Darkness: Through The Darkness Part 46

He thought that over, then nodded. "I suppose I can wait," he said, sounding as if he deserved a special order of merit for being able to. Vanai laughed a little. When it came to matters that touched the bedchamber, he had more trouble thinking of anyone but himself. But he could do it, which put him a long way ahead of Major Spinello.

Maybe Spinello's dead by now, Vanai thought hopefully. Maybe they sent him down to that Sulingen place where the fighting goes on and on and on. If they did send him there, may he never come out again.

She had to make a deliberate effort to drive the Algarvian officer out of her mind. Sometimes even that didn't work; sometimes memories of him got between her and Ealstan when they made love, killing her pleasure as if blazing it with a heavy stick.

Not tonight, though. Afterwards, she and Ealstan lay side by side, naked and sweaty. As he had when they'd made love after she first made her sorcery succeed, he reached out and plucked a hair from her bush. As she had then, she yelped now. "What was that for?" she demanded, more than a little irate.

He held the hair between thumb and forefinger. "It's still blond," he said.

"Well, of course it is!" Vanai exclaimed. "What do you want me to do, dye myself down there, too?"

To her astonishment, Ealstan nodded. "I think you'd better," he said seriously. "Sooner or later, Mezentio's men are going to figure out that Kaunians are dyeing their hair--the hair on their heads, I mean. What'll they do then? Start yanking up tunics and yanking down drawers, that's what."

"They wouldn't!" But then Vanai grimaced. "They might. They're Algarvians, curse them, and Algarvians have no shame, not about such things." Memories of Spinello surged upward again, and of the utterly blase way he'd acted when Brivibas walked in on him while he was taking his pleasure with her. "No," she said in a low voice, "they have no shame at all."

Ealstan, fortunately, didn't know just what an intimate knowledge of Algarvian shamelessness she had. But he knew her well enough to see she was troubled. He took her in his arms. And when he did, he only held her. He didn't try to make love with her again, though she had no trouble telling he would have been interested in doing so.

She thought about lying there and letting him have her--she would have taken no pleasure from a second round then. But she'd done that too many times with Spinello, because she'd had no choice. Now she did have one, and Ealstan seemed no more than slightly miffed when she got out of bed.

Even that little bit of annoyance vanished when he discovered she was going to take him up on his suggestion. Applying the dye down there was an awkward business. The stuff stung her tender flesh, too. When she was through, she giggled. She looked different in a way she'd never expected to be.

"Exotic," Ealstan said again. Vanai let out another giggle. She knew what he meant by that: he meant he really did want another round. Being able to laugh made it easier for her to let him have one. She ended up enjoying it more than she'd thought she would, too.

The next morning, she worked the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian for a while. Ealstan hadn't yet left to cast accounts. He nodded, confirming she'd worked the spell correctly. "It doesn't change your looks as much now," he said, "but it does change them."

"All right," she said, and left the flat without the shiver of terror she would have felt undisguised. When she got down to the street, what was she? As far as the eye could tell, just one Forthwegian among many. She wished she could go out as a Kaunian among Forthwegians, but that hadn't always been easy even before the Algarvians overran Forthweg.

When she walked into the Forthwegian apothecary's shop, he nodded to her from behind his high counter. "A good day to you, Mistress Thelberge," he said; Vanai had taken to using the name Ealstan gave her. "And what can I do for you so early?"

"Since you seem to have a way of doing such things, sir," she said, "you might want to pa.s.s word to ... people who may be using dye to use it on ... all their hair."

She waited to see if he would understand. If he didn't, she intended to be as blunt as she had to. A couple of years before, when she was still living with her grandfather, embarra.s.sment would have paralyzed her. No more. She was a great deal harder to embarra.s.s than she had been.

After a moment, the apothecary nodded. "I know what you're saying, mistress, never you fear." He paused, ground a powder with mortar and pestle-- and with quite unnecessary vehemence--and added one more word: "Algarvians."

"Aye." Vanai nodded. "Algarvians."

"Well, I will pa.s.s it along," he said. "I think it may save a life or two. And as long as you're here, can I try and sell you anything?"

