Rulers of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  Cornelu knew he wasn’t going to get much of an answer, but he did want some. “Why on earth did they have my leviathan bring you two large egg casings filled with sawdust?”

  “No trees around these parts,” Leino replied as the rowboat ran aground on a pebbly beach. “Hard to get a ship through all these icebergs. A leviathan can carry more than a dragon. And so—here you are.”

  “Here I am,” Cornelu agreed in hollow tones. “Here I may stay, too, unless you get me back to my leviathan before it swims off after food.”

  “No worry there.” Leino scrambled out of the boat. “We have a good binding spell on the sea hereabouts. You are not the first leviathan-rider to come here, but not a one of them has been stranded.”

  “Fair enough.” Cornelu got out of the boat, too. With rubber flippers still on his feet, he was as awkward as a duck on land. He persisted: “Why sawdust?”

  “Why, to mix with the ice, of course,” Leino replied, as if that were the most obvious thing in the world. “We have plenty of ice here.”

  Cornelu gave up. He might hope for a straight answer, but he could tell he wasn’t going to get one. He asked a different sort of question: “How do you keep yourselves fed?”

  Leino seemed willing enough to answer that. “We buy reindeer and camel meat from the Ice People.” His flat, swarthy features twisted into a horrible grimace. “Camel meat is pretty bad, but at least the camel it comes from is dead. Live camels—believe me, Commander, you do not want to know about live camels. And we blaze seals and sea birds every now and then. They are not very good, either. To keep us from dying of scurvy, the Lagoans are generous enough to send us plenty of pickled cabbage.” By his expression, he also didn’t care for that.

  “Cranberries fight scurvy, too,” Cornelu said. “Do cranberries grow on this part of the austral continent?”

  “Nothing has grown on this part of the austral continent since I got here,” Leino replied. He looked around at the green sprouting up here and there. “I must admit, I cannot be quite so sure about what will grow now. See? Even these sorry things yield up a crop.”

  He pointed to the shelters, from which emerged a couple of dozen other mages. Most were easy to type as either Kuusamans or Lagoans, but six or eight could have been either and were in fact partly both. Such untidiness bothered Cornelu. In Sibiu, everyone was recognizably Sibian. He shrugged. He couldn’t do anything about it here.

  Whatever their blood, the mages were friendly. They gave Cornelu smoked meat and sour cabbage and potent spirits Leino hadn’t mentioned. Some of them spoke Algarvian, in which he was more fluent than classical Kaunian. Waving a slice of meat, he said, “This stuff isn’t so bad. It’s got a flavor all its own.”

  “That’s one way to put it,” said a mage who looked like a Kuusaman but spoke Lagoan when he wasn’t using Algarvian or classical Kaunian. “And do you know why it’s got that flavor? Because it was smoked over burning camel dung, that’s why.”

  “You’re joking.” But Cornelu saw that the wizard wasn’t. He set down the meat and took a big swig of spirits. Once he had the spirits in his mouth, he swished them around before swallowing, as if cleaning his teeth. In fact, that was exactly what he was doing.

  The mage laughed. “You’ve got to get used to eating things cooked with it if you’re going to try and live in the land of the Ice People. There isn’t much in the way of wood here. If there were, would you be bringing sawdust from Lagoas?”

  “You never can tell,” Cornelu answered, which made the mage laugh again.

  “Well, maybe not,” the fellow said. “Some of those blockheads in Setubal ought to be ground up for sawdust themselves, if anybody wants to know what I think.”

  Cornelu tried again: “Now that you have all this sawdust, what will you do with it?”

  “Mix it with ice,” the Lagoan mage answered, as Leino had. “We’re trying to make cold drinks for termites, you see.”

  “Thank you so very much,” the Sibian exile said. All that got him was still more laughter from the wizard.

  “Are you feeling refreshed after your long journey here?” Leino asked in classical Kaunian. When Cornelu admitted he was, the Kuusaman mage asked, “Then you will not mind if I row you out to sea again so you can summon your leviathan and so we can bring these casings full of sawdust to the shore?”

