Out of the Darkness

Thirteen

Leudast marveled that he could walk through the streets of Trapani without being ready to dive into a hole at any moment. The Algarvians’ formal surrender in the city hadn’t quite ended the fighting. Diehards and soldiers who hadn’t got the word kept blazing at the Unkerlanters for several days more. Even King Mainardo’s announcement of a general Algarvian surrender hadn’t quite done the job. By now, though, all the redheads had either laid down their sticks or were lying down themselves-lying down and not about to get up again.

A skinny Algarvian woman came out of a battered house. “Sleeping with me?” she called in bad Unkerlanter, and twitched her hips in case Leudast hadn’t been able to understand her.

He shook his head and walked on. He hadn’t turned the corner before she called the same invitation to another Unkerlanter soldier. Leudast got propositioned a couple of times a day. Some of his countrymen said it proved all Algarvian women were whores. Leudast didn’t know whether it proved they were whores or just that they were hungry.

Everybody-everybody Algarvian, anyhow-in Trapani was hungry these days. Leudast couldn’t see that the Unkerlanter authorities were working very hard to keep the redheads fed. He lost no sleep over it. When Mezentio’s men held big stretches of Unkerlant, they hadn’t done much to keep the peasants and townsfolk there fed, either. Let ‘em get a taste of empty, he thought. Let ‘em get more than a taste, by the powers above.

He had to stop then. A column of captives came shambling by: glum, hollow-cheeked men in filthy, tattered Algarvian uniforms, the stubble on their faces almost but not quite grown out into beards. Most of them were redheads, but he spotted a knot of men who looked like Unkerlanters, though they wore tan tunics and kilts like the Algarvians. Their dark beards were thick and full.

“Who are those whoresons?” he called to a guard. “Traitors from the Duchy of Grelz?” He was a lieutenant nowadays because he’d captured the Algarvian calling himself King of Grelz. Some of the men from the duchy in the southeast of Unkerlant kept fighting against King Swemmel even after that.

But the guard shook his head. “No, sir,” he answered. “These bastards are Forthwegians: the outfit that called itself Plegmund’s Brigade. And see? They’ve got a couple of Valmieran swine with ‘em. The Algarvians picked up garbage all over the place.” He laughed at his own wit.

“Plegmund’s Brigade, eh?” Leudast nodded. “Aye, I ran up against them a time or two.” He hadn’t cared for the experience; the Forthwegians had been tough and nasty.

One of them, a fellow who looked as if he’d been a robber before joining Plegmund’s Brigade, must have understood him, for he spoke in his own language: “Too futtering bad we didn’t get you, too.”

Having come from northeastern Unkerlant, not far from the Forthwegian border, Leudast followed Forthwegian better than most of his countrymen would have. He also heard another captive say, “Powers below eat you, shut up, Ceorl! You want to make it worse than it is already?”

“Where are these men going?” Leudast asked the guard.

“Sir, I don’t know for certain, but I think they’re off for the Mamming Hills,” the fellow replied.

“Ah,” Leudast said, and said no more. Ceorl’s comrade had been wasting his time worrying. If these captives were bound for the Mamming Hills, it was already about as bad as it could be. He didn’t need to fret about making it worse.

More captives cleared debris from a broad square in front of the royal palace. Leudast scowled at the burnt and shattered wreckage of King Mezentio’s residence. He’d been in on some of the fighting there, and the Algarvians had battled room by room, corridor by corridor. And then, when his own side had finally cleared them out, they’d found Mezentio already dead. If that wasn’t a cheat, what was? Capturing Mezentio’s cousin Raniero had made Leudast an officer. What would capturing Mezentio himself have gained some lucky Unkerlanter? Colonel’s rank? A duchy? Anything this side of the sky itself seemed possible.

But Mezentio, curse him, had taken the easy way out. What would King Swemmel have done to him, had he fallen alive into Unkerlanter hands? Mezentio hadn’t wanted to find out. Leudast didn’t think he would have wanted to find out, either, not in Mezentio’s shoes. He remembered how bravely Raniero had gone into the boiling water-and how he’d shrieked afterwards, for as long as he still kept life in him. And Mezentio, without a doubt, would have ended up envying Raniero his easy fate.

Several Unkerlanters came out of the palace, along with one Algarvian who towered half a head over them. The group walked toward Leudast without even noticing he was there: all the Unkerlanters were officers of age and rank exalted enough to make a young lieutenant seem no more important than any other chunk of rubble littering the ground.

One of the officers-a brigadier-was speaking to the redhead: “You had better understand, you will keep the job as long as you do as his Majesty commands. Disobey, and all you will be is very, very sorry.”

“I’m not likely to make a mistake about that, am I?” The Algarvian spoke fluent, almost unaccented Unkerlanter. His wave encompassed the whole of the capital, the whole of the kingdom. “Considering the example I have before me, I would have to be a madman to step out of line.”

“This does not always stop Algarvians,” the brigadier replied. “We have seen as much. I hope I am plain: if you are not pliable, you are dead. . slowly.”

“I told you once, I understand,” replied the redheaded-noble? Leudast supposed he had to be.

“You had better, that’s all,” the brigadier said. He and the other officers swept past Leudast. I won’t stare after them, Leudast thought. They might notice me, and I don’t want to be noticed now.

What sort of job did they have in mind for the Algarvian? By the way they were talking, it might almost have been king. But, with Mainardo, Algarve already had a king. Of course, if Swemmel decided not to recognize Mezentio’s brother and raised up a candidate of his own, who would, who could, stop him? He’d already done that in Forthweg. Why not here, too? The only drawback Leudast could see was that any redhead was likely to betray Unkerlant the instant he thought he could get away with it.

That wasn’t his worry. If the candidate looked like giving trouble, he expected King Swemmel would spot it before it got bad enough to be dangerous. Swemmel looked for trouble the way fussy old women looked for weeds in their garden plots-and when he found it, he yanked it up by the roots.

Not far beyond the royal palace stood a building so solidly made, it had come through the fierce fighting in Trapani almost undamaged. Men were carrying sacks-sacks obviously heavy for their size-out the front door and loading them into wagons. What looked like a regiment’s worth of guards surrounded the wagons.

“What’s going on here?” Leudast asked one of the guards.

“Sir, this is the treasury of the Kingdom of Algarve,” the man answered. His eyes were hard and alert, warning that Leudast would do well not to seem too interested.

Despite that warning look, Leudast couldn’t help letting out a low whistle. “Oh,” he said. “And it’s about to become part of the treasury of the Kingdom of Unkerlant?”

“You might say something like that, sir,” the guard replied.

“Good,” Leudast said. “The fornicating redheads cost us plenty. Only fair they should pay us back. I just wish gold and silver could really pay for all the lives they robbed us of.”

“Aye, sir.” Something of the guard’s humanity showed through the hard mask of his face. “I lost a brother last year, and my home village isn’t far from Durrwangen, so powers above only know if any of my kin are left alive.”

“I hope so,” Leudast answered. It was all he could say; some of the biggest and most important battles of the war had been fought around the southern city of Durrwangen a couple of summers before. Leudast had been there, on the eastern side of the bulge the Algarvians were trying to pinch off. He still marveled that he’d come through in one piece.

“So do I.” The guard’s stick twitched, just a little. Leudast took the hint. Anyone who spent too long watching the plundering of the Algarvian treasury might be suspected of wanting some of the plunder for himself. As a matter of fact, Leudast did want some of the plunder for himself, but not enough to get blazed for it. He left in a hurry.

When he got back to his regiment’s encampment in a park not too far from the palace, it was boiling like an anthill stirred by a stick. “What’s going on?” he asked a soldier from his company.

