Into the Darkness

18.

Colonel Lurcanio came up to Krasta and gave her an extravagant Algarvian bow. “Milady, I am given to understand there is to be an entertainment laid on at the Viscount Valnu’s this evening. Would you do me the honor of accompanying me there?”

She hesitated. However well Lurcanio spoke Valmieran, he remained one of the conquerors. She recalled all too well the feel of his hard hand against her cheek—scarcely a proper prelude to an invitation in her circle or any circle she knew. And, had any Algarvian sought to invite her, she would have preferred Captain Mosco, who was both younger and handsomer than his superior.

Still… Lurcanio was the more prominent of the two of them. If she turned him down, what would he do to her? Whatever he likes rang like a mournful bell in her mind, a bell with a nasty undertone of fear. The other side of the coin was that any entertainment at Valnu’s was sure to be lavish and likely to be scandalous. She wanted to go, both to enjoy herself and to be able to hold her head up among her own set.

That decided her. With a smile the brighter for coming a beat or two late, she said, “Thank you, Colonel. I would be delighted.”

Lurcanio’s answering smile might have been pleased, might have been predatory, and was probably both at once. “Excellent!” he said, and bowed again. “Most excellent. Shall we meet at the front door at sunset? My driver will do the honors, the invitation being mine. He knows the way.”

So Lurcanio had gone to Valnu’s before, had he, and without her? Her back stiffened. She’d make sure he didn’t want to do that again. She never went into anything halfheartedly. When she answered, “Till sunset, then, Colonel,” her voice had a purr in it. She put a little extra in her walk as she went upstairs to primp and plan for the evening ahead. She didn’t look back to see if the Algarvian noble’s eyes were following her. She knew they would be.

After bathing, after a hairdresser piled her hair into a mound of curls (an old-fashioned style suddenly popular again), she chose her outfit. The trousers of midnight velvet she put on were so tight, Bauska had to help lace them closed. “Easy, there,” Kaunian wheezed. “I want to be able to breathe, a little.

“Aye, milady,” Bauska said, and pulled them tighter yet. Her head was bent to the work, so Krasta did not see her smile. Krasta did admire the effect in the looking glass, which made her servant bite her lip.

The tunic Krasta chose was filmier than the nighttime one in which she had gone to upbraid Lurcanio and Mosco over the coronation of King Mezentio’s brother as the new ruler of Jelgava. Then, though, the display had been inadvertent. Now it was intentional, even calculated. She wanted Lurcanio’s eyes to pop.

She wanted to pick the time when they would pop, too, so she draped a short cape of glistening beaver fur over her shoulders to let her choose the moment and to protect her against the chill of the autumn evening. Snow hadn’t started falling yet, but it wasn’t more than a month away.

Rather knobby knees aside, Lurcanio looked dashing in dress tunic, kilt striped in his kingdom’s colors, and a broad-brimmed plumed hat. He bowed over Krasta’s hand, then raised it to his lips. “You are lovely this evening,” he murmured. “You are, no doubt, lovely every evening, but you are particularly lovely this evening.”

“I thank you,” Krasta said in a smaller voice than she’d intended. The Algarvian officer could be charming when he chose. That he could also be anything but only made the charm more interesting.

Lurcanio’s driver devoured Krasta with his eyes when the colonel handed her up into the carriage. Krasta expected Lurcanio to dress him down; he was impossibly forward. Instead, laughing, Lurcanio leaned forward to pat him on the shoulder and spoke to him in Algarvian. Krasta caught Valnu’s name. The carriage rolled forward.

“That fellow’s rude,” Krasta complained.

“No.” Lurcanio laughed again, and shook his head. “He is Algarvian. When it comes to pretty women, we do not hide what we think.” He too looked Krasta up and down, slowly and lingeringly. She decided she could have done without the cape, at least as far as concealment went.

She was glad to have it, though; her breath smoked when she breathed out.

Valnu’s house, not far from the center of Priekule, would have been classically elegant had he not painted columns and frieze in gaudy colors. He insisted that was good classical usage, and would wave learned articles to prove it. As far as Krasta was concerned, classical meant plain white marble, and that was that. Valnu, though, had never been one to keep his enthusiasms from running away with him.

