“Good.” The instructor smiled. “I told him I thought you were diligent. I see I am right. His name is Valamo. His shop is near the center of town, not far from the hostel called the Principality. Here-let me draw you a map.” She did, quickly and competently. “Where are you staying now?” she asked. When Talsu told her, she nodded. “I thought you dwelt in that district. There is a ley-line route that will take you close to the shop. Valamo says he would like you to be there by an hour after sunrise.”
This far south, the sun rose very early in the summertime: one more thing Talsu was getting used to. Even so, he nodded. “I will.”
And he did, though he missed the caravan stop closest to the tailor’s shop and had to get out at the next one and then go running back up the street. People stared at him. He didn’t care. He didn’t want to be late, not on his first day.
“Greetings. You must be Talsu,” Valamo said in classical Kaunian when he came in out of breath and sweaty. The tailor wasn’t young. Past that, Talsu had trouble guessing. Kuusamans seemed to show their years less than his own countrymen did.
“Aye, sir,” Talsu answered in the same tongue. “Thank you for taking me in. I shall work hard for you. I promise it.”
“Good. Glad to hear it.” Despite a Kuusaman accent, Valamo was more fluent in the old language than Talsu was himself. Talsu found that distressing, as he had with other Kuusamans who knew more classical Kaunian than he did. Valamo said, “Come here behind the counter, and I will show you what wants doing.”
The first jobs he gave Talsu were simple repairs. Talsu handled some of them with no more than needle and thread, others with the craft tricks that were sorcery but hardly seemed like it. Before long, he was done. “Here you are,” he told Valamo.
“Thank you.” His new boss was polite enough, but inspected the work with a knowing eye before nodding. “Good. You have some notion of what you are doing. One can never tell beforehand, you understand. I speak without intending to cause offense.”
“Of course,” Talsu said. “What else have you for me to do?”
“I have the pieces of an outfit here,” Valamo said. “Join them together, if you would be so kind.”
“Of course,” Talsu said again. He examined the pieces, got needle and thread to sew small parts of them together, and then used the sorcery an Algarvian mage had taught his father to finish the joining. All told, it took about an hour. He brought Valamo the finished garment.
This time, the Kuusaman tailor gave him a very odd look. “How did you get done so fast?” he asked. “Did you use one of those basting spells that will not last?”
“No,” Talsu answered. “Judge for yourself.”
Valamo poked and prodded at the tunic and leggings. He examined the stitchery, not only with his bare eyes but with a jeweler’s loupe and with spells. At last, he said, “This looks to be good work. But how did you do it so well so quickly?”
Talsu explained, finishing, “I shall be glad to teach you the charm.”
“You have earned your pay, by the powers above,” Valamo exclaimed. “You have more than earned it. Please do teach me that spell. Before long, I am sure you will use it in a place of your own.”
“A place of my own,” Talsu echoed dreamily. Could he ever find such a thing in this foreign land? Slowly, he nodded to himself. Maybe I can.
Ealstan looked at his father. “Aye, of course I’ll help you with this business,” he said. “I have my doubts you really need any help from me, though.”
“Well, that depends,” Hestan answered. “Two can often do a job quicker than one. I suppose I could manage it myself, but I know for a fact it would take me longer. And the town officials have said they’d pay for an assistant. I’m hoping you recall that nine comes after eight and not the other way round.”
“I still have some notion of how to cast accounts,” Ealstan agreed. “I made a living at it in Eoforwic. You taught me well, Father-I knew more than most of the men who’d been bookkeepers for years.”
That teased out one of his father’s rare, slow smiles. “You make me proud of myself,” Hestan said, “and that’s a dangerous thing in any man.”
“Why is being proud of what you’re good at dangerous?” Ealstan asked. “Most ways, Eoforwic makes Gromheort look like a provincial town, and-”
“It is,” his father broke in.
“But you would have made any of the bookkeepers there ashamed to call himself by the name,” Ealstan went on, as if the older man hadn’t spoken. “You could have gone there and got rich, Father. It makes me wonder why you stayed here.”
