Rulers of the Darkness

He wasn't the only one with such suspicions. Oraste said, "I don't think this mage could tell a turd from a tulip."

"I wouldn't be surprised if you were right," Bembo agreed. "Of course, who knows if those Kaunian bandits were here to begin with?"

No sooner had the words come from his lips than the next pair of men fetched before Gastable suddenly seemed to writhe and change shape. They weren't Forthwegians- they were Kaunians with dyed hair. The constabulary captain spoke to Bembo and Oraste: "Are these the men you saw with the perpetrator Gippias?"

The two constables looked at each other. They both shrugged. "We don't know, sir," Bembo said. "When we saw 'em, they were in their sorcerous disguise and running like blazes around a corner."

"How are we supposed to identify them, if you bloody well can't?" the captain asked.

"Don't you still have hold of that Forthwegian who told us the name of the one Kaunian whoreson?" Bembo asked.

By the way the captain set his hands on his hips, he didn't. By the way he glared at Bembo and Oraste, he was ready- even eager- to blame them for what was obviously his failing. But he seemed to realize he couldn't quite get away with that. Scowling, he tried to make the best of it: "Well, we'll just have to see what we can squeeze out of them."

"Aye, sir," Bembo said- that actually made sense. He pointed to the two discovered Kaunians and spoke to Oraste in a low voice: "By the time we're through with them, they'll wish they'd just been shipped west."

Oraste considered. After a moment, he said, "Good."

"And the two of us are off the hook," Bembo added. As far as he was concerned, that was pretty good, too.

Five

When Ealstan came into the flat he shared with Vanai, she handed him an envelope. "Here," she said. "This came in the morning's post. The rest was just advertising circulars. I threw them away."

He kissed his wife, then said, "All right- what have we got here?" He thought he knew; the hand that had addressed the envelope looked familiar. When he opened it and extracted the note inside, he nodded. "Ethelhelm is back in Eoforwic," he told Vanai.

"And he'll want you to reckon up the accounts for the band's tour in the provinces?" she asked.

"That's right." Ealstan sighed. "I wonder if he'll have any money left, what with the squeeze the redheads take from him." Ethelhelm was half Kaunian. If he hadn't been the most popular singer and band leader in Forthweg, he might well have been shipped west. As things were, the Algarvians preferred to let him go on playing, but to make him pay heavily for the privilege of staying free. It was a highly unofficial form of taxation, but that didn't mean it wasn't lucrative.

Ethelhelm played Forthwegian-style music. Ealstan knew Vanai didn't much care for it; her tastes along those lines were purely Kaunian, which meant she liked a thumping beat to every song. And her thoughts here weren't strictly on the music anyhow. She said, "As long as the Algarvians leave him enough money to keep paying you."

"If they don't, he'll bloody well have to find himself another bookkeeper, that's all." Ealstan sighed again. "He used to be my friend, you know, not just my client. He used to write bold songs, strong songs, songs that'd make even a lackwit sit up and think about what Mezentio's men were doing to us. Then they got their hooks into him."

"If he hadn't gone to sing for the men of Plegmund's Brigade when they were training outside of town here…" Vanai's voice trailed away.

"Aye, he might have stayed free," Ealstan said. "Of course, the redheads might have flung him into a ley-line caravan car and cut his throat, too. You can't know." Ethelhelm hadn't had the nerve to find out. Ealstan wondered what he would have done in the band leader's place. He was glad he didn't know.

"You can worry about Ethelhelm later," Vanai said. "For now, you can sit down to supper. I found some nice sausage at the butcher's."

"Probably half horsemeat and half dog," Ealstan said. Vanai made a horrible face at him. Shrugging, he went on, "I don't care. I'll eat it anyway, as long as it doesn't bark when I stick a fork in it."

Enough garlic and pepper and oregano and mint spiced the sausage to make it impossible to tell what the meat had been before it was ground up and stuffed into a casing. Whatever it was, it went well with salted olives and crumbly white cheese and bread and honey, and filled the hole in Ealstan's belly.

Walking over to Ethelhelm's block of flats the next morning reminded Ealstan of the distance between the wealthy entertainer and the fellow who kept books for him. Actually, Ealstan could have afforded a better flat for himself, but clung to the neighborhood into which he'd moved when he first came to Eoforwic because it let him- and, more important, Vanai- stay nearly invisible to the Algarvian occupiers.