That last wasn’t a word in any language Cornelu knew, but he understood it. He liked the sound of it, too. “Aye,” he said. “Clothes fftt.”
The Lagoan got to his feet. “Come with me,” he said again, in the tones of a man giving an order. He couldn’t have known Cornelu was a commander-- clothes went a long way toward making a man, or, in the case of sodden night-clothes, toward unmaking him. On the other hand, he might not have cared had he known; some petty officers got so used to bullying sailors around that they bullied their superiors, too.
Inside of another half hour, he had Cornelu outfitted in a Lagoan sailor’s uniform, complete with a heavy coat and a broad-brimmed hat to shed the rain. “I thank you,” Cornelu said in Sibian; the phrased remained similar in all the Algarvic languages.
“It’s nothing,” the petty officer answered, catching his drift. Then he said something Cornelu couldn’t precisely follow, but it included Mezentio’s name and several obscenities and vulgarities. Having taken care of Cornelu, the Lagoan went on his way.
Cornelu walked back to the crumpled Sibian barracks. The sour smell of wet smoke still hung in the air despite the rain. But Cornelu’s uniform, all his effects, the whole building, were indeed fftt. A Sibian lieutenant still wearing nothing but soaked nightclothes gave him a look full of lacerating jealousy and said, “You seem to have landed on your feet better than anyone, sir. As far as I can see, we’re on our own till the Lagoans get around to providing for us.”
“All right.” That was what Cornelu had hoped to hear. “I’m going into town, then. I want to make sure some friends are all right.” Janira mattered to him. Balio, her father, mattered to him because he mattered to her.
After only a few strides toward the closest ley-line caravan stop, Cornelu paused and cursed himself for a fool. How could he get aboard without money? But when he jammed his hands into the pockets of his new navy coat, he found coins in one of them-plenty of silver, he discovered, for the fare and for a good meal afterwards. Who’d put it there? The petty officer? The quarter-master who’d given him the coat? He had no way of knowing. He did know he’d have a harder time looking down his nose at Lagoans from now on.
He got out of the caravan car at the stop near the Grand Hall of the Lagoan Guild of Mages. He’d passed several new stretches of wreckage on the way there; the Algarvians had hit Setubal hard. But Cornelu knew it could have been worse-Mezentio’s men could have massacred Kaunians instead of coming over and risking themselves.
People were standing around in the street near Balio’s cafe. Cornelu didn’t think that a good sign. He pushed his way through the crowd. A couple of men sent him resentful looks, but gave way when they saw him in Lagoan naval uniform. He grimaced when he got to see the cafe. It was a burnt-out ruin. An egg had burst a few doors down, burst and started a fire.
And there stood Balio, staring at the ruins of his business. “I’m glad to see you well,” Cornelu told him, and then asked the really important question: “Is Janira all right?”
“Aye.” Balio nodded vaguely. “She’s around somewhere. Powers above only know how we’ll make a living now, though.” He cursed the Algarvians in Lagoan and Sibian both. Cornelu joined him. He’d been cursing the Algarvians for years. He expected to go on doing it for years more. And now he had a brand new reason.
News sheets in Eoforwic had stopped talking about the battle for Sulingen. From that, Vanai concluded it was going badly for the Algarvians. The quieter they got, she assumed, the more they had to hide. And the more they had to hide, the better she liked it. “May they all fall,” she said savagely at breakfast one morning.
“Aye, and take all their puppets down with them,” Ealstan agreed. “Powers below eat King Mezentio, powers below eat all his soldiers, and powers below eat Plegmund’s Brigade, starting with my accursed cousin.”
“If the Algarvians are ruined, everyone who follows them will be ruined, too,” Vanai said. She understood why Ealstan hated Plegmund’s Brigade as he did. But one thing her grandfather had taught her that still seemed good was to search for root causes first. The Algarvians had caused Forthweg’s misery. Plegmund’s Brigade was only a symptom of it.
Ealstan thought about arguing with her: she could see it on his face. Instead, he took a last bite of bread and gulped down the rough red wine in his mug. Pausing only to give her a kiss that landed half on her mouth, half on her cheek, he headed for the door, saying, “It’s not worth the quarrel, and I haven’t got time for one anyhow. I’m off to see if I can help some men pay the redheads a little less.”
“That’s worth doing,” Vanai said. Her husband nodded and left.
My husband, Vanai thought. It still bemused her. It would have horrified Brivibas: not just because Ealstan was a Forthwegian, though that alone would have been plenty, but because of the mean little ceremony with which they’d been formally joined. And what her grandfather would have thought about the two woman-loving matrons who’d checked the hair on her secret place. . She laughed, imagining the look on his face if she ever told him about that.
She knew exactly what had let her get through it without smacking them. It was simple: the Algarvians had already shown her worse. What Ealstan wished on his cousin, she wished on Major Spinello.
For a long time after she’d had to start giving herself to him, she’d doubted she would ever feel clean again. Falling in love with Ealstan had gone a long way toward curing her there. But, after the two of them came to Eoforwic, she’d had trouble feeling clean in the literal sense of the word. Washing with a pitcher and basin here in the flat wasn’t a patch even on Oyngestun’s public bath. And Oyngestun was only a village. Eoforwic had the finest baths in all of Forthweg.
Up till very recently, of course, they’d done her no good at all. She hadn’t been able to show her face in public, let alone her body. Now, though, she looked like a Fortliwegian to everyone around her as long as her magic held. When she looked in a mirror, she saw her familiar Kaunian features framed by much less familiar dark hair. What she saw didn’t matter, so long as no one else could see it.
She went through the spell again, to make sure it wouldn’t wear off while she was out and about in Eoforwic. Then she put some coppers in her belt pouch and left the flat. Now that she could head for the public baths, she did, usually every other day. She had trouble thinking of anything she enjoyed more about the freedom she’d sorcerously found.
With a sneer, she walked past the bathhouse closest to her block of flats. Oyngestun’s was better; whoever’d built this one seemed to have thought, Well, it’s plenty good enough for poor people. Here, unlike in Oyngestun, she had other choices.
The bathhouse not far from the farmers’ market was a great deal finer. She strode up the stairs that led to the women’s side, paid her little fee to the bored-looking attendant who sat there with a coin box, and went inside. She stripped off her tunic and gave it and her belt pouch and her shoes to another attendant, who put them on a shelf and handed her a numbered token with which she could claim them when she finished bathing.
A couple of Forthwegian women stripped off as casually as she had. They didn’t give her a second glance, for which she was grateful, but went off chatting with each other. She followed, a little more slowly. In her own eyes, she remained too thin and far too pale to make a proper Forthwegian, and her black bush seemed even more unnatural than the hair on her head. But nobody else could see her fair skin and her pink nipples. Were that untrue, she would have long since been caught.