

Valnu laughed. “Well, that sounds more like you. But the question isn’t what you don’t know. The question is what you do know, and what you intend to do about it.”

“I know…” Krasta paused and took a deep breath. “I know you’re part of the underground, because if you weren’t, CountAmatu wouldn’t be dead.”

“And so?” Valnu asked. “What do you propose to do about that? That Algarvian colonel’s been in your bed ever since the redheads marched into Priekule. I don’t care to have my name come up in pillow talk, you know.”

The parcel Krasta was holding crinkled a little. That reminded her of what was inside the paper. Her cheeks heated. Even so, she said, “If you didn’t care to have that happen, you shouldn’t have tried molesting me at one party or another-at one partyand another, I should say.”

“Molesting you?” Valnu threw back his head and laughed. “My dear, you didn’t seem molested. And who, if I may ask, was doing just what to whom?”

Krasta needed a moment to sort through that, too. Once she did, she put the parcel down on a table and walked right up to Valnu. “The last time we got caught,” she said, putting her arms around him, “I was doing something like this.” She kissed him.

He didn’t respond for a moment. Then, his mouth still joined to hers, he started to laugh, and he kissed her back.

“That’s better,” she said after a while. “I was starting to wonder if those handsome Algarvian officers were the only ones who mattered to you any more.”

“I already said you have a handsome Algarvian officer in your bed,” Valnu replied. “Why shouldn’t I have some in mine?” He was, as usual, altogether flagrant and altogether unabashed.

“Why?” Krasta said. “I’ll show you why.” She kissed him again, this time so hard that she tasted blood-hers or his she neither knew nor cared. Whatever his interest in Algarvian officers, she knew she’d excited him in the past. By the bulge in his trousers, she was exciting him again, too. Now she laughed in the middle of a kiss, laughed and ground her hips against him.

“I asked you once, who was molesting whom?” Valnu panted. His left hand cupped her right buttock; his right squeezed her left breast.

“Oh, shut up,” she told him, and rubbed him with her hand.

Deft and sure, his right hand undid the wooden toggles that held her tunic closed. He bent to her and teased her nipples with his tongue. Whatever his interest in Algarvian officers, he remembered how to excite her, too.

She fumbled with his belt. Once she got it unbuckled, she yanked his trousers down. She fell to her knees in front of him. But as she began, as one of his hands went to the back of her head to guide her, he said, “The last time you put your mouth there, you threw me out of your carriage when you found out a pretty little shopgirl had done that before you.”

“And so?” Krasta rocked forward and back a couple of times. Valnu’s breath sighed out of him. Krasta paused and said, “She was just a commoner.” She returned to what she’d been doing. His fingers tangled in her hair. His hand urged her forward again, urged her on. In spite of it, she paused again and looked up at him. “I presume all your handsome Algarvians were of noble blood?”

He gaped. Then he laughed. He laughed so hard, he lost the most obvious evidence of his excitement. “There’s no one like you, is there?” he said.

“I should hope not,” Krasta replied indignantly, and set about repairing the damage. It didn’t take long. She hadn’t thought it would.

After a bit, Valnu pulled away. “Shall we go back to the bedchamber?” he asked.

Krasta considered. “No,” she said, and pulled him down onto the floor with her.

She regretted that in short order: thrashing about on the carpet wasn’t so comfortable as it would have been on a soft, resilient mattress. But that regret was only a small thing, especially after Valnu poised himself above her, her thighs clasping his lean flanks. He had stamina and to spare, and also had the courtesy to help her along with a finger so that she gasped and shuddered and stiffened at the same instant he drove himself deepest into her.

Afterwards, he didn’t have the courtesy to keep all his weight on his elbows and knees. That mattered more on a hard floor than it would have in bed, too. “Let me up,” Krasta said, and bit him on the shoulder to make sure she got the point across.

“So much for romance,” Valnu said, but he did as she asked.

“Romance hasn’t got anything to do with getting squashed.” Krasta spoke with great conviction. She rubbed her backside. She hadn’t noticed the carpet burn while she and Valnu were making love, but she did now.

He started putting on his clothes. As he did up the toggles on his tunic, he asked, “Whose sideare you on, anyway?”

“Mine, of course,” Krasta replied at once. Before she got dressed, she used the privy. As she returned, she asked a question of her own: “Did you expect anything else?”

“I never know what to expect with you, darling,” Valnu said, running a comb through his hair. He cocked his head to one side, studying her. “I don’t think anyone knows what to expect from you.”

“Good,” she said, which made him laugh again.

But then he sobered. “Not necessarily,” he told her. “You ought to know, you’ve almost had the same sort of unfortunate accident poorCountAmatu did.”

People in the underground have wanted to kill you, was what that meant. Krasta knew she had to keep up a bold front. “Just remember,” she said, “that kind of accident wouldn’t be unfortunate only for me.” Without giving him a chance to answer, she picked up the paper-wrapped parcel and swept out of the flat.

Her driver hadn’t drunk himself into a stupor. He touched the brim of his cap when she came up. “Home, milady, or on to more shops?” he asked.

“Home,” Krasta said. He nodded and took her there without another word.

ColonelLurcaniomet her in the entrance hall. “I trust you had a successful campaign?” he asked, as if she’d gone to war rather than to the Boulevard of Horsemen.

How much did he know? Was he spying on her? Before, that would only have infuriated her. Now it might be deadly dangerous. As calmly as she could, she answered, “Aye,” and held up the parcel as if it were spoils of war.

“Ah.” Lurcanio’s eyes lit up. “You will have to show me your plunder, then.”

