The sun hadn’t climbed above the northeastern horizon yet but wasn’t too far below it; there was enough light by which to see. The cold struck savagely at Fernao as he got to his feet. Every inhalation felt like breathing knives. Every exhalation brought forth a new fogbank. He cocked his head to one side, listening, but couldn’t hear the whisper of stars. That horrified him all over again, for it meant the weather could get colder still.
Snow didn’t cover every inch of the local landscape. Parts of it were bare rock and frozen ground. That had perplexed Fernao till he realized the air down here was so cold, it held less moisture than it could farther north, and the endless ravening wind helped sweep the landscape clear.
Lagoan soldiers were emerging from their tents, all of them as muffled against the chill as Fernao and Affonso. Like Fernao’s, the fog from their breath hung around their heads. They stumbled toward the smoking cook fires, shivering and loudly cursing their fate.
Off in the distance, Ice People on shaggy, two-humped camels watched the Lagoan army. They’d been shadowing the force ever since it landed at the edge of the ice shelf that formed around the edge of the austral continent every winter. The nomads of the frozen waste had laughed then to see King Vitor’s men struggling over the ice. They weren’t laughing anymore. Fernao hoped they weren’t passing the army’s movements on to the Yaninans. If they were, the Lagoans couldn’t do anything about it; the Ice People could have run rings around them.
Man by man, the lines at the cook fires moved forward. A cook who looked not only cold but also bored slapped a glob of mush and a strip of fried camel meat--mostly fat--into Fernao’s tin. “Eat fast,” the fellow advised. “Otherwise you’ll break teeth on it after it freezes up again.”
He wasn’t joking. Fernao had seen that. The mage was also ravenous. In this weather, a man needed far more food than he would have in a better climate. Affonso ate with the same dedication. Only after their tins were empty did Affonso remark, “I wish this cursed country didn’t hold any cinnabar. Then we could let the Yaninans have it.”
“Then King Tsavellas wouldn’t want it,” Fernao answered. “Nobody would ever come to visit the Ice People, except once in a while to buy pelts from them.”
“Dragons.” Affonso turned the word into a curse. Fernao nodded. Quicksilver came from cinnabar. Without it, dragons couldn’t flame so hot or so far. Algarve, Yanina’s ally {Yaninds master was nearer the truth these days), had only small stocks of the vital mineral. If Lagoas could take the land of the Ice People away from King Tsavellas’ men, King Mezentio’s dragons would have to do without. That would make Algarve’s war harder.
Taking the cinnabar away from Algarve was making Fernao’s life harder. The army trudged toward Mizpah. The town had been a Lagoan outpost till the Yaninans seized it after Lagoas went to war with Algarve. Fernao had been in it then. He counted himself lucky to have escaped and something less than lucky to have returned to the austral continent.
Grudgingly, as if resenting the necessity, the sun rose. Fernao’s shadow, far longer than he was tall, stretched off to his left. Because the sun couldn’t get far above the horizon, its light remained red as blood. It was about to set when a couple of Ice People rode toward the Lagoan column on camelback, shouting at the tops of their lungs.
Lieutenant General Junqueiro, who commanded the Lagoan force, hurried over to Fernao. He was a big, bluff fellow with a bushy red mustache streaked with white. “What in blazes are they saying?” he asked the mage. “You speak their language.”
“Not a word of it,” Fernao answered, which made Junqueiro’s eyes open very wide. “If you listen closely, though, you’ll discover they’re speaking Lagoan, after a fashion.”
Junqueiro cocked his head to one side. “Why, so they are.” He sounded astonished. Then his expression changed. “Is what they’re saying true? Are the Yaninans really moving against us?”
Fernao eyed him in some exasperation. “I don’t know--this country isn’t friendly to magecraft, except the sort the shamans of the Ice People use. But don’t you think you’d better get ready to receive them, on the chance those nomads aren’t lying?”
“It’s almost night again,” Junqueiro said. “Not even the Yaninans would be mad enough to attack in the darkness ... I don’t think.” But he began shouting orders, and the army shook itself out from column into line of battle.