Vanai smiled. "No, thanks, unless you've got some particularly fine mushrooms. I'm just out enjoying the morning air." Being able to come out and enjoy the morning air felt very fine indeed.

After the words had left her mouth, she realized she'd all but told the apothecary she was a disguised Kaunian. She worried about it less than she would have with any other Forthwegian save Ealstan, but she couldn't help worrying some. Then the apothecary said, "As a matter of fact, I've got some Kaunian Imperials here--a customer who was short of cash gave them to me to pay for a bottle of eyewash."

He reached under the counter and brought out the splendid orange mushrooms. Vanai's mouth watered. "What do you want for them?" she asked, bracing herself for a hard haggle.

"Take a couple," the apothecary said. "It's not always easy to get out of the city." Aye, he knew she was a Kaunian, all right.

She bowed her head. "My thanks," she said softly, and put two of the splendid mushrooms in her belt pouch. "That's not the first good turn you've done me." She took the mushrooms and left the shop.

A couple of Forthwegians who looked as if they were getting paid in spirits were pasting broadsheets on the walls. When Vanai stepped up and read one, she winced. The Algarvians hadn't chosen to go yanking down everyone's drawers, at least not yet. Instead, "in the interest of internal security," they were making the manufacture and possession of black or dark brown hair dye illegal.

After a moment, though, Vanai started to laugh. She thought the redheads were likely to blaze off their own toes with this edict. Kaunians weren't the only ones it would hurt. Plenty of vain and aging Forthwegians would want to keep the frost from showing in their hair and beards. She doubted whether Mezentio's men would be able to make the prohibition stick.

Indeed, before she got back to the flat, she heard several Forthwegians--at least, she presumed they were Forthwegians--cursing the new ordinance. That made her laugh again. Sure enough, if the Forthwegian majority rejected this law, the occupiers could make as much noise as they chose; they wouldn't change anything much. And if Forthwegians got dye, Kaunians who looked like Forthwegians would be able to get it, too.

With those things on her mind, Vanai paid less attention to what was going on around her than she might have, and got caught by an Algarvian clipping patrol. She queued up with the Forthwegians (and, for all she knew, other Kaunians) to wait for Mezentio's men to finish their duty. With the hair on her head and that between her legs freshly dyed, she was safe unless they had a mage with them.

They won't, a small, cold voice inside her said. They need their mages to make weapons of war or to kill my people.

And she proved right. An Algarvian constable, looking bored with the whole business, snipped off a lock of her hair. Thanks to the dye, it stayed dark. The redhead nodded and jerked a thumb down the street. "Going on," he said.

Vanai went on. She would have to jeer at Ealstan: the Algarvians hadn't thought to start checking people's secret hair yet. But then she realized jeering wouldn't do. Ealstan was right; that was something the redheads would come up with, and they probably wouldn't take long. She muttered something vile. She didn't look forward to dyeing herself there every couple of weeks.

For now, though, she was free to go through the streets of Eoforwic. The Algarvians couldn't tell what she was. Neither could the Forthwegian majority. To the eye, she was one of them. She still wished she could go out and about as a Kaunian. Since she couldn't, this was the next best thing.

She remembered the mushrooms in her pouch. "Not everyone hates me," she whispered--but even the whisper was in Forthwegian, not in the ancient language she'd learned from birth.

The Kuusaman physician nodded to Fernao and said, "Good day," in her own tongue.

"Good day," the Lagoan mage said, also in Kuusaman. He'd always had an ear for languages, and was quick to pick up words and phrases. But when the physician went on, she did so far too fast for Fernao to follow. "Slowly, I beg you," he said.

"Sorry," said the physician, a little dark woman named Juhani. She went on in her own speech; again Fernao didn't understand a word of it. Seeing as much, she switched to cla.s.sical Kaunian: "Do you know this language?"

"Aye," he answered. "I am fluent in it."

"So you are," Juhani agreed. "More so than I, perhaps. I was saying that I took you for a countryman because of your eyes. Some of us wear kilts, too. But you come out of the west, then?"

"Aye," Fernao said again.

