When she staggered upright, she first started back toward the stall where she'd bought the olive oil. Then she started thinking straight, and realized she had more important things to worry about. Chief among them was that she couldn't afford to be recognized as a Kaunian at this of all moments. Forthwegians and Algarvians alike would assume she'd helped plant the egg, and she probably wouldn't last long enough to get shipped west.
That meant she had to return to the flat as fast as she could. Only when she headed back across the square did she realize how lucky she'd been not to have stood closer to the egg when it burst. Some people were down and shrieking. Other people, and parts of people, lay motionless. Blood was everywhere, puddling between cobblestones and splashed up onto walls and stalls the sorcerous energies hadn't knocked down.
The street by which she'd entered the square, the street on which the Forthwegians had been pulling down broadsheets, suddenly had an opening twice as wide as it had been. Fewer people- fewer whole people, anyway- and more body parts lay closer to where the egg must have been hidden. Gulping, trying to avert her eyes, Vanai picked her way past them, and past the crater the egg had blown in the ground.
By some miracle, one of the Algarvian constables who'd been on the street had survived. His tunic and kilt were half torn off him. Blood streamed down his face, and from cuts on his arms and legs. But he was up and walking, and in that state of eerie calm where he hardly seemed aware of his own injuries.
"Stinking Kaunians sneaking back from Zuwayza must've done this," he said to Vanai in Algarvian, as if to a superior. "Zuwayzin are supposed to be allies, curse 'em." He spat- spat red- and then noticed to whom he was talking. "Powers above, you probably don't understand a word I'm saying." Off he staggered, looking for an officer to brief.
But Vanai followed Algarvian well enough. She thought the constable was very likely right. The difference was, he hated the Kaunian raiders, while she hoped they would do more and worse.
People were rushing toward the burst. Some paused to help wounded men and women. Nobody took any special notice of unhurt or slightly hurt folk coming away. Vanai wasn't the only one- far from it. For all she knew, she wasn't the only Kaunian hurrying to get out of the public eye before concealing sorcery concealed no more.
Her street. Her block. The entrance to her block of flats. The stairway up to the dingy lobby. The stairway up to her flat. The hallway. Her front door. Her front door, opening. Her front door, closed behind her.
She took the almonds and the onions and the bream into the kitchen. Then she poured herself a full mug of wine and gulped it down. It would probably make her go to sleep in the middle of the day. She didn't care. She would probably look like a Kaunian when she woke up, too. She didn't care about that, either- not now. What difference did it make, here inside the flat where she was safe?
Twenty
Unkerlanter dragons swarmed above Herborn. Unkerlanter mages swarmed inside the reclaimed capital of Grelz and to the east of it. They had plenty of Unkerlanter victims ready to sacrifice if the Algarvians chose a sorcerous strike at Herborn during King Swemmel's moment of triumph. Common sense said nothing could go wrong.
Marshal Rathar had learned not to trust common sense. "I'm worried," he told General Vatran.
Vatran, to his relief, didn't pat him on the shoulder and go, Everything will be fine. Instead, the veteran officer screwed up his face and said, "I'm worried, too, lord Marshal. If the Algarvians get wind of what's going on here this afternoon, they'll turn this place upside down to stop it." Looking around, he added, "Of course, between the two sides, they and we've pretty much turned Herborn upside down already- and inside out, too, come to that."
"True enough." Rathar looked around, too. Herborn was one of the oldest towns in Unkerlant. An Algarvian merchant prince- or, some said, an Algarvian bandit chief- had set himself up here as king in the land more than eight hundred years before. Ever since, the city had had an Algarvian look to it, though a native dynasty soon supplanted the foreigners. Extravagantly ornamented, skyward-leaping towers always put visitors in mind of places farther east.
In the battles for Herborn, though- when the Algarvians took it from Unkerlant in the first months of the war, and now when King Swemmel's soldiers took it back- a lot of those skyward-leaping towers had been ground-ward-falling. Others yet stood but looked as if they'd had chunks bitten out of them. Still others were only fire-ravaged skeletons of what they had been.
The stink of stale smoke lingered in the air. So did the stink of death. That would have been worse had the weather been warmer.
It was still too warm to suit Rathar. "I wish we'd have a blizzard," he grumbled. "That'd make his Majesty put things off." He cast a hopeful eye westward, the direction from which bad weather was likeliest to come. But none looked like coming today.
Vatran shook his head. "For one thing, his Majesty doesn't give a fart if all the Algarvian captives he's got- well, all but one- freeze to death while he's parading 'em."
"I know that," Rathar said impatiently. "But he wouldn't care to go up on a reviewing stand and watch 'em in the middle of a snowstorm."
"Mm, maybe not," Vatran allowed. "Still and all, though, if he put things off, it'd give the redheads longer to find out what we're about."
That made Rathar nod, however little he wanted to. "Aye, you're right," he said. "If we have to do it, we'd best get it over with as soon as may be. If the king will-"
Vatran gave him a shot in the ribs with an elbow. The general had known him a long time, but that didn't excuse such uncouth familiarity. Rathar started to say so, in no certain terms. Then he too saw King Swemmel coming up, surrounded by a squad of hard-faced bodyguards. He bowed very low. "Your Majesty," he murmured. Beside him, Vatran did the same.
"Marshal. General," Swemmel said. He wore a tunic and cloak of military cut but royal splendor: even in the wan winter sunlight, their threadwork of cloth-of-gold, their encrusting pearls and rubies and polished, faceted chunks of jet glittered dazzlingly. So did the heavy crown on his head. He waved. "We are pleased with the aspect of this, our city of Herborn."
"Your Majesty?" This time, Rathar exclaimed in astonishment. Swemmel's guards caught the tone. Their faces went harder yet. Several of them growled, down deep in their throats, like any wolves. They knew lese majesty when they heard it.
But the king, for once, felt expansive enough to overlook it. He waved again. "Aye, we are pleased," he repeated. "Most of all are we pleased with that." He pointed to the tallest surviving tower of the duke's palace, the palace that had been Raniero's till not long before. Unkerlant's banner- white, black, and crimson- fluttered above it.
"Ah." Rathar nodded, as he had to Vatran. Now he understood what Swemmel meant. Hoping to take advantage of his sovereign's good humor, he asked, "Your Majesty, may I say a word?"
Swemmel's bodyguards growled again. Whatever Rathar was about to say, they could tell it would be something their master didn't care to hear. King Swemmel could tell as much, too. "Say on," he replied, icy warning in his voice.
Most of the king's courtiers would have found something harmless to ask him after that response. Doing anything else took more nerve than facing the Algarvians in battle. But Rathar would speak his mind every now and then, and did so now: "Your Majesty, what you have planned for the end of the parade-"
"Shall go forward," King Swemmel broke in. "It is our will. Our will shall assuredly be done."