Out of the Darkness

Keeping such things out of her hands and, more to the point, out of her mouth was Vanai’s second-biggest worry. It was the biggest one about which she could do anything. Ealstan was and remained somewhere far away to the east. She wondered if she’d even know if anything-powers above, forbid it! — happened to him. She’d heard not a word since he got dragooned into King Swemmel’s army. If he didn’t come back after the war ended, that would tell her what she needed to know-or it might, for the Unkerlanters could simply have hauled him off to the other end of their vast kingdom.

How would I be able to find out, one way or the other? she wondered. The answer there was painfully obvious: I wouldn’t. She pushed the worry to the back of her mind, as she did whenever she started fretting about what she couldn’t help.

If only Ealstan were here… If Ealstan were here, he would find life in Eoforwic easier than it had been at any time since he and Vanai came to the Forthwegian capital. It had been weeks since Algarvian dragons appeared overhead. Gromheort still held out, but the rest of Forthweg belonged to Unkerlant these days-and, nominally, to King Beornwulf as well.

Beornwulf seemed to be doing what he could (and, perhaps, what the Unkerlanters would let him) to be a good king. Broadsheets outlawing price-gouging in the marketplace went up alongside sheets singing the praises of Swemmel’s soldiers. Vanai looked out her kitchen window. A work crew was pasting up fresh broadsheets even now. I wonder if I could put glass in the window again, Vanai thought. It wouldn‘t get broken right away, not any more.

She couldn’t afford to look out the window for long. She looked back toward Saxburh instead. It wasn’t a dead cockroach this time-just a dust bunny. Vanai got it away from the baby. When Saxburh fussed, Vanai said, “Come on-let’s go see what the new sheets say.”

Scooping her daughter off the floor, she carried her down the stairs and out into the street. A few other people were looking at the new broadsheets, too, but only a few. There’d been too many broadsheets-from King Penda, from the Algarvians, and now from the Unkerlanters and their puppet king-for anybody to get very excited over one more. Vanai wasn’t very excited, just curious and looking for an excuse to get out of the flat for a little while.

A Forthwegian man reading one of the new broadsheets pasted to a fence turned away with a disgusted gesture. Another one said, “Well, here’s something else that won’t fly.”

The first fellow said, “And what if it did? Doesn’t hardly matter anymore, does it? I ask you, is this a waste of time or what?” Shaking his head, he walked off.

Vanai went up to a broadsheet. “Oh,” she said softly when she saw its title; the headline was CONCERNING KAUNIANS. She still wore her sorcerous disguise, and so still looked like a Forthwegian herself. Back before the war, Eoforwic had a name as the place where Forthwegians and Kaunians got on better than they did anywhere else in the kingdom. The reputation held some truth; Forthwegians and Kaunians here had rioted together on learning that the Algarvians were shipping blonds west to be murdered. But plenty of Forthwegians here despised Kaunians, too. Vanai had seen that along with the other.