Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 33

"The Algarvians are blazing to kill out there," Vanai said. "I saw them. I was frightened for you."

"I was a little frightened myself, once or twice," Ealstan said--no small admission from him. "I took a long time coming home because I did not want to run into the redheads. I already told you that." Ealstan hesitated, then added, "I saw several bodies in the street."

"There was one right outside this block of flats--a woman," Vanai said, "and some wounded men, too."

"That woman's body is gone. I saw others." Ealstan changed the subject, and changed languages with it: "What were you doing there when I got home?"

"Trying to make sense out of You Too Can Be a Mage." Vanai switched to Forthwegian, too. "I was seeing if I could figure out where that idiot went wrong in translating his transformation spell out of Kaunian and into Forthwegian. If I can figure out how the Kaunian really ran, I can do a better job of turning it back into Forthwegian."

"Why bother?" Ealstan asked. "If you're sure you've got the Kaunian right, leave it alone and use it. I guess the next question is, how sure are you?"

"Pretty sure," Vanai said, and felt the corners of her mouth turn down.

Ealstan frowned, too. "You can get into all sorts of trouble using a spell you're pretty sure is good. Last time, you made me look Kaunian instead of doing anything to yourself. We don't want that to happen again, and we don't want anything worse to happen, either."

"I know," Vanai said, "but if only I were free to move around in Eoforwic--well, after things calm down again, anyhow. Earlier today, I was thinking that being caged up here wasn't so bad. I haven't thought anything like that for a long time. I don't think I ever thought anything like that before."

Ealstan nodded. "I don't blame you. It's .. . pretty bad out there. Some of the fighting came right up to Ethelhelm's block of flats, and that sort of thing doesn't usually go on in the fancy parts of town."

"What did your singer friend have to say?" Vanai asked. "Was he cheering the rioters on? Anybody with Kaunian blood ought to be."

"I don't quite know." Ealstan sighed. "He doesn't like the redheads-- we've seen that--but he doesn't want to lose what he's got, either. To hang on to it, he has to play along with them, at least some. And when he plays along with them, he starts ..." He groped for a phrase.

Vanai suggested one: "Forgiving things?"

"No, that goes too far." Ealstan shook his head. "Not seeing things, maybe." He held up a hand before Vanai could say anything. "Aye, I know that's just about as bad. Maybe not quite, though."

"Maybe." Vanai didn't believe it, but didn't feel like starting an argument.

Again, Ealstan seemed to want to change the subject: "If you can get the magic to work, that would be wonderful. It would mean we'd be safe moving out of this flat, since . . ." He shook his head. "We could move out."

What hadn't he said there? Not since you wouldn't look like a Kaunian anymore. If he'd meant that, he would have said it. What then? Another possibility sprang into Vanai's mind: since Ethelhelm knows where we live and might blab to the Algarvians. Ealstan wouldn't want to say that out loud. He probably didn't even want to think it. But maybe he hadn't changed the subject after all.

He c.o.c.ked his head to one side. "I wonder what you'd look like as a Forthwegian. Would you feel different, too?" He used his hands to sketch figures in the air, contrasting her slimness to his own more solid build, which was typical of Forthwegians.

"I don't know," Vanai answered. "I'm not really a mage, remember." Her grandfather would have been able to say. She was sure of that. Brivibas knew a lot about magecraft, especially the history of magecraft. He'd used sorcery in his own historical research. She wondered how much else he might use if he wanted to. A good deal, she suspected. But would he ever think to do so? That was another question altogether.

Ealstan's thoughts had been running along another, and a distinctively masculine, ley line. With a small chuckle, he said, "If you look different and feel different, too, it would almost be like making love to somebody else."

"Would it?" Vanai eyed him from under lowered brows. "And do you want to be making love to somebody else?"

He was bright enough to recognize the danger in that one, and hastily shook his head. "Of course not," he answered, and Vanai had to hide a smile at how emphatic he sounded. But he didn't quite back away from everything he'd said: "It would just be like choosing a different posture, that's all."

"Oh," Vanai said. Ealstan was fonder of different postures than she was, for Major Spinello had forced them on her. But Ealstan didn't know about Spinello, for which Vanai was heartily glad. She gave her lover the benefit of the doubt. "All right, sweetheart."

