Out of the Darkness

Saxburh banged both little fists down on the high chair’s tray, interrupting her mother’s gloomy reflections. “Out!” she said.

“She’s talking very well,” Elfryth said as Vanai turned the baby loose. “She’s going to be smart.” She shook her head. “No, she’s already smart.”

“Must take after her mother,” Hestan remarked.

“No doubt,” Ealstan agreed. “Do you suppose I’m an idiot because I got it from you, or just because you raised me?”

“Both, I’d say,” Hestan answered placidly. He turned to Vanai and shifted from Forthwegian to classical Kaunian: “When do you intend to teach the baby this language along with ours?”

“My father-in-law, I didn’t do it before because of the occupation,” Vanai said in the same language. “If she’d spoken the wrong tongue while we were sorcerously disguised, that could have been. . very bad.”

“Of course,” Hestan said. “But you can do it now-and you should, I think. With so many of your people gone on account of the cursed Algarvians, classical Kaunian is in danger of dying out as a birthspeech. After so many generations, that would be very bad, too.”

“I’ve had the same thought,” Vanai said. That a Forthwegian would feel as she did surprised her. Ealstan would. Ealstan does, she thought. But Ealstan was in love with her. His father wasn’t. But he gets a lot of his ideas from his father. She shook her head, bemused at arguing with herself.

Hestan plucked at his thick gray beard. “I’m not my brother, and I thank the powers above that I’m not,” he said. “We don’t all hate Kaunians and Kaunianity, even if the war let too many who do run wild.”

“I know that,” Vanai said. “If I didn’t know that, would I have married your son? Would we have a baby who’s not one thing or the other, with another one on the way?”

“No, indeed,” Hestan answered. “But sometimes these things do need saying.”

“Fair enough.” Vanai nodded. Saxburh scrambled up into her lap. The toddler looked curiously from her to Hestan and back again. They were talking, but they were using words she hadn’t heard much before and couldn’t understand. By her wide eyes, that was very interesting.

Ealstan said, “The next question is, how do I make enough money to feed a wife and two babies and maybe even myself?” He laughed. “After six years of questions like, How do I stay alive? and How do I keep the cursed redheads from murdering my wife? — after worrying about questions like those, thinking of money isn’t so bad.”

“I’ve never gone hungry, and neither did my children,” Hestan said. “I don’t think yours have much to worry about.”

“If this were real peace, I wouldn’t worry,” Ealstan said. “But with everything all torn to pieces by the war, business just isn’t what it used to be.”

“Not now,” his father agreed, “but it’s bound to get better. It could hardly get worse, after all. And we’re still willing to share, you know.”

“Haven’t we taken enough already?” Ealstan said.

“We’re a family. This is what families are for.” Elfryth nodded, most vehemently, toward Vanai. From personal experience, Vanai had only a vague notion of what families were for. She didn’t want to shrug, so she just sat still.

Her husband still seemed unhappy. “You’re not helping Conberge the same way you’re helping us.”

“So we’re not, and do you know why?” Hestan asked. Ealstan shook his head. His father went on, “Because Grimbald’s parents are helping the two of them-the three of them, soon-that’s why.”

“Oh,” Ealstan said in a small voice.

Vanai said, “Thank you very much for everything you’ve done for us. I don’t know what we would have done without you.”

“This is what families are for,” Elfryth repeated.

Hestan added, “And if you and Ealstan got by in the middle of Eoforwic in the middle of the war, I don’t expect you would have had much trouble here in Gromheort in peacetime.”

It’s because he says things like that, Vanai realized, that all his teasing doesn’t pack a sting. Ealstan couldn’t doubt he really was loved, no matter how sardonic his father got. And the ley line ran in both directions. That was obvious, too.

Saxburh screwed up her face and grunted. No matter how clever she was, she was a long way from knowing how to wait when she needed to go. Vanai eagerly looked forward to the day when she learned. But another baby’s coming, she thought in sudden dismay. Even after Saxburh knows what to do, her little brother or sister won’t.

She carried her daughter away to clean up the mess. “Come on, you little stinker,” she said. Saxburh thought that was funny. So did Vanai-but only after she’d washed her hands.