“Orders, sir,” the man replied.

That told Leudast less than he wanted to know. “What kind of orders?” he demanded, but the soldier had already hurried off. In a way, Leudast got the answer to his question: the orders were of the urgent kind.

“Oh, there you are, Leudast,” Captain Dagaric said. “I’ve been looking for you.”

“I’m here, sir,” Leudast answered, saluting. “What in blazes is going on?”

“We’re moving out of Trapani, that’s what,” the regimental commander told him. “Moving out by tonight, as a matter of fact.”

“Powers above!” Leudast exclaimed. “Moving out where?” His first, automatic, glance was toward the east. “Are we going to start the war up again, and take on the Kuusamans and Lagoans?”

“No, no, no!” Dagaric shook his head. “We’re not going east. We’re going west. We’re going a long way west, as a matter of fact. A long, long way west.”

“About as far west as we can go?” Leudast asked.

Dagaric nodded. “That’s right. We’ve got some unfinished business with the Gongs, you know. . What’s so funny?”

“Nothing, sir, or not really funny, anyhow-but strange, all the same,” Leudast said. “Back a million years ago, or that’s what it seems like now-back before the big Derlavaian War started, anyway-I was fighting in the Elsung Mountains, in one of those little no-account skirmishes that don’t matter at all unless you happen to get killed in them. I’ve been through all this, and now I’m going back.”

He wondered how many other Unkerlanters who’d fought in the halfhearted border war against Gyongyos were left alive today. Not many-he was sure of that. Once more, he counted himself lucky only to have been wounded twice. Well, now the cursed Gongs will get another chance, he thought, and wished he hadn’t.

More than his regiment was leaving Trapani: much more than his regiment. Once his men got to the ley-line caravan depot, they had a long wait before they filed onto the cars that would take them across most of the length of Derlavai. “Why did we have to hurry so much, if we’re just standing around here?” somebody grumbled.

“That’s the way the army works,” Leudast said. “And believe me, standing around is a lot better than getting blazed at. Besides, it’ll take us ten days, maybe more, to get where we’re going. You might as well get used to doing nothing.”

He remembered his last passage out to the borders of Gyongyos as far and away the longest, most boring journey he’d ever made, with nothing to do but watch endless miles of flat countryside slip past. But battle, once he got to the uttermost west, hadn’t been boring, however much he wished it were. He didn’t expect it would be this time, either. As he finally filed aboard the ley-line caravan car, he hoped against hope he would prove wrong.

Ceorl had known for a long time that he would get it in the neck. If he hadn’t signed up for Plegmund’s Brigade, a Forthwegian magistrate would have given it to him. The second time they caught you for robbery with violence, they didn’t bother locking you up; they just got rid of you. The judge had been in what passed for a kindly mood for him: he’d been willing to let the Unkerlanters do the job instead of taking care of it himself with a signature.

And so Ceorl had gone to fight in the south. For a while-all the way up through the battles in the Durrwangen bulge-he’d hoped he’d managed to cheat the judge, because Algarve had still had a chance to win the war. After that. . He shook his head. After that, it had been almost two years of hard, grinding retreat. He’d started out somewhere between Durrwangen and Sulingen, and ended up one of the last holdouts in the ruins of King Mezentio’s palace in Trapani.

Even then, the Unkerlanters hadn’t been able to kill him. Along with the other survivors from Plegmund’s Brigade, the blonds from the Phalanx of Valmiera sprinkled in among them, and the Algarvians who’d been stubborn enough to stick it out to the very end, he’d come forth with his hands high, sure enough, but also with his head high.

He turned to Sudaku. Aye, Sudaku was a stinking Kaunian, but he’d fought as well as anybody else this past year. In Algarvian-Sudaku had picked up some Forthwegian, but not a lot-Ceorl said, “The one thing I didn’t figure on was that Swemmel’s whoresons’d go right on having chances to do us in even after we surrendered.”

“Powers below eat me if I know why not,” Sudaku replied. “Did you think they would pat us on the bottom and tell us to go home and to be good little boys from here on out? Not likely.”

“Ah, futter you.” Ceorl spoke altogether without malice. He cursed as automatically as he breathed, and thought no more of one than of the other. He was a brick of a man, stocky even by Forthwegian standards, with bushy eyebrows, a big hooked nose, and a smile that usually looked like a sneer.

“The Unkerlanters are going to futter us all,” Sudaku said. “They can take their time about it now, but they’re going to do it.”

He was right, of course. Ceorl knew it. If he’d been on top of the world, he would have paid back everybody who’d ever done him dirt. He had a long list. But his list, he had to admit, paled beside the one King Swemmel must have been keeping all these years. What Swemmel’s list amounted to was, the whole Kingdom of Algarve and anybody who ever helped it in any way. That was a list worth having, a list worth admiring.

And Swemmel was getting his money’s worth from it, too. Once upon a time, this captives’ camp outside of Trapani had been a barracks complex holding perhaps a brigade’s worth of men. Six or eight times that many soldiers-or rather, ex-soldiers-were crammed into it now. They got just enough food to keep them from starving in a hurry. It was as if the Unkerlanters wanted to savor their suffering.

“Pretty soon,” Sudaku said, “a plague will start, and they will need to bring in a ley-line caravan to carry out the corpses by carloads.”

“You’re a cheery bastard, aren’t you?” Ceorl answered. “I almost hope a plague does start. The stinking Unkerlanters’d catch it, too, and it’d fornicating well serve ‘em right.”

With a shrug, the man from the Phalanx of Valmiera said, “You should want to live. If you get out of this place, if you go back to your own kingdom, you can hope to do what you did before the war. I am not so lucky. For a Valmieran who has fought for Algarve, there is nothing left.”

“Oh, my arse,” Ceorl said. “You ever get back to your own kingdom, pick a new name and pick a new town and start telling lies like a fornicating madman. Tell ‘em about how the redheads, powers below eat ‘em, did you all kinds of dirt. Your people would buy it. Most people are nothing but a pack of fornicating fools.”

Sudaku laughed out loud. “Maybe you are right. It might be worth a try. What a reason to live: to spend the rest of my life telling lies.”

Ceorl poked him in the chest with a forefinger. “Listen, pal, after this war, folks’ll be telling lies for the next fifty years. Anybody who ever had anything to do with the redheads is going to say, ‘No, no, not me. I tried to kick those bastards right in the nuts.’ And all the Algarvians who were the meanest whoresons, they’ll go, ‘No, I didn’t have any idea what was going on. That was those other fornicators, and they’re already dead.’ You think I’m kidding? Just wait and see.”

“No, I do not think you are kidding,” the blond said. “It will happen. Maybe I could do that… if I ever got back to Valmiera. But I do not think I am going to.”

He was likely right for himself, but Ceorl had some hope of escaping. But for his beard, he looked like an Unkerlanter, and he could make a stab at the language of King Swemmel’s soldiers. If he could murder a guard and get into the fellow’s uniform tunic, he might sneak out of the captives’ camp. And if he could do that, anything might happen.

He was still contemplating ways and means two days later, when the Unkerlanters emptied out the captives’ camp by marching half the men in it-including the survivors of Plegmund’s Brigade-out of the place and through the streets of Trapani.

“Who are those whoresons?” an Unkerlanter lieutenant asked a guard as the captives trudged along. “Traitors from the Duchy of Grelz?”

“No, sir,” the guard answered. “These bastards are Forthwegians: the outfit that called itself Plegmund’s Brigade. And see? They’ve got a couple of Valmieran swine with ‘em. The Algarvians picked up garbage all over the place.” Ceorl followed his words well enough.

