All the houses on his block, like the houses and shops and taverns in the rest of Tirgoviste, were dark, for the same reason street lamps were: dragons from Lagoas could reach Sibiu. Cornelu understood why the Algarvians wanted to make it hard for them to drop their eggs accurately. Here as elsewhere, understanding failed to bring sympathy.
Here was his walk, leading up to his front porch. As he strode along the walk, he reached under his jacket and pulled out a short stick, one of the sort a constable might carry. The stick had cost him most of the silver he’d brought down from the hills, but he didn’t care. Even if it wasn’t such a powerful weapon as a foot-soldier’s stick, it ought to be good enough to dispose of the officers who’d settled down here. Then Cornelu could take Costache and Brindza away to the southern side of the island or maybe back up into the hills.
“And then,” Cornelu muttered under his breath, “then, by the powers above, I can be alone with my wife.” He ached for her, sometimes literally.
As quietly as he could, he stepped up onto the porch. He must have been quiet enough; no one inside called out in alarm. Once up there, he could tell lamps were lit within, though black curtains--new since he’d last seen the house--swallowed almost all the glare.
Cornelu paused a moment, pondering his next step. Did he knock? Would he do better to sneak in through a window? Could he break down the door, slay all of Mezentio’s men, and get Costache and Brindza away before the commotion drew neighbors or more Algarvians? That was what he most wanted to do, but he knew the risks.
While he pondered, Costache’s voice, bright and cheerful, came out through the window undimmed by the curtains: “Wait there, darling. I’ll be with you in a moment.”
Rather than Brindza’s childish prattle, which Cornelu had expected, an Algarvian doing his best to speak Sibian answered, “All right, sweetheart, but you’d better not keep me waiting long.”
“Don’t worry,” Costache said archly. “I won’t be long, I promise. And you’ll be glad when I get there.” The Algarvian laughed.
Sick at heart, Cornelu turned away. He looked at his stick. If he blazed himself through the head, if he left his body lying on the walk, would Costache shed a tear? Or would she just laugh?
“I should have known,” Cornelu said to himself in a sort of whispered groan. “Oh, by the powers above, I should have known.” She hadn’t wanted to see him, not really; she hadn’t wanted to be alone with him. He’d wondered, he’d worried, but he hadn’t believed, not deep in his heart. He hadn’t wanted to believe.
He stared back toward his house--no, toward the house that had been his. He stared back toward the life that had been his, too. Things would never be the same now.
Looking at the stick, he shook his head. Costache had betrayed him. Why should he give her the satisfaction of finding him dead? What he really wanted was revenge. He started to swing back toward the house. If he killed not only the Algarvians but his wife, his faithless wife, as well. . .
What would he do with Brindza then? Kill her, too? She hadn’t done anything to him. She hadn’t even kept him from sleeping with Costache, as he’d thought before--Costache hadn’t wanted to sleep with him anyhow. Take Brindza with him? He had no idea how to care for a toddler; he’d never had a chance to learn.
He slammed his forehead, hard, with the heel of his hand. He’d just found the last thing he wanted: a reason to let his wife live.
With a muffled curse, he hurried down the street, running as much from his fury as from his former home. He let his feet carry him; his mind was empty of anything even resembling thought. He’d gone several blocks before realizing he was heading down toward the harbor, not back up into the hills. He’d worked as a woodcutter in the hope of rejoining Costache and Brindza. His feet had realized before his head that that wouldn’t happen, now. And if it wouldn’t, what point to going back to the hills and to work he despised anyhow? Mezentio’s men would still be looking for him there, too.
The smell of the sea was always strong in Tirgoviste town. But once Cornelu drew near the piers, he caught the reek of old fish from the boats the Algarvians still permitted to sail, an odor that didn’t travel so far inland as the salt tang pervading all the Sibian islands, the main five and their smaller outliers. Through the damp, deadening fog, he caught the familiar slap of waves against the wooden pilings that supported the harbor piers.
He knew exactly where he was by the way the waves sounded. Discovering where his feet had brought him, he also discovered they’d had a better notion of where they were going than he’d imagined: he was within a stone’s throw of the great wire pens where the Sibian navy had held its leviathans--and where the Algarvian occupiers held theirs these days.
Cornelu had come to look at the leviathans in an earlier visit to Tirgoviste. An Algarvian guard had cursed him and sent him away in a hurry. He snorted. What would the guard have done if he’d come up in his sea-green Sibian commander’s uniform? Nothing so pleasant as cursing and running him off--of that Cornelu was sure.
Somewhere not far away, an Algarvian guard--maybe even the same Algarvian guard--was pacing through the fog. If he was like every other guard Cornelu had ever known, he would be cursing his luck at drawing duty on a night when the only way he could find a foe would be to trip over his feet.
As if thinking of the guard had conjured him into being, his footsteps sounded on the walk not far away. Like frost forming on a window, decision crystallized within Cornelu. The Algarvian didn’t even bother trying to move quietly. He seemed sure he was the only man up and walking for miles around. Had the fellow been a Sibian, Cornelu would have reported him to his superior officer. As things were, he killed him instead.
It was almost absurdly easy. All he had to do was keep from stomping his feet on the stone of the walkway as he followed the Algarvian’s footfalls. Mezentio’s man hadn’t the faintest notion Cornelu was coming up behind him. As soon as the guard became something more than the sound of booted feet, as soon as he became a dim shape ahead, Cornelu raised his stick and blazed him down.
His beam was a brief, bright line of light in the mist. That mist attenuated the beam, which was not all that strong to begin with. But, at a range of three or four feet, it was strong enough. It caught the Algarvian in the back of the head. He let out a startled grunt, as if Cornelu had tapped him on the shoulder. Then he quietly toppled. His own stick clattered as it slipped from his nerveless fingers.
Cornelu dragged his body off the walk, so it wouldn’t be found at once. He picked up the stick and dropped it into the water in one of the leviathan pens. It made only a tiny splash.
But that splash, as he’d hoped, was enough to draw the leviathan to the surface to find out what had made it. Leviathans were even more curious than their squat cousins, the whales. Because of the fog, Cornelu couldn’t see this one, but it was plain in his mind’s eye: lean and long, about six times a man’s length, with a beaky mouth full of sharp teeth. Wild leviathans were wolves of the sea. Tamed and trained, they turned into hunting dogs.
Moving quickly, Cornelu got out of his jacket and tunic, his kilt and his shoes. Naked, he jumped into the water of the leviathan pen. It was cold, but the chill did not pierce him to the core. He let out a long exhalation of relief: his sorcerous protection against the ice waters of the southern seas still held good. Had that not been so, he would have frozen to death before long.
He swam toward the leviathan. By everything Sibian spies knew, Mezentio’s men guided their leviathans with pokes and prods almost identical to those Sibian riders used. He was betting his life the spies had it right. A man made a good mouthful for a leviathan, no more.