“Don’t forget, up till about the time I was your age, Gromheort was in Algarve and Eoforwic was in Unkerlant,” Hestan replied. “Forthweg didn’t get its freedom back till after the Six Years’ War. And then, not much later, I married your mother and settled down. And I never truly wanted to be what you’d call rich. Enough is enough. Too much?” He made a face. “If you go after money for the sake of money instead of for the sake of being comfortable, it has you-you don’t have it any more.”
“I’m not so sure I believe that,” Ealstan said.
Hestan smiled again, at least with half his mouth. “I’m sure I didn’t, not at your age. And you asked why being proud of what you’re good at is dangerous? I’ll tell you why: it can make you proud of yourself in general, and it can make you think you’re good at things you’re not.”
Ealstan considered, then nodded. If that wasn’t his careful, cautious father, he didn’t know what was. Using a cane, Ealstan got to his feet. “Well, I already told you: if you want me to come along, I will. And if our city fathers want to know where every last copper in the rebuilding of Gromheort is going, I’ll help you tell them.”
“Good,” Hestan said. “Truth to tell, I don’t think the city fathers care so much. Baron Brorda never did, back before the war, and things haven’t changed a great deal since. But the Unkerlanters want to know what everything is worth. Efficiency, you know.” In a different tone of voice, that would have been praise.
As Ealstan and his father walked toward the door, Saxburh toddled down the hall toward them. “Dada!” she said. She called Ealstan that with much more conviction these days than she’d shown when she first came to Gromheort. He picked her up, gave her a kiss, and then jerked his head back in a hurry so she couldn’t grab a couple of handfuls of beard and yank. She looked over at Hestan. She had a name for him too now: “Pop!”
“Hello, sweetheart.” Ealstan’s father kissed her, too. This time, Hestan’s smile was broad and rather sappy. He took to being a grandfather with great relish.
When Vanai came around the corner, Ealstan was glad enough to put Saxburh down. Handling her and the cane was awkward, and her weight put extra strain on his bad leg. “Mama!” Saxburh squealed, and dashed for Vanai as fast as her legs would take her. As far as the baby was concerned, Vanai was the center of the universe, and everyone and everything else-Ealstan included-only details.
“Out and about?” Vanai asked as she bent to scoop up Saxburh.
“Bookkeeping,” Ealstan answered.
“Ah,” she said. “Good. We can use the money. Your parents are wonderfully generous, but. ” She didn’t know what to make of generous parents-or of any parents, come to that. Ealstan didn’t care to think about what being raised by Brivibas would have been like.
Hestan switched to classical Kaunian: “You make it sound as if you were a burden. How long will it be before you understand that is not so?”
“You are very kind, sir,” Vanai replied in the same language, which meant she didn’t believe him for a moment.
Ealstan’s father understood the meaning behind the meaning, too. He let out a slightly exasperated snort. “Come on, son,” he said. “Maybe you can talk some sense into her when we get home.”
“Oh, I doubt it,” Ealstan answered. “After all, she married me, so how much sense is she likely to have?”
Now Vanai snorted. “A point,” Hestan said. �
�A distinct point. That speaks well for your sense, but not for hers.”
Although Ealstan laughed at that, Vanai didn’t. “How can you say such a thing?” she demanded. “If he wasn’t mad to marry a Kaunian in the middle of the war, what would you call madness?”
“I knew what I was doing,” Ealstan insisted.
“You can argue about that later, too,” his father said. “Come on.”
Gromheort still looked like a city that had undergone a siege and a sack. Streets were largely free of rubble, but blocks had houses missing and practically every house still standing had a chunk bitten out of it. People on the street were still thinner than they should have been, too, though not so thin as when Ealstan fought his way into the city.
Some of the men weren’t undernourished at all: Unkerlanter soldiers doing constable’s duty, as Algarvian soldiers had before them. “When do we get to be our own kingdom again?” Ealstan asked, after walking past a couple of them.
“Things could be worse,” his father answered. “As I told you back at the house, when I grew up we weren’t our own kingdom. Swemmel could have annexed us instead of giving us a puppet king like Beornwulf. I feared he would.”