“Plegmund’s Brigade, eh?” The officer nodded. “Aye, I ran up against them a time or two.”

“Too futtering bad we didn’t get you, too,” Ceorl muttered.

“Powers below eat you, shut up, Ceorl!” another Forthwegian captive said as they went on their way. “You want to make it worse than it is already?”

“How?” Ceorl asked as they shambled on. The other fellow had no answer for him.

They stopped by the ruins of the central ley-line caravan depot. The queue of captives snaked toward the platforms. Ceorl thought of a way in which things might be worse, and spoke to the other men from Plegmund’s Brigade in Forthwegian: “We better stick together, whatever happens. Otherwise, the fornicating redheads’re liable to come down on us hard, on account of we’re odd men out.” His eyes flicked toward Sudaku. “You catch that?” he asked the blond from the Phalanx of Valmiera, also in his own language.

“Bet your arse I did,” the Kaunian replied in the same tongue. He’d been with the men of Plegmund’s Brigade long enough to have learned to curse in Forthwegian, and had picked up other bits and pieces as well. Ceorl slapped him on the back. The ruffian despised blonds on general principles, but didn’t dislike the handful beside whom he’d fought.

To his surprise, the caravan car to which the Unkerlanter guards steered his lot of captives was one made for carrying passengers. He’d expected to go aboard one that had borne freight, or perhaps animals. To be able to sit down in an actual compartment and watch the landscape go by … That didn’t sound so bad.

It also wasn’t what happened. A compartment was made to hold four people. The Unkerlanters shoehorned a couple of dozen into that space. “You fit!” one of them shouted in bad Algarvian. “You make selfs fit! You no do, we do.”

Men squeezed onto the seats, onto the floor, and up onto the baggage racks above the barred windows. Ceorl saw at once that those racks offered more room to stretch out than anywhere else in the compartment. He swarmed up onto one. An Algarvian had the same idea at almost the same time. Ceorl’s elbow got him in the pit of the stomach. He dropped back into the seething crowd below.

Ceorl hauled Sudaku out of the crowd and up onto the rack with him. “Thanks,” the blond said in Algarvian. “Why did you do that?”

Before Ceorl could answer, the redhead he’d elbowed and a pal rose again like a couple of spouting leviathans and tried to haul him down. Ceorl’s boot got one of them in the face. “Oh no you don’t, you son of a whore!” he said. Meanwhile, Sudaku had driven off the other Algarvian. “That’s why,” Ceorl said. “Everybody’s got to have somebody to watch his back for him.”

“Ah.” The Kaunian nodded. “I see it. We are like too many wolves in too small a cage.”

“I don’t know anything about wolves,” Ceorl said. “All I know about is gaols, but I know them good. Either you eat meat or you are meat. Powers below eat all those other bastards. Nobody’s going to eat me.”

He leaned down from the baggage rack to kick an Algarvian who was wrestling with a man from Plegmund’s Brigade for a space on one of the seats. The Algarvian crumpled. The Forthwegian shoved him aside and waved to Ceorl. Ceorl grinned back. He’d had plenty of practice at this kind of dirty fighting. It was different from soldiering. Here, everyone except a few chums was an enemy. Have to remind the chums who they are, he thought.

By the time things in the compartment sorted themselves out, he had a good line on who was strong and who was weak. The weak, the friendless, and the stupid were jammed into the space on the floor between the seats. Some of them were nothing more than footrests for the stronger captives.

Yells from the compartment down the corridor said the Unkerlanters were filling it the same way. Once the car was full, a door slammed. The ley-line caravan still didn’t move. Plenty of other cars remained to be filled.

Up in his aerie, Ceorl was comfortable enough. He didn’t want to think about what the poor whoresons folded in on themselves down below were going through. He didn’t want to, and so he didn’t. They hadn’t had the brains or the ballocks to take care of themselves. Nobody else would do it for them.

After what seemed like forever, the ley-line caravan glided out of the depot. From where he was, Ceorl couldn’t see a great deal, but he did know they were heading west. He shrugged. He’d already got the upper hand on things, and expected he’d be able to keep it no matter where he ended up.

Rations were hard bread and salted fish that set up a raging thirst in whoever ate them. He got a good-sized chunk of bread and one of the biggest fish. He also got first pull at the cup from the water bucket the Unkerlanters grudgingly allowed their captives.

When he and his comrades were herded into the compartment, he hadn’t expected to stay there for three days. One man died on the trip. No one noticed till he wouldn’t take his piece of bread. Even after the captives shoved his corpse out into the corridor, the compartment seemed just as crowded as it had before.

On the morning of the third day, the ley-line caravan finally stopped. “Out!” the guards shouted in Unkerlanter and Algarvian. “Out!”

A lot of the captives had trouble moving. Not Ceorl, whose fettle was about as fine as it could be. He sprang down from the caravan car and looked around. Not far away stood ramshackle wooden barracks. Low, rolling hills dotted the countryside. The air smelled of wood smoke and something else, something with a harsh, mineral tang to it.

“Where in blazes are we?” he said.

“These are the Mamming Hills.” A guard pointed to a black hole. “Cinnabar mine. We’ll work you till you die, you whoreson.” He threw back his head and laughed. “It won’t take long.”

Count Sabrino lay on his cot. He’d been on his feet-no, on his foot-a few times by now, but moving around while upright still left him not only exhausted but in more pain than he’d known when dragonfire set his leg alight. The healers talked about fitting him with a jointed artificial leg one day, but he didn’t take that seriously-not yet. The only thing he took seriously these days was the decoction of poppy juice that pushed aside the worst of the pain.

He knew he’d started craving the drug for its own sake as well as for the relief it brought. One of these days, I’ll worry about that, too, he thought. If the pain ever goes away, I expect I’ll find a way to wean myself from the decoction.

What he hadn’t expected was that the missing leg still hurt, even though it wasn’t there anymore. The healers told him such things were normal, that most people who lost limbs kept a sort of phantom memory and perception of what they’d once had. He didn’t argue with them: he was hardly in a position to do so. But that phantom presence struck him as the strangest thing about being mutilated.

Or so it did till the afternoon when a healer came up to him and said, “You have a visitor, Count Sabrino.”

“A visitor?” Sabrino said in surprise. No one had come to see him since he was injured. He could think of only a couple of people who might. “Is it Captain Orosio? Or my wife, perhaps?” He didn’t know if either of them was alive. If they aren‘t, they won’t come, he thought, and laughed under his breath.

“Uh, no, your Excellency,” the healer replied. “No and no, respectively.” The fellow coughed a couple of times, as if to say Sabrino was very wrong indeed.

“Well, who in blazes is it, then?” the colonel of dragonfliers demanded. As he got more used to the decoction of poppy juice, more of his own temper pierced the haze it gave his wits.

Instead of answering straight out, the healer said, “I’ll bring in the gentleman. Excuse me, your Excellency.” He hurried away. When he came back, he had with him a white-haired Unkerlanter officer with a chestful of medals. “Your Excellency, I have the honor to present to you General Vatran. General, Count Sabrino.”

“You speak Unkerlanter?” Vatran asked in Algarvian.

Sabrino shook his head. “Sorry, but no.” He started at the Unkerlanter. “What are you doing here? You’re Marshal Rathar’s right-hand man.”

“That is why I am here,” Vatran went on in Algarvian. He wasn’t fluent, but he could make himself understood. Catching the healer’s eye, he jerked a thumb at the door. “You. Get lost.” That got through, sure enough. The healer fled.

“What… do you want with me?” Sabrino asked. He still had trouble believing he wasn’t imagining this.