And, sure enough, the enemy did attack. Eggs started bursting not far from the Lagoan forces--releasing energy like that was sorcery so basic, it worked all over the world. The Yaninans swarmed forward, howling like mountain apes. Beams from their sticks pierced the darkness. Junqueiro held back response as long as he could. Then all the light egg-tossers the Lagoans had brought with them began flinging eggs back at the Yaninans. The Lagoan footsoldiers, waiting behind cover, blazed away at the men who followed King Tsavellas.
To Fernao’s delighted astonishment, the Yaninans broke in wild disorder. They must have thought they would be able to steal the battle by night, catching the Lagoans by surprise. When that didn’t happen, some fled, some threw down their sticks and surrendered, and only a stubborn rear guard kept Junqueiro’s army from bagging them all.
Even before twilight began to gray the northern horizon the next morning, the Lagoan commander declared, “The way to Mizpah is open!”
“You wouldn’t sound so happy if you’d ever seen the place,” Fernao said, yawning. Junqueiro paid him no attention. He hadn’t really expected anything different.
Talsu had got used to Algarvians swaggering through the streets of Skrunda. He felt less embittered toward the redheads than did a lot of Jelgavans, not least because he’d done more against them in the war than had most of his countrymen. His regiment had invaded Algarve, even if it never had succeeded in breaking out of the foothills of the Bratanu Mountains and seizing Tricarico. And he hadn’t thrown down his stick till Jelgava was truly beaten. Beaten his kingdom remained, but he didn’t blame himself for it.
His father had other ideas. Looking up from the tunic he was sewing for an Algarvian officer, Traku sighed and said, “If only we’d fought harder, I wouldn’t have to be doing this kind of work.”
By that, Talsu knew he meant, If only you’d fought harder. His father felt guilty about not seeing battle. Because he did, he had a low opinion of those who had seen it and hadn’t prevailed--like Talsu.
With a sigh of his own, Talsu answered, “No. Instead you’d be sewing jewels onto some noblewoman’s cloak, and you’d be grumbling about that.”
Traku grunted and ran his fingers through his hair. He was going gray but, like his son and most of his countrymen, was so blond it hardly showed. “Well, what if I would?” he said. “At least she’d be one of our own noblewomen, not a cursed redhead.”
Before Talsu answered, he looked out into the street. No one there looked like coming into the tailor’s shop above which Traku and Talsu and his mother and sister lived. Satisfied he could speak frankly, Talsu said, “If it weren’t for all out idiot noblemen clogging up the officer corps, maybe we wouldn’t have a cursed redhead calling himself King of Jelgava these days. I had to follow their orders, remember--I know what kind of soldiers they made.”
Traku opened the cash box, took out a small silver coin with Bang Mainardo’s beaky portrait stamped on it, and ground it under his heel. “That’s what I think of having any Algarvian, let alone King Mezentio’s worthless brother, set up as the ruler of a decent Kaunian kingdom.”
“Oh, aye, I have no love for him, either,” Talsu said. “Who does? But if King Donalitu hadn’t run away to Lagoas after the redheads broke in here, we wouldn’t have an Algarvian calling himself king now. You ask me, Father, Donalitu was as useless as his nobles.”
“That’s what the Algarvians want you to say,” his father answered. “A king doesn’t have a use, except to be king. He stands for his kingdom, or else he’s no use at all. And how can an Algarvian king stand for a Kaunian kingdom? It’s against nature, that’
s what it is.”
Talsu had no good comeback for that. By everything he knew of magecraft--which wasn’t much--Traku was right. But Traku thought of the Jelgavan nobility in terms of luxuries used up and money wasted. That was how Talsu had thought of the nobles before the war. Now he thought of dukes and counts in terms of lives wasted, which were far more expensive.
“I’ll see you later,” he said, starting out of the shop. “Mother asked me earlier this morning to get her some olive oil and some garlic, and I haven’t done it yet.”
“Go on, then.” Traku was willing to let the argument lie. “You’d better, if you expect to eat supper tonight.”