Juhani studied him. "There must have been some urgent need to bring you out of the west with the injuries to your arm and leg."

"There was," Fernao answered, and said no more. What he was doing in Yliharma was no one's business but his own.

When the physician saw he was going to stay quiet, she shrugged. "Well, by all the signs, we can free your arm from its prison, anyhow."

"Good," the mage said. "It has been in plaster so long, it feels much as if it had been in prison indeed."

"You will not like it so well once it comes out of its sh.e.l.l," Juhani warned. Fernao only shrugged. The physician went to work getting the cast off.

And she turned out to be right. For one thing, the arm that had been broken was only a little more than half as thick as the other. And it also disgusted the mage because all the dead skin that would have sloughed off had been trapped by the cast. He looked like a man with a horrible disease.

Juhani gave him a jar of ointment and some rags. She even helped him clean off the dead skin. After they finished, the arm smelled sweet and looked no worse than emaciated. "Will my leg be the same way?" Fernao asked, tapping the plaster there.

"I have no doubt it will look worse," the physician said, which made him shudder. She went on, "Were you in a ley-line caravan accident, or did you have a bad fall, or ... ?"

Fernao nodded. "That last one. I chanced to be rather too close to an egg when it burst. As you see, I am nearly healed now. For quite some time, however, I did not think the healers and mages had done me any favors by saving me."

"Never give up," Juhani said seriously. "Things may get better. Things have got better for you, have they not?"

"They have," Fernao admitted. "It would have been difficult for them to get worse." He reached for his crutches. As he did so, he tried to imagine making quick, complex pa.s.ses with his newly freed arm. He laughed quietly. He couldn't do it, not to save his life. Then he dipped his head to the physician as he levered himself to his feet. "My thanks, mistress. And what do I owe you for your services?"

When she told him, he blinked. He would have paid twice as much in Setubal. Everything was cheaper in Yliharma, but few things were so much cheaper. Seeing his surprise, she said, "My husband serves the Seven Princes. How can I enrich myself off someone who has already met the foe?"

"I can think of plenty of people who would have no trouble whatever," Fernao replied as he steadied himself on his crutches. "Honor is where you find it. I hope your husband stays safe."

He swung out to the street, pausing in the doorway to pull the hood on his tunic up over his head. A chilly drizzle was falling; on the other side of the Vaatojarvi Hills, from what Pekka said, it would be snow. As far as Fernao was concerned, rain was bad enough. Anything that made the sidewalks slippery was bad. He kept fearing he would fall. Just what I'd need: to break one leg when the other one's finally healing.

He planted his crutches and his good foot with great care. Kuusamans on the sidewalk gave way before him when they saw he had trouble getting around. That never would have happened in Setubal. There, anyone who couldn't keep up with the bustling throngs was liable to get run down and trampled. He had no trouble flagging a cab. The driver helped him get inside, again more considerate than a Lagoan would have been. "Where to?" the fellow asked.

That was another phrase Fernao had learned. "The Princ.i.p.ality," he replied. Grandmaster Pinhiero had grumbled about paying for his stay there, but yielded in the end. Fernao couldn't very well impose on Ilmarinen (as far as he could tell, no one imposed on Ilmarinen) or Siuntio, and Pekka was staying at the Princ.i.p.ality. The more he learned from the Kuusaman mages, the more he talked shop with them, the better off Lagoas would be. So he'd told the grandmaster, and he'd actually made Pinhiero believe it.

Several hostels in Setubal might have matched the Princ.i.p.ality, but Fernao wasn't sure any could have beaten it. The room in which he dwelt was large and luxurious; the food, even in wartime, was outstanding; and he was convinced that at least half the people who worked in the Princ.i.p.ality spoke better Lagoan than he did. The doorman was one of those. "Let me give you a hand, sir," he said, and helped Fernao up the stairs to the entrance. Going along on flat ground, Fernao thought he managed pretty well. When he had to climb stairs, he was glad for any help he could get.

Once he made it into the lobby, he flipped back the hood on his tunic and sighed with pleasure, enjoying the warmth that radiated from several coal stoves. He looked around, wondering whether any of his Kuusaman colleagues were around. He'd thought he might spot Siuntio or Ilmarinen, but didn't-- though he wouldn't say they weren't there till he made a trip to the bar.