Vatran walked over and shut the door the healer had just used. That bit of melodrama done, he came back to Sabrino’s bedside and said, “How you like to be King of Algarve?”

“I’m sorry.” Sabrino burst out laughing. “You know I’m hurt. You know I’m taking a pretty strong decoction for the pain.” Vatran nodded curtly. Sabrino went on, “It does some strange things sometimes. I thought you just asked me if I wanted to be King of Algarve.”

“I do say that,” General Vatran replied. “You want to be King of Algarve, you be King of Algarve. So say King Swemmel.”

“But Algarve already has a king,” Sabrino said. “King Mainardo.” He’d almost said Mezentio, but remembered hearing Mezentio was dead.

In his own guttural language, Vatran said something pungent about Mainardo. Sabrino followed part of it. He didn’t speak Unkerlanter, not really, but years in the west had taught him something about swearing in that language. Vatran was plainly a master of the art. In Algarvian, the general continued, “Powers below eat Mainardo. He is trouble. King Swemmel want a man he can trust for king.

We ask one redhead already, but he play games with us. No games here.” He drew a thumb across his throat to show exactly what he meant.

He meant the invitation. Sabrino wasn’t so drugged that he didn’t understand that. Slowly, with as much caution as the poppy juice left in him, he asked, “Why does King Swemmel think I am the right man for this job?”

“You are Algarvian. You are noble.” General Vatran ticked off points on his fingertips, as if he were trying to sell Sabrino a jug of olive oil. “You are brave fighter, so men respect you. And we know you quarrel with King Mezentio.”

“Ah,” Sabrino said. Now things grew clearer. “And so you think I would make a proper traitor?” With the drug in him, he couldn’t be very cautious.

Vatran shook his head. “Not a traitor. How can Algarve hurt us now, no matter who is king? Other bastard, he not see that.” He made the throat-cutting gesture again.

And he had a point, or a sort of a point. Sabrino wagged a forefinger at him. “If you didn’t care who was king, why would you mind having Mainardo keep the crown?”

“Mainardo is Mezentio’s brother.” Vatran went back to counting on his fingers. “And he is puppet of Lagoas and Kuusamo. This not good, not for Unkerlant.”

He had a certain brutal honesty to him, even when he played the game of intrigue. Algarvians were suaver, smoother…. And much good that did us, Sabrino thought. “You would want me to be a puppet of Unkerlant’s, eh?”

“Why, of course,” General Vatran answered. “I tell you about this other bastard-he stupid. You think we let your kingdom get big and strong so you kick us in the balls again, you crazy.”

Brutal honesty, indeed, went through Sabrino’s mind. He shook his head. “To my way of thinking, I would have to be a traitor to do the job as you want it done.”

The Unkerlanter shook his head again. “No, no, no. You can ward your subjects, can shield them. This much, I think King Swemmel let you have.”

Can shield them from Unkerlanter soldiers, was what he had to mean. Even so, Sabrino said, “I thank you, sir-and I mean that, for you offer me an honor I never dreamt would come my way. Even so, I must decline.”

“Why?” When General Vatran frowned, his bushy white eyebrows came down and together, so that they formed a bar over his eyes. “His Majesty not be happy. You are right man for job. Algarvian. Noble. You don’t like Mezentio.”

“I think you misunderstand something,” Sabrino said. “Shall I be very plain?” With the decoction of poppy juice in him, he could hardly be anything else.

“Say on,” Vatran rumbled ominously.

“You know I disagreed with King Mezentio,” Sabrino said, and the Unkerlanter officer’s big, heavy-featured head went up and down. “And because of that, you think I would be able to work well with your king.”

General Vatran nodded once more. “Aye. It is so.”

But Sabrino shook his head. “No. It is not so. And, sir, I will tell you why it is not so.” He wagged that forefinger at Vatran again. “It is not so because I wanted my kingdom to beat yours every bit as much as King Mezentio did. Believe me: I wanted to march through Cottbus in triumph every bit as much as Mezentio did.” He glanced down at the asymmetrical shape under the sheet on the cot. “But we didn’t march through Cottbus, and I won’t be doing any marching now.”

“Why you quarrel with your king, then?” Vatran demanded. His voice held a certain amount of respectful wonder. Sabrino thought he understood that. From everything he’d heard, quarreling with Swemmel was something an Unkerlanter did at most once.

“Why? Purely over means, not over the end,” Sabrino said. By Vatran’s new frown, he saw the Unkerlanter didn’t follow that. He spelled it out: “I didn’t think killing Kaunians was a good idea. I never thought it was a good idea. I thought it would make all our enemies hate us and fear us and fight us harder than ever.”

“You right,” Vatran said.

And much good that did me, Sabrino thought. I never imagined you Unkerlanters would slaughter your own to strike back at us. None of the eastern kingdoms would have done such a thing. You knew this fight was to the death, too. Aloud, he said, “I suppose I was. I thought we would have beaten you without doing any such thing. Maybe I was right about that, and maybe I was wrong. But that was my quarrel with my king, the long and the short of it.” Mezentio didn’t dispose of me for arguing with him, the way Swemmel would have. But he never forgave me, either.

Vatran grunted. “This why you a colonel when war starts and you still a colonel when war stops? I wonder some on that. Make more sense now.”

“Aye, that’s why,” Sabrino agreed. “And so, you see, you cannot rely on me to make a puppet King of Algarve, either. I am no man’s puppet, not even my own sovereign’s.”

“You brave to say this,” Vatran observed. “You maybe stupid to say this, too. You likely stupid to say this.”

“Why? Will Swemmel blaze me for it?” Sabrino asked.

“Don’t know,” Vatran replied. “Wouldn’t be surprised.”

Sabrino shrugged. “Well, if he does, he does. I’ve been through too much to worry about it. Let him do what he will do.”

“This is your last word?” Vatran asked. Sabrino nodded. The Unkerlanter general sighed. “All right. I take it away with me. You are brave man. You are also fool.” There, for the first time, he almost tempted Sabrino to change his mind. If being a fool qualified a man for the kingship, he reckoned himself the best qualified sovereign Algarve had ever had.

After General Vatran left, the healer came back into Sabrino’s chamber. Curious-nosy-as any Algarvian, he asked, “What did the barbarian want?”

“He wanted to proclaim me King of Algarve,” Sabrino answered.

He waited to see what the healer would make of that. For a moment, the fellow just gaped, not sure how to take it. Then he started to laugh. “Well, I asked for that, didn’t I?” he said. “All right, your Majesty, I’ll be careful around you from now on.”

“I’m not anyone’s Majesty,” Sabrino said. “I turned him down.”

That only made the healer laugh harder. “I can see why you would have. A chap like you, you have to hold out for a really good position, eh?”

No wonder Mezentio got so testy, Sabrino thought. He ruled a whole kingdom full of people like this. I suppose I was just another little nuisance to him. Till Vatran’s offer, he’d never tried to imagine what the world looked like from the perspective of a king. Powers above! Why would anybody want the job?

Still laughing, the healer said, “Why didn’t you ask him if you could be King of Unkerlant instead? There’s a place that could really use a civilized man running things.”

“I don’t want to be King of Unkerlant.” Sabrino wondered if an Unkerlanter mage was somehow listening to every word he said. Given some of the things he’d heard about King Swemmel, he wouldn’t have been surprised. He didn’t want that mage hearing anything untoward. “I don’t want to be king at all, not any place.”

“Well, all right.” The healer plucked at his mustachios, which he’d managed to keep perfectly waxed throughout Algarve’s collapse, conquest, and occupation. “If it were me, though, I’d grab anything I could get.” He plucked some more. “Maybe we ought to switch you to a decoction that’s not quite so potent.”