And then, while Ealstan worked on columns of figures ("Powers above only know when I'll be able to get these to my clients," he said, but kept working anyhow), Vanai went back to picking the Forthwegian spell to pieces and rebuilding it in cla.s.sical Kaunian. When she noticed her new version had a partial rhyme scheme, her hopes lifted: the original surely would have rhymed, to make memorizing it easier. She tried alternative words to give more rhymes. Some she discarded; others fit as well as a snug pair of trousers.

"I have it, I think," she told Ealstan. "Shall I try it?"

"If you want to," he answered, "and if you think you can reverse anything that goes wrong."

Vanai studied her new text. She wasn't sure of that, and Ealstan, she had to admit, showed good sense in asking her to be. She sighed. "I'll see what I can do," she said, and then, "Can you bring me some books on magecraft?"

"Tomorrow? No," Ealstan said. "When things settle down? Of course." Vanai sighed again, but then she nodded.

Cornelu didn't like walking through the streets of Setubal. For one thing, he still had trouble reading Lagoan, which reminded him how much a stranger he was in the capital of Lagoas and how much a stranger he'd remain. He had never wanted to be a Lagoan; what he wanted was to be a free Sibian in a free Sibiu.

But walking through Setubal also reminded him that even a free Sibiu could never hope to measure itself against Lagoas again. That hurt. Setubal alone held as many people, did as much business, as all the five islands of his native kingdom. And, while Setubal was the greatest city in Lagoas, it was far from being the only Lagoan city of consequence.

How do people live here without going mad? Cornelu wondered as Lagoans streamed past him, every one of them moving faster than he cared to. More ley lines came together at Setubal than anywhere else in the world; that was why the city had blazed into prominence over the past couple of hundred years. And the sorcerous energy seemed to fill the people as well as the place. Cornelu knew that couldn't be literally true, but it felt as if it were.

A hawker waved a news sheet in his face and bawled something half comprehensible. He caught the words Ice People, and supposed the headline had to do with the Lagoans' continuing advances on the austral continent. He was all for those advances, as he was all for anything that hurt the Algarvians, but he didn't care to spend money on a sheet he could barely puzzle out. The news-sheet vendor said a couple of uncomplimentary things that weren't much different in Lagoan from what they would have been in Sibian.

A few blocks later, Cornelu turned the corner and strode up to the ornate neocla.s.sical headquarters of the Lagoan Guild of Mages. No one stopped him from approaching the great white marble pile, and no one stopped him from going inside, either. It wasn't so much that he looked like a Lagoan; he could have been as hairy as a man of the Ice People and no one would have stopped him. Business was business.

He knew the way to Grandmaster Pinhiero's offices. He'd been there before. He hadn't got what he wanted, but he did know the way. The grandmaster's secretary, a portly fellow named Brinco, looked up from the papers he was methodically going through. He beamed. "Commander Cornelu! Good to see you again!" He spoke Algarvian, which he knew Cornelu understood.

"Good day," Cornelu answered. Brinco had met him only once, and that months before. But the mage remembered him right away. That bespoke either some un.o.btrusive sorcery or a well-honed recollection.

When Cornelu said no more, Brinco asked, "And how may I serve you today, your Excellency?"

He sounded as if nothing would delight him more than doing Cornelu's bidding. Cornelu knew that to be untrue, but couldn't decide whether it flattered or irked him. He decided to stick to the business on which he'd come: "I have heard that the mage Fernao, whom I once brought back from the land of the Ice People and who had the misfortune to go there again, was wounded. Is it so?"

"And where did you hear this?" Brinco asked, nothing in his face or voice giving any sign about whether it was so. Cornelu stood mute. When it became clear he wouldn't answer, Brinco shrugged, said, "Good to see you again," once more, and returned to his papers.

Curse you, Cornelu thought. But Brinco had power and he had none; that was part of what being an exile meant. His stiff-necked Sibian pride almost made him turn on his heel and walk out. In the end, though, he growled, "I was in a tavern with the dragonflier who brought in a man he thought to be Fernao."

"Ah." Brinco's nod was almost conspiratorial. "Aye, dragonfliers will run on at the mouth. I suppose it comes from being unable to talk with their beasts, the way you leviathan-riders do."

