Almost all the people on the street were Forthwegian. From everything she’d heard, Eoforwic was home to a large number of Kaunians. Either most of them were hiding as she was or a lot had already been shipped away. One of those prospects was bad, the other worse.
Three Algarvian constables strode up the street, sticks in hand. Vanai shrank back from the window. She didn’t know they were trolling for Kaunians, but she didn’t know they weren’t, either. She didn’t want to find out. The constables kept walking. Everyone who saw them scrambled out of their way. That no doubt appealed to their vanity. But if they were such heroes as their strides made them out to be, why did they always travel in groups of at least three?
Time crawled on. A pigeon landed on the windowsill and peered in at Vanai with its beady little red eyes. She knew several recipes that dated back to the days of the Kaunian Empire for roast squab, squab seethed in honey, baked squab stuffed with mushrooms and figs. . . . Thinking about them made her hungry enough to start to open the window. At the noise and the motion, the pigeon flew off.
Darkness had already fallen before Ealstan came upstairs with a couple of days’ worth of groceries. The flat had no rest crate with spells to keep food from going bad, so he couldn’t shop very far ahead. “I’ve got a nice soup bone here,” he said. “A good bit of meat on it, and plenty of marrow inside. And I bought some ham. That’ll keep till tomorrow.”
“I’ll get the fire going in the stove and chop some vegetables for the soup,” Vanai said. “That does look like a good bone.”
“Don’t go yet.” Ealstan was rummaging at the bottom of the cloth sack in which he’d brought home the food. “Here--I found these for you.” He held up three Forthwegian romances--one, The Deaf Mute’s Song, a great classic. Apologetically, he went on, “I couldn’t find you anything in Kaunian. I looked, I really did, but the redheads have made it against the law to print anything in your language, and I didn’t dare ask too many questions.”
“I know they’ve done that,” Vanai answered. “I remember how furious my grandfather was when he had to try to compose in Forthwegian. Thank you so much! I was just thinking earlier today that I needed something to do, and now you’ve given me something.”
“I was thinking the same thing--about you, I mean,” Ealstan said. “Sitting up here by yourself all the time can’t be easy.”
Vanai’s eyes opened very wide. Tears stung them, and she had to turn away. As best he could, Ealstan did look out for her and try to make her happy. That still astonished her; she was altogether unused to it. She’d gone away with him partly for his own sake, true, but also because she’d thought he couldn’t be worse than her grandfather and because she’d felt guilty that he’d got into trouble in Gromheort on account of her.
She hadn’t really expected she’d be so much happier in spite of everything. But she was.
Ealstan said, “And this fellow pays pretty well. We’ll be able to salt plenty away. If things were different, we could think about moving to a nicer place, but they aren’t--I think we’re better off with ready cash.”
Meeting Ealstan gathering mushrooms hadn’t shown Vanai his solid core of good sense. Neither had lying with him, however much she’d enjoyed that--and however astonished she’d been that she could enjoy such things after Major Spinello. She quoted an adage in classical Kaunian: “Passion fades; wisdom endures.”
“I hope passion does not fade so soon as that,” Ealstan said in his slow, careful Kaunian. Hearing him speak the language with which she was most familiar always pleased her. Though she was more fluent in Forthwegian than he was in Kaunian, he made the effort for her. She wasn’t used to that, either. Still in Kaunian, he went on, “And do you know what else?”
“No,” she said. “Tell me.”
“The man whose accounts I cast today knows Ethelhelm the band leader and singer, and he says Ethelhelm needs someone to keep books for him, too.” Ealstan spoke as if a star were shining in broad daylight.
But the name meant little to Vanai. “Is that good?” she asked. Forthwegians and Kaunians had different tastes in music; what pleased one group seldom delighted the other.
“It’s the best!” Ealstan exclaimed, irked back into Forthwegian.
“All right.” Vanai was willing to believe him even if she didn’t share his enthusiasm. As she started into the kitchen to make soup, she realized that was at least a good start on love.
Night and fog. In winter--and, for that matter, at other seasons of the year, too--fog rolled off the ocean into Tirgoviste town, as it did into every other seaside city on the five major islands of Sibiu. Cornelu was out long after the curfew the Algarvian occupiers had imposed on his kingdom. He hoped, and had reason to hope, the Algarvian patrols that prowled his hometown would never set eyes on him. He didn’t want them to; they’d been looking for him up in the hills of central Tirgoviste, and no doubt they were looking for him down here, too.
But even if they did, he was pretty sure he could get away from them. He’d lived in Tirgoviste almost all his life; he knew its neighborhoods and alleys without having to see them. Mezentio’s men might get lucky and blaze him before he could slide round a corner or into a doorway, but he didn’t think so.
He exhaled, breathing out still more fog. He could hardly see that fog: no streetlights burned, lest they guide Lagoan dragons to their targets. Cornelu knew the houses and shop fronts past which he walked were made from mortared blocks of the rough gray local limestone. He knew they had steep roofs of red slate slabs to shed rain and snow. He knew all that because he’d seen it. He couldn’t see it now.
Shivering, he drew his ragged sheepskin jacket more tightly around him. He’d been a commander in the Sibian navy, as good a leviathan-rider as any officer who served King Burebistu. He’d had a fine wardrobe of tunics and kilts and cloaks of all weights. Now, as a woodcutter down from the hills, he wore the same clothes day in and day out, and counted himself lucky not to be colder than he was.
Carefully, he stepped forward. Aye, there was the curb. He started to step off the cobbles when he heard several men in heavy boots coming up the street toward him. He drew back. Somebody among those booted men stumbled and let out a couple of loud, vile curses. They were in Algarvian. He was fluent in the language, but likely would have understood most of them even if he hadn’t been: Sibian and Algarvian were as close as brothers to each other.
He did understand those curses could mean trouble. Moving as quietly as he could, he drew back again, ready to flee if the Algarvians heard him. They didn’t. They passed him by with no notion he was there. The fellow who’d stumbled was still grumbling: “--aren’t going to be any stinking Sibs out on a night like this. It’s a waste of time, that’s what it is. Anybody who’d come out tonight would break his fool neck five minutes later, and serve him right, too.”
“You almost broke yours, that’s cursed sure,” one of his comrades said. The others laughed. The grumbler cursed some more and kept cursing till the patrol passed out of earshot.
By then, Cornelu had already crossed the street--quite safely. Had the Algarvians been able to see his smile through the darkness and murk, they would not have enjoyed it. The streets got steep in the direction they were going. Maybe one of them really would break his neck. Cornelu hoped so.
He went on another couple of blocks, then turned left onto his own street and hurried toward his own house, the house in which he hadn’t lived, in which he hadn’t even set foot, since the Algarvian invasion. Costache and Brindza lived there still. So did the three Algarvian officers quartered on them.