Her spell had slipped again by the time she woke the next morning. She hastily repaired it while Ealstan ate barley porridge and gulped a morning cup of wine. As it had the night before, his smile reassured her. She could cast the spell with no one checking her, but she'd find out the hard way if she made a mistake.
Ealstan gave her an absentminded kiss and hurried out the door. By the way he hurried, Vanai was sure he was heading to Pybba's pottery works, though he didn't say so. She shook her head. She'd done everything she could to keep him safe. He would have to do something for himself, too.
She also had to go out, to the market square. While she'd kept her Kaunian looks, Ealstan had done the shopping. Getting out of the flat still seemed a miracle: so much so that she didn't mind lugging food back. Beans? Olives? Cabbages? So what? Just the chance to be out on the streets of Eoforwic, to see more than she could from her grimy window, made up for the work she had to do.
The apothecary's shop where she'd almost been caught out as a Kaunian, where the proprietor had killed himself rather than letting the Algarvians try to torment answers out of him, was open again. UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP, a sign in one window said. NEW LOWER PRICES, cried another sign, a bigger one, in the other window. I might get medicines there, Vanai thought. I'd never trust this new owner, whoever he is, with anything more. He might be in the redheads' belt pouch.
For all she knew, the new owner might be a relative of the dead apothecary. She still wouldn't trust him, and he still might be in the Algarvians' pay.
She didn't trust the butcher, either, but for different reasons: suspicion that he called mutton lamb, that he put grain in his sausages when he swore he didn't, that his scales worked in his favor. Writers had complained about such tricks in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Brivibas, no doubt, could have cited half a dozen examples, with appropriate citations. Vanai bit her lip. Her grandfather wouldn't be citing any more classical authors. Half the distress she felt was at not feeling more distress now that he was dead.
Marrow bones would flavor soup. The butcher said they were beef. They might have been horse or donkey. Vanai couldn't have proved otherwise; there, for once, the lie, if it was one, was reassuring. The gizzards he sold her probably did come from chickens-they were too big to belong to crows or pigeons. "I wouldn't have had 'em by this afternoon," he told her.
"I know that," she answered, and took them away.
When she got out on the street, people were nudging one another and pointing. "Look at him," somebody said. "Who does he think he is?" somebody else, a woman, added. "What does he think he is?" another woman said.
Vanai didn't want to look. She was too afraid of what she'd see: a Kaunian whose magic had run out, most likely. If the fellow had dyed hair, he wouldn't look exactly like a Kaunian, but he wouldn't look like a Forthwegian, either. Before long, the cry for Algarvian constables would go up.
Horrid fascination didn't take long to turn Vanai's eyes in the direction of the pointing fingers. The man at whom people were pointing didn't look just like a Forthwegian, but he wasn't an obvious Kaunian, either. Halfbreed, Vanai thought. Eoforwic held more than the rest of Forthweg put together. Her hand flattened on her belly. She held one herself.
Then she gasped, because she recognized the man. "Ethelhelm!"
The name slipped from her lips almost by accident. In a moment, it was in everyone's mouth. And the singer and drummer grinned at the crowd that had been so hostile and now paused, uncertain, waiting to hear what he would say. "Hello, folks." His voice was relaxed, easy. "I often use a little magic so I can go out and about without people bothering me. It must've worn off. Can I give you a song to make up for startling you?"
He'd told a great, thumping lie, and Vanai knew it. The redheads were hungry for Ethelhelm. But the crowd didn't know that. With one voice, they shouted, "Aye!" They might have mobbed an ordinary Kaunian or halfbreed whose luck had run out with his magic. Ethelhelm wasn't ordinary. He might have lost his magic, but he still had some luck.
And he still had his voice. He grabbed a wooden bucket from someone, turned it upside down, and used it to beat out a rhythm as he sang. After one song-he carefully picked one that said nothing about the Algarvians-the crowd howled for another. The impromptu concert was still going on when Vanai left.