“Penda’s still my king,” Ealstan said, but he pitched his voice so no one but Hestan could hear him.
“Penda was no great bargain, either,” Hestan said, also softly. “He led us into a losing war, remember, and more than five years of occupation.”
“But he was ours,” Ealstan said.
Hestan’s laugh held both amusement and pain. “Spoken like a Forthwegian, son.”
A labor gang trudged past, its men carrying shouldered shovels and picks and crowbars as if they were sticks. They had reason to walk like soldiers: most of them were Algarvians in tattered uniforms. The men herding them along had smooth faces and wore rock-gray tunics, which meant they came from Unkerlant.
Ealstan eyed the few Forthwegians in the labor gang. “I keep wondering if I’ll see Sidroc one of these days,” he said.
His father’s face hardened. “I hope not. I hope he’s dead. If he happens not to be dead and I do see him, I’ll do my best to make sure he gets that way.”
Each word might have been carved from stone. Ealstan needed a heartbeat to remember why his father sounded as he did. He’d already fled to Eoforwic himself when Sidroc killed Leofsig. He knew it had happened, but it didn’t seem real to him. His memories of his cousin went back further, to school days and squabbles no more serious than those between a couple of puppies. Hestan, though, had watched Leofsig die. Recalling that, Ealstan understood every bit of his father’s fury.
The gang went by. On the sidewalk coming toward Ealstan and his father was Hestan’s brother, Hengist. He saw the two of them and deliberately turned away. Ealstan’s father muttered something under his breath. “Him, too?” Ealstan asked in dismay-he hadn’t seen, or looked for, Uncle Hengist since returning to Gromheort.
“Him, too,” Hestan said gravely. “When he finally found out from dear Sidroc some of the reasons why you’d run away, he tried to turn me in to the Algarvians.”
“Powers below eat him!” Ealstan exclaimed, and then, “Tried to turn you in to the redheads?”
His father chuckled, a noise full of cynicism. “One thing my dear, unloving brother forgot was how much the Algarvians enjoy taking bribes. I paid my way out of it, the same as I paid Mezentio’s men to look the other way when Leofsig broke out of their captives’ camp and came home. Saving my own neck cost me less, because I only had to pay off a couple of constables. Still, it’s the thought that counts, eh?”
“The thought that counts?” Ealstan echoed. “He wanted you dead!” His father nodded. After a couple of angry steps, Ealstan said, “You ought to denounce him to the Unkerlanters. That would pay him back in his own coin.”
“First you talk like a Forthwegian, and then you talk like a bookkeeper,” Hestan said. “Anyone would think you were my own son.” He stooped, picked up a quarter of a brick, and tossed it up and down, up and down. “Don’t think I haven’t thought about it. I remember everything he did to me, and everything Sidroc did to the whole family, and I want vengeance so much I can taste it. But then I remember he’s my brother, too, in spite of everything. I don’t need revenge that badly.”
“I’d take it.” Ealstan’s voice was fierce and hot.
“For my sake, let it go,” his father said. “If Hengist ever causes us more trouble, then aye, go ahead. But I don’t think he will. He knows we could tell the Unkerlanters about Sidroc. That would make Hengist a traitor, too, if I rightly read some of these new laws King Beornwulf has put forth. How’s your leg holding up?”
“Not bad,” Ealstan answered. He didn’t push his father any more about Sidroc or Uncle Hengist; Hestan wouldn’t have changed the subject like that unless he didn’t want to talk about them at all.
A couple of minutes later, Hestan said, “Here we are. If I remember rightly, the Algarvians used this place for one of their field hospitals. The Unkerlanters did try not to toss eggs at those on purpose, which is probably why it’s still standing.”
Ealstan recognized a couple of the men waiting for them inside the red brick building. The place kept the smell of a field hospital, even now: pus and ordure warring with strong soap and the tingling scents of various decoctions. It must have soaked into the bricks.
One of the men he didn’t know spoke to Hestan: “So this is your boy, eh? Chip off the old block. If he’s as good with numbers as you are, or even half as good, we’ll be well served.”