“Tonight,” Krasta promised, doing her best to sound alluring. Lurcanio was a good lover. She’d first let him into her bed more from fear than for any other reason, but she’d come to want him, too. That wouldn’t be so easy tonight, though, not after what had happened in the flat off Priekule’s chief shopping boulevard. She sighed, and hoped he didn’t notice. The more she wished things were simple, the more complicated they got.

After supper, she went up to her bedchamber and put on the negligee. Lurcanio knocked on her door not much later. When she opened it, he looked her up and down. “A successful campaign indeed,” he said, and surprised her by picking her up and carrying her back to the bed.

He surprised her again when his attentions gave her a full share of pleasure, just as Valnu’s had. Lazy in the afterglow, she leaned over and kissed him. If she was on her own side and no one else’s, she’d won twice today.

Ealstan glared at Pybba. “You don’t care,” he said bitterly. “You’ve never cared. She’s a Kaunian. As far as you’re concerned, the powers below are welcome to her.”

The pottery magnate glared back at Ealstan. “Aye, now that you mention it.” Before Ealstan could hurl himself at him, Pybba went on: “But you’re worth enough to me that I’d do something for her if I could. Only thing is, I can’t.”

“You haven’t tried!” Ealstan exclaimed.

“What exactly do you think I can do?” Pybba asked. “If she’s still in Forthweg at all, she’s here in Eoforwic in the Kaunian district, right? Some of the guards there are Algarvians. The rest of the whoresons, the Forthwegians, are the ones who’re just a step away from Plegmund’s Brigade. They don’t want to have anything to do with Kaunians except maybe to blaze ‘em, and they don’t want to have anything to do with me, either. I’m sorry, kid, but what does that leave?”

He didn’t sound particularly sorry, and Ealstan knew he wasn’t particularly sorry. But Ealstan also knew he had a point… or part of a point. “My father says you can always bribe an Algarvian if you go about it the right way.”

“Go ahead and try,” Pybba said. “Most of the time, your old man’d be right. But they’ve tightened up about the blonds. They need ‘em too bad to want to turn any more of’em loose.” He shrugged. “It’s a sign they’re in trouble. If you think that breaks my heart, you’re daft.”

He had a point there, too. Ealstan didn’t want to admit it, not when Pybba was talking about Vanai. “But-” he began.

“Shut up,” Pybba said flatly. “I’ve listened for as long as I’m going to listen. Get your arse back to work. What you try by yourself, you try, that’s all. But if anything goes wrong, you can bet I’ll kill you before the stinking redheads get the chance to squeeze you. You know too bloody much.”

“I don’t know enough to do what I need to do,” Ealstan said, though that wasn’t what Pybba meant.

“You didn’t know enough to keep from getting the hots for a blond girl,” the pottery magnate told him, though that wasn’t what he’d meant before, either. Pybba jerked a thumb at the door that led out of his inner office. “Go on. Get out of here. I haven’t got the time to waste on you, and you haven’t got the time to waste, with all the work piled on your desk.”

If Ealstan said he was caught up on his work, Pybba would just give him more. He knew that. He had no choice but to leave. He slammed the door behind him. Pybba only laughed. Plenty of people slammed the door coming out of his office. It was usually a sign he’d got his way.

“Not this time,” Ealstan muttered. A couple of people in the outer office glanced at him, but not with any enormous surprise. Plenty of people muttered to themselves coming out of Pybba’s office, too.

To make things worse, one of the first items Ealstan had to enter in Pybba’s ledgers was the payment the Algarvians had made for another large shipment of Style Seventeen sugar bowls. The potter magnate made plenty of money from the redheads-money he turned around and used against them. But would he do anything for Vanai? Ealstan shook his head. What you try by yourself, you try, that’s all.

“Powers below eat you,” Ealstan whispered. He clenched his fist till his nails bit into the palm of his hand, I willtry. And I will get her out, too.

Mechanically, he worked through the day, as he’d worked through every day since coming home to find Vanai vanished. At last, quitting time came. He hurried out of Pybba’s establishment and onto the streets of Eoforwic.

He didn’t go straight home. He saw no point in going straight home. Without Vanai there, his flat was only a place to eat and sleep. He didn’t want to spend time there, not any more. Spending time there reminded him of what he was missing, and that hurt too much to bear.

Instead, as he often did these days, he hurried to the edge of the Kaunian district. Prominently posted signs outside it declared that any Forthwegians caught inside the district would be blazed without warning, thus we THWART THE KAUNIANS’ VILE SORCERIES, the signs proclaimed. THEY SEEK TO

CONCEAL THEIR EVIL, BUT WE SHALL NOT LET THEM MASQUERADE AS DECENT PEOPLE.

As Forthwegians, was what that meant. Most of the guards patrolling the edge of the quarter were Forthwegians themselves; Pybba had been right about that. He’d also been right that they seemed enthusiastic about their work. Did that make them decent people? Ealstan couldn’t see it.

One of the guards saw him. The fellow swung his stick Ealstan’s way, not quite pointing it at him but ready to do just that. “You keep sniffing around here,” the guard said. “I catch you again, you’ll be sorry. You got that?”

“Aye,” Ealstan said, and beat a retreat. He cursed and kicked at pebbles all the way back to his fiat, wishing each one of them were the guard’s face. How could he get into the Kaunian quarter to bring Vanai out when his own countrymen were so determined to keep her and all the other blonds in there till the Algarvians needed them?

Once he got home, he ate bread and olive oil and almonds and a chunk of smoked pork, washing them down with red wine. He hadn’t bothered fixing himself anything fancier than that since the redheads had seized Vanai. He probably would have botched things anyhow. He’d never had to learn to cook for himself.

She’s going to have a baby, he thought as he washed his few dishes. Don’t the Algarvians care? Unfortunately, he knew the answer to that only too well.

