“Were you born that stupid, or did you have to practice?” Oraste asked. “Whichever, you’re a champion. Why do you suppose the cursed Kaunians were after a jeweler? Just for the take? Maybe, but not bloody likely, you ask me. Who’s getting the money they’d take in from unloading those jewels? Nobody who likes Algarvians any too well, or I’m a naked black Zuwayzi.”
Bembo saw nasty, greedy men everywhere he looked. Years as a constable had taught him to do that. He didn’t see plots everywhere he looked. Here in Gromheort, maybe that meant he was missing things. “You’d look good as a naked black Zuwayzi,” he remarked.
“You’d look good as a mountain ape,” Oraste replied. “It’s about the only way you would look good.” He turned to the people who were gawking at the robber’s body. “Anybody here know this filthy Kaunian son of a whore?”
“He’s liable to come from one of the villages,” Bembo said.
But Oraste shook his head. “He’ll be a townman. You wait and see. If he wasn’t, how would his pals and him know which place to hit?” Bembo’s only answer was a grunt. He hated it when Oraste outthought him, and Oraste had done it twice in a row now.
Nobody in the crowd spoke up. Bembo said, “I know you people don’t much like Algarvians, but do you love Kaunians? Do you want them robbing you next?”
Someone said, “Isn’t that the fellow named Gippias?” Bembo didn’t see who’d chosen to open his mouth, but Oraste did. He knifed through the crowd and grabbed the Forthwegian. The man looked anything but happy about having to say more, but that was just too bloody bad. Bembo and Oraste looked at each other and nodded. They had a name. They’d find out more. And if there was a plot, they’d find out about that, too.
More and more these days, Ealstan thought of Vanai as Thelberge. Things were safer that way. Even inside their flat, they spoke more Forthwegian and less Kaunian than they had before she’d turned the botched spell in You Too Can Be a Mage into one that really did what it was supposed to do. When the spell that made her swarthy and stocky lapsed and she got her own features back for a while, he would look at her sidelong, a little curious, a little surprised. Maybe that was because he wasn’t used to seeing Kaunian looks under her dark hair- for her hair, of course, being dyed, didn’t go back to blond. But maybe it was because he wasn’t so used to her real looks any more, too.
“Do you know what we can do?” he asked one evening after supper. “If you want to, I mean.”
Vanai set down the dirty dish she’d been washing. “No, what?”
He took a deep breath. Once he’d said what he was going to say, he couldn’t back away from it. “We could go down to the hall of laws and get married. If you want to, I mean.”
For a long moment, Vanai didn’t say anything. She looked away from Ealstan. Fear ran through him. Was she going to turn him down? But then she looked back. Tears streaked her face. “You’d marry me, in spite of-everything?” she asked. Everything, of course, boiled down to one thing: her blood.
“No,” Ealstan said. “I just asked you that to watch you jump.” And then, fearful lest she take him seriously, he went on, “I’m marrying you-or I will marry you, if you want to marry me-because of everything. I can’t imagine finding anybody else I’d rather spend the rest of my life with.”
“I’m glad to marry you,” Vanai said. “After all, if it weren’t for you, I’d probably be dead.” She shook her head, dissatisfied with the way she’d answered. “And I love you.”
“That sounds like a good reason to me.” Ealstan walked over and kissed her. One thing led to another, and the dishes ended up getting finished rather later than they would have if he hadn’t proposed.
When they woke the next morning, Vanai’s sorcery had slipped, so that she looked like herself, or herself with dark hair. She quickly set the spell to rights, waiting for Ealstan’s nod to let her know she’d done it correctly. Once she was sure of that, she meticulously redyed her hair, both above and below.
“You don’t suppose they’ll have mages at the hall of laws, do you?” she asked anxiously.
“I wouldn’t think so,” Ealstan answered. “Unless I’m daft, any redhead with enough magic in him to make a flower open two days early is off fighting the Unkerlanters.” His smile held a fierce delight. “And they’re not doing too bloody well even so. That’s why you find SULINGEN scrawled on every other wall.”
“Let’s see how many times we see it before we get to the hall of laws,” Vanai said, at least as happy at the idea of Algarvian disasters as Ealstan was.
They counted fourteen graffiti on the walk through Eoforwic. Twice, the name of the Unkerlanter city had been painted over recruiting broadsheets for Plegmund’s Brigade. The combination made Ealstan thoughtful. “I wonder if Sidroc’s down in Sulingen,” he said hopefully. “The only thing wrong with that would be getting my revenge through an Unkerlanter instead of all by myself.”
“Would it do?” Vanai asked.
After a little thought, Ealstan nodded. “Aye. It would do.”
The hall of laws lay not far from King Penda’s palace. In the days before the war, judges and barristers and functionaries would have gone back and forth from one building to the other. They still did, the only difference being that most of them, and all the high-ranking ones, were Algarvians now.
Forthwegians did remain in the hall of laws-as clerks and other minor officials not worth the occupiers’ while to replace. One of those clerks, who looked so bored he should have been covered with dust, handed a form to Ealstan and another to Vanai. “Fill these out and return them to me with the fee indicated on the sign on the wall,” he droned, not even bothering to point at the sign he’d mentioned.
Ealstan filled in his own true name and his place of residence. That was where the truth stopped for him. He invented his father’s name and declared that his fictitious forebear had been born and raised in Eoforwic. He didn’t know whether the constables were still looking for Ealstan son of Hestan of Gromheort, but he didn’t know that they weren’t, either, and didn’t care to find out by experiment.
Glancing over at Vanai’s form, he saw that the only truth she’d told on it was her place of residence. She’d invented a fine Forthwegian pedigree for herself. Their eyes met. They both grinned. This was all part of the masquerade.
When they went back to the counter, the clerk barely glanced at the forms. He was more interested in making sure Ealstan had paid the proper fee. On that, he was meticulous; Ealstan supposed the Algarvians would take it out of his pay if he came up short there. Having satisfied himself, the clerk said, “There is one more formality. Do you both swear by the powers above that you are pure Forthwegian blood, without the slightest taint of vile Kaunianity?”
“Aye.” Ealstan and Vanai spoke together. She must have expected something like this, Ealstan thought, for not even a flicker of anger showed in her eyes.
But the occupiers required more than oaths. A couple of burly Forthwegian men came up to Ealstan; a couple of almost equally burly women approached Vanai. One of the men said, “Step into this anteroom with us, if you please.” He sounded polite enough, but not like somebody who would take no for an answer.
As Ealstan headed for the antechamber, the women led Vanai off in the other direction. “What’s all this about?” he asked, though he thought he already knew.
And, sure enough, the bruiser said, “Ward against oathbreakers.” He closed the door to the antechamber, then took a small scissors from his belt pouch. “I’m going to snip a lock of hair from your head.” He did, then nodded when it failed to change color. “That’s all right, but you wouldn’t believe what some of the stinking Kaunians try and get away with. I’m going to have to ask you to hike up your tunic and drop your drawers.”
“This is an outrage!” Ealstan exclaimed. He wondered what Vanai was saying in the other room. With any luck, something more memorable than that.