He'll get away, she thought. He'll keep playing till he satisfies them, then get off somewhere by himself and renew his spell. And then he'll be an ordinary Forthwegian... the same way I'm an ordinary Forthwegian. But that wasn't quite right. The Algarvians wanted Ethelhelm because of who he was, not what he was. Vanai shook her head in slow wonder. She'd finally found somebody worse off than she was.
***
When Skarnu had visited Zarasai by himself, he hadn't been much impressed: it was a southern provincial town without much going for it that a man from Priekule could see. Returning to it with Amatu and Lauzdonu was unpleasantly like torture. The two Valmieran nobles who'd come back from Lagoas seemed to him to be doing their best to get caught.
His temper didn't take long to kindle. When he got them alone in the flat the underground had found for them, he snapped, "Why don't you just carry signs that say WE HATE KING MEZENTIO? Then the constables would nab you and the people who really know what they're doing could get back to doing it instead of spending half their time saving you. Whenever you go outside, you risk yourselves and everybody who helped you get here in one piece."
"Sorry," said Lauzdonu, who had some vestiges of sense. "The kingdom's changed a lot more than we thought it had since we flew our dragons south instead of giving up."
"Aye." Amatu had a sharp, rather shrill voice that would have irritated Skarnu no matter what he said. When he said things like, "It's changed for the worse, that's what it's done," he irritated Skarnu all the more. And then he went on, "It looks like nine people out of every ten are stinking traitors, that's what it looks like. And I'm not so bloody sure about the tenth chap, either." He looked Skarnu full in the face as he made that-perhaps impolitic-remark.
I'm not supposed to bash him in the head, Skarnu reminded himself. We're on the same side. We're supposed to be, anyhow. "People are trying to live their lives," he said. "You can't blame them for that. What's a waiter to do if an Algarvian comes into his eatery? Throw him out? The poor whoreson'd get arrested, or more likely blazed."
"And who'd arrest him?" Lauzdonu put in. "Not the redheads, most likely. It'd be a Valmieran constable. You bet it would."
"They're the real traitors," Amatu snarled. "They all need shortening by a head, powers below eat 'em." He was quick to condemn. "And the waiters, too. If an Algarvian comes into their eatery, the redhead ought to go out with a case of the runs or the pukes. That'd teach him a lesson."
"So it would," Skarnu agreed, "the lesson being that something dreadful ought to happen to the waiter who messed with his stew or his chop. You haven't got any sense, Amatu."
"You haven't got any balls, Skarnu," retorted the noble returned from exile.
Lauzdonu had to step between them. "Stop!" he said. "Stop! If we quarrel, who laughs? Mezentio, that's who."
That was enough to halt Skarnu in his tracks. Amatu still seethed. "I ought to call you out," he snar led.
"Aye, go ahead-imitate the Algarvians," Skarnu said. That brought the other noble up short, where nothing else had done the job. Pushing his edge, Skarnu went on, "Can we look for ways to hurt the enemy instead of each other?"
"You don't seem to know who the enemy is." But now Amatu only sounded sulky, not incandescent.
"We do what we can," Skarnu answered. "We came here, remember, because a lot of ley lines run south through Zarasai. We want to keep the redheads from sending Kaunians to the seashore and slaughtering them to strike at Lagoas and Kuusamo."
Amatu's lip curled. "Maybe you came here for that. I came here to strike at the Algarvians and their lickspittle lapdogs. Who cares what happens to the kingdoms on the far side of the Strait of Valmiera?"
Doing his bes
t to be reasonable, Lauzdonu said, "Except for Unkerlant, they're the only two kingdoms still in the fight against Algarve. That counts for something." All he got was another sneer from Amatu.
Skarnu said, "My lord, if you're not interested in doing the job you were sent here to do, if you'd sooner do what you think best, you can do that. But you'll have to move out of this flat and find one on your own, and you'll have to strike at the redheads on your own, too. No one from the underground will help you."