He thought about pouring himself more wine, about drowning his worries in it. But then he shook his head, as if someone had suggested the idea to him out loud. As far as a lot of Kaunians were concerned, Forthwegians were a bunch of drunks. Ican’t afford to get drunk now. If I’m drunk, I know I won’t come up with any way to get my wife free.

The only trouble with that was, even sober he couldn’t find any way to get Vanai free. He’d tried and tried, and had no luck. He wandered out of the kitchen and into the front room. Like the bedroom, it had several cheap bookcases filled with secondhand books. Back before Vanai had come up with the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian, she’d had to stay in the flat all the time, with words on paper her only escape from boredom.

Ealstan’s eye fell on the slim book calledYou Too Can Be a Mage. He scowled at it. “Miserable, useless thing,” he said. Vanai had tried to use a charm in it to make herself look like a Forthwegian. The one time she cast that spell, all she’d accomplished was the opposite of what she’d intended: for a little while, she’d made Ealstan look like a Kaunian.

Fortunately, she’d figured out how to reverse that. But then she’d had to take apart the spell inYou Too Can Be a Mage, see where the bumbling author must have mistranslated from classical Kaunian into Forthwegian, and reconstruct what the original Kaunian had been. That gave her a spell she could really use, not one that offered hope and then immediately betrayed it.

Ealstan had heard her use the spell dozens of times. With a couple of bits of yarn, he could have cast it himself. But so what? He already looked like a Forthwegian. Turning himself into one wouldn’t do him any good.

He tookYou Too Can Be a Mage off the shelf and found the sorcery Vanai had modified. In its original, unchanged form, it would let him look like a Kaunian. For a moment, excitement blazed in him. That would get him into the Kaunian quarter. It would let him see Vanai. It would let him be with her.

But it wouldn’t let him bring her out. That was what he needed, above all else. Going into the Kaunian district to keep her company was romantically splendid but altogether useless. All it would accomplish, in the long run- maybe in the not-so-long run-was getting both of them sent west.

“That won’t do,” he said, as if someone-someone inside himself, perhaps-had suggested it would. The idea wasn’t for him to die looking like a Kaunian. The idea was for Vanai to live looking like a Forthwegian… or whatever else she had to look like to go on living. Ealstan nodded. He did clearly see what had to be done. He was the practical son of a practical father. Hestan would never have wasted time on a futile romantic gesture, either.

Fair enough, Ealstan thought. Isee what doesn‘t work. What does, though? The Algarvians had set things up so that no Forthwegians could go into the Kaunian quarter and no Kaunians could pass out of it into the rest of Eoforwic-not unless they seized them and took them to the ley-line caravan depot. Their system wasn’t slipshod, as it had been before. These days, they couldn’t afford to waste Kaunians. With the war in Unkerlant not going well, they needed every blond they could catch and hold.

No Forthwegians inside. No Kaunians outside. Ealstan hurledYou Too Can Be a Mage across the room. He slammed his fist down on the little table in front of the sofa on which he sat. Pain blazed up his arm. That left… nothing.

There has to be something. He shook his head. He wanted there to be something. That didn’t mean it had to be. How many Kaunians had thought there had to be something? How many of those Kaunians were dead now? Too cursed many. Ealstan knew that.

Wearily, he got to his feet and picked upYou Too Can Be a Mage. The pages were almost ready to part company with the binding: this wasn’t the first time he or Vanai had flung the book. With a curse, Ealstan put it back on the shelf.

“There has to be something.” He said it aloud, even if he’d already figured out it wasn’t true. The redheads had closed off every possibility involving Forthwegians and Kaunians, and what else was there? “Nothing. Not a stinking thing.” He said that aloud, too, to remind himself not to be a fool. Then he went to bed.

When he woke up, he was smiling. At first, still half asleep, he didn’t understand why. But as full awareness came, the smile only got broader. He knew what he had to do. A moment later, he paused and shook his head. He knew what he had to try. It might not work. If it didn’t work, he was ruined. But if it did, he had a chance.

His breakfast was much the same as his supper had been, only with olives as a relish instead of almonds. He hurried downstairs, hurried out of the block of flats, hurried to the pottery works, hurried into Pybba’s sanctum.

He’d been sure the pottery magnate would be there before him. And he’d been right. Pybba sat behind his desk, sorting through papers and muttering unhappily to himself. He looked up at Ealstan with no great liking. “What do you want?”

Before answering, Ealstan closed the door behind him. Pybba’s eyebrows rose. They rose higher when Ealstan told him exactly what he wanted.

“You’re out of your bloody mind, boy,” the pottery magnate said when he was through.

“Probably,” Ealstan agreed. “Can you get it for me? No-I’m sure you can. Will you get it for me?”

“I’d be crazy if I did,” Pybba answered. Ealstan folded his arms across his chest and waited. Pybba said, “Anything goes wrong…” and sliced his thumb across his throat. Ealstan didn’t move. Then Pybba said, “Odds are I’d be well rid of you anyhow,” and Ealstan knew he had won.

Ukmerge had one park-or, at least, Skarnu hadn’t been able to find more than one. In winter, with the weather cold and the grass dead and the trees bare-branched, not so many people came there. He could still walk through it, though, or sit down on one of the benches without drawing notice from the constables, if he came at noon. Even in the wintertime, some workers escaped from the nearby shoe manufactory to eat their dinners in the park.

The air stank of leather. In Ukmerge, the air stank of leather so much that Skarnu had almost stopped noticing it. Almost. He still found himself wrinkling his nose every now and again.