  Whatever the mages wanted to do with the sawdust, they were eager to get at it. With a sigh, Cornelu got to his feet again. “After tasting the delicacies of the countryside here, I suppose I can,” he answered. The sooner he left the land of the Ice People and its delicacies, the happier he would be. He didn’t say anything about that. The mages who were stuck down here at the bottom of the world couldn’t leave no matter how much they wanted to.

  Leino handled the oars with ease a fisherman might have envied. As he rowed, he asked, “When you go back to Setubal, Commander, you will take letters with you?”

  “Aye, if you and your comrades give them to me,” Comelu answered.

  “We will.” The Kuusaman sighed. “The cursed censors will probably have to use their black ink and knives on them. They have taken too many bites out of the letters my wife sends to me.”

  “I can do nothing about that.” Cornelu’s wife didn’t write him letters. The most he could say about her was that she hadn’t betrayed him to the Algarvians even after she started giving herself to them. It wasn’t enough. It wasn’t nearly enough.

  Leino let the rowboat drift to a stop. “This was about where I picked you up, was it not?”

  “I think so, aye.” Cornelu leaned out over the gunwale and slapped the water in the pattern that would summon his leviathan if it was anywhere close by. He waited a couple of minutes, then slapped again.

  He got only a brief glimpse of the leviathan’s sinuously muscled shape before its snout broke the surface by the boat and sent water splashing up onto the two men in it. Still in his rubber suit, Cornelu didn’t mind. Leino spluttered and said something in Kuusaman that sounded pungent before returning to classical Kaunian: “I think the beast did that on purpose.”

  “I would not be a bit surprised if you were right,” Cornelu answered. “Leviathans seem to think people were made for their amusement.” He slid down into the sea and swam over to the leviathan. After patting it and praising it for coming, he undid the egg casings it carried under its belly and brought the two ropes over to Leino. “The cases are of neutral buoyancy,” he said as he got back into the boat. “They will not pull you under.” Leino made the ropes fast to the stern of the boat.

  When the Kuusaman mage started to row again, he grunted. “They may not sink me, but they are not light. The shore looks a good deal farther away than it did when you were here before.”

  “I gather you and your colleagues wanted a good deal of sawdust,” Cornelu replied. “I still do not understand why you wanted it, but you did, and now you have it. I hope you use it to confound Algarve.”

  “With the help of the powers above, I think we may be able to oblige you.” Leino took another stroke and grunted again. “Assuming my arms do not fall out of their sockets between here and the beach, that is.”

  “Would the work not go on either way?” Cornelu asked, as innocently as he could.

  Leino started to say something—perhaps something sharp—then checked himself and chuckled. “Commander, you are more dangerous than you look.”

  Cornelu courteously inclined his head. “I hope so.”

  Nine

  Tears ran down Vanai’s face. She’d just finished chopping up a particularly potent onion when someone knocked on the door to the flat. As she hurried out of the kitchen, whoever it was knocked again, louder and more insistently. Fear blazed through her. This wasn’t just a knock. This was liable to be the knock, the one she’d dreaded ever since coming to Eoforwic.

  “Opening up!” The call came in Algarvian-accented Forthwegian. “Opening up or breaking down, by powers above!”

  Vanai wondered if she
ought to leap out the window and hope she could end everything quickly. The redheads wouldn’t get the use of her life energy that way, anyhow. But she’d just renewed the spell that disguised her Kaunianity—and she was carrying a child. If that wasn’t an expression of hope, what was?

  She unbarred the door and worked the latch. The kilted Algarvian in the hall had his fist upraised to knock again. A couple of burly Forthwegian constables flanked him like bookends. He looked Vanai up and down, then said, “You are being Thelberge, wife to Ealstan?”

  “Aye. That’s right.” More hope flowered in Vanai. If the Algarvian called her by her Forthwegian name, he probably wasn’t going to seize her for being a Kaunian. Gathering courage, she asked, “What do you want?”

  “Your husband is keeping books for Ethelhelm, the singing and drumming man?”

  Ah. Vanai wouldn’t let her knees shake with relief. If that was why the redhead was here, she could even tell the truth. “Ealstan did keep books for Ethelhelm, aye. But Ethelhelm hasn’t been his client since late winter.”

