“I know, Clarinda,” Sabrino answered. “It’s not always easy to send messages from the front. But I’m here. The Unkerlanters haven’t managed to turn the lady my wife into a widow quite yet. Is Gismonda at home?”
Clarinda nodded. “Aye, my lord Count. Nobody goes out as much as we did. . beforehand. Let me go get her.” She hurried away, calling, “Lady Gismonda! Lady Gismonda! Your husband’s home!”
That brought servants from all over the mansion to clasp Sabrino’s hand and embrace him. The last time he’d had such a greeting, he thought, was when he’d managed to escape the Unkerlanters after they blazed down his dragon.
“Let me through,” Gismonda said, and the cooks and serving girls parted before her as if she were a first-rank mage casting a powerful spell. Sabrino’s wife gave him a businesslike hug. She was a few years younger than he; she’d been a beauty when they wed, and her bones were still good. She would have hated being called handsome, but the word fit her. After looking Sabrino up and down, she nodded in brisk approval. “You seem better than you did the last time they let you come home.”
“I was wounded then,” he pointed out. “You look very good, my dear-and you don’t look as if you were about to go to a funeral.” Gismonda’s tunic and kilt were of a bright green that set off her eyes and the auburn hair that, these days, got more than a little help from a dye jar.
Her lip curled. “I don’t much care for what people call fashion these days, and so I ignore it. Some fools do cluck, but the only place I care about hens is on my supper plate.” She turned to the head cook. “Speaking of hens, have we got a nice one you can do up for the count’s supper tonight?”
“Not a hen, milady, but a plump capon,” he replied.
Gismonda looked a question to Sabrino. His stomach answered it by rumbling audibly. As if he’d replied with words, Gismonda nodded to the cook. He went off to get to work. Gismonda asked Sabrino, “And what would you like in the meanwhile?”
He answered that without hesitation: “A hot bath, a glass of wine, and some clean clothes.”
“I think all that can probably be arranged,” Gismonda said. By the look she gave the servants, they would answer to her if it weren’t.
Sabrino was soaking in a steaming tub-luxury beyond price in the wilds of Unkerlant or Yanina-when the bathroom door opened. It wasn’t a servant; it was his wife, carrying a tray on which perched two goblets of white wine. She gave Sabrino one, set the other on the edge of the tub, and went out again, returning a moment later with a stool, upon which she perched by the tub. Sabrino held up his goblet in salute. “To my charming lady.”
“You’re kind,” Gismonda murmured as she drank. Their marriage, like most from their generation and class, had been arranged. They never had fallen in love, but they liked each other well enough. Gismonda sipped again, then asked a sharp, quick question: “Can we win the war?”
“No.” Sabrino gave the only answer he could see.
“I didn’t think so,” his wife said bleakly. “It will be even worse than it was after the Six Years’ War, won’t it?”
“Much worse,” Sabrino told her. He hesitated, then went on, “If you have a chance to get to the east, it might be a good idea.” He didn’t elaborate. He didn’t want to think about the Unkerlanters’ coming so far, but couldn’t help it. Gismonda’s thoughtful nod told him she understood what he meant.
Her eyes glinted. “Since you’re unfortunate enough to find yourself in Trapani without a mistress, would you like me to scrub your back for you-or even your front, if you’re so inclined?”
Before he could answer, bells started ringing all over the Algarvian capital, some nearer, some farther. “What’s that?” he asked.
“Enemy dragons,” Gismonda replied. “The warning for them, I mean. The dowsers are skilled, not that it helps much. Get dressed-quickly-and come down to the cellar. We can worry about other things later.” She sighed. “The capon will have to go out of the oven and into a rest crate. We will get to eat it eventually.”
The only clothes Sabrino had in the bathroom were his uniform tunic and kilt and a heavy wool robe. Without hesitation, he chose the robe. Even as he tied it shut, eggs began falling on Trapani. He’d delivered attacks and been under attack from the air, but he’d never imagined a pounding so large and sustained as this. And it went on and on, night after night after night? Gismonda did not have to hurry him down the stairs. He marveled that any of Trapani was left standing.
The cellar hadn’t been made to hold everyone in the mansion. It was cramped and crowded and stuffy. Even down here underground, the thuds and roars of bursting eggs dug deep into Sabrino’s spirit. Everything shook when one came down close by. If one happened to land on the roof, would everyone be entombed here? He wished he hadn’t thought of that.
After a couple of hours, he asked, “How long does this go on?”
“All night, most nights,” Clarinda answered. “Some of them fly away, but more come. We knock some down, but. .” Her voice trailed away.
All night long? Sabrino thought with something approaching horror. Every night? We never could have done that, not at the height of our strength. The height of Algarve’s strength seemed very far away now, very far away indeed. We are going to lose this war, and then what will become of us? The eggs kept falling. They gave no answer, or none Sabrino wanted to hear.
For the first time since the middle of summer, Ealstan couldn’t hear any eggs bursting. The fighting had passed east from Eoforwic. Algarvians no longer swaggered through the streets of Forthweg’s capital. Now Unkerlanters stumped along those cratered, rubble-strewn streets. If they’d expected to be welcomed as liberators, they were doomed to disappointment. But they didn’t seem to care one way or the other.
“Just another set of conquerors,” Ealstan said one afternoon, when he got back to the flat he shared with Vanai and Saxburh. “They look down their noses at us as much as the Algarvians ever did.”
“Powers above be praised that we’re safe and that this building is still standing, so we have a roof over our heads,” his wife replied. “Past that, nothing else really matters.”
“Well, aye,” Ealstan said reluctantly. “But if we rose up against Swemmel’s men, they’d squash us the same way the Algarvians did. That’s. . humiliating. Is Forthweg a kingdom, or is it a road for its neighbors to run through any time they choose?” Almost as soon as the question was out of his mouth, he wished he hadn’t asked it. Too many times in years gone by, Forthweg had proved to be nothing but a road.
But Vanai surprised him by answering, “I don’t know. And do you know something else? I don’t care, either. I don’t care at all, if you want to know the truth. The only thing I care about is, the Unkerlanters don’t march through the streets yelling, ‘Kaunians, come forth!’ And if I go outside and my sorcery slips- or even if I go outside without my sorcery-they won’t drag me off to a camp and cut my throat. They don’t care about Kaunians one way or the other, and you have no idea how good that feels to me.”
Ealstan stared. Maybe because Vanai had looked like Thelberge for so long, he’d let himself forget-or at least not think so much about-her Kaunianity. The Kaunians in Forthweg often found Forthwegian patriotism bewildering, or even laughable. That was one reason, one of many, Forthwegians and Kaunians rubbed one another the wrong way. And he couldn’t blame Vanai for thinking the way she did, not after everything she’d been through. Still. .
A little stiffly, he said, “When the war is finally over, I want this to be our own kingdom again.”
“I know.” Vanai shrugged. She walked over and gave him a kiss. “I know you do, darling. But I just can’t make myself care. As long as nobody wants to kill me because I’ve got blond hair, what difference does it make?” Ealstan started to answer that. Before he could say anything, Vanai added, “Nobody but a few Kaunian-hating Forthwegians, I mean.”