He thinks I imagined the whole thing, Sabrino realized. “I suppose you’re going to tell me I made up the Unkerlanter general, too,” he said.

With a shrug, the healer answered, “Who knows what’s real these days?” Sabrino laughed, but it wasn’t as if the fellow didn’t have a point.

“Another letter!” Vanai said to Saxburh as she fished it out of the brass letterbox in the lobby of her block of flats. The envelope bore no return address, and was addressed to her as Thelberge. Her heart leaped when she recognized the script. “And it’s from your father!”

“Mama,” Saxburh said. She didn’t say dada so much these days. Had Ealstan been here, had she had someone to say it to, that would have been different. Vanai was sure of it.

She picked up her daughter and the jug of olive oil she’d bought. “Come on. Let’s go upstairs, and we’ll find out what he says.” She longed for the days when Saxburh would be able to walk up those stairs by herself; the baby wasn’t a lightweight any more. She wasn’t so much of a baby any more, either. She’d started taking her first few toddling steps without holding on to anything, and her first birthday was only a few days away.

Of course, she didn’t care anything about the letter. “Hat!” she said, as soon as she got back to the flat. She found her special little hat and jammed it down onto her head. “Hat!”

“That’s a hat,” Vanai agreed. She almost tore Ealstan’s letter in her eagerness to get it out of the envelope. Hello, sweetheart! Ealstan wrote. That you’re seeing this proves I’m not an Unkerlanter soldier any more. They kept me long enough to use me up, then decided they didn‘t want me with a hole in my leg.

I would like you and Saxburh to come back here to Gromheort to live. I wouldn‘t have said that before everything that happened. Eoforwic used to be the easiest place in the kingdom for your people and for mixed couples to get along. Now. . Now I don’t know how easy it will be anywhere. I wish I didn’t have to say something like that, but I’m afraid it’s true.

Vanai feared it was true, too. As he usually did, Ealstan made hard, solid sense. That was one of the things that had interested her in him from the beginning. Now that she’d seen a letter from his father, she had a better notion of how he came by it.

I don’t know how your money is holding out, he wrote: a bookkeeper’s son and a bookkeeper himself, he thought of such things. If you need more, let me know. If you don’t, buy passage on the first ley-line caravan car you can and come east. Don’t wait to write us which caravan you‘II be on. You know where we live. Take a cab from the depot. This old town went through a lot in the siege, but the rubble is out of the streets and you can get from there to here.

All my kin here can’t wait to meet you and see you and find out what you look like-both ways-and to see our little girl. Conberge is going to have a baby, too, so Saxburh will have a cousin to grow up with. And I miss you more than I can tell you, and I can’t wait to hug you and kiss you and do whatever else I can talk you into. With all the love there is-your husband, Ealstan.

Pack up everything she could carry? Wait not a minute? Vanai started to shake her head, then paused. She’d done that before, when she came here to Eoforwic with Ealstan. How glad she’d been to get out of Oyngestun, too! And how likely it was that getting out of Oyngestun had saved her life.

No Algarvians lurked these days, waiting to throw her into a special camp. But she’d spent too much of her time here in Eoforwic in hiding. She had no friends here, and she didn’t really want to make any. She’d been through too much. Things might be better in Gromheort. They could hardly be worse.

Ealstan was right. Before the Derlavaian War, the capital had been the best place in Forthweg for Kaunians, mixed couples, and half-breeds. Nowadays, Vanai doubted any place in the kingdom would be very good.

I can go on looking like Thelberge when I show my face outside the house, she thought. Inside? Inside, I don’t think it will matter. Now that I’ve seen Hestan‘s letter, I really don’t think it will. She glanced over to Saxburh, who was standing by herself in the middle of the floor and looking enormously proud. And you will learn Kaunian, too, along with Forthwegian.

“Come here,” Vanai called. “Come here-you can do it.” Saxburh toddled about halfway to her, then fell down and crawled the rest of the way. “Good girl,” Vanai said, scooping her up. “How would you like to go to Gromheort and meet your grandfather and grandmother?”

Saxburh didn’t say no. No wasn’t a word she’d discovered yet. From things Vanai had heard, that would change when her daughter turned two or so. Vanai checked her dwindling store of silver. She didn’t know what caravan fares were like these days, but, unless they’d gone altogether mad-which most prices hadn’t-she still had plenty to get to Gromheort.

She took the money. She packed a couple of tunics for herself and clothes and cloths for the baby. She made sure she had a length of golden yarn and one of black so she could renew their sorcerous disguises. And she packed some food for herself and her daughter, though she was glad Saxburh was still nursing. That made travel much more convenient.

The silver went into her handbag. Everything else filled a duffel bag. She put Saxburh back into the harness that let her carry the baby without using her hands, then went downstairs. When the first of the month came, the landlord would come knocking on the door for the rent, and he’d get a surprise. Till then, who would know-who would care? — whether she was there or not?

She headed for the street corner to get a cab to the caravan depot. She knew she might be there for a while, and hoped Saxburh wouldn’t decide to fuss.

“Hello, Thelberge,” someone said, pausing on the corner along with her. “You look like you’re going somewhere.”

“Oh … Hello, Guthfrith,” Vanai said. The drummer and singer was about the last person she wanted to see. As she was, he was wearing a purely Forthwegian sorcerous disguise. That made her ask, “Or should I call you Ethelhelm?” She wanted him to remember she knew who and what he was.

He grimaced. “Ethelhelm’s dead. He’s never coming back to life. Too many people, uh, don’t understand what happened during the war.”

Don’t understand how you got too friendly with the redheads, you mean, Vanai thought. Ethelhelm had started out as a bold foe of the Algarvians. But his Kaunian blood let them put pressure on him that they couldn’t use against an ordinary Forthwegian. And he’d buckled under it, cozying up to them to help keep the comforts he’d earned as a leading musician in Forthweg.

He went on, “I don’t suppose I’m the only one these days who’s going by more than one name.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Vanai answered, though she did perfectly well.

“Oh, I doubt that,” he said-in classical Kaunian.

Vanai made herself shrug. “Sorry-I never learned that language. What did you say?” She didn’t want to give him any kind of hold on her. Spinello had taught her what men did with such things. She didn’t know what Ethelhelm wanted from her, and she didn’t care to find out. She looked down the street for a cab, but didn’t see one. Where were they when you needed them?

“Hat!” Saxburh said-in Forthwegian. Vanai hadn’t taught her any Kaunian yet, for fear she would blurt it out at the wrong time. This, Vanai thought, would have been exactly the wrong time.

Ethelhelm took no notice of what the baby said, though. He just nodded to Vanai and said, “Why are you worrying? It’s not illegal to be Kaunian anymore.”

“If you don’t leave me alone, I’m going to shout for a constable,” Vanai said. “I don’t want anything to do with you.”

“You wouldn’t have shouted for a constable when they had red hair,” Ethelhelm said. “I know what you are.”

“You don’t know anything at all,” Vanai told him. “And I know what you are, too: somebody who sucked up to the Algarvians when it looked like a good idea. Now you can’t even wear your own face, because too many people know what you did.”

The face Ethelhelm was wearing turned red. “You stinking Kaunian bitch!” he exclaimed. “I ought to-”

“You ought to dry up and blow away.” Vanai saw a cab and waved frantically. She let out a sigh of relief when the hackman waved back and steered his carriage through the traffic toward her. Eyeing Ethelhelm, she added, “And if you try bothering me anymore, I’ll put a curse on you the likes of which nobody’s seen since the days of the Kaunian Empire. If you don’t think I can, you’re wrong.” She set down the duffel bag, slung her handbag to the crook of her elbow, and pointed at him with both index fingers at once.