Most of the benches in the park faced a broad expanse of bare ground without trees, without even much in the way of dead grass. “Did something used to be here?” Skarnu asked the underground leader who called himself “Tytuvenai” after his hometown one noontime. “Something worth looking at, I mean?”

“Tytuvenai” nodded. “An arch from the days of the Kaunian Empire. The Algarvians put eggs under it and knocked it down, same as they did with the Column of Victory in Priekule, same as they’ve done all over Valmiera- all over Jelgava, too, if half what we hear from there is true.”

“Powers below eat them,” Skarnu growled. “They’re trying to make us forget our Kaunianity.”

“Aye, no doubt,” “Tytuvenai” said. “They’re trying to make themselves forget it, too-that we were civilized while they were just woodscrawlers. But that’s not why I asked you to meet me here today.”

“No, eh?” Skarnu tried to imagine what the arch had looked like. He had no trouble getting a general idea; he’d seen plenty of imperial monuments in Priekule and elsewhere. But he didn’t know what this one had been for, what reliefs and statuary and inscriptions it had borne. He wouldn’t be able to find out now, either. Nor would anyone else. That growl still in his voice, he said, “Maybe it should have been.”

“Maybe.” “Tytuvenai” didn’t sound convinced. He explained why: “One of these days, when we have time, we’ll worry about arches and columns and tombs. We don’t have that kind of time now. We’ve got to worry about putting the Algarvians in tombs, and keeping them from putting any more of us into them. Isn’t that more important than old marble and granite?”

“I suppose so,” Skarnu said grudgingly. “It’s more urgent, anyhow. Whether urgent is the same thing as important is something we can argue about another day.”

“It’s something we’d better argue about another day,” “Tytuvenai” told him. “I called you here to ask if you were ready to get back to work.”

“Ah,” Skarnu said. That certainly was more urgent than marble. As his comrade had done, he got straight down to business: “Here in Ukmerge? What have you got in mind, planting eggs inside the shoe manufactories?”

“You laugh,” “Tytuvenai” said, and he was smiling himself. “If you knew how many shoes this town’s made for Mezentio’s men, you’d laugh out of the other side of your mouth, believe you me you would. It’d be a shrewd blow against the Algarvians. If we can bring it off, itwill be a shrewd blow against the Algarvians. But it isn’t what we have in mind for you.”

“Whatdo you have in mind for me?” Skarnu knew he sounded relieved. The shoe manufactories, the whole town of Ukmerge, oppressed him almost as badly as they did Merkela. He would have loved to see the manufactories go up in smoke, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with them himself.

“You’ll know, better than most, how the Algarvians will bring Kaunians from Forthweg through Valmiera down to the coast of the Strait when they want to strike a sorcerous blow against Lagoas or Kuusamo,” “Tytuvenai” said.

Skarnu’s answering nod was grim. “Aye, I know about that. I’d better. I sabotaged one of those ley-line caravans before it could get where it was going, and a lot of those Kaunians escaped before the redheads got the chance to sacrifice them.” He spoke with more than a little pride.

“Tytuvenai” nodded, too. “Aye, I’d heard that. And when you find a Valmieran who’s disappeared, a Valmieran who’s got ‘Night and Fog’ scrawled on his doorway, he’s off to be sacrificed, too. The Algarvians want it to seem like a mystery, but that’s what happens.”

“Is it?” Skarnu said, and the other underground leader nodded again. Skarnu went on. “I didn’t know that, but I’d be lying if I said I was surprised. You still haven’t told me what it’s got to do with me, though, or what you want me to do about it.”

“I’m coming to that,” “Tytuvenai” said. “Not so long ago, in spite of everything we could do, the redheads got a couple of caravanloads of Kaunians from Forthweg down to the coast, out about as far east as they could go. It’s pretty plain they were aiming their sacrifice at Kuusamo, not Lagoas. And they made the cursed sacrifice, and they stole the Kaunians’ life energy, and they used it to power their stinking sorcery, and… something went wrong.”

“Good!” Skarnu exclaimed. “What happened? Did one of their mages botch the spell, so that it came down on their own heads? By the powers above, that’d be sweet-and fitting, too.”

But now “Tytuvenai” shook his head. “That was our first guess. It doesn’t seem to be so, though, not from the way the Algarvians have been running around down there by the sea like so many ants whose anthill just got kicked. No, what it looks like is, they made the sacrifice-made the murders-and cast the spell, and everything went just the way it was supposed to… except that the Kuusamans somehow turned the spell around and made it land on the redheads who’d cast it: either that, or they had a counterspell waiting that was even more potent.”

“How could they?” Skarnu asked. Then, one obvious-and dreadful- possibility occurred to him. “Are they sacrificing people for the sake of their life energy, too, the way the Unkerlanters are doing?”

“No.” “Tytuvenai” spoke with great certainty. “Theyaren’t doing that, powers above be praised. If they were, we’d know about it. The mages say they can feel those sacrifices, and they haven’t felt anything like that out of Kuusamo. But the Kuusamans threw back whatever Mezentio’s men sent them, and the Algarvians are jumping out of their kilts trying to figure out how.”

“Mmm, I can see why they would be,” Skarnu said. “If there’s something out there that can master their magecraft, that’s got to be plenty to set them shivering and shaking.”

“Now you’re getting the idea,” the other underground leader said. “We’re going to send you there, you and Palasta, to see if you can’t make them shiver and shake a little harder.”

“Palasta?” Skarnu knew he’d heard the name before, but where? Then he remembered. “Oh. The little mage who hid my trail when the Algarvians were after Merkela and Gedominu and me in Erzvilkas.”

“That’s right,” “Tytuvenai” said. “I know she looks like she’d blow away in a strong breeze, but she’s as good as we’ve got: the best.”