"Find a flat on my own?" Amatu looked horrified. Without a doubt, he'd never had to look for lodgings in his whole life. Skarnu wondered if he had any idea how to go about it. By his expression, probably not.
"The fight against Algarve is bigger than any one man." Skarnu knew he sounded like a particularly gooey kind of recruiting poster, but he didn't much care. Anything to get some use out of Amatu.
"All right. All right!" The returned exile threw his hands in the air. "I'm yours. Do with me as you will. And once you're done, once I have time of my own, have I got your gracious leave to go after the Algarvians in my own way?" He bowed himself almost double.
He really did want to go after the redheads. Skarnu recognized as much. The trouble was, he made almost every Valmieran commoner and a lot of nobles want to go after him. When betrayal was as simple as a word whispered in the ear of a
Valmieran constable, that wouldn't do. Skarnu had to remember to bow back, lest Amatu think he was offering a deadly insult. "Of course you may, as long as you try not to do anything that'll get us killed or captured and tortured. Betraying our friends isn't what we've got in mind, either."
"I understand that. I'm not an idiot," Amatu said testily, though Skarnu might not have agreed with him. The noble went on, "I'll haunt the caravan depot, if that's what you need from me. If I could sleep upside down in the rafters like a bat, I'd do that. Are you satisfied?"
"No," Skarnu said at once, which made Amatu glare at him all over again. He went on, "You and Lauzdonu and a lot of other people we don't even know will wander through the depot every so often-not often enough to make the Algarvians or their Valmieran hunting dogs notice us. If we see anything-powers above, if we smell anything, because those cars stink-there's a little eatery where we can go. In the back of that eatery, there's a crystal. Here's hoping we don't have to use it."
"Aye," Lauzdonu said. "That would mean trouble for us, and trouble for the poor Kaunians in the caravan car, too." He had some basic sense of reality.
Amatu? Skarnu wasn't so sure about him. He might have forgotten what he'd promised a moment before. Now he said, "Hang around in the depot? Oh, very well." He gave a martyred sigh. "But if I were a woman or Viscount Valnu, I might get arrested for soliciting."
"No, not like that," Skarnu said again. "Don't hang around. Wander through. Pause on a platform when a caravan comes in from the north or east. Wander off again. Buy yourself a mug of ale or a news sheet. Kill time."
"Beastly lies in the news sheets," Amatu said.
"Of course there are," Skarnu agreed. "But knowing how the enemy is lying is military information, too." That seemed to startle the other noble, who thought for a bit before nodding. Amatu had probably been fine fighting on dragonback- his headlong aggressiveness matched his mount's. Skarnu's opinion was that his brainpower also matched his mount's, but that was nothing he could say.
He decided not to trust Amatu alone in the ley-line caravan depot, at least at first. To his relief, the returned exile seemed glad for company, not irate because Skarnu was coming with him. He probably hasn't realized why I'm coming along, Skarnu thought. I'm not going to tell him, either.
"Bloody ugly building," Amatu remarked as they walked up to the red-brick depot. Skarnu agreed with him, but he hadn't come as an architecture critic. Once they got inside, he studied the board, then pointed. Amatu nodded. "Aye. Platform three," he said. Skarnu didn't stomp on his toes to make him shut up, but couldn't have said why he didn't. He was more merciful than he'd suspected, that was all.
On the way to platform three, he bought some ale and a news sheet. Amatu refused to buy a news sheet and made a horrible face when he tasted his ale. Skarnu wondered if his comrade were trying to get them both caught, if he were in Algarvian pay. Skarnu didn't think so, but stupidity and arrogance could be as deadly as treason.
The caravan that stopped at the depot seemed ordinary. It had no passenger cars with wooden shutters nailed over the windows, no baggage cars from which came the stench of crowded, filthy people. "Well, this was a waste of time, wasn't it?" Amatu said.