That was a bluff, nothing else but. So was her threat. Even the most ordinary modern mage could counter any ancient curse. She’d studied the subject; she knew as much. Forthwegians who hadn’t studied it reckoned the Kaunians of imperial days very wise and very dangerous. Here, despite his mixed blood, Ethelhelm counted as a Forthwegian.

He went from red to pale in a heartbeat. His own fingers twisted in a sign to turn aside sorcery-not an effective sign, if the knowledge Vanai’s grandfather had drilled into her was true. “Powers below eat you,” he said. His right hand folded into a fist.

I’ll kick him right in the crotch, Vanai thought. That’s where it’ll do the most good. A wagon in front of the cab had stopped for no apparent reason. She glared at it. Get out of the way, you miserable whoreson!

Ethelhelm drew back his fist. Before he could swing, someone with a loud voice said, “You don’t want to do that, pal.”

“Thank you, Constable!” Vanai said fervently. “This man’s been bothering me, and he won’t go away.”

“Oh, I think he will.” The constable spun his truncheon on its leather loop. “Either that or he’ll get his face mashed. We don’t put up with hitting people on the streets.” He stepped toward Ethelhelm. “Which way’s it gonna be, buddy?”

“I’m leaving,” Ethelhelm said, and he did.

“Thank you!” Vanai said again. She’d never been so grateful to any Forthwegian except Ealstan in her life.

“Part of the job, lady,” the constable said. “Is that cab stopping for you?”

“Aye, it is,” she answered, and turned toward the driver. “The central ley-line caravan depot, please.”

“Sure thing.” He climbed down to hold the door open for her. “Climb on in-careful of your baby. Here, let me have that bag.”

He closed the door behind her. The constable walked off. Would he have helped me like that if he’d known I’m a Kaunian? Vanai wondered as the cab started to move. She shrugged. No way to know, though she had her doubts. One thing she could do now, in the near-privacy of the cab: renew the spells that kept her and Saxburh looking like Forthwegians. With luck and a decent caravan schedule, she wouldn’t have to do it again till they got to Gromheort.

“Supper soon,” Elfryth told Ealstan, as if he couldn’t have figured it out himself from the savory smell of chicken stewing with onions and mushrooms. His mother smiled at him. “It feels good, having one of our babies back in the house with us for a while.”

“Babies?” Ealstan said. “Just because I’m toddling around. .” He could walk, but was glad to have a cane in each hand to help bear his weight. Then he smiled, too. “I wonder if my daughter’s toddling yet.”

“She’s what? About a year old?” Elfryth asked. Ealstan nodded. His mother sighed. “I wish I could see her. I hope Vanai paid attention to your letter.”

“You’re not the only one.” Ealstan’s tone of voice made his mother laugh. His ears got hot. “I mean …”

“I know what you meant,” Elfryth said. “If anything goes to show you’re not a baby any more, that does. That and your beard.”

“I was already wearing a beard when I, uh, left,” Ealstan said. Ran away because I was afraid I’d killed Sidroc, was what he’d meant there. He grimaced. I wish I had killed him. Then he wouldn‘t have killed Leofsig, and Leofsig was worth a hundred of him. A thousand.

Thoughts like those were probably going through his mother’s mind, too. She’d been there when he and Sidroc fought. She’d been there when Sidroc smashed Leofsig with a dining-room chair, too. She’s been through a lot, Ealstan realized-not the sort of idea he was used to having about his mother.

She said, “It’s a lot thicker now, though. It was a boy’s beard then. It isn’t any more.” She hesitated, then added, “It reminds me a lot of your brother’s, there just before-” She broke off. She’d been thinking of Leofsig, too, then.

Ealstan limped over to her and leaned one of his canes against his hip so he could set a hand on her shoulder. He’d gone off to Eoforwic and Conberge had got married, but his older brother would never come to the house again. Elfryth smiled up at him, but unshed tears made her eyes brighter than they should have been.

Someone knocked at the door. “Who’s that?” Ealstan and his mother said together. She went on, “I’ll find out. I can move faster than you can these days. Stir the chicken, if you please.”

“All right,” he said to Elfryth’s back. She was hurrying toward the entry hall. Ealstan plied the big iron spoon.

“Aye?” his mother said at the door, in the polite but distant tone she used for commercial travelers and other strangers.

“Is… is this the house of Hestan the bookkeeper?”

Chicken utterly forgotten, Ealstan hobbled toward the entry hall at the best speed he could manage. He was halfway there before he realized he was still holding the stirring spoon, not his other cane. That had fallen over. He hadn’t noticed.

“Aye, it is,” his mother said doubtfully as he rounded the corner. “And you are-?”

“Vanai!” Ealstan said.

“Ealstan!”

Somehow, his mother got out of the way as they rushed to embrace each other. Ealstan couldn’t squeeze her so tight as he wanted; she had Saxburh in a harness in front of her. For a glorious forever that couldn’t have lasted more than a minute and a half in the real world, Ealstan forgot everything but his wife. Then the baby started to cry and his mother said, “Well, I don’t suppose I need an introduction now.”

“Oh!” Ealstan didn’t want to let go of Vanai; the arm whose hand still held that serving spoon stayed around her shoulder. But he made himself turn back to Elfryth. “Mother, the quiet one is Vanai, and the noisy one is Saxburh. Sweetheart, this is my mother, Elfryth.”

Before Vanai could say anything, Elfryth did: “Powers above, Ealstan, don’t leave her standing out in the street like a peddler.” She darted forward and took the duffel bag Vanai was carrying away from her. “Come in, my dear, come in. My husband and my son told you you were welcome here, and they both have a habit of meaning what they say. Do come in.”

“Thank you.” Vanai took Saxburh out of the harness and set her on the ground. The baby stood easily. She hadn’t been able to do that when the Unkerlanters hauled Ealstan into the army. “She wants to run around,” Vanai said. “She didn’t have much of a chance while we were on the caravan car or in the cab.” And, sure enough, Saxburh’s wails stopped. She looked up at Ealstan with big, dark eyes shaped like his own.

“She’s beautiful,” Elfryth said.

That made Vanai smile, but only for a moment. “This isn’t her true seeming, you know-or mine, either, for that matter.” She sounded a little-more than a little-anxious about reminding Elfryth she was a Kaunian.

But Ealstan’s mother only shrugged. “Aye, I know you don’t really look like my daughter-”

“Ha!” Ealstan broke in, and pointed at Vanai. “I told you so.” She stuck out her tongue at him. They both laughed.

Gamely, Elfryth went on, “But I’m sure you’re beautiful in your own way, too, and so is your daughter.” She crouched down. “Hello, little one!”

Saxburh stared at her, and then at Ealstan. Pointing to him, Vanai said, “That’s your dada. We’ve got your dada back.”

“Dada?” Saxburh didn’t sound as if she believed it. She turned to Vanai and spoke imperiously: “Hat!” Vanai reached into her handbag and took out a little hat Ealstan had never seen before. She set it on Saxburh’s head. Saxburh jammed it down till it almost covered her eyes. “Hat!” she squealed.

“You’re still standing in the street,” Elfryth told Vanai. “Please come in. You must be tired. I’ll get you some wine and cheese and olives, and supper will be ready pretty soon.” She noticed Ealstan was still holding the serving spoon, took it away from him, and went back into the house.

“Come on,” Ealstan said.

“All right.” Vanai looked anxiously at him. “How are you?”

