“Tell me,” she urged. “Tell me right now.”
“They’re talking about defensive battles,” Ealstan said. “Whenever they talk about defensive battles, that means they’re taking a pounding. And they’re talking about fighting in Sommerda, and Sommerda was a long way behind their line not so long ago. They think people are too stupid to look at a map to find out where these places are, but they’re wrong.”
“We can look at a map.” Vanai went and pulled an atlas from a bookshelf. “You got this for me when I had to hide here all the time.” She made a face and corrected herself: “The last time I had to hide here all the time, I mean.” She didn’t leave the flat these days. Her sorcerous disguise still worked, but for shorter and shorter—and ever less predictable—stretches of time.
Ealstan flipped the atlas open to a map of Derlavai. He started to laugh. “I didn’t realize it was this old.”
“I did,” Vanai told him. “It dates from back before the Six Years’ War.” No kingdom of Forthweg showed on the map; Algarve ruled the eastern half of the land, with Unkerlant holding the west. She went on, “This map doesn’t show where Sommerda is. Go to the one of Unkerlant.”
“All right.” Ealstan turned pages till he found it. When he did, he whistled in surprise. “Even I hadn’t realized it was that far east of the Cottbus River. Powers above, the Algarvians are in trouble if the Unkerlanters have come that far this fast.”
“Good.” Vanai wrapped her arms around her enormous belly. Surely the baby couldn’t wait more than another few days. “I hope they take back all their own kingdom. Then I hope they come into Forthweg and take it away from the Algarvians, too. I hope they do it fast. It’s the only way I can think of to have even a few Kaunians left alive here.”
Ealstan nodded. He couldn’t deny that. He had his own worries about the Unkerlanters. If they overran Forthweg, would King Penda ever return? Or would King Swemmel try to rule the kingdom as his father had in the distant days when the atlas was printed? That mattered a great deal to him. But he had to admit that Vanai’s concern was more urgent.
Kaunian-lover. In Forthweg, even before the Algarvians overran it, that had been a name with which to tar a man. Ealstan didn’t care. He reached out and touched Vanai’s hand.
She looked up, startled; she’d been studying the map hard. But she’d been thinking along with him, too, as she often did. She said, “I wonder if the Kaunians who are left will have to go on disguising themselves— ourselves—as Forthwegians. That would be the end of Kaunianity in Forthweg.”
“I know,” Ealstan said quietly. He didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t think anyone could do anything about it. He also didn’t think he could say that to Vanai. What he did say was, “Turn to the map of Jelgava. I want to see where the fighting’s moved there.”
“All right.” Vanai turned pages with what looked like relief.
“The news sheet says there’s fighting in Salacgriva, and says that’s an oceanfront town,” Ealstan said. He and Vanai bent over the map, their heads close together. “Why, those lying whoresons!” he exclaimed. “Salacgriva is more than halfway from the sea to Balvi.”
“They are in trouble,” Vanai said softly. “I’ve dreamt for so long that they would be, and now they finally are. But will anything still be standing by the time they’re finally beaten?”
That was another question with no good answer. Instead of trying to answer it, Ealstan kissed her. She smiled at him, which made him think he’d done about as well as he could do.
When he went off to work the next morning, the news-sheet vendors were yelling about the terrible price the Unkerlanters had paid for overrunning Sommerda. Ealstan smiled and walked on without buying a sheet. He could figure out what that meant: Sommerda had fallen. The news sheets were putting the best face they could on it, but they couldn’t deny the brute fact.
Pybba waited for Ealstan when he walked into the pottery. “Do you sleep in your kilns?” Ealstan asked him. As far as he could tell, Pybba was always there. He talked about having a home, but that seemed talk and nothing else.
“Only when I’m in my cups. Get it—my cups?” Pybba laughed uproariously. “Now that you’re finally here, you lazy good-for-nothing, come on into my office. We’ve got things to talk about, you and I.” He pointed with a stubby finger, much scarred from old burns, toward the door to his sanctum.