He stood in the entrance hall, greeting guests as they arrived. When he saw Krasta, something simultaneously amused and malicious kindled in his eyes. He spoke to Colonel Lurcanio in Algarvian. Lurcanio raised an eyebrow. When he and Krasta had gone on into the main salon, he asked her, “Why did he say I should not be alone with you on a dark country road?”

“You’d better ask him that, hadn’t you?” Krasta said with a toss of the head that set her curls flying. She spotted a servant watching wraps. When she shrugged off her cape, she discovered that Lurcanio hadn’t imagined everything about her, not if the way his head swiveled was any sign.

Up on a platform at the back of the salon, a harpist and a couple of viol players performed one Algarvian tune after another. Used to the more emphatic rhythms of Valmieran music, Krasta wondered why anyone would bother listening to this. But Lurcanio smiled and bobbed his head in time to the songs that were so familiar to him, as did many of the other Algarvians who had come to Valnu’s residence.

Looking around, Krasta saw that a lot of Algarvian officers and civilian functionaries had come to Valnu’s. They outnumbered the Valmieran men there and, almost without exception, they had very pretty girls on their arms. Not all the girls, or even most of them, were of noble blood, either. Krasta knew who was. The rest… Opportunists, she thought scornfully.

They were hungry opportunists, too, converging like locusts on the buffet Valnu’s servants had set out. Some of the dishes there were hearty Valmieran sausages and breaded chops and the like, others more delicate, more elaborate Algarvian-style creations. The Algarvian soldiers and civilians ate in moderation. Many of the Valmierans gorged. Food, especially fine food like this, wasn’t easy to come by in Priekule these days.

Krasta had no great interest in what the Algarvians ate, or in anything else new. Sausage and red cabbage suited her fine. After a couple of shots of sweet cherry brandy, everything Lurcanio said got wittier and funnier.

When he slipped an arm around her waist in a proprietary way, she snuggled against him instead of flinging brandy in his face.

She was, by then, rather glad of that arm. It kept most of the Algarvians in the milling crowd from pinching her, patting her, and feeling her up. Not all of them, though: that she was a colonel’s companion did nothing to intimidate a couple of brigadiers and more than a couple of the civilian dignitaries who ruled occupied Valmiera.

“Do your men always act this way?” she asked Lurcanio after snarling at a functionary who’d made too free with his hands and also contriving to step on his foot.

“Very often,” he answered calmly. “But then, our women act much the same way. It is the custom in our kingdom—not better or worse than the customs here, simply different.”

What Krasta had heard was that all Algarvian women were sluts. She started to say as much, but checked herself. She’d already seen that insulting the conquerors was not a good idea. And she’d also noted that Valnu’s salon, at the moment, held a good many Valmieran sluts.

She kept looking around, spotting people she knew and seeing who among her set might have been there but was not. A lot of people, both Valmierans and Algarvians, kept looking around. Had people who weren’t there simply not been invited—because they were dull, say? Or had they declined to come because they didn’t care to be seen with the Algarvians? Much of the chatter was hard and brittle, a sort of crust over things better left unsaid.

A Valmieran band—thundering horns and thumping drums—replaced the musicians playing Algarvian songs. A little space cleared in the center of the large chamber. Couples began to dance. “Shall we?” Krasta asked, saucily glancing up at Lurcanio.

“And why not?” he said. He proved to dance very well, and knew the steps that went with the Valmieran music. When the time came to hold her close, he didn’t try to consummate things out on the dance floor, as Valnu had in the cellar before the Algarvian invasion. Then again, Krasta wasn’t egging him on, as she had with Valnu. Lurcanio acted as if he had nothing he needed to prove along those lines because everything was already decided. Krasta couldn’t decide whether that miffed or excited her. Between dances, she drank more brandy. That helped make up her mind. A lot of the Algarvians were with women who had already made up their minds. Krasta didn’t see anything she hadn’t seen before, but she’d seen a good deal. They’ve decided who’s won the war, she thought. And if she had not, would she have been here on the arm of and in the arms of an Algarvian nobleman?

Presently, Lurcanio leaned forward and murmured in her ear: “Shall we return to your mansion? I fear I have a few too many years and a bit too much dignity to care to make a public exhibition of myself.”

Krasta had drunk enough brandy to need a few seconds to realize what that meant. When she did, she hesitated, but not for long. Having gone this far, how could she stop? And she didn’t want to stop, not now. She took Lurcanio’s arm, reclaimed her cape, and made for the door.