  “But Ealstan is going—was going—to seeing Ethelhelm only a few days ago.”

  It wasn’t a question. Maybe the Algarvian had talked to the doorman at Ethelhelm’s block of flats. Again, Vanai could tell the truth, and did: “Ethelhelm did send Ealstan a note asking him to visit. But when he went to Ethelhelm’s block of flats, he found Ethelhelm had left the building.”

  “He is knowing where the singing and drumming man is going—has going?”

  “No,” Vanai said. “He was surprised when he found Ethelhelm had gone. From what he told me, everyone was surprised when Ethelhelm left.”

  “That’s the truth,” one of the Forthwegian constables muttered.

  “You husband Ealstan not hearing from Ethelhelm since?” the Algarvian asked.

  “No,” Vanai repeated. “He doesn’t want to hear from him, either. They’d fallen out. I don’t know what Ethelhelm wanted with him, and I don’t want to find out, either.” That was also true. She recognized how craven it was, but she didn’t care. She only wanted that Algarvian to go away, and to take his Forthwegian henchmen with him.

  And she got what she wanted. The redhead swept off his hat and bowed to her. “All right, pretty lady. We going. You seeing this Ethelhelm item, you hearing him, you telling us. We wanting him. Oh, aye. We wanting him. You telling?”

  “Of course,” Vanai answered: a lie, this time. The Algarvian and the two Forthwegians tramped down the hall to the odorous stairwell. Vanai stood in the doorway and watched till they disappeared. Then she shut the door, leaned against it, and slid halfway to the ground as her knees did weaken with relief.

  As she put the bar back on the door, she realized what a narrow escape that had been. Ealstan and Ethelhelm might have fallen out at any time. If they had, and if Ethelhelm had disappeared not long afterwards, Mezentio’s men would have come around asking questions. If they’d done it while she still looked like the Kaunian she was …

  She went back to the onion and threw it in the stew pot. It still stung her eyes, but she didn’t feel like crying anymore, not after she’d had her disguise tested and she’d won through to safety.

  When Ealstan got back that evening, she told him about her adventure. He held her and squeezed her and didn’t say anything for a long time. Then he set the palm of his hand on her belly and murmured, “You are all right You are both all right.”

  Vanai needed a moment to realize he’d spoken Kaunian. She smiled and snuggled against him. Speaking Forthwegian had always seemed safer, and more and more lately. It wasn’t that Ealstan was more at home in it than in Kaunian; that had always been true. But when Vanai wore Thelberge’s seeming, she put on all the trappings that went with being Thelberge, including her language.

  As he had when she told him she would have a baby, he went into the kitchen and came back with two cups of wine. “To freedom!” he said, also in classical Kaunian, and she happily drank to that.

  He probably assumed they would make love after supper. Vanai assumed the same thing; they’d spent a lot of evenings doing that, both back in the days before she could leave the flat and afterwards. Her own left hand went to her belly as she spooned up more bean-and-barley soup with grated cheese and a couple of marrow bones. If they hadn’t, she wouldn’t have had a baby growing in there. She yawned. She wouldn’t have been so tired all the time, either.

  When they were done eating, she went out to the sofa and lay down. The next thing she knew, Ealstan was shaking her awake. “Come on,” he said. “Time and past time to go on into the bedchamber. I’ve washed the dishes and put them away.”

  “You have?” Vanai said, astonished. “Why? What time is it?”

  By way of answer, Ealstan pointed to their windows, which faced toward the southwest. They framed the first-quarter moon, now sinking down toward the horizon. He spelled out what that meant: “Getting on toward midnight.”

  “But it can’t be!” Vanai exclaimed, as if he’d somehow tricked her, cheated her. “I just came out here to rest for a few minutes, and—”

  “And you started to snore,” Ealstan said. “I wasn’t going to bother you, but I didn’t think you’d want to spend the whole night here.”

  “Oh.” Now Vanai sounded sheepish. “It caught me again.” She yawned again, too. “Am I going to stay asleep till the baby’s born?”

  Ealstan grinned at her. “Maybe you ought to hope you will. I don’t know much about what women do while they’re expecting, but you were the one who said you wouldn’t get much sleep after the baby’s here.”

