Indeed, before she got back to the flat, she heard several Forthwegians-at least, she presumed they were Forthwegians-cursing the new ordinance. That made her laugh again. Sure enough, if the Forthwegian majority rejected this law, the occupiers could make as much noise as they chose; they wouldn’t change anything much. And if Forthwegians got dye, Kaunians who looked like Forthwegians would be able to get it, too.
With those things on her mind, Vanai paid less attention to what was going on around her than she might have, and got caught by an Algarvian clipping patrol. She queued up with the Forthwegians (and, for all she knew, other Kaunians) to wait for Mezentio’s men to finish their duty. With the hair on her head and that between her legs freshly dyed, she was safe unless they had a mage with them.
They won’t, a small, cold voice inside her said. They need their mages to make weapons of war or to kill my people.
And she proved right. An Algarvian constable, looking bored with the whole business, snipped off a lock of her hair. Thanks to the dye, it stayed dark. The redhead nodded and jerked a thumb down the street. “Going on,” he said.
Vanai went on. She would have to jeer at Ealstan: the Algarvians hadn’t thought to start checking people’s secret hair yet. But then she realized jeering wouldn’t do. Ealstan was right; that was something the redheads would come up with, and they probably wouldn’t take long. She muttered something vile. She didn’t look forward to dyeing herself there every couple of weeks.
For now, though, she was free to go through the streets of Eoforwic. The Algarvians couldn’t tell what she was. Neither could the Forthwegian majority. To the eye, she was one of them. She still wished she could go out and about as a Kaunian. Since she couldn’t, this was the next best thing.
She remembered the mushrooms in her pouch. “Not everyone hates me,” she whispered-but even the whisper was in Forthwegian, not in the ancient language she’d learned from birth.
The Kuusaman physician nodded to Fernao and said, “Good day,” in her own tongue.
“Good day,” the Lagoan mage said, also in Kuusaman. He’d always had an ear for languages, and was quick to pick up words and phrases. But when the physician went on, she did so far too fast for Fernao to follow. “Slowly, I beg you,” he said.
“Sorry,” said the physician, a little dark woman named Juhani. She went on in her own speech; again Fernao didn’t understand a word of it. Seeing as much, she switched to classical Kaunian: “Do you know this language?”
“Aye,” he answered. “I am fluent in it.”
“So you are,” Juhani agreed. “More so than I, perhaps. I was saying that I took you for a countryman because of your eyes. Some of us wear kilts, too. But you come out of the west, then?”
“Aye,” Fernao said again.
Juhani studied him. “There must have been some urgent need to bring you out of the west with the injuries to your arm and leg.”
“There was,” Fernao answered, and said no more. What he was doing in Yliharma was no one’s business but his own.
When the physician saw he was going to stay quiet, she shrugged. “Well, by all the signs, we can free your arm from its prison, anyhow.”
“Good,” the mage said. “It has been in plaster so long, it feels much as if it had been in prison indeed.”
“You will not like it so well once it comes out of its shell,” Juhani warned. Fernao only shrugged. The physician went to work getting the cast off.
And she turned out to be right. For one thing, the arm that had been broken was only a little more than half as thick as the other. And it also disgusted the mage because all the dead skin that would have sloughed off had been trapped by the cast. He looked like a man with a horrible disease.
Juhani gave him a jar of ointment and some rags. She even helped him clean off the dead skin. After they finished, the arm smelled sweet and looked no worse than emaciated. “Will my leg be the same way?” Fernao asked, tapping the plaster there.
“I have no doubt it will look worse,” the physician said, which made him shudder. She went on, “Were you in a ley-line caravan accident, or did you have a bad fall, or …?”
Fernao nodded. “That last one. I chanced to be rather too close to an egg when it burst. As you see, I am nearly healed now. For quite some time, however, I did not think the healers and mages had done me any favors by saving me.”
“Never give up,” Juhani said seriously. “Things may get better. Things have got better for you, have they not?”
“They have,” Fernao admitted. “It would have been difficult for them to get worse.” He reached for his crutches. As he did so, he tried to imagine making quick, complex passes with his newly freed arm. He laughed quietly. He couldn’t do it, not to save his life. Then he dipped his head to the physician as he levered himself to his feet. “My thanks, mistress. And what do I owe you for your services?”
When she told him, he blinked. He would have paid twice as much in Setubal. Everything was cheaper in Yliharma, but few things were so much cheaper. Seeing his surprise, she said, “My husband serves the Seven Princes. How can I enrich myself off someone who has already met the foe?”
“I can think of plenty of people who would have no trouble whatever,” Fernao replied as he steadied himself on his crutches. “Honor is where you find it. I hope your husband stays safe.”
He swung out to the street, pausing in the doorway to pull the hood on his tunic up over his head. A chilly drizzle was falling; on the other side of the Vaatojarvi Hills, from what Pekka said, it would be snow. As far as Fernao was concerned, rain was bad enough. Anything that made the sidewalks slippery was bad. He kept fearing he would fall. Just what I’d need: to break one leg when the other one’s finally healing.
He planted his crutches and his good foot with great care. Kuusamans on the sidewalk gave way before him when they saw he had trouble getting around. That never would have happened in Setubal. There, anyone who couldn’t keep up with the bustling throngs was liable to get run down and trampled. He had no trouble flagging a cab. The driver helped him get inside, again more considerate than a Lagoan would have been. “Where to?” the fellow asked.
That was another phrase Fernao had learned. “The Principality,” he replied. Grandmaster Pinhiero had grumbled about paying for his stay there, but yielded in the end. Fernao couldn’t very well impose on Ilmarinen (as far as he could tell, no one imposed on Ilmarinen) or Siuntio, and Pekka was staying at the Principality. The more he learned from the Kuusaman mages, the more he talked shop with them, the better off Lagoas would be. So he’d told the grandmaster, and he’d actually made Pinhiero believe it.
Several hostels in Setubal might have matched the Principality, but Fernao wasn’t sure any could have beaten it. The room in which he dwelt was large and luxurious; the food, even in wartime, was outstanding; and he was convinced that at least half the people who worked in the Principality spoke better Lagoan than he did. The doorman was one of those. “Let me give you a hand, sir,” he said, and helped Fernao up the stairs to the entrance. Going along on flat ground, Fernao thought he managed pretty well. When he had to climb stairs, he was glad for any help he could get.
Once he made it into the lobby, he flipped back the hood on his tunic and sighed with pleasure, enjoying the warmth that radiated from several coal stoves. He looked around, wondering whether any of his Kuusaman colleagues were around. He’d thought he might spot Siuntio or Ilmarinen, but didn’t- though he wouldn’t say they weren’t there till he made a trip to the bar.