He'd taken a couple of hitching steps in that direction when someone called his name. He stopped and looked around--and there sat Pekka, not far from one of the stoves. She waved to him. "Come and join me, if you care to," she said in cla.s.sical Kaunian.

"I would be very glad to," he answered.

She had a skein of dark green yarn in her lap and a length of finished green cloth into which were inserted a pair of crocheting hooks. "If I am not the worst crocheter in the world, I pity the poor woman who is," Pekka said. "Would you care for a m.u.f.fler, Master Fernao? You had better say aye, for I cannot make anything else."

"Aye, and thank you," Fernao said. "If I asked you for something with sleeves, you would probably knit me to death with those things."

"Knitting needles are different," Pekka said. "I knit even worse than I crochet, which is why I do not knit at all anymore." She pointed to his newly freed arm. "I leave knitting to you. And I am glad to see you are doing it well."

Reminded of the arm, he scratched it. "A very able lady physician named Juhani took off the cast. You Kuusamans worry less about the differences between men and women than my people do."

Pekka shook her head. "No, that is not so," she answered. "We worry less about differences in what men and women do than most other folk. We know there are differences between men and women." She smiled. "If there were not, the world would have ended a long time ago, or at least our place in it."

"That is true enough." Fernao smiled, too.

Pekka rolled her eyes. "I wonder what my son is doing now, down in Kajaani. Something to drive my sister mad, I have no doubt. And, speaking of the differences between men and women, I never behaved that way when I was seven years old."

"No?" Fernao's chuckle threatened to become a belly laugh. "Would your mother and father say the same thing about you?"

"I hope so!" Pekka exclaimed. "Their hair is still almost altogether dark. Mine, I think, will be white as snow by the time Uto grows to manhood."

Fernao ran a hand through his own coppery hair, which was just beginning to be frosted with gray. "I have no children," he said. "If my hair turns white overnight, it may be on account of what you Kuusamans have come up with."

"That might do it to me, too." Before saying anything more, Pekka looked around to see if anyone might be listening. So did Fernao. He spotted no one close by. Pekka couldn't have, either, but she went on, "I mislike speaking of this in public. Shall we talk further in my rooms?"

To a Lagoan, that might have been an invitation of one sort or an invitation of another sort altogether. Fernao asked, "What would your husband say if he heard you asking me there?"

"He would say that he trusted me," Pekka answered. "He would also say that he had reason to trust me. I presume you would not try to prove him wrong?"

"Now that you have spoken so, of course not," Fernao said. "But I did wonder. Customs differ from one kingdom to another."

"So they do. But I am telling you how things are here."

"I said all right once," Fernao replied, not sure whether to be annoyed or amused. "If you do not believe me, take back the invitation."

"If I did not believe you, Master Fernao, I would do more than take back the invitation." Pekka sounded sterner than he'd thought she could. "I would do everything I could to have you sent back to Setubal. And I think I could do it." Her smile had iron in it--no, she wasn't a woman of the sort Fernao was used to dealing with. She got up. "But now, if you will come with me, we can go up to my rooms--and talk of business."

Where Pinhiero grumbled about paying the price of a room at the Princ.i.p.ality, the Seven Princes had installed Pekka in a suite far larger than the flat Fernao called his own back in Setubal. He said, "With all this, why did you bother coming down to the lobby at all?"

"I get lonely, in here with nothing to look at but the walls," Pekka answered. "I would rather see open country, as I do out behind my house down in Kajaani, but even the lobby and the street are better than ... walls."

Fernao thought nothing of looking at the walls of his own flat for days on end. Hostel lobbies and city streets were his natural habitat, as was true of any native of Setubal. As for open country, he'd seen more than he'd ever wanted in the land of the Ice People. The only thing he could say about it was that he hadn't quite died there.