With that door slammed shut behind them, Ealstan spoke first: “Mezen-tio’s bastards really are taking it on the chin now.”
“Aye, they are,” Pybba agreed. “That’s one of the things I want to talk to you about: won’t be long, if things keep going the way they are, before we’ll be able to rise up against the redheads, throw ‘em out of Eoforwic, maybe throw ‘em out of the whole of Forthweg, too.”
Excitement blazed through Ealstan. “That would be wonderful,” he breathed. “And about time, too.”
Voice dry, the pottery magnate answered, “It does help to have the Algarvians distracted, you know. But we’ve got to rise up before the Unkerlanters do all the work for us, or else we’ll never get our own kingdom back again.”
Ealstan nodded. How not, when the same thought had gone through his mind the night before? “What can I do to help?” he breathed.
“Well, you’ve already done this and that,” Pybba allowed. “That little spell you came up with to let you look like an Algarvian and get your wife out of the Kaunian quarter—we’ve used that a couple of times, and it’s worked.”
“Good,” Ealstan said.
“The redheads are looking for Kaunians who look like Forthwegians,” Pybba said. “They aren’t looking for Forthwegians who look like them. One of their special constables, a whoreson who had to be part bloodhound by the way he sniffed out everything we did, isn’t among those present any more thanks to that little spell, and we don’t miss him one bloody bit, either.”
“Good,” Ealstan said again, this time with savage gusto.
“Aye, not so bad.” Pybba raised a shaggy eyebrow. “I almost forgive you for taking up with a Kaunian girl.”
“That’s nice.” Ealstan raised an eyebrow, too. “And I almost forgive you for just almost forgiving me.”
He’d hoped to anger Pybba. Instead, he made him laugh. “If you were as pure as you think you are …” the pottery magnate began, but then he checked himself. “Maybe you are, by the powers above. When you come down to it, that’s a scary thought. Go on, get back to work.” His voice rose to a familiar bellow. “You think I pay you for sitting around doing nothing?”
Ealstan always had plenty of work to do, even when dealing with Pybba’s legitimate business. When he added on the rest, he wondered how he ever slept at night. But he didn’t stay late, as he had so often in the dark days when Vanai was a captive in the Kaunian quarter. With her so close to her time, and with no one but him she could trust, he wanted to be there as much as he could. If Pybba didn’t like it, he would have thrown his job in the pottery magnate’s face. But Pybba hadn’t said a word.
On the way home, Ealstan walked through the park where he’d gone with Vanai just after she worked out the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian. He’d named her Thelberge there, when he’d run into Ethelhelm the drummer and singer, whose books he’d once kept. Poor Ethelhelm, he thought. Poor, cursed Ethelhelm. A man of half-Kaunian blood, the musician had been putty in the Algarvians’ hands. He’d liked his riches too well, and had got much too involved with the redheads, though he’d finally used the sorcery to escape their clutches.
I wonder why I thought of him. Maybe it was just going through the park. Maybe it was the musicians playing on the grass—although Ethelhelm wouldn’t have had much to do with the trumpeters or the viol player. The drummer, now, the drummer wasn’t bad.
The drummer, in fact, was good enough to make Ealstan pause and listen for a little while and toss some silver into the bowl the band had set in front of them. A nondescript, stocky fellow, the drummer could have made much
more money playing in clubs or even in theaters. He sounded … He sounded like someone doing an excellent impression of Ethelhelm.
After a bit, the drummer’s eyes met Ealstan’s. That wasn’t surprising; only eight or ten people were standing around listening. What was surprising was that the drummer’s eyebrows rose slightly, as if he recognized Ealstan. If he did, he had the advantage, for Ealstan was sure he’d never set eyes on the fellow before.
He’d almost got back to the block of flats when he stopped so suddenly, the woman behind him bumped into him and let out a torrent of shrill complaint. He apologized, but too absentmindedly to suit her.
Up in the flat, though, he said, “I’m sure that was Ethelhelm, sorcerously disguised to look all Forthwegian. He can hide the way he looks, but he can’t hide the way he plays the drums. And he knew who I was—I’m sure of that, too.”
