Through the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  Bembo refused to let himself get too annoyed. He said, “They’re all going out into the country to hunt fornicating mushrooms, that’s what. The blonds are as wild for those nasty things as the real Forthwegians are. If the gate guards checked everybody who came in and went out . . .”

  Slowly, a smile replaced the glower on Pesaro’s plump face. “Well, curse me!” he exclaimed. “There, do you see? You’re not as foolish as you look. Who would have believed it?”

  “I’ve had good ideas before,” Bembo protested indignantly.

  “Oh, so you have,” Pesaro said. “The one good idea you never could figure out was keeping your big mouth shut.” He pondered, stroking the tuft of hair on his chin. “But that is smart, dip me in dung if it’s not. Aye, I’ll pass it up the line.” He stroked his chin again. “Something else like that, too—if we shut off a whole city block, say, and snipped everybody in it, I bet we’d catch a few blonds by surprise.”

  “That’s good, Sergeant,” Bembo said, partly because he meant it, partly because Pesaro was the fellow who told him what to do every day. “That’s really good. Maybe we’ll both get promoted.” He snapped his fingers. “Powers above, why think small? Maybe we’ll both get sent home!”

  “That is a big thought,” Pesaro said. “Too big, most likely. And they won’t promote me, not without a drop of noble blood in my whole line unless I’m descended from some viscount’s bastard back three hundred years or so. They like quality in officers, so they do, even constabulary officers. You might get bumped up, though.”

  “Lots of officers getting killed these days,” Bembo observed. “Not so many in the constabulary, I grant you, but lots and lots of soldiers. They’ll run short before too long, and then they’ll either promote commoners or they’ll bloody well do without officers. The Unkerlanters don’t fret too much about a man’s blood, by all I’ve heard.”

  “That’s on account of most of their nobles got bumped off a long time ago,” Pesaro said. “Besides, who wants to be like the fornicating Unkerlanters?” But the sergeant’s tone was thoughtful, almost wistful; Bembo knew he’d put a flea in his ear.

  No trips back to Tricarico came from either Bembo’s suggestion or Pesaro’s. No promotions came from them, either. Bembo cursed his superiors till the next time he got paid, when he found a two-goldpiece bonus. He wasn’t even too resentful to find out that Pesaro’s was twice as big. Pesaro was a sergeant, after all.

  A few days later, he and Oraste stretched a rope dead line across a narrow street. The rope had a sign on it, written in Algarvian and Forthwegian: CLIPPING STATION. At the other end of the street, two more Algarvian constables stretched out another rope with an identical sign attached. All the Algarvians drew their sticks. “Nobody goes by without getting snipped!” Bembo yelled in his own language. One of the other pair spoke Forthwegian and translated. “Line up!” Bembo added. Again, his opposite number turned the words into Forthwegian.

  Oraste spoke up: “Form your line. Over the rope one at a time. Get clipped. Anybody gets out of line, he gets blazed.” Once more, the Forthwegian-speaking constable did the honors.

  Grumbling, the people trapped between the two ropes queued up. Bembo gestured them forward one by one. Oraste clipped. “This is all a waste of time, you know,” a Forthwegian told Bembo in excellent Algarvian.

  “Mind your own business.” After a moment, Bembo recognized the fellow: the one who’d lost a son to a man from Plegmund’s Brigade. He’s a fine one to tell us what to do and how to do it, the plump constable said. Aloud, he said, “Fat lot you know about it, anyhow.”

  “I know you’re looking for hair that turns yellow when it’s cut,” the Forthwegian answered; gossip was nothing to be sneezed at. “I also know any Kaunian with half a wit would dye his hair black before he risked a trap like this.”

  Bembo stared. Back in Tricarico, folk of Kaunian blood had dyed their hair red to fit in with the Algarvian majority. Black hair didn’t make Kaunians look like Forthwegians—but this chap was right: it could further ward Kaunians sorcerously disguised to look like their neighbors. “Get out of here,” Bembo snarled, and the Forthwegian with the graying beard disappeared in a hurry.