He didn't want to say anything at all about the land of the Ice People. Instead, he did talk of business: "If the implications of your experiments are what they seem to be, as Ilmarinen says--"

"Even if they are, I do not think we can exploit them," Pekka said, and now she sounded even more angry than she had when she'd warned what she would do if she didn't trust him. "I do not think memory can be conserved; I am not at all convinced physical existence can be conserved. The amount of energy released inclines me to doubt it."

"How could we make an experiment to test that?" Fernao asked.

"Do we not have more obviously urgent things to do?" Pekka returned.

"More obvious? Certainly," Fernao said. "More urgent? I do not know. Do you?" After a bit of thought, Pekka shook her head. She was honest. Maybe that was why she insisted on honesty from him.

Algarvian soldiers guarded King Gainibu's palace these days, as they had for more than two years. Seeing redheads in kilts there still irked Krasta. Turning to Colonel Lurcanio in the carriage they shared, she said, "You should have left the king an honor guard of his own people."

"I?" Her Algarvian lover spread his hands. He had fine hands--an artist's hands, or a surgeon's, with long, slim fingers--and was vain of them. "My sweet, it was not my decision that put them there; it was Grand Duke Ivone's, or perhaps King Mezentio's. You may take your complaint to either one of them, and I wish you joy of it."

"You're making fun of me!" Krasta said shrilly.

"No, only of your silly idea," Lurcanio answered. Most Algarvians were excitable. He was often excitable himself. Tonight, he stayed calm, probably because that annoyed Krasta more. He went on, "Do you not see that a Valmieran honor guard might easily decide its honor lay in rebellion? That would be a nuisance to us, and unfortunate for King Gainibu."

As far as Krasta was concerned, Gainibu was already unfortunate: a prisoner in his own palace, with nothing better to do than drink till the fact of imprisonment blurred along with everything else. But, after a moment, she realized exactly what Lurcanio meant. "You'd kill him!"

"I?" This time, Lurcanio shook his head. "My countrymen? It could be. Mezentio's brother is King of Jelgava. His first cousin is King of Grelz. I am sure he has some other near kinsman who could do duty as King of Valmiera."

"Of all the nerve!" Krasta exclaimed. Lurcanio only smiled. He might not be so reliably excitable as some of his countrymen, but he had the full measure of Algarvian arrogance. Krasta wanted to slap him. But he would slap her back, and he wouldn't care that he did it in public. She cursed quietly, but held still.

One of the Algarvian guards approached the carriage and called a soft challenge in his own language. Lurcanio's driver responded, also in Algarvian. Krasta heard Lurcanio's name and her own, but understood nothing of what the driver said. The guard laughed and withdrew. Lurcanio also laughed under his breath. Krasta looked daggers at him, but to no avail.

Agile despite his years, Lurcanio descended from the carriage and held out his hand to help Krasta down. "Step carefully, my dear," he said. "You would not want to trip on the cobbles in the darkness and turn your pretty ankle."

"No, I certainly wouldn't." Krasta's voice was testy. "If you'd beaten the Lagoans by now, I wouldn't have to fumble around in the dark. You could let lights shine without drawing dragons."

"Once we settle Unkerlant, you may rest a.s.sured that Lagoas is next on the list," Lurcanio said. The statement would have been more impressive had he not chosen that moment to stumble. He almost fell, but caught himself by flailing his arms.

Krasta didn't laugh. Colonel Lurcanio, she'd learned, was as touchy about his dignity as a cat. She did say, "I wish Lagoas didn't have to wait."

"We had . . . plans for Setubal. They did not work out quite as we would have wished." Lurcanio shrugged. "Such is life."

Something in his voice warned Krasta against asking questions about what sort of plans the Algarvians had had. Plans like the ones my brother wrote about? she wondered. She didn't want to believe that. If what Skarnu had written was true, she walked arm in arm with a murderer, or at least with an acquiescing accomplice to his kingdom's murders.

One thing, at least: Lurcanio hadn't asked her any questions lately about her brother. And, though he'd left the mansion two or three times in the past few weeks, he'd always come back on the grumpy side. That told her he hadn't caught Skarnu--if he'd gone out hunting her brother. It also told him he hadn't caught some young, pretty Valmieran commoner, which relieved her nearly as much.