“For his sake, I hope you’re wrong,” Vanai said. “You told him as much yourself: if he wants to stay safe, he has to stay away from music. If you recognized who he was, someone else will, too, and then the Algarvians will have him.”
“I know. That would be too bad.” Ealstan had had his quarrels with Ethelhelm—he’d had quarrels with most of his employers—but he wouldn’t have wished falling into Algarvian captivity on anyone, especially on anyone of even partly Kaunian blood.
Looking back on it, Vanai had trouble defining exactly when she went into labor. Her womb had been squeezing now and again throughout the last couple of months of her pregnancy. She thought that was normal, but had no one she could ask. Over the couple of days after Ealstan saw, or thought he saw, Ethelhelm, the squeezes grew stronger and came more often.
Are these labor pains? she wondered as she walked around the flat. They didn’t keep her from walking, or from doing anything she needed to do. And they didn’t hurt. How could they be pains if they didn’t hurt?
She lay down beside Ealstan, wriggled till she found the least uncomfortable position—finding a comfortable one, with her belly so enormous, was impossible these days—and fell asleep. When she woke, right around dawn, it was to the sound of a snap. She also discovered she needed to use the pot, but she couldn’t stop herself before she got there, and dribbled on the floor.
“What is it?” Ealstan asked sleepily.
“I think … my bag of waters just broke,” Vanai answered. She hoped that was what it was. If it wasn’t that, it was something worse.
“Does that mean this is it—I mean, that you’ll have the baby pretty soon?” The mattress creaked as Ealstan sat up in bed.
“I don’t know,” Vanai said irritably. The truth was, she didn’t know much more about it than he did. But it was happening to her, not to him. It hardly seemed fair. He’d been there at the beginning. Why shouldn’t he be there at the end, too? She went on, “I think—oof”
“What’s the matter?” Ealstan could hear that something was.
“Now I know… why they’re called … labor pains.” Vanai got the words out in small bunches. This time, when her womb clenched, she really felt it. Maybe the water in there had shielded her from the worst of the squeezes. Nothing was shielding her any more. She’d been looking forward to having the baby. Now, all at once, she wasn’t so sure.
“Pybba won’t get his accounts cast today,” Ealstan said. “I expect he’ll figure out why I’m not there.”
“I expect so,” Vanai agreed—once the pang eased, she could speak freely. She also seemed to have stopped dribbling. She got up off the pot and waddled back to bed. She hadn’t been there long before her womb clamped down again. She grunted. This one was stronger than the last.
“Can I get you anything?” Ealstan asked anxiously.
Vanai shook her head. “I’m going to do this till I’m done,” she said. “I can tell. It’s real now.” She wanted to laugh at herself—she made it sound as if she were going into battle. But the laughter wouldn’t come. This was a battle, and some women didn’t come back from it. She wished she hadn’t thought of that.
To keep from thinking, she got out of bed and started walking. It wasn’t so easy now, not with the pangs coming every few minutes. When the third or fourth one caught her in the middle of a step, she almost fell. That would not be a good thing to do, not now, she told herself. She stood there, waiting for the labor pain to end and her belly to ease back from rock hardness. That seemed to take a very long time. She was gasping by the time it finally happened. Moving slowly and with great care, she walked back to the bed and lay down.
“Are you all right?” Ealstan looked faintly green. But he stayed by the bed and clutched her hand, and she didn’t suppose he could do much more than that.
“I’m as well as I can be,” Vanai answered. “I don’t think I’ll do any more walking, though, thank you all the same.”
Before very long, her womb squeezed in on itself again. The baby didn’t like that, and kicked and wiggled as if in indignation. Because there was very little room in there and the walls of the womb were tight, that hurt, too, where it usually hadn’t before. Vanai hissed, which made Ealstan jump.
When the tension eased, she said, “This is all supposed to happen, I think.” Both of them had read as much as they could about what happened when a baby was born, but the Forthwegian books on the subject told less than Vanai would have liked. Back in Oyngestun, her grandfather had had classical Kaunian gynecological texts in his library, but they might as well have been a mile beyond the moon for all the good they did her now.