“I’m getting better,” he answered. “It still hurts, and I still have some trouble getting around-I left my other cane back in the kitchen when I heard you out here-but I’m getting better. And I’m a lot better, seeing you here.”

“I like your mother.” Vanai sounded relieved. She also did sound tired. “Come on, sweetie-we’re going in there,” she told Saxburh. Holding her hand, the baby walked into the entry hall.

“She couldn’t do that when the Unkerlanters grabbed me,” Ealstan said.

“She does all kinds of things she couldn’t do then,” Vanai answered as he closed and barred the door behind them. “A few months don’t matter much to us, but they’re a big part of Saxburh’s life.”

Ealstan reached out and lightly patted her on the backside. “Who says a few months don’t matter?” he said. She smiled back over her shoulder at him.

“Come in here,” Elfryth called from the kitchen. “I’ve poured the wine- and your cane is by the doorway there, Ealstan.”

“Thanks, Mother,” he said. “I don’t know if I ought to drink any wine. I’m so happy, I feel drunk already.”

“‘I’m going to,” Vanai declared. “After I’ve come halfway across the kingdom with a baby in tow, I’ve earned some wine, by the powers above! This kitchen is wonderful,” she said to Ealstan’s mother. “It’s three times the size of the one in our flat in Eoforwic. It’s bigger than the one I had back in Oyngestun, too, and laid out better.”

“I’ll show you around the house in a little while, if you like,” Elfryth said. “First, though, I thought you’d want to relax for a bit.”

“That would be nice.” Vanai shook her head. “No, that would be more than nice. That would be wonderful!” She picked up a mug of wine. “What shall we drink to?”

“To being able to drink together!” Ealstan said. Vanai nodded. So did his mother. They all drank.

“I’ll have to dig out your old high chair and your old cradle,” Elfryth said.

“You still have them?” Ealstan said in astonishment.

“Of course we do,” his mother answered. “We knew we would have grandchildren one day, and we thought they would come in handy. They’re down in the cellar-I remember seeing them when we spent so much time there during the siege.” Seeing the mugs had emptied in a hurry, she poured them full again.

They drank more slowly the second time through. Ealstan could feel the wine. By the way her expression grew slack, it hit Vanai hard. When the next knock on the door came, they all jumped. “That’ll be Father,” Ealstan said. He was closest to the door. He didn’t move as fast as he had when he heard Vanai’s voice, but he got there soon enough. He threw open the door and announced, “They’re here!”

“Who’s here?” Hestan asked, but then he went on, “No-don’t tell me. By the idiot grin on your face, I’ve got a pretty good idea.” He pushed past Ealstan and went into the kitchen, where he spoke in classical Kaunian: “Vanai? I am your father-in-law, and I am very glad to meet you at last.”

“Thank you, sir,” she said in the same language. “I’m very glad to meet you, too. This is your granddaughter.”

“I suspected as much,” Hestan said gravely. “Who else in this house would be sitting there banging the lid of a pot on the floor? Well, perhaps Ealstan, but he is larger.”

“Slander,” Ealstan said from behind him.

Vanai looked from one of them to the other and back again. “Now I understand some things about you that I didn’t before,” she told Ealstan.

“I come by absurdity honestly,” he agreed.

“Supper’s just about ready,” his mother said. “I know I can find that high chair.” She did, too, and triumphantly brought it into the dining room. Saxburh ate little bits of torn-up chicken and bread, and drank well-watered wine from a cup whose lid had three little holes. She made a mess. Elfryth smiled at Ealstan in a way that said she remembered him doing the same thing.

Halfway through supper, the sorcerous disguises Vanai had given herself and the baby wore off. All Hestan said to Ealstan was, “You married a pretty girl either which way.” Ealstan nodded. He hadn’t seen much of Vanai’s true Kaunian features for a long time.

Vanai couldn’t see her own features change, of course, but she noticed it on Saxburh and understood what Hestan’s comment had to mean. “I can put the spell back on,” she said hastily.

“Only if you want to,” Ealstan’s father said. “Myself, I don’t think there’s any need to, not when you’re among friends.”

“Among friends,” Vanai echoed. She shook her head in wonder, her gray-blue eyes wide. “You don’t know how strange that sounds to me. Be thankful you don’t know.”

Hestan didn’t try to argue. All he said was, “Strange or not, it’s true here.”

“It certainly is,” Elfryth agreed. Vanai brushed at her eyes with the back of her hand. She didn’t quite cry, but Ealstan thought she came close.

After supper, Saxburh fell asleep in Vanai’s lap. Maybe the wine helped, but the baby had had a long, hard day, too. Ealstan’s mother brought out the cradle. “It was right by the high chair,” she said. Vanai laid Saxburh in it.

Before too much longer, Vanai started yawning herself. Ealstan and his father moved a bed from a guestroom into the one he was using. That crowded the chamber, but he didn’t care. Yawning still, Vanai went off to bed.

“I see what you see in her,” Ealstan’s father said after the door closed.

“She’s very sweet,” his mother added, nodding. “And I want to eat your daughter up.”

“We’re all back together again,” Ealstan said. “That counts for more than anything.” His wounded leg twinged. He ignored it. In spite of it, what he’d said remained true.

He waited till he thought Vanai would surely be asleep, then tiptoed back to the bedroom, careful not to tap with his canes. Opening the door as quietly as he could, he stepped inside, then closed it behind him.

From the new bed, Vanai whispered, “I thought you’d never get here. If you’d waited much longer, I really would have fallen asleep.” She flipped back the bedclothes. Under them, she was bare. “I’ve missed you,” she said.

“Oh, darling,” was all Ealstan answered-with words, anyhow.

Prince Juhainen’s image stared out of the crystal. “Aye, Mistress Pekka,” he said. “The demonstration was everything we could possibly have wanted it to be. The Gongs who saw it with their own eyes were horrified. The crew aboard the ley-line cruiser all agree on that.”

“But the Gyongyosians in Gyorvar won’t believe them,” Pekka said. “Is that where the problem lies?”

“That seems to be it, aye,” the prince answered. “They have made it plain they intend to keep fighting.”

Pekka scowled. “We could have brought the lash down on Gyorvar straightaway. Don’t they see that? We try to warn them, we try to show them mercy, and they refuse to take it? Are they mad?”

“Just stubborn, I think,” Juhainen said. “If they insist on paying the price, you can make them pay it?”

“Aye, your Highness,” Pekka said, “though I don’t like to think about doing that to a place with people in it.”

“If they’ll heed nothing else, we do have to gain their attention,” Juhainen said.

“I suppose so, sir,” Pekka said. “In fact, I know you’re right. But doing something like. . that to Gyorvar or to one of the Gongs’ other towns still comes hard. I’d sooner have done it to Algarve.”

“I know you would, and I understand your reasons,” Juhainen said. “In your turn, though, you have to understand those are not reasons of state.”

“Revenge isn’t the only reason I said that, your Highness,” Pekka replied. “It plays a part; I’d be lying if I told you anything else. Taken all in all, though, the Gongs have fought a pretty clean war. They’re just enemies, people who want the same islands we do and won’t take no for an answer. The few times they’ve used the murderous sorcery the Algarvians came up with, the men they killed to fuel it were all volunteers-real volunteers, by everything we could learn. With what Mezentio’s men did, they deserved being on the receiving end of this more than Gyongyos does.”

“Very well. I see your point,” Prince Juhainen said. “But if we can’t convince them to give up the fighting any other way, we shall have to hit them over the head with a rock. Better that than all the Kuusaman soldiers’ lives we would have to spend invading their homeland. Or do you think I’m wrong?”