"Aye, it was, but we didn't know ahead of time that it would be," Skarnu answered in a much lower voice. "That's why we keep an eye on the depot: because we don't know ahead of time, I mean."
Amatu accepted that, even if reluctantly. He was glad to leave the depot, though. Alone, Skarnu would have hung around for a while longer. With Amatu for a comrade, he was delighted to get away unscathed. He let out a silent sigh of relief when they got past the pair of Valmieran constables standing at the entranceway.
Once they reached their street, Amatu started toward their block of flats without the least hesitation. "Wait," Skarnu murmured, and took him by the arm. "Let's walk past. Let's not go inside."
"Why not?" For a wonder, Amatu kept his voice down.
"I've never seen those fellows lounging by the stairway," Skarnu answered. "Beggars usually have their own turfs. Those fellows are new. Their rags look too clean, and so do they. They've never missed a meal. I think they're constables.... No, curse you, don't stare at them."
"Lauzdonu-" Amatu began.
Skarnu had become a better actor than he would have imagined in his carefree days in Priekule. Without seeming to break stride, he contrived to step on Amatu's foot and make the noble hop and curse. For good measure, he stuck an elbow in the pit of Amatu's stomach, too. "Shut up, you cursed fool," he hissed. "They may have him already. Odds are, they do."
For another wonder, Amatu heeded him and said not another word till they'd turned the corner. Then, in tones more subdued than he usually used, he asked, "What do we do now?"
"We go to that eatery," Skarnu answered patiently. "We talk on the crystal-just long enough to let people know there's trouble here. After that, we disappear again. This isn't my town, you know."
"Nor mine, powers above be praised for that," Amatu said. "All right-the eatery."
No suspiciously well-fed tramps lingered outside. But when Skarnu casually asked after the waiter's health, the fellow answered that he was fine, and didn't use the words he was supposed to. Skarnu ordered ale and a plate of smoked beef tongue for himself and Amatu. They ate and drank, paid the scot, and left.
"No good?" Amatu asked.
"No good," Skarnu agreed. "They're waiting for people in the underground to come in and show themselves. If we'd done it, we wouldn't have walked out again."
"What do we do now?" Amatu asked again.
"Walk around for a while," Skarnu answered. "They can't have grabbed everybody in Zarasai. Somebody will give us a hand." I hope, he thought. Oh, by the powers above, how I hope. Otherwise I'm stuck here with the worst excuse for an underground man the world has ever known, and no way to get free of him.
***
The bigger of the two Unkerlanter soldiers who'd come east into the Duchy of Grelz was named Gandiluz. The smaller one was Tantris. They were both back with
Garivald's band of irregulars these days. Tantris did most of the talking for them. "Now that the trees are in full leaf again, things favor you," he declared. "You've got to strike the Algarvians and their Grelzer puppets one stinging blow after another."
"We'll do what we can, of course," Garivald answered, "but look around. We're not a big band."
Tantris waved that aside, as if of no account. "And you've got a mage."
"Where?" Garivald asked in real perplexity.
"There." The Unkerlanter regular pointed at Sadoc.
Garivald threw his hands in the air. "Oh
, by the powers above!" he howled. "Munderic thought the same bloody thing. Every time Sadoc tried a spell, something would go wrong. Every stinking time. Sometimes it'd be something big, sometimes just something little. But something would always happen." He turned his furious glare on Sadoc. "Tell 'em yourself. Am I right, or am I wrong?"
"Well, aye, you're right," Sadoc said. "But that's only so far. I think I know what I've been doing wrong. I'll be better from here on out."
"A likely story," Garivald growled. He turned back to the pair of Unkerlanter regulars. "Are you both daft? Do you want to get the lot of us killed be fore you can squeeze any kind of proper use out of us?"
"Of course not," Gandiluz said.
Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness Page 38