"So we'll root 'em out if they're in there," the constabulary captain finished. "And if they're not, odds are we'll dig up some other nasty Kaunians even so. Our soldiers'll be able to use their life energy- you'd best believe that."
Use their life energy. That was a nice phrase. Bembo contemplated it and nodded. You could say something like that and not have to think at all about actually killing people. Bembo approved. He didn't like to think about killing people, even Kaunians. Sometimes it needed doing- he knew that- but he didn't like to think about it.
"Let's go!" the captain cried. The constables swarmed into the block of flats and started pounding on doors. The captain stayed out on the sidewalk. It wasn't as if he'd do any of the hard work himself. He took a flask from his belt, swigged, and passed it to Gastable the mage.
"Open up!" Bembo shouted in front of the first door he and Oraste came to. The two of them waited a few heartbeats. Then Oraste kicked in the door. The constables burst into the flat, sticks aimed and ready to blaze. But there was nobody to blaze; the place appeared to stand empty. They quickly turned it upside down, poking their noses everywhere someone might hide. They found nobody.
"Whoever lives there'll get a surprise when he comes home tonight," Oraste said cheerfully. He and Bembo didn't bother closing the door after themselves. "I wonder if he'll have any stuff left by then. No skin off my nose either way."
He pounded on the next door. A Forthwegian woman opened it. Bembo eyed her appreciatively. She had a pretty face; he thought it a pity she followed her country's fashion by wearing such a long, baggy tunic. "Out!" he said, and jerked a thumb toward the stairs leading down to the street. "Anybody else in here with you?"
She yammered at him in Forthwegian, which he didn't speak. He tried again, this time in his halting classical Kaunian. She understood that, and turned out to speak Kaunian a lot better and a lot more angrily than he did. But when Oraste pointed his stick at her face, she quieted down and got moving in a hurry.
"See?" Oraste said. "You just have to know which language to use."
They went through the flat and found an old woman snoring in bed, sound asleep despite the commotion. When they shook her awake, she cursed in Forthwegian and Kaunian. "Oh, shut up, you horrible hag," Bembo said, not bothering to waste politeness on anybody who wasn't good-looking. "Go downstairs." He managed to put that into Kaunian, and the old woman, still fuming, went.
"I hope she turns out to be a blond," Oraste said. "Serve the noisy sow right."
"She'll be steamed enough when they flip up her tunic and trim her bush." Bembo shuddered. "Checking her daughter would be fun, but her? I'm glad somebody else'll get stuck doing that."
Along with the rest of the constables, they went through the building like a dose of salts. A few coins left too visible ended up in Bembo's belt pouch. He didn't notice Oraste making up for low pay, but he wouldn't have been surprised. Once the constables had got up to the top floor, a sergeant said, "All right, let's go back down and make sure the whoresons we rousted don't give anybody any trouble."
When Bembo got down to the sidewalk again, women were screeching about getting clipped anywhere but on their heads. A man and woman who hadn't thought to dye the hair on their private parts had been separated from their neighbors. Their faces were masks of dismay; four or five Algarvian constables pointed sticks at them.
Gastable was making sorcerous passes and muttering to himself in front of a pair of men who looked like Forthwegians. They kept on looking like Forthwegians once he finished his passes, too. Did that mean they weren't disguised, or was he inept? Bembo had no answers. He suspected Gastable had no answers, either.
He wasn't the only one with such suspicions. Oraste said, "I don't think this mage could tell a turd from a tulip."
"I wouldn't be surprised if you were right," Bembo agreed. "Of course, who knows if those Kaunian bandits were here to begin with?"
No sooner had the words come from his lips than the next pair of men fetched before Gastable suddenly seemed to writhe and change shape. They weren't Forthwegians- they were Kaunians with dyed hair. The constabulary captain spoke to Bembo and Oraste: "Are these the men you saw with the perpetrator Gippias?"
The two constables looked at each other. They both shrugged. "We don't know, sir," Bembo said. "When we saw 'em, they were in their sorcerous disguise and running like blazes around a corner."
"How are we supposed to identify them, if you bloody well can't?" the captain asked.
"Don't you still have hold of that Forthwegian who told us the name of the one Kaunian whoreson?" Bembo asked.
By the way the captain set his hands on his hips, he didn't. By the way he glared at Bembo and Oraste, he was ready- even eager- to blame them for what was obviously his failing. But he seemed to realize he couldn't quite get away with that. Scowling, he tried to make the best of it: "Well, we'll just have to see what we can squeeze out of them."
"Aye, sir," Bembo said- that actually made sense. He pointed to the two discovered Kaunians and spoke to Oraste in a low voice: "By the time we're through with them, they'll wish they'd just been shipped west."
Oraste considered. After a moment, he said, "Good."
"And the two of us are off the hook," Bembo added. As far as he was concerned, that was pretty good, too.
Five
When Ealstan came into the flat he shared with Vanai, she handed him an envelope. "Here," she said. "This came in the morning's post. The rest was just advertising circulars. I threw them away."
He kissed his wife, then said, "All right- what have we got here?" He thought he knew; the hand that had addressed the envelope looked familiar. When he opened it and extracted the note inside, he nodded. "Ethelhelm is back in Eoforwic," he told Vanai.
"And he'll want you to reckon up the accounts for the band's tour in the provinces?" she asked.
"That's right." Ealstan sighed. "I wonder if he'll have any money left, what with the squeeze the redheads take from him." Ethelhelm was half Kaunian. If he hadn't been the most popular singer and band leader in Forthweg, he might well have been shipped west. As things were, the Algarvians preferred to let him go on playing, but to make him pay heavily for the privilege of staying free. It was a highly unofficial form of taxation, but that didn't mean it wasn't lucrative.
Ethelhelm played Forthwegian-style music. Ealstan knew Vanai didn't much care for it; her tastes along those lines were purely Kaunian, which meant she liked a thumping beat to every song. And her thoughts here weren't strictly on the music anyhow. She said, "As long as the Algarvians leave him enough money to keep paying you."
"If they don't, he'll bloody well have to find himself another bookkeeper, that's all." Ealstan sighed again. "He used to be my friend, you know, not just my client. He used to write bold songs, strong songs, songs that'd make even a lackwit sit up and think about what Mezentio's men were doing to us. Then they got their hooks into him."
"If he hadn't gone to sing for the men of Plegmund's Brigade when they were training outside of town here…" Vanai's voice trailed away.
"Aye, he might have stayed free," Ealstan said. "Of course, the redheads might have flung him into a ley-line caravan car and cut his throat, too. You can't know." Ethelhelm hadn't had the nerve to find out. Ealstan wondered what he would have done in the band leader's place. He was glad he didn't know.
"You can worry about Ethelhelm later," Vanai said. "For now, you can sit down to supper. I found some nice sausage at the butcher's."