Even if I did think you were wrong, you and the rest of the Seven would go right on down the ley line you’ve chosen. Pekka knew that perfectly well. But, in fact, she agreed with the prince. “No, your Highness. If this lets us win the war quickly, then we should do it. I hope the Gongs give up before we loose the magic on them, though.”

“Well, so do I-but if not, not,” Juhainen said. “Is there anything else, Mistress Pekka?” When Pekka shook her head, the prince gestured to his crystallomancer, who broke the etheric connection. Light flared in the crystal in front of Pekka, and then it went dark and inert.

She walked back to her chamber. Fernao sat at the desk there, filling leaves of foolscap with calculations. He set down the pen and levered himself upright with the help of his cane. “Hello,” he said. “I love you.”

“I love you, too,” Pekka said, smiling. It was true. Things being as they were, she didn’t even have to feel guilty when she said it. But that thought by itself was enough to raise guilt in her. When Fernao held out his arms to hug her, she slipped into his embrace as if it could shield her from all the complications of the world. She wished it were so. Unfortunately, she knew better.

After kissing her, Fernao asked, “What did the prince say?”

That brought another piece of the outside world into the chamber-not that it hadn’t already been there on the leaves of foolscap. “About what we thought,” Pekka said. “The Gongs don’t seem to believe that we can do this to them, in spite of the demonstration at Becsehely.”

“They’re fools,” Fernao said.

“They’re a stubborn folk. They always have been,” Pekka said. “If they weren’t, they wouldn’t have been able to keep so much of their own way of life while they added on modern, eastern Derlavaian-style sorcerous techniques. They’re strange and they’re hard, and we’re going to have to break them.”

“Right now, I’d do almost anything to end the Derlavaian War.” Fernao pointed to the papers on Pekka’s desk. “We can do this. Gyorvar’s farther away than that Becsehely place, but not enough to change the spell much. There’s no sign the Gyongyosians have any counterspells in place.”

“I’m not sure there are any counterspells for this magecraft,” Pekka said.

“I’m not sure there are, either, but we’re just starting to explore it, so there may be,” Fernao said. Pekka nodded; he had a point. He went on, “Whether there are or not, there certainly aren’t any up for Gyorvar. If we want to …” He snapped his fingers. “We can.”

“I know.” Pekka clicked her tongue between her teeth. “I don’t like to think about being able to wreck a city from halfway around the world.”

“Neither do I,” Fernao said. “But I’ll tell you this: I’d rather be able to do it than to know someone else could do it to me and I couldn’t answer back.”

Pekka thought about that, too, then slowly nodded. “If we have to do this to Gyorvar, I wonder how King Swemmel will take it,” she said. “Actually, I don’t wonder. I’ve got a pretty good idea: Swemmel will have fawns.”

“ ‘Have kittens,’ we’d say in Lagoan,” Fernao told her. “Amounts to about the same thing either way, I suppose. I wonder how long the Unkerlanters will take to figure out what we’ve done and how we’ve done it.”

“Years,” Pekka said confidently. “They’re brave and they’re very tough and they’re very big, but they’re very backward, too.”

“I wonder. I really do,” Fernao said. “The Algarvians thought the same thing about them, I suppose, and look at the surprise they got.”

“They deserved the surprise they got,” Pekka said. “They should have got more and worse, as a matter of fact.”

“That’s not what I meant.” Fernao wagged a finger at her in an Algarvic gesture. “What’s more, you know it’s not what I meant. Unkerlanter mages turned out to know their business pretty well. If they matched what Mezentio’s men did, why shouldn’t they match us, too?”

“It doesn’t seem likely to me,” Pekka said. “What will Swemmel do to push them forward? Kill the sorcerers who tell him it can’t be done as fast as he wants?”

She’d meant it for a joke, but Fernao nodded. “He might. Nothing concentrates the mind like the prospect of being boiled alive in the morning.”

Pekka made a horrible face. “That’s disgusting.”

“I know,” Fernao answered. “That doesn’t mean it won’t work.”

“There are times I wish I’d never performed my experiments,” Pekka said.

“If you hadn’t, someone else would have,” Fernao said. “It might have been an Algarvian or an Unkerlanter. If anyone can do this, better Kuusamo and Lagoas than most other places I could name.”

“I think you’re right,” she said. “If you were to ask an Algarvian or an Unkerlanter, though, he would tell you different.”

“Oh, no doubt,” Fernao agreed. “That doesn’t mean they’d know what they were talking about, though.” He laughed. “After all, what are they but a bunch of ignorant foreigners?”

“You’re impossible,” Pekka told him. “And”-she jabbed a finger his way- “as far as I’m concerned, you’re an ignorant foreigner, too, even if you do speak Kuusaman with a south-coast accent.”

“Whose fault is that?” Fernao said. “Besides, if I settle down with you in Kajaani, will I still be a foreigner?” He held up a hand. “I know I’ll still be ignorant. You don’t need to remind me of that.”

“No, eh?” Pekka was a trifle annoyed that he’d seen her next gibe coming before she could make it. She thought about the question he’d put her. “I don’t know if you’d be a foreigner or not. A lot of that would depend on you, wouldn’t you say, and on how much you’d want to fit in?”

Fernao bent down and kissed the top of her head. That reminded her how much taller he was than the average Kuusaman, woman or man. He said, “I’ll never look like one of your countrymen.”

“You do have the eyes,” she answered, and he nodded. She went on, “And there are a fair number of Kuusamans-people who speak Kuusaman, who think of themselves as Kuusamans-with red hair and with legs longer than they need to be, especially in the western part of the land, the part close to Lagoas. You have some short, dark, slant-eyed folk who think of themselves as Lagoans, too.”

“We have people who look like everything under the sun who think of themselves as Lagoans,” Fernao said. “For the past hundred years, people have been coming to Setubal to get away from wherever they were living. They think of themselves as exiles, but their children learn Lagoan. And we’re a mongrel lot, anyhow-we mostly look Algarvic, but you said it: we’ve got Kuusaman blood in us, too, and some Kaunian blood besides, from the days of the Empire’s province in the northwest of the island.”

Pekka snapped her fingers. “That reminds me,” she said. “Kuusamo is going to get some new Kaunian blood of its own. Remember the poor fellow from Jelgava whose wife wrote to Leino when he got thrown in a dungeon?”

“I translated the letter for you. I’d better remember,” he answered. “So you know what happened to him, do you?”

“Aye.” Pekka nodded. “The Seven Princes complained to King Donalitu. Donalitu let him out of the dungeon, all right, but he kicked him and his wife out of Jelgava altogether. They’ve just come to Yliharma. He’s a tailor, I think.”

“He’ll have to get used to doing some new things,” Fernao said with a chuckle. “Kaunians wear trousers, Algarvic folk wear kilts, and Unkerlanters and Forthwegians wear long tunics, but you Kuusamans throw on whatever you please.”

“We aren’t Kaunian. We aren’t Algarvic,” Pekka said. “And we don’t need our clothes to tell us who and what we are.”

Fernao reached out and patted her on the bottom. “I should hope not. Sometimes it’s more fun finding out things like that with no clothes at all.”

“That’s not what I meant, and you know it,” Pekka said severely, but the corners of her mouth couldn’t help curling up. “If you move to Kajaani, will you stay in kilts all the time, or will you wear leggings and trousers now and again, too?”

“I don’t know,” Fernao answered. “I hadn’t really thought about it.”

“Well, maybe you should, if you’re talking about turning into a Kuusaman,” Pekka said. He did, quite visibly. After a bit, to her relief, he nodded.