"It could be." Cornelu waited for the Lagoan to say more. When Brinco didn't, Cornelu folded his arms across his chest and fixed the grandmaster's secretary with a cold stare. "I answered your question, sir. You might have the common courtesy to answer mine."

"You already have a good notion as to that answer, though," Brinco said. Cornelu looked at him. It wasn't a glare, not really, but it served the same purpose. A slow flush mounted to Brinco's cheeks. "Very well, sir: aye, that is true. He was wounded, and is recovering."

Cornelu took from his tunic pocket an envelope. "I hope you will do me the honor of conveying this to him: my best wishes, and my hope that his health may be fully restored."

Brinco took the envelope. "It would be my distinct privilege to do so." He coughed discreetly. "You understand, I trust, that we may examine the note before forwarding it. I intend no personal offense in telling you this: I merely note that these are hard and dangerous times."

"That they are," Cornelu said. "Your kingdom trusted me to join in the raid on Dukstas, so of course you would a.s.sume I am engaged in sending your mage subversive messages."

Grandmaster Pinhiero's secretary flushed again, but said, "We would do the same, sir, were you his Majesty's eldest son."

"You are--" Cornelu broke off short. He'd been about to call Brinco a liar, but something in the mage's voice compelled belief. With hardly a pause, Cornelu went on, "--saying Fernao is involved in work of some considerable importance."

"I am not saying any such thing," Brinco replied. Now he sent Cornelu a look as chilly as the one the Sibian leviathan-rider had given him. "Will there be anything more, Commander?"

His clear implication was that there had better not be. And, in fact, Cornelu had done what he'd come to do. Bowing to Brinco, he answered, "No, sir," and turned and strode away. He was not a mage, so he couldn't possibly have sensed Brinco's eyes boring into his back. He couldn't have, but he would have taken oath that he did.

Outside the Guild building, he paused and considered. He knew, or thought he knew, which ley-line caravan would take him back to the harbor, back to the leviathan pens, back to the barracks where he and his fellow exiles had painfully built a tiny, stuffy re-creation of Sibiu in this foreign land.

But that satisfied him hardly more than Setubal itself did. Unlike some of his countrymen, he recognized how artificial their life inside the barracks was. He wanted the real thing. He wanted to go back to Tirgoviste town and have everything the way it was before the Algarvians invaded his homeland. Wanting that and knowing he couldn't have it ate at him from the inside out.

Instead of lining up at the caravan stop, he tramped down the street, looking for... he didn't know what. Something he didn't have--he knew that much. Would he even recognize it if he saw it? He shrugged, almost as if he were an Algarvian. How could he know?

Plenty of Lagoans seemed to have trouble figuring out what they wanted, too. They paused in front of shop windows to examine the goods on display-- even now, in wartime, goods richer and more various than Cornelu would have found in Tirgoviste town before the fighting started. Cornelu wanted to shout at them. Didn't they know how much hardship was loose in the world?

Here in Setubal, it showed in only one place: the menus of the eateries. Local custom was to post the bill of fare outside each establishment, so pa.s.sersby could decide whether they cared to come in and buy. Cornelu approved of the custom. He would have approved of it more had he made easier going of the menus. Lagoan names for domestic animals--cows, sheep, swine--came from Algarvic roots, so he had little trouble with them. But the words for the meats derived from those animals--beef, mutton, pork--were of Kaunian origin, which meant he had to pause and contemplate them before he could figure out what was supposed to be what. Similar traps lurked elsewhere.

These days, though, he had fewer things to contemplate. Almost every eatery's menu had several items scratched out, generally those involving things imported from the mainland of Derlavai. Beef dishes were also fewer than they had been, and more expensive. Cornelu sighed. That didn't seem to be enough acknowledgment of the war.

When he saw an eatery offering crab cakes, though, he went inside. For one thing, the Lagoan name was almost identical to its Sibian equivalent, so he had no doubt what he'd be getting. For another, he liked crab cakes, and couldn't remember the last time they'd served them at the barracks.

Inside, the place looked anything but fancy, but it was clean enough. A cook with red hair going gray cracked crabs behind the counter. Cornelu sat down. A young woman with a family resemblance to the cook came up to him. "What'll it be?" she asked briskly.

"Crab cakes. Rhubarb pie. Ale." Cornelu could get along in Lagoan, especially on basics like food.