Laughing--though his father hadn’t been joking--Talsu headed for the grocer’s a couple of blocks away. The weather was mild. Winter in Skrunda only rarely got chilly; the beaches on Jelgavas northeastern coast, the ones that looked across the Garelian Ocean toward equatorial Siaulia, were subtropical themselves. In happier times, they were a popular holiday resort for folk fleeing nasty weather farther south.
The grocer’s lay in the direction of the market square. As always, Talsu looked toward the square on the off chance he might spy something interesting. He didn’t but gave a small double take anyhow. That was foolish; the Algarvians had wrecked the triumphal arch from the days of the Kaunian Empire months before. But he still wasn’t used to its being gone.
One reason Talsu didn’t mind going to the grocer’s was his pretty daughter, Gailisa. She was behind the counter when he walked in, and smiled to see him. “Hello, Talsu,” she said. “What can I get you today?”
“A pint of the middle-grade olive oil and some fresh garlic,” he answered.
Gailisa said, “There’s plenty of garlic, but we’re out of the middle-grade oil. Do you want the cheap stuff or the extra-virgin?” Before he could answer, she held up a warning hand. “If you make jokes about that the way the miserable Algarvians do, I’ll clout you with the jar, do you hear me?”
“Did I say anything?” Talsu asked, as innocently as if such thoughts had never entered his mind. The grocer’s daughter snorted; she knew better. Talsu went on, “Let me have the good oil, if you please.”
“All right--since you asked for it so pretty.” Gailisa reached behind her, pulled an earthenware jar off the shelf, and set it on the counter. “Do you want to choose your own garlic, or shall I grab one for you?”
“Go ahead,” Talsu told her. “You’d do a better job than I would.”
“I knew that,” Gailisa said. “I wondered if you did.” She pulled a good-sized head off a string and handed it to him, then said something in classical Kaunian.
Talsu hadn’t spent enough time in school to learn much of the old language, and modern Jelgavan had drifted too far from it to let him understand the phrase. He had to ask, “What was that?”
“The stinking rose,” Gailisa translated. “I don’t know why they called it that back in the days of the Empire--it doesn’t look anything like a rose--but they did.”
“It doesn’t stink, either,” Talsu said. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like garlic. Powers above, even the redheads eat it.”
“They eat everything,” Gailisa said with a fine curl of the lip. “They’re eating my father out of food, and they only pay half what it’s worth. If he complained, they wouldn’t pay anything at all--they’d just take. They’re the occupiers, so they can do as they please.”
“They’ve always paid my father--so far, anyhow,” Talsu said. “I don’t know what he’d do if one of them didn’t; he gets a lot of his business from them these days.”
“They’re thieves.” Gailisa’s voice was flat. “They’re worse thieves than our own nobles, and they give us back less. I never thought I’d say that about anybody, but it’s true.”
“Aye.” Talsu nodded. “They could have made a lot of people like them if they’d put down the nobles and walked small themselves, but they haven’t bothered. King Mainardo! As if an Algarvian has any business being king here!”
“We lost the war. That means they can do whatever they want, like I said,” Gailisa answered. “They beat us, and now they’re beating us.”
Talsu paid her for the garlic and the oil and left the grocers shop in a hurry. Gailisa sounded almost like his father, blaming him for losing the fight. Maybe she didn’t mean it that way, but that was how it sounded. If I’d been in charge of things.. . , Talsu thought, and then laughed at himself. If he’d been in charge of things, the Jelgavan army would still have lost. He didn’t know how to run an army or a war. But the nobles who’d run the army were supposed to.
He stopped in a tavern and bought a glass of red wine flavored with orange and lime juice. The wine was rough and raw and cheap, but better than the thin, sour beer army rations had served up with breakfast every morning. Somebody’d probably promised better, then pocketed half of what he should have spent. That was how things had gone during the war.
As Talsu was leaving the tavern, a couple of Algarvian soldiers strode in. If he hadn’t stepped back in a hurry, they would have walked right over him. He wanted to smash them for their arrogance, but didn’t dare. Two against one was bad odds, and all the occupiers in Skrunda would come after him even if he won.