And the Kaunians of imperial times had known a lot less about medicine than modern folk did—even the Forthwegians whom the descendants of those Kaunians reckoned barbarians. A lot of what was in Brivibas’ texts was probably wrong.
Ealstan suddenly said, “You look like yourself again, not like a Forthwegian.”
Vanai started to laugh again, only to break off in the middle when another pang hit. She started to say something in spite of the labor pain, only to discover she couldn’t. What her body was doing took charge now, and her mind had to wait till her body gave it leave to work once more. In the time between pains, she said, “That’s the least of my worries.” Sweat ran down her face; her hair, newly re-dyed black, felt wet and matted. She might have been running for hours. People called giving birth labor for a reason, too.
And it went on and on. The pangs came closer together, and each one seemed a little stronger, a little more painful, than the one just before. After what felt like forever, Vanai asked, “What time is it?”
“Midmorning,” Ealstan answered.
She almost shouted that he had to be lying to her, that it had to be mid-afternoon at the very least. But when she looked at the light through the windows, she realized he was right. In a small voice, she asked, “Would you get me a little wine?”
He frowned. “Should you have it?”
“I don’t know,” she answered. “I don’t think I’ll puke it up if I drink it, and my mouth is dry as the Zuwayzi desert right now.”
“All right.” Ealstan brought it to her. He also brought in a wide-mouthed basin in case she proved mistaken. But the sweet red wine went down smoothly and stayed down, and she felt better for it. Her mouth no longer seemed caked with dust.
Another eternity that might have been an hour or two dragged by. Ealstan stayed by the side of the bed, squeezing her hand, running a cool, damp cloth over her forehead and neck every so often, occasionally holding up the wine-cup so she could take another sip. She was glad to have him there, gladder than she would have been to have a midwife, even if a midwife knew more.
And then, all at once, she wasn’t. “You—you—you man, you!” she said furiously, in between two pangs that hardly left her room to breathe, let alone talk. “If it weren’t for you and your lousy prick, I wouldn’t be in this mess now.”
Ealstan looked stricken. After a moment, though, his face cleared. “One of the books said that when you started calling me names, it was a sign the baby would come soon,” he told her.
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Vanai called him more names then, all the names she could think of, in both Forthwegian and classical Kaunian. She hated to stop when the next labor pang took her, but had very little choice; just breathing through it was quite hard enough. But she resumed when it finally ebbed.
After a few more pangs, she felt the urge to use the pot again, as if her bowels badly needed to move. When she said so—her sudden storm of anger against Ealstan had passed away as fast as it blew up—he answered, “That means you’re ready to push the baby out.”
That wasn’t what it felt like. It felt as if she were straining to pass a stool the size of a football. She’d heard that a couple of times, from women talking back in Oyngestun before the war. She hadn’t imagined it could be true—how could having a baby be so crude? Now she found out for herself.
But, no matter how hard she bore down, the baby didn’t seem to want to move. “I’m trying to shit a boulder,” she panted as Ealstan ran that cloth across her face. “I’m trying to, but it’s stuck.”
“Keep trying,” he said. “It’s what you’re supposed to do.”
She had very little choice. Her body kept straining to force out the baby. It would have kept on doing that whether she wanted it to or not. The most she could do was concentrate, take a deep breath, and try to help it along. She pushed with all her might—and this time felt movement. That made her push harder than ever. She let out a noise half squeal, half groan, and all effort.
“Oh, by the powers above,” Ealstan said softly. “Here comes the head.” He let out a startled squawk. “No—here comes the baby.”
Once Vanai had pushed out the head, everything else was easy. That was the hard part, both figuratively and literally. Shoulders, torso, and legs followed in short order. So did the afterbirth. Ealstan made gulping noises. “You’ll have to throw away these sheets,” Vanai said, before asking the question she should have asked first: “Is it a boy or a girl?”
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