  A man three people after him in line did turn out to be a Kaunian with undyed hair. Bembo and Oraste beat the blond with their bludgeons. Oraste covered him while the rest of the line went through. He was the only Kaunian the constables caught. But even as they frog-marched him off toward the ley-line caravan depot for what would likely be his last journey, a question kept echoing and reechoing in Bembo’s mind: how many blonds had they missed?

  The dye had an acrid reek Vanai found distasteful. She applied it twice, as the directions on the jar told her to do. Then, again following the directions, she combed her hair without drying it. Flicking her eyes to right and left, she could see the dark locks that fell damply to her tunic—and would probably end up staining it. Instead of going for a mirror, she asked Ealstan, “What do I look like now?”

  “Strange,” he answered, and then found a word that meant the same thing but sounded nicer: “Exotic. There aren’t any black-haired folk on Derlavai with fair skin and light eyes. Maybe on some of the islands in the Great Northern Sea, but I don’t know of any even there.”

  “There are plenty of Kaunians in Forthweg with dark hair now, or I hope there are,” Vanai said. “I wonder what went wrong and tipped off the Algarvians that we’d found a magic to let us look like everybody else.”

  “Somebody must have stayed out too long, and had the magic wear off when a redhead was looking,” Ealstan said. “Something like that, anyhow.”

  “Aye, you’re likely right,” Vanai agreed after a little thought. “But can you blame whoever did it? Trapped in that little district, never knowing if Mezentio’s men were going to haul him away and send him west? Wouldn’t you want to grab as much freedom as you could?”

  “Likely so,” Ealstan said. “But I wouldn’t want to do anything that could put anybody else in danger.”

  The answer was very much in character for him. He thought of others ahead of himself; Vanai had seen that for as long as she’d known him. It was unusual in someone so young. It was, from what she’d seen, unusual in people of any age. It was one of the things that had drawn her to him. It drew her to him now: she got up, went over to him, sat down beside him on the worn sofa, and gave him a kiss.

  “What was that for?” he asked.

  “Because I felt like it,” Vanai answered.

  “Oh, really?” This time, Ealstan kissed her. “What else do you feel like?”

  “We ought to wait till my hair is dry,” Vanai said. She lifted a lock from her shoulder and nodded. “See? It’s just what I thought—the dye’s stained my tunic. I don’t want to have to try to get it out of the bedclothes, too.”

  He thought that over, then nodded. “I suppose I can wait,” he said, sounding as if he deserved a special order of merit for being able to. Vanai laughed a little. When it came to matters that touched the bedchamber, he had more trouble thinking of anyone but himself. But he could do it, which put him a long way ahead of Major Spinello.

  Maybe Spinello’s dead by now, Vanai thought hopefully. Maybe they sent him down to that Sulingen place where the fighting goes on and on and on. If they did send him there, may he never come out again.

  She had to make a deliberate effort to drive the Algarvian officer out of her mind. Sometimes even that didn’t work; sometimes memories of him got between her and Ealstan when they made love, killing her pleasure as if blazing it with a heavy stick.

  Not tonight, though. Afterwards, she and Ealstan lay side by side, naked and sweaty. As he had when they’d made love after she first made her sorcery succeed, he reached out and plucked a hair from her bush. As she had then, she yelped now. “What was that for?” she demanded, more than a little irate.

  He held the hair between thumb and forefinger. “It’s still blond,” he said.

  “Well, of course it is!” Va
nai exclaimed. “What do you want me to do, dye myself down there, too?”

  To her astonishment, Ealstan nodded. “I think you’d better,” he said seriously. “Sooner or later, Mezentio’s men are going to figure out that Kaunians are dyeing their hair—the hair on their heads, I mean. What’ll they do then? Start yanking up tunics and yanking down drawers, that’s what.”

  “They wouldn’t!” But then Vanai grimaced. “They might. They’re Algarvians, curse them, and Algarvians have no shame, not about such things.” Memories of Spinello surged upward again, and of the utterly blasé way he’d acted when Brivibas walked in on him while he was taking his pleasure with her. “No,” she said in a low voice, “they have no shame at all.”