“All right,” Skarnu said. “I won’t be sorry to see the last of Ukmerge, and I’d be a liar if I said anything different. And Merkela will be even happier to get away from here than I am.”

A bell rang in the nearby shoe manufactory. The workers who’d been eating their dinners in the park hurried away. If they weren’t back before the bell rang again, they might lose their positions. All at once, Skarnu and “Tytuvenai” seemed conspicuous. Skarnu looked around nervously. He saw no constables, Algarvian or Valmieran. He relaxed-a little.

And then he noticed the expression “Tytuvenai” was wearing. The other man didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. Skarnu did it for him: “You don’t want Merkela to come along with me.”

“Well, now that you mention it, no,” “Tytuvenai” admitted. “I don’t see what she can do to help you once you get down there. And the redheads will be looking for a fellow traveling with his wife and baby, not for somebody with a girl who could be his almost-grown daughter or his kid sister. Everybody would be better off if Merkela stayed behind.”

“Everybody except her and me,” Skarnu pointed out.

“Tytuvenai” shrugged. “This is still a war. Back before our army fell apart, you went where you were ordered and you did what you were told, and you didn’t think twice about any of it. Now you’ve got a new set of orders, my lordMarquis. Will you follow them, or won’t you?”

“It’s not the same,” Skarnu said. In a certain sense, that was true. The formal structure of the Valmieran army no longer existed. Back in the days when he was a captain, his colonel had had authority to give him orders that they both recognized. “Tytuvenai” didn’t. He could request. But he wasn’t Skarnu’s superior officer. He couldn’t command, not unless Skarnu let him.

Despite that, the other man from the underground had weapons, had them and didn’t hesitate to use them: “I’m not asking for myself, you know. This is for the sake of the kingdom. This is for the sake of the war.”

“Curse you,” Skarnu said wearily; he had no good argument against that. He pointed a finger at “Tytuvenai.” “I’m going to bargain with you.”

In the Valmieran army, that would have got him cashiered. “Tytuvenai” just nodded and said, “Go on.”

“First, before I disappear, I’m going to go back to the flat and say goodbye,” Skarnu said. He knew what “Tytuvenai” would say to that, and forestalled him: “I know better than to tell her where I’m going or what I’ll be doing.”

“All right,” the other man said mildly. “But ‘first’ has ‘second’ on its trail. What else do you want?”

“Get Merkela and the baby out of Ukmerge,” Skarnu answered. “She can’t stand it here, and I can’t say I blame her. Find her some place out in the country where she can stay. She’s lived on a farm all her life. She’s going crazy, cooped up in a flat. Do that and…” He sighed. “Do that and I’m your man.”

“Agreed,” “Tytuvenai” said at once. “There. You see how easy that was?”

“Futter you,” Skarnu said. “Tytuvenai” laughed.

Except for having to climb out of his cot earlier than he would have liked, Bembo faced each new day in Gromheort with more zest that he would have imagined possible when he came west from Tricarico. As his unhappy leave back in Algarve had reminded him, he felt more at home here these days than he did in his own hometown.

Of course, constables back in Tricarico didn’t get rich. Plenty of graft came their way, aye, but it was all petty graft: constables just weren’t important enough to get any more. Things were different here in occupied Forthweg. Here, Algarvian constables often held the power of life and death over Forthwegians and Kaunians. Even with dour, brutal Oraste for a partner, Bembo had done amazingly well for himself.

He found himself grinning at Oraste as they queued up for rolls and olive oil and red wine for breakfast. “No, this isn’t such a bad place after all,” he said.

Oraste only grunted. He wasn’t at his best before he’d had something to eat, and especially before he’d had something to drink. He’s not always at his best after he’s had something to eat and something to drink, either, Bembo thought, and his grin got wider.

“What’s so fornicating funny?” Oraste demanded.

“Er-nothing.” Bembo didn’t want to quarrel with his partner. In a brawl, Oraste would tear him in two with no remorse and with no great effort.

“Better not be,” Oraste said. He then clamped his jaw shut till he’d got his food and his wine. Bembo kept quiet, too, though he liked to talk. Intimidation cast almost as powerful a spell as magecraft. Only after Oraste had gulped down his wine and gone back for a second mug did he speak again: “That’s more like it.”

Bembo sipped from his own mug. He smacked his lips together, as if he were a connoisseur. “We can afford better, you know. Powers above, we can afford anything we want.” He blinked. Back in Tricarico, he’d never imagined being able to say anything like that. But it was true.

Oraste grunted again. “Well, so what?” he answered. “I still say we should’ve turned in that Hestan item. He’s trouble. He’ll go on being trouble.”

“Aye, no doubt,” Bembo said. “But if we had turned him in, what would he have done? Paid off somebody else, that’s what, and you know it as well as I do. Go on-tell me I’m wrong.” Oraste let out one more grunt. Bembo wagged a ringer at him. “See? You can’t do it. That’s how the world works.

And since that’s how the world works, I’d sooner see his money in my belt pouch than anybody else’s. The clowns who give us orders have too much money already.”

One of Oraste’s eyebrows twitched-not much, but enough for Bembo to notice. He glanced back over his shoulder. One of the people who gave him orders, Sergeant Pesaro, was heading his way. Fortunately, the fat sergeant couldn’t have heard him; he’d had the sense to keep his voice down. Had Pesaro ever found out how much his two constables had squeezed out of Hestan, he would have demanded a good-sized cut.

A large, meaty hand fell on Bembo’s shoulder, another on Oraste’s. “I want to see you boys in my office as soon as you’re done with breakfast,” Sergeant Pesaro said, and then went on his way, his big belly wobbling as he walked.