Hating the Algarvians, hating himself, he went home. His father, having sewn one half of the Algarvian officer’s tunic, was muttering the charm that would finish the stitching. It wasn’t quite a straight application of the law of similarity, because the left half was a mirror image of the right. Talsu wouldn’t have wanted to try it himself; he knew he didn’t have the skill. But his father was the best tailor in Skrunda and for several towns around, not only for his handwork but also for the craft spells that meant he didn’t have to do everything by hand.
As soon as Traku spoke the final word of command, the thread he’d laid on the left side of the tunic writhed as if alive, then stitched itself through the fabric, duplicating his careful sewing on the right side. He watched anxiously, trusting even long-familiar magic less than his needlework. But everything turned out as it should have.
“That’s a nice piece of work, Father,” Talsu said, setting the oil and the garlic on the counter by the newly finished tunic.
“Aye, it is, if I say so myself,” Traku agreed. “Cursed pity I’m wasting it on the redheads.” Talsu grimaced and had to nod.
Eoforwic was like no place Vanai had ever known. Of course, she hadn’t known many places in her young life: only Oyngestun and a few visits to Gromheort. She’d thought Gromheort a great city. Next to Oyngestun, it surely was. But measured against the capital of Forthweg--the former capital of former Forthweg, she thought--Gromheort sank down to what it was: a provincial town like two dozen others in the kingdom.
Gromheort had at its heart the local count’s palace. Eoforwic had at its heart the royal palace. The palace was badly battered. Forthwegian soldiers had defended it against invading Unkerlanters, and then, less than two years later, the Unkerlanters had defended it against invading Algarvians. Even battered, though, it was far larger, far grander, and far more elegant than the count of Gromheort’s residence. And the rest of Eoforwic was in proportion to its heart.
“Aye, it’s a big place,” Ealstan said one morning, doing his resolute best not to show how impressed he was. “More chances for us not to get noticed.” His wave took in the cramped little flat they were sharing. “Like this, for instance.”
Vanai nodded. “Aye. Like this.” After the comfortable house in which she’d lived with her grandfather, the flat, in a rundown part of town, seemed especially small and especially dingy.
But living with Ealstan rather than Brivibas made a lot of difference. Her grandfather had neither known nor much cared about what she was thinking. Ealstan, by contrast, thought along with her: “I know it’s not much. I’m used to better, too. But nobody who’s not really looking hard for us would ever find us here. And the company’s good.”
She went around the rickety kitchen table and gave h
im a hug. After serving as an Algarvian officer’s plaything, she’d thought she would never want another man to touch her, let alone that she would want to touch a man herself. Finding she’d been wrong was a wonder and a delight.
Ealstan pulled her down onto his lap--which made his chair, as decrepit as the table, creak--and kissed her. Then he let her go, something Major Spinello hadn’t been in the habit of doing. “I’m off,” he said matter-of-factly. “The last fellow I worked for has a friend who’s also glad to find a bookkeeper who can count past ten without taking off his shoes.”
“He couldn’t possibly pay you what you’re worth,” Vanai said. This time, she kissed him. Why not? The door was closed, the window shuttered against late-winter chill. No one would know. No one would care.
“He’ll pay me enough to keep us eating a while longer and keep a roof over our heads,” Ealstan answered with a bleak pragmatism she found very appealing. He headed out the door as if he’d been going off to work every day for the past twenty years.
Vanai washed the breakfast dishes. She’d been doing that ever since she was able to handle plates without dropping them; her grandfather, while a splendid historical scholar, was not made for the real world. Then she went back into the bedroom and sprawled across the bed she and Ealstan shared at night.
Looking at the bare, roughly plastered wall only a couple of feet from her face made her sigh. She missed the books she’d left behind in Oyngestun. Until she met Ealstan, books were almost the only friends she’d had. She missed the books more than she missed Brivibas. That should have shamed her, but it didn’t. Her grandfather had been perfectly hateful toward her since she started giving herself to the Algarvian to get him out of the labor gang.
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