  Ealstan, fortunately, didn’t know just what an intimate knowledge of Algarvian shamelessness she had. But he knew her well enough to see she was troubled. He took her in his arms. And when he did, he only held her. He didn’t try to make love with her again, though she had no trouble telling he would have been interested in doing so.

  She thought about lying there and letting him have her—she would have taken no pleasure from a second round then. But she’d done that too many times with Spinello, because she’d had no choice. Now she did have one, and Ealstan seemed no more than slightly miffed when she got out of bed.

  Even that little bit of annoyance vanished when he discovered she was going to take him up on his suggestion. Applying the dye down there was an awkward business. The stuff stung her tender flesh, too. When she was through, she giggled. She looked different in a way she’d never expected to be.

  “Exotic,” Ealstan said again. Vanai let out another giggle. She knew what he meant by that: he meant he really did want another round. Being able to laugh made it easier for her to let him have one. She ended up enjoying it more than she’d thought she would, too.

  The next morning, she worked the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian for a while. Ealstan hadn’t yet left to cast accounts. He nodded, confirming she’d worked the spell correctly. “It doesn’t change your looks as much now,” he said, “but it does change them.”

  “All right,” she said, and left the flat without the shiver of terror she would have felt undisguised. When she got down to the street, what was she? As far as the eye could tell, just one Forthwegian among many. She wished she could go out as a Kaunian among Forthwegians, but that hadn’t always been easy even before the Algarvians overran Forthweg.

  When she walked into the Forthwegian apothecary’s shop, he nodded to her from behind his high counter. “A good day to you, Mistress Thelberge,” he said; Vanai had taken to using the name Ealstan gave her. “And what can I do for you so early?”

  “Since you seem to have a way of doing such things, sir,” she said, “you might want to pass word to . . . people who may be using dye to use it on . . . all their hair.”

  She waited to see if he would understand. If he didn’t, she intended to be as blunt as she had to. A couple of years before, when she was still living with her grandfather, embarrassment would have paralyzed her. No more. She was a great deal harder to embarrass than she had been.

  After a moment, the apothecary nodded. “I know what you’re saying, mistress, never you fear.” He paused, ground a powder with mortar and pestle—and with quite unnecessary vehemence—and added one more word: “Algarvians.”

  “Aye.” Vanai nodded. “Algarvians.”

  “Well, I will pass it along,” he said. “I think it may save a life or two. And as long as you’re here, can I try and sell you anything?”

  Vanai smiled. “No, thanks, unless you’ve got some particularly fine mushrooms. I’m just out enjoying the morning air.” Being able to come out and enjoy the morning air felt very fine indeed.

  After the words had left her mouth, she realized she’d all but told the apothecary she was a disguised Kaunian. She worried about it less than she would have with any other Forthwegian save Ealstan, but she couldn’t help worrying some. Then the apothecary said, “As a matter of fact, I’ve got some Kaunian Imperials here—a customer who was short of cash gave them to me to pay for a bottle of eyewash.”

  He reached under the counter and brought out the splendid orange mushrooms. Vanai’s mouth watered. “What do you want for them?” she asked, bracing herself for a hard haggle.

  “Take a couple,” the apothecary said. “It’s not always easy to get out of the city.” Aye, he knew she was a Kaunian, all right.

  She bowed her head. “My thanks,” she said softly, and put two of the splendid mushrooms in her belt pouch. “That’s not the first good turn you’ve done me.” She took the mushrooms and left the shop.

  A couple of Forthwegians who looked as if they were getting paid in spirits were pasting broadsheets on the walls. When Vanai stepped up and read one, she winced. The Algarvians hadn’t chosen to go yanking down everyone’s drawers, at least not yet. Instead, “in the interest of internal security,” they were making the manufacture and possession of black or dark brown hair dye illegal.

  After a moment, though, Vanai started to laugh. She thought the redheads were likely to blaze off their own toes with this edict. Kaunians weren’t the only ones it would hurt. Plenty of vain and aging Forthwegians would want to keep the frost from showing in their hair and beards. She doubted whether Mezentio’s men would be able to make the prohibition stick.

  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 say
ing 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?”