But the waitress c.o.c.ked her head to one side. "You're from Sibiu." It wasn't a question. It wasn't scornful, either, which rather surprised Cornelu: most Lagoans thought well of themselves, not so well of anyone else. At his nod, the woman turned to the cook. "He's from the old kingdom, Father."

"It happens," the cook said in Lagoan. Then he switched to Sibian with a lower-cla.s.s accent he wouldn't have learned in school: "My father was a fisherman who found he was making more money in Setubal than back on the five islands, so he settled here. He married a Lagoan lady, but I grew up speaking both languages."

"Ah. I got out when Mezentio's men overran Tirgoviste town," Cornelu said, relishing the chance to use his own tongue. He nodded to the waitress, really noticing her for the first time. "And you--do you speak Sibian, too?"

"I follow it," she answered in Lagoan. "Speak a little." That was Sibian, a good deal more Lagoan-flavored than her father's. She returned to the language with which she was obviously more familiar: "Now let's get your dinner taken care of. I'll bring the ale first off."

It was strong and nutty and good. The crab cakes, when they came, reminded Cornelu of home. He ate them and the sweet, sweet rhubarb pie with real enjoyment. And speaking Sibian with the cook and his daughter was indeed enjoyable, too. The man's name was Balio, which might almost have been Sibian; his daughter was called Janira, a name as Lagoan as any Cornelu could imagine.

"This is all wonderful," he said. "You should have more customers." He was, at the moment, the only one in the place, which was why he could go on speaking Sibian.

"It'll get livelier tonight," Balio said. "We have a pretty fair evening crowd."

Janira winked at Cornelu. "You just have to come back here and eat up everything we've got. Then we'll get rich."

She spoke Lagoan, but he could answer in Sibian: "You'll get rich, and I'll get fat." He laughed. He didn't laugh very often these days; he could feel his face twisting in ways it wasn't used to. "Maybe that wouldn't be so bad." Janira laughed, too.

Qutuz said, "The Marquis Balastro is here to see you, your Excellency." His nostrils twitched. He ached to say more; Hajjaj could tell as much.

And, since his visitor was the minister from Algarve . . . "Let me guess," Hajjaj said. "Has he come to call in what we Zuwayzin would reckon proper costume?"

"Aye," his secretary answered, and rolled his eyes. "It's not customary."

"He'll do it now and again anyhow," Hajjaj said.

"I wish he wouldn't," Qutuz said. "He's very pale, the parts of him his clothes usually cover. And--he's mutilated, you know." For a moment, the secretary cupped a protective hand over the organ to which he was referring.

"Algarvians have that done when they turn fourteen," Hajjaj said calmly. "They call it a rite of manhood."

Qutuz rolled his eyes again. "And they reckon us barbarians because we don't drape ourselves in cloth!" Hajjaj shrugged; that had occurred to him, too, every now and again. With a sigh, his secretary said, "Shall I show him in?"

"Oh, by all means, by all means," the Zuwayzi foreign minister answered. "I must admit, I'm not broken-hearted about avoiding tunic and kilt myself. It's a hot day." In Bishah, home of hot days, that was a statement to conjure with.

Having seen Balastro's portly, multicolored form undraped before, Hajjaj knew what to expect. Zuwayzin took nudity for granted. Balastro wore bareness as theatrically as he wore clothes. "Good day, your Excellency!" he boomed. "Lovely weather you're having here--if you're fond of bake ovens, anyhow."

"It is a trifle warm," Hajjaj replied; he wouldn't admit to a foreigner what he'd conceded to Qutuz. "You will of course take tea and wine and cakes with me, sir?"

"Of course," Balastro said, a little sourly. The Zuwayzi ritual of hospitality was designed to keep people from talking business too soon. But, since Balastro had chosen Zuwayzi costume, or lack of same, he could hardly object to following the other customs of Hajjaj's kingdom.

In any case, Balastro seldom objected to food or wine. He ate and drank-- and sipped enough tea for politeness' sake--and made small talk while the refreshments sat on a silver tray between him and Hajjaj. Only after Qutuz came in and carried away the tray did the Algarvian minister lean forward from the nest of cushions he'd constructed. Even then, polite still, he waited for Hajjaj to speak first.

Hajjaj wished he could avoid that, but custom bound him as it had bound Balastro. Leaning forward himself, he inquired, "And how may I serve you today?"