Alarm and anger blazed through Bembo. “Oh, that son of a whore!” he whispered fiercely. “That stinking son of a whore! He knows, I bet. If that turd of a Hengist rang the bell on us, he’s going to be one dead Forthwegian.”

But Oraste, whose temper was usually shorter than Bembo’s, shook his head. “I don’t think he knows anything,” he said-not the first time he’d expressed such sentiments about Pesaro. Now, though, he amplified them: “Look. He’s picking on other pairs, too.”

“Probably going to shake down everybody.” Bembo’s voice remained bitter, as if he’d never shaken down anybody. But if Pesaro did have the goods on him, he knew he’d have to fork over: getting your sergeant angry at you wasn’t much different from having the powers below eat you.

Along with the other constables, Bembo and Oraste trooped into Pesaro’s office. They crowded it to the point of overflowing; it was none too big to begin with. Sitting behind his rickety desk, Pesaro seemed almost trapped. “What’s up, Sergeant?” somebody asked-Bembo couldn’t see who.

He had trouble seeing Pesaro, too. But the sergeant never had any trouble making himself heard. He said, “I’ll tell you what’s up. What’s up is, they need more people to hold the lid on over in Eoforwic. There’s a real live nasty Kaunian underground on the loose there, and Forthwegian rebels, and the Unkerlanters have been sending dragons over the place. And so you men are heading west. There’s a ley-line caravan leaving from the depot here an hour before noon. You’re all going to be on it.”

“Eoforwic?” Half the constables in the crowded little office, Bembo among them, howled out the name of the Forthwegian capital in protest. But their hearts weren’t in it-or at least Bembo’s wasn’t. He didn’t much feel like packing up and going, but one Forthwegian town was likely to be much like another.

For any of the constables who didn’t understand that, Sergeant Pesaro spelled it out: “Anybody who doesn’t care for the idea can go put on a different uniform and get shipped a lot farther west than Eoforwic.”

Protest was cut off as if sliced by a knife. Nobody wanted to go fight in Unkerlant. Soldiers coming through Gromheort cursed the constables and envied them their soft jobs. Bembo didn’t envy the soldiers theirs, which were anything but soft.

Into the sudden silence, Sergeant Pesaro said, “That’s better. You will be on Platform Three at the depot by an hour before noon. No excuses-not a chance. Anybody who misses the caravanwill go straight to Unkerlant, and that’s a promise. Don’t bring anything more than you can carry, either. Questions?”

“Why did you pickus, Sergeant?” someone asked.

“Because you’re so sweet,” Pesaro growled. “Any more questions?” After that, there were none. Pesaro waved a hand. “Dismissed.”

Bembo went back into the barracks and started loading a duffel bag. It got full long before he’d gone through everything around his cot. Cursing, he started editing his earthly goods. He needed three tries before finally deciding he could do no better. Even then, the canvas sack left him panting and sweating by the time he’d lugged it to the caravan depot.

“What have you got in there?” demanded the Algarvian who checked his name off a list.

“Your wife,” Bembo snarled. He and the fellow with a clipboard cursed each other till, grunting with effort, he hauled the duffel bag onto the caravan car.

Oraste was already aboard. His sack held about a quarter as much as Bembo’s. “Have you got everything you need?” he asked.

“No,” Bembo said. He would have flung his bag against the wall of the car, but it was too heavy to fling. He eased it over there and flung himself into a seat. Oraste, who laughed at very little, laughed at him. Bembo petulantly glared at his partner till the ley-line caravan glided west out of Gromheort.

Before long, he was in country he’d never seen before. He took a while to realize it; the countryside didn’t look much different from that around Gromheort. Fields with growing wheat and barley slid past his window. So did groves of olives and almonds and citrus fruit. And so did villages full of whitewashed houses, some with red tile roofs, others-more and more as he got farther west-with roofs of thatch.

War had touched the countryside only lightly. Peasants went about their business as they had whenKingPenda ruled Forthweg. As the ley-line caravan passed through towns-it stopped three or four times to pick up more constables-the ruined buildings nobody had bothered to repair stood out much more noticeably, as they did in Gromheort. Once the caravan got into the territory Unkerlant had occupied before Algarve went to war with her, the wreckage got fresher and worse. KingSwemmel ’s men had fought hard every inch of the way.

Eoforwic surprised Bembo, who said, “I didn’t think this miserable excuse for a kingdom had such a big city.”

“It’s still full of Forthwegians,” Oraste replied with a shrug. “Them and Kaunians.” He made as if to spit on the floor of the caravan car, but reluctantly thought better of it. When the car stopped at the depot, he shouldered his sack and hurried out. Bembo’s duffel bag hadn’t got any lighter while it lay there. Swearing, bent almost double under it, he followed his partner onto the platform.

Another cheerful fellow with a clipboard checked his name off a list. Then the other Algarvian said, “We’ve got carriages waiting for you people, to take you to your barracks.”

“Oh, powers above be praised!” Bembo said fervently. “I was afraid I’d have to walk.” He carried his duffel bag with jauntier style, not least because he knew he wouldn’t have to carry it far. They did things with class here in the capital.

That impression lasted till he got to the barracks, which were every bit as crowded and gloomy as the ones in Gromheort. He got an iron cot in the middle of a room full of constables-a room full, mostly, of strangers.

Someone called his name in a loud voice. “Here,” he answered, and then, seeing the pips on the other constables’ shoulder boards, “Here, Sergeant.” He wondered what sort of a new boss he was getting.

“I’m Folicone,” the sergeant said. He was younger and skinnier than Pesaro. Of course, even Bembo was skinnier than Pesaro, so that didn’t say much. Folicone went on, “I’m going to partner you with Delminio here.” He nodded toward a constable whose cot stood only a couple of spaces away from Bembo’s.