  That was indeed all too likely to be true. Vanai got up, cleaned her teeth, changed into a light linen tunic, and lay down in bed beside Ealstan. He went to sleep right away. She tossed and turned for a while. She was used to sleeping on her belly, but her breasts were too tender for that to be comfortable. She curled up on her side and …

  It was morning. She rolled over. Ealstan wasn’t there. Noise from the kitchen told where he’d gone. She went out there herself. He was dipping bread into olive oil and sipping from a cup of wine. “Hello, there,” he said cheerfully, and got up and gave her a quick kiss. “Shall I fix you some?”

  “Would you, please?” Vanai laughed a small, nervous laugh. “I didn’t have any trouble keeping supper down. Let’s hope I do all right with this, too.”

  “You haven’t been too bad that way,” Ealstan said, cutting her a chunk of bread, adding oil to the dipping bowl, and pouring wine.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Vanai answered. Some women, she’d heard, got morning sickness right away and kept on having it till their babies were born. She didn’t know how long she’d keep having hers, of course, but she didn’t have it all the time. Ealstan was right about that. Even a couple of meals disastrously lost, though, were plenty to make her wary about food.

  This morning, everything seemed willing to stay down. She’d almost finished when Ealstan said, “Your spell just slipped.”

  “Did it?” Vanai raised a hand to her face. That was foolish; she couldn’t feel any change in her looks, any more than she could see one.

  Ealstan reached across the table and stroked her cheek, too. “Aye, it did,” he answered, eyeing her. “That’s the face I fell in love with, you know.”

  “You’re sweet,” Vanai said. “It’s also the face that could ruin everything if anybody but you saw it.” She got the yellow and dark brown lengths of yarn out of her handbag, twisted them together, and chanted in classical Kaunian: one use for her own first language that would not go away. When she finished, she looked a question to Ealstan.

  He nodded. “Now you look like my sister again.”

  “I wish you’d stop saying that,” Vanai told him. It was the wrong sort of family connection to have, especially now that she was pregnant.

  “I’m sorry.” Ealstan finished his wine. “If this cursed war ever ends, if you and Conberge ever get the chance to meet, I think you’ll like each other.”

>   “I hope so,” Vanai said. She hoped with all her heart that his family would like her; so far as she knew, none of her own family was left alive. After a moment, she went on, “The one I truly want to meet is your father. He made you what you are. That first time we met in the woods, you said, ‘Kaunians are people, too,’ and that he’d taught you that. If more Forthwegians thought that way, I wouldn’t have to worry about my magecraft.”

  “I know he’ll like you,” Ealstan told her. “He’s bound to like you. You’re difficult.”

  “Am I?” Vanai wasn’t sure how to take that. It sounded as if it wanted to be a compliment.

  Ealstan nodded. “Don’t you suppose the Algarvians think you’re difficult?”

  “I never even learned that apothecary’s name,” Vanai said. It didn’t sound like a responsive answer, but it was. Mezentio’s hounds had been one man away from learning who’d devised the magic that let Kaunians look like their Forthwegian neighbors. If the apothecary hadn’t had a lethal dose ready to hand, they might have torn the knowledge out of him. She wondered what they would do to someone who’d caused them so much trouble. She shivered. She was glad she didn’t have to find out.

  Ealstan poured his cup half full of wine once more, gulped it down, and said, “I’m off. I’ve got a couple of people whose accounts need casting, and another fellow, a friend of one of theirs, might want to take me on, at least to give his regular bookkeeper a hand. Pybba heads up one of the biggest pottery outfits in town, which means one of the biggest ones in the kingdom. He’d pay well. He’d better, or I won’t work for him.”

  “Good,” Vanai said. “I approve of money.”

  “Aye, my father would like you—will like you—just fine,” Ealstan said. “That you’re mother to his grandchild won’t hurt, either.” He got up and brushed her lips with his. She tasted the wine on them.

  She stood, too, to give him a quick hug. “I’ll do what I can around the house,” she said. “And what I can’t …” She shrugged and yawned. “I’ll curl up like a dormouse and sleep the day away.”