“He manages just fine,” Hestan answered. He introduced Ealstan to the men, saying, “If it weren’t for this crowd, a lot less of Gromheort would be standing today.”
“Pleased to meet you all,” Ealstan said. “I spent a good deal of the time outside of town, trying to knock things flat.”
“Boy does a good job at everything he sets his hand to, doesn’t he?” Hestan said. Several of the powerful men in Gromheort laughed.
“Let’s see what the two of you can do when you set a hand to our books here,” said the one who’d spoken before-his name was Osferth. He pointed to the two ledgers, which sat side by side on a table at the back of the hall. “Got to keep King Swemmel’s inspectors happy, you know, if such a thing is possible.”
Ealstan’s father sat down in front of one, Ealstan himself in front of the other. He sighed with relief as the weight came off his wounded leg. The two bookkeepers bent over the ledgers and got to work.
As far as Colonel Lurcanio could tell, the Valmierans didn’t know much about interrogation and were doing their level best to forget everything they could about what had happened to their kingdom while the Algarvians occupied it. The officer posturing at him now was a case in point.
“No,” Lurcanio said with such patience as he could muster. “I did not rape Marchioness Krasta. I had no need to rape her. She gave herself to me of her own free will.”
“Suppose I tell you the marchioness herself has given you the lie?” the officer thundered, as if trying to impress a panel of judges.
“Suppose you do?” Lurcanio said mildly. “I would say-I do say-she is lying.”
“And why should we prefer your word to hers?” the Valmieran demanded. “You have more to gain by lying than she does.”
“If you care about the truth there, you might really try to find it,” Lurcanio said. “You could ask Viscount Valnu what he knows, for instance.”
As he’d hoped it would, that knocked the interrogator back on his heels. Valnu was a hero of the underground, so his word carried weight. And Lurcanio’s guess was that he, unlike Krasta, wouldn’t lie for the fun of it. Also, interrogating someone else meant the Algarvians might not try to question Lurcanio himself under torture or under sorcery. He hadn’t raped Krasta, but they might find plenty of other things for which to put a rope around his neck.
The officer said, “Viscount Valnu cannot know the truth.”
“Indeed,” Lurcanio ag
reed. “Only Krasta and I can know the truth. But Valnu will know what Krasta said to him about what we did, and I have no doubt she said a great deal: getting her to stop talking has always been much harder than getting her to start.”
“When will you give over your slanders of the decent citizens of Valmiera?” the officer demanded indignantly.
“For one thing, truth is always a defense against a charge of slander,” replied Lurcanio, who feared other charges awaited against which he had no defense. But he intended to make his captors squirm as long as he could, and so went on, “As for dear Krasta, considering some of the things we did, I am not altogether sure she is one of your precious ‘decent citizens of Valmiera.’ Still, I will tell you she enjoyed them all, whether decent or not.”
“How dare you say such things?” the Valmieran officer gabbled.
Lurcanio hid a smile. He didn’t play by the rules the victors thought they’d set up. He didn’t act afraid, and he wasn’t apologetic. That confused the blonds. As long as they were confused, as long as they had trouble deciding what to do about-and to-him, he wasn’t too bad off. If they did decide. . “How dare she say such things about me?” he returned, sounding as indignant as he could. “I, at least, am telling the truth, which she certainly is not.”
“You were her lover at the same time as you were trying to hunt down and kill her brother, the illustrious Marquis Skarnu,” the officer said, as if he’d scored a point.
“Well, what if I was?” Lurcanio answered. “That may have been in poor taste, but you will have precious few men left in a kingdom if you set about killing everyone guilty of poor taste. And Skarnu was in arms against my kingdom, as he himself would be the first to tell you. He was, in fact, in arms against my kingdom after King Gainibu surrendered. What do you people do to Algarvians captured in arms against your occupying armies? Nothing pretty, and you know it as well as I.”
“That has nothing to do with what you tried to do to Skarnu,” the Valmieran said.
“Of course it does, you foolish little man,” Lurcanio said. “If you are too dense to see it, I hope they take you away and give me an interrogator with the sense to understand plain speech in his own language.” That was the last thing he wanted, but the officer didn’t need to know it.
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