“Pleased to meet you,” Delminio said, and clasped wrists with Bembo. He wore bushy red side whiskers, and mustachios and chin beard waxed to spikes.

“Pleased to meet you, too,” Bembo answered. But then he turned to Folicone and said, “Sergeant, Oraste and I, we’ve been partners a long time, you know what I mean?”

“And maybe you will be again, in a while,”SergeantFolicone said. “But I want you with somebody who knows the ropes here while you’re breaking in.”

That made too much sense for Bembo to argue with it. He nodded and said, “No offense,” to Delminio.

“It’s all right,” Delminio answered. “Getting a new partner is a funny business. I know that.” He eyed Bembo the same way Bembo was eyeing him. What sort of partner will you be? “You want to go into the Kaunian quarter with me?” Delminio asked. He hesitated. “You do know about the business with the Kaunians?”

“Oh, aye,” Bembo said, and Delminio visibly relaxed. Bembo added, “I’m not what you’d call happy about it, but what can you do? It’s wartime.”

“Sounds like you’ve got some sense,” Delminio said. SergeantFolicone nodded. Bembo beamed. He’d made a good first impression. Delminio went on, “Just come with me. The quarter isn’t far.”

Bembo went past the same sorts of warning signs he would have seen in Gromheort. The Kaunian district here looked much the same as Gromheort’s, too, though it was larger. He watched Kaunian women’s backsides, as the blonds went around in trousers. So did Delminio. They noticed each other doing it, and they both grinned. “I think I can manage here,” Bembo said. His new partner nodded. Bembo wondered if he could find a Kaunian wench for himself. It might not be too hard.

Up till the time when the redheads swept through the Kaunian quarter of Eoforwic, Vanai had been through only one roundup. And back then, she hadn’t even known what the Algarvian constables were doing when they took Kaunians out of Oyngestun. They’d told soothing lies then: they’d said they were sending people west as laborers. Some of her fellow villagers had even gone with them of their own free will.

It wasn’t like that anymore. The surviving Kaunians knew the Algarvians wanted them for one thing and one thing only: their life energy. And so, when the redheads swarmed into the Kaunian district, the blonds did their best to hide.

The roundup, of course, came without warning. Anyone the hunters caught on the street was simply nabbed and grabbed and hauled away. But the captured Kaunians’ cries of despair and the Algarvians’ shouts of triumph warned others of the raid. Like any hunted animals, most of the Kaunians who weren’t caught in the open had holes in which to hide.

Vanai was no exception. After she was captured and brought into the Kaunian district, she’d expected something like this to happen sooner or later-probably sooner. And so she’d gone exploring in the block of flats where the redheads had put her. Waiting quietly in her flat for them to come get her and take her away… She shook her head. By the powers above, I’m not going to make it easy for them, she thought.

Exploring had been easier because so many of the flats stood empty. She didn’t like to think about that. But it gave her a lot more choices than she would have had otherwise.

She’d found a good spot in a vacant ground-floor flat: a closet that had a lot more room than it seemed to, and one where a searcher peering in, even with a lamp, wouldn’t be able to spy her. He would have to step all the way into the closet to notice it took an unexpected dogleg. Whoever’d made it that way might have had a hidey-hole in mind.

When the first terrified cries rang out, Vanai knew at once what they meant, what they had to mean. She wasted not an instant. She had to get downstairs and into her hiding place before constables started swarming through the building. If she didn’t, she was ruined. The baby she carried made her awkward and slow, but she forced herself to hurry downstairs anyhow.

More Kaunians, many more, were going up than down. “You fool, it’s death on the streets!” a man said as she pushed past him, moving against the tide.

He was bound to be right, of course. But Vanai wasn’t heading for the streets, though she didn’t say so. She burst out of the stairwell and went down the hallway toward that empty flat at a lumbering trot.

Just outside the open door, panic nearly froze her. What if someone else has found this place, too? It won’t hold two, and I won’t have time to go looking anywhere else.

Almost moaning in terror, she dashed back to the closet. No one cried out in fear even greater than hers, believing her to be one of the hunters rather than the hunted. And no one shouted for her to go away, either. She still had the place to herself.

“Powers above be praised,” she gasped, making herself as comfortable as she could in the little hidden niche.

Only then did another bad thought strike her: if this hiding place was so splendid, why did this flat stand empty? The redheads must have caught whoever had been living here before. Would constables come casually walking in, check the closet, and take her away? She couldn’t run, not any more. It was too late for that.

Footsteps in the hallway and loud Algarvian voices said she had indeed made her choice. Now she would have to live-or die-with it. “Miserable blonds,” a man growled, his voice sounding as if it came from right outside the doorway to the flat in which she cowered. “Finding the lousy buggers is getting to be like pulling teeth.”

“We’ve got to do it, though,” another Algarvian answered. He might have been talking about any hard, not particularly pleasant job… till he went on, “The Forthwegians here won’t miss them, anyhow.”

“Well, of course they won’t,” the first constable said, as if his friend were belaboring the obvious. And then that first redhead’s voice came frominside the flat: “Let’s see what we’ve got here.” Vanai shivered. She forced herself to stop-it might make a noise. She tried not even to breathe.

“Not bloody likely we’ll flush anybody out of this place-Kaunians usually like to run upstairs, not hide down low.” The second Algarvian spoke now as the voice of experience.

“I know, I know,” his pal said. “We’ve got to go through the motions, though.” A piece of furniture went over with a crash. The Algarvian grunted. “Nothing there. Let me check this closet here, and then we can go on upstairs, like you said.”