Balastro laughed, which mortified him; he hadn't wanted his reluctance to show. The Algarvian minister said, "You think I've come to give you a hard time about the cursed Kaunian refugees, don't you?"

"Well, your Excellency, I would be lying if I said the thought had not crossed my mind," Hajjaj replied. "If you have not come for that reason, perhaps you will tell me why you have. Whatever the reason may be, I shall do everything in my power to accommodate you."

Balastro laughed again, this time louder and more uproariously. He wiped his eyes on his hairy forearm. "Forgive me, I beg, but that's the funniest thing I've heard in a long time," he said. "You'll do whatever suits you best, and then you'll try to convince me it was for my own good."

"You do me too much honor, sir, by giving me your motives," Hajjaj said dryly, which made Balastro laugh some more. Smiling himself, the Zuwayzi foreign minister went on, "Why have you come, then?"

Now the jovial mask dropped from Balastro's face. "To speak plainly, your Excellency, I have come to ask Zuwayza to get off the fence."

"I beg your pardon?" Hajjaj raised a polite eyebrow.

"Get off the fence," Balastro repeated. "You have fought this war with your own interest uppermost. You could have struck Unkerlant harder blows than you have, and you know it as well as I do. You've fought Swemmel, aye, but you've also looked to keep him in the fight against us. You would sooner we wear each other out, because that would mean we'd leave you alone."

He was, of course, perfectly correct. Hajjaj had no intention of admitting as much. "Did we not hope for an Algarvian victory, we should never have cooperated with King Mezentio's forces in the war against Unkerlant," he said stiffly.

"You haven't cooperated any too b.l.o.o.d.y much as is," Balastro said. "You've done what you wanted to do all along: you've taken as much territory as you wanted to, and you've let our dragons and our behemoths help you take it and help you hold it. But when it comes to giving us a real hand--well, how much of a hand have you given us? About this much, it seems to me." He thrust out two fingers in a crude Algarvian gesture Hajjaj had often seen and almost as often used in his university days back in Trapani.

"It is as well we have been friends," Hajjaj said, his voice even more distant than before. "There are men with whom, were they to offer me such insult, I would continue discussions only through common friends."

Balastro snorted. "We'd be a fine pair for dueling, wouldn't we? We'd probably set the notion of defending one's honor back about a hundred years if we went after each other."

"I was serious, sir," Hajjaj said. One of the reasons he was serious was that the Algarvian minister had once more spoken nothing but the truth. "His Majesty has lived up to the guarantees he gave you through me at the beginning of this campaign, and has done so in every particular. If you say he has not, I must tell you I would consider you a liar."

"Are you trying to get me to challenge you, your Excellency?" Balastro said. "I might, except you'd probably choose something like camel dung as a weapon."

"No, I think I'd prefer royal proclamations," Hajjaj answered. "They are without question both more odorous and more lethal."

"Heh. You're a witty fellow, your Excellency; I've thought so for years," the Algarvian minister said. "But all your wit won't get you out of the truth: the war has changed since it began. It is not what it was when it began." Corpulence and nudity didn't keep him from striking a dramatic pose. "Now it is plain that, when all is said and done, either Algarve will be left standing or Unkerlant will. You have sought middle ground. I tell you, there is none to be had."

"You may be right," said Hajjaj, who feared Balastro was. "But whether you are right or wrong has nothing to do with whether King Shazli has met the undertakings he gave to Algarve. He has, and you have no right to ask anything more of him or of Zuwayza than he has already delivered."

"There we differ," Balastro said. "For if the nature of the war has changed, what Zuwayza's undertakings mean has also changed. If your kingdom gives no more than it has given, you are more likely to be contributing to Algarve's defeat than to our victory. Do you not wonder that we might want something more from you than that?"

"I wonder at very little I have seen since the Derlavaian War began," Hajjaj replied. "Having watched a great kingdom resort to savagery that would satisfy the barbarous chieftain of some undiscovered island in the northern seas, I find my capacity for surprise greatly shrunken."

"No barbarous chieftain faces so savage and deadly a foe as Algarve does in Unkerlant," Balastro said. "Had we not done what we did when we did it, Unkerlant would have done it to us."

"Such a statement is all the better for proof," Hajjaj observed. "You say what might have been; I know what was."