Valnu stood just outside the doorway, arm in arm with a handsome young Algarvian officer. He smiled dazzlingly at Krasta and Lurcanio, then called after them: “Don’t do anything I wouldn’t enjoy!” As far as Krasta knew, that gave them free rein.

Lurcanio’s driver smelled of brandy. He said something in Algarvian. He and Lurcanio both laughed. “He is jealous of me,” Lurcanio said as he helped Krasta into the carriage. He laughed again. “He has reason to be jealous of me, I expect.”

When they got back to the mansion, none of Krasta’s servants was in sight. No one watched her and Lurcanio go up the stairs to her bedchamber together—or she saw no one watching, which in her mind amounted to the same thing.

In the bedchamber, Lurcanio took charge, as he had throughout the evening. He decided a lamp would remain burning. He undressed Krasta, kissing and caressing her breasts after he pulled her tunic off over her head, then unlacing her trousers and sliding them down her legs. She sighed, at least as much from relief as from desire.

But desire was there, too, and the Algarvian knew just how to fan it. Before long, Krasta was doing everything she could to inflame him, too. He was, she discovered, circumcised, which Valmieran men were not. “Rite of manhood,” he said. “I was fourteen.” He poised himself between her legs. “And now for another rite of manhood.”

After the rite was accomplished—most enjoyably accomplished—they lay side by side. Even then, Lurcanio’s hands roamed over her body. “You are generous to a soldier in a kingdom not his own,” he said. “You will not be sorry.”

Krasta rarely thought about being sorry. She’d never thought about it in the afterglow of lovemaking. She’d sometimes been angry then, which spoiled things, but never sorry. “Soon you Algarvians will rule the world, I think,” she said, which was and was not an answer.

“And you have chosen the winning side?” Lurcanio ran his fingers through her bush. “You see? You are a practical woman after all. Good.”

Even though Talsu sometimes wore his Jelgavan army uniform tunic and trousers on the streets of Skrunda, his home town, no Algarvian soldier who saw him had ever given him a rough time about it. He was glad. He did not have so many clothes as to make it easy for him to set any of them aside. Nor was he the only young man in Skrunda in pieces of uniform. That was true of most of the former soldiers the Algarvians hadn’t scooped into their captives’ camps.

Like his former comrades, he made money where he could, pushing a broom or carrying sacks of lentils or digging a foundation. One day, after lugging endless sacks of beans and clay jars of olive oil and sesame oil from wagons into a warehouse the Algarvians were using, he came home with half a dozen small silver coins stamped with the image of King Mezentio. They rang sweetly when he set them on the table at which his family ate.

“What have you got there?” his father demanded. Traku was a wide-shouldered man who looked as if he ought to be a tough but was in fact a tailor. His trade having left him shortsighted, he bent close to the coins to see what they were. Once he did, he growled a curse and swept them off the table and on to the floor. The cat chased one as it rolled.

“What did you go and do that for, Father?” Talsu crawled around on hands and knees till he’d found all the money. “Powers above, it’s not like we’re rich.”

“I don’t want that ugly whoreson’s face in my house,” his father said. “I don’t want the fundament of that ugly whoreson’s brother stinking up our throne, either. No redhead’s got any business sitting on it. It’s not their kingdom. It’s ours, and they can’t take it away from us.”

“Silver is silver,” Talsu said wearily. “Theirs spends as good as ours. Theirs spends better than ours, because they’ve buggered up the exchange rate so the redheaded soldiers can buy pretties for their mistresses on the cheap.”

“They’re thieves and robbers,” Traku said. “They can keep their cursed money, and pile my curse on top of all the others that are already there.”

In from the kitchen came Talsu’s mother and younger sister. His mother, Laitsina, carried a bowl of stew. His sister, Ausra, had a fresh-baked loaf of bread on a tray. The bread was an unhealthy brownish-tan color, not because it hadn’t been baked properly but because the flour wasn’t all it might have been. Ground beans, ground peas—Talsu hoped there wasn’t any sawdust mixed into it.

And the stew was more peas and beans and turnips and carrots, with only a few bits of meat here and there, more for flavor than for nourishment. Talsu wasn’t all that sure he cared for the flavor it gave. “What is this stuff?” he asked, holding a bit out on his spoon.