He spoke his last few words just outside the closet where Vanai hid. The baby growing inside her chose that moment to kick. The unexpected motion within her made her want to jump. It made her want to scream. She did neither. She bit down hard on her lower lip and waited in dark, dusty silence.

Then she wanted to scream again; for the silence, while it remained dusty, was no longer so dark. That Algarvian had a lamp, which he used to illuminate as much of the closet as he could from the entrance to it. Just for a moment, light touched the tip of Vanai’s right shoe. She started to jerk it back, but checked herself. Motion and sound could betray her, too.

“Anything?” the second Algarvian asked.

“Doesn’t look like it,” the first one answered. The hateful light receded. “Now we can go on upstairs and get down to business.”

“Right,” his friend said, “Here, I’ll paint a cross on the front door to keep anybody else from wasting his time.” The two sets of footsteps receded.

I’m safe, Vanai thought dizzily. For a little while, I’m safe. Now she could shake. Once she started, she discovered she had a hard time stopping.

And, just because she’d escaped the roundup for the time being didn’t mean the other Kaunians in the block of flats were so lucky. She heard Algarvians hauling them downstairs, heard men cursing and begging, heard women shrieking in despair. Neither curses nor pleas nor shrieks had the slightest effect on the constables, except to annoy them. Then Vanai heard bludgeons striking flesh-which, if they didn’t quiet the curses and pleas, did turn them to shrieks.

“Well, that’s not a bad bag,” one Algarvian said to another in the ground-floor hallway.

“Not too bad, anyhow,” his companion agreed. “How close to quota are we?”

“How should I know?” the first man answered. “You think our officers tell me anything more than they tell you?”

“Fat chance,” the second man said. “Screw ‘em all.”

They’re just doing their job, Vanai thought again. They don’t much like the people who give them the work, but they do it. How can the? I don’t understand. Could anyone understand?

Silence returned. Vanai didn’t dare move. They’d said they were done with this block of flats, but had all of them left? If she came out before they had, she was sure they would be happy enough to scoop her up. How would she know? When could she be sure? She shook her head. She couldn’t be sure. When would she have to take a chance?

She wished she had some way to gauge things inside the closet. She feared her guesses weren’t worth much. It already seemed as if she’d been trapped inside here forever.

She was about to come out and see if she could sneak upstairs when she heard new voices in the hallway. An Algarvian spoke in his own language: “Look at the crosses on the doorways, sir. They’ve already searched this building.”

The fellow who answered did so with aristocratic scorn: “You are looking with your eyes. I look with more than that. I look with senses you haven’t got. And I shall find what you’ve missed, too-you wait and see.”

A mage, Vanai thought, with terror dulled only because she’d already been through so much other terror. She wasn’t warded. She hadn’t imagined she would need to be warded. If he started incanting-no, when he started incanting-she was ruined. It’s not fair. That was probably true, but it would do her no good at all.

Out in the street-Vanai thought it was out in the street, anyhow-a shout rang out: the same word, repeated over and over. Hidden in the blind dogleg closet, she couldn’t make out what the word was. Neither could the Algarvian mage. “How am I supposed to concentrate with this racket?” he snapped, his voice peevish.

“You don’t need to concentrate, sir,” the constable with him answered. “They’re yelling that they’ve got their quota. They don’t need any more blonds this time around.”

“Oh,” the mage said. “Is that so? Well, if I don’t have to work, I’m bloody well not going to work. That’s fair enough-better than fair enough, by the powers above.” He began to whistle. His footsteps, along with those of the constable who’d come into the block of flats with him, faded in the distance as the two men left again.

Vanai didn’t move for a long time. By then, she wasn’t sure shecould move. At last, a bladder that threatened to burst drove her to her feet.

She came out of the closet ever so cautiously. She came out of the flat even more cautiously. When she saw someone come up the stairs and into the block of flats, she almost jumped out of her skin. But it was only another Kaunian. He waved to her. “So I’m not the only one they missed here, eh?” he said, sounding more cheerful than he had any business doing. “Well, good.”

He saw Vanai, who’d survived the roundup, and resolutely didn’t see all the people who hadn’t. She couldn’t think like that.

When she went back up to her flat, she found that the Algarvians had turned it inside out. She wasn’t upset; she’d expected nothing less. She had little that could be broken, and even less that she minded losing. Before long, she had the flat set to rights again.

And, before long, just as if the roundup hadn’t happened, bells clanged in the Kaunian quarter, summoning the blonds who’d come through uncaught to get their food so they could stay strong and healthy till the Algarvians needed more of them. Vanai didn’t go, in case it turned out to be another trap, another betrayal. The Algarvians who’d gone through the flat had been after her person, not the couple of small chunks of stale bread and dried fruit she’d secreted there. She didn’t have a lot to eat, but she had some.

As she nibbled a dried apricot, she looked out the window and down onto the street below. Not many Kaunians could have escaped in this neighborhood, but she saw a fair number of people heading for the feeding stations the Algarvians had set up. She grimaced. If they’re that stupid, they deserve to be caught. Then she grimaced again, this time at herself. Why do they deserve to get caught for having empty stomachs?

And then she spotted the Algarvian constable who came down the street chatting up every young woman who passed. She muttered the foulest curses she knew, and wished she knew worse ones. Even though she couldn’t hear him, she could guess what he’d be saying. Come with me, sweetheart. Give me what I want, and you won’t go west, the same sort of vicious bargainMajorSpinello had struck with her back in Oyngestun. The redheads were great ones for deals like that. Vanai shrank back from the window, lest he see her. When she peeked out again, a few minutes later, he was gone. She let out a long, heartfelt sigh of relief.