Through the Darkness

After only a few strides toward the closest ley-line caravan stop, Cornelu paused and cursed himself for a fool. How could he get aboard without money? But when he jammed his hands into the pockets of his new navy coat, he found coins in one of them--plenty of silver, he discovered, for the fare and for a good meal afterwards. Who’d put it there? The petty officer? The quarter-master who’d given him the coat? He had no way of knowing. He did know he’d have a harder time looking down his nose at Lagoans from now on.

He got out of the caravan car at the stop near the Grand Hall of the Lagoan Guild of Mages. He’d passed several new stretches of wreckage on the way there; the Algarvians had hit Setubal hard. But Cornelu knew it could have been worse--Mezentio’s men could have massacred Kaunians instead of coming over and risking themselves.

People were standing around in the street near Balio’s cafe. Cornelu didn’t think that a good sign. He pushed his way through the crowd. A couple of men sent him resentful looks, but gave way when they saw him in Lagoan naval uniform. He grimaced when he got to see the cafe. It was a burnt-out ruin. An egg had burst a few doors down, burst and started a fire.

And there stood Balio, staring at the ruins of his business. “I’m glad to see you well,” Cornelu told him, and then asked the really important question: “Is Janira all right?”

“Aye.” Balio nodded vaguely. “She’s around somewhere. Powers above only know how we’ll make a living now, though.” He cursed the Algarvians in Lagoan and Sibian both. Cornelu joined him. He’d been cursing the Algarvians for years. He expected to go on doing it for years more. And now he had a brand new reason.

News sheets in Eoforwic had stopped talking about the battle for Sulingen. From that, Vanai concluded it was going badly for the Algarvians. The quieter they got, she assumed, the more they had to hide. And the more they had to hide, the better she liked it. “May they all fall,” she said savagely at breakfast one morning.

“Aye, and take all their puppets down with them,” Ealstan agreed. “Powers below eat King Mezentio, powers below eat all his soldiers, and powers below eat Plegmund’s Brigade, starting with my accursed cousin.”

“If the Algarvians are ruined, everyone who follows them will be ruined, too,” Vanai said. She understood why Ealstan hated Plegmund’s Brigade as he did. But one thing her grandfather had taught her that still seemed good was to search for root causes first. The Algarvians had caused Forthweg’s misery. Plegmund’s Brigade was only a symptom of it.

Ealstan thought about arguing with her: she could see it on his face. Instead, he took a last bite of bread and gulped down the rough red wine in his mug. Pausing only to give her a kiss that landed half on her mouth, half on her cheek, he headed for the door, saying, “It’s not worth the quarrel, and I haven’t got time for one anyhow. I’m off to see if I can help some men pay the redheads a little less.”

“That’s worth doing,” Vanai said. Her husband nodded and left.

My husband, Vanai thought. It still bemused her. It would have horrified Brivibas: not just because Ealstan was a Forthwegian, though that alone would have been plenty, but because of the mean little ceremony with which they’d been formally joined. And what her grandfather would have thought about the two woman-loving matrons who’d checked the hair on her secret place . . . She laughed, imagining the look on his face if she ever told him about that.

She knew exactly what had let her get through it without smacking them. It was simple: the Algarvians had already shown her worse. What Ealstan wished on his cousin, she wished on Major Spinello.

For a long time after she’d had to start giving herself to him, she’d doubted she would ever feel clean again. Falling in love with Ealstan had gone a long way toward curing her there. But, after the two of them came to Eoforwic, she’d had trouble feeling clean in the literal sense of the word. Washing with a pitcher and basin here in the flat wasn’t a patch even on Oyngestun’s public bath. And Oyngestun was only a village. Eoforwic had the finest baths in all of Forthweg.

Up till very recently, of course, they’d done her no good at all. She hadn’t been able to show her face in public, let alone her body. Now, though, she looked like a Fortliwegian to everyone around her as long as her magic held. When she looked in a mirror, she saw her familiar Kaunian features framed by much less familiar dark hair. What she saw didn’t matter, so long as no one else could see it.

She went through the spell again, to make sure it wouldn’t wear off while she was out and about in Eoforwic. Then she put some coppers in her belt pouch and left the flat. Now that she could head for the public baths, she did, usually every other day. She had trouble thinking of anything she enjoyed more about the freedom she’d sorcerously found.