“The butcher says it’s rabbit,” his mother answered. “He charges for it like it’s rabbit, too.”

“I haven’t heard very many cats yowling on the roofs lately, though,” Ausra said with a twinkle in her eye. She glanced over to the little gray tabby that had bounded after the Algarvian silverpiece. “You hear that, Dustbunny? Stick your nose outside and you’re liable to be a bunny for true.”

Talsu made sure his next spoonful of stew held no meat. After that, though, he ate it. If it wasn’t all it might have been, the army had inured him to worse. And his mother had paid for it. With things as they were, the family couldn’t afford to let anything go to waste.

His mother might have been thinking along with him, for she said, “Dear, it would be a shame not to use the silver Talsu worked so hard to get.”

“It’s Algarvian money,” Traku said stubbornly. “I don’t want Algarvian money. We should have beaten King Mezentio’s men, not the other way around.”

He looked at Talsu as if he thought Jelgava’s defeat were his son’s fault. He’d been just too young to fight in the Six Years’ War, which if anything made him take its victory even more to heart than if he’d served, for he didn’t know firsthand what the soldiers who’d won that victory had endured to do it.

“Well, we cursed well didn’t,” Talsu said—he knew what soldiering was like. “Maybe we would have, if our precious noble officers had known their brains from their backsides. I can’t say one way or the other about that, because they didn’t.” He tore a chunk of bread off the loaf and took a big bite out of it.

Traku stared. “Those are the same lies you see on the Algarvian broadsheets all over town.”

“They aren’t lies,” Talsu said. “I was there. I saw with my own eyes. I heard with my own ears. I’ll tell you, Father, I’ve got no love for the redheads, and I don’t think they’ve got any business putting a king of their own over us. If King Donalitu comes back, that’ll be fine. But if the Algarvians hang every duke and count and marquis before he comes back, that’ll be even better.”

Close to a minute of silence followed. He hadn’t tried to hide his bitterness toward the Jelgavan nobility since trudging back to Skrunda, but he hadn’t been so blunt about it, either. At last, his father said, “That’s treason.”

“I don’t care,” Talsu said, which produced more silence. Into it, he went on, “And I don’t think it is, not really, because the nobles don’t run Jelgava any more. The Algarvians do, and I haven’t said anything about them.” He put the coins he’d earned back on the table. “You can have these if you want them. If you don’t, I’ll take them out and buy beer or wine and lemon juice.”

His mother scooped up the Algarvian silver. “Laitsina!” his father said.

“It’s money,” his mother said. “I don’t care whose face is on it. If our king comes home, I’ll shout myself silly for joy. Until he comes home—and after he comes home, too—I’ll spend whatever money people will take. And if you have any sense, so will you, and you’ll take any money the redheads give you, too.”

“That’s trading with the enemy,” Traku protested.

“That’s making a living,” Laitsina replied. “The Algarvians are here. Are we supposed to starve because they’re here? That’s foolishness. With the kind of food we can get nowadays, we’re close enough to starving as is.”

Ausra meowed, to remind Traku what sort of meat was liable to be in the stew. Her father gave her a dirty look. Talsu looked down into his bowl so Traku would not be able to see him laughing.

“Bah!” Traku said. “How can I say one thing when everyone else in my family says something else? But it’s a sorry day for Jelgava—I will say that.”

“That’s so. It is a sorry day for Jelgava,” Talsu said. “But we’ve had too many sorry days lately, and the Algarvians haven’t given us all of them. If you don’t believe me, Father, ask anybody else who was in the army and managed to come home again in one piece.”

He expected the argument to boil up once more, but his father only looked disgusted. “If we’d done everything as we should have, we’d have won the war. Since we didn’t win, we couldn’t have done everything right.” Traku settled down and ate his stew and bread and said not another word till they were gone. Even then, he talked about the coming of cooler weather and other innocuous things. Talsu concluded he’d won his point. He hadn’t done that very often before going into the army.

Next morning, after bread and sesame oil and a cup of beer almost as bad as he’d had in King Donalitu’s service, he went out to see what sort of work he could find for the day. During the night, the Algarvians had slapped a new set of broadsheets up on walls and fences all over Skrunda. They bore Mainardo’s beaky profile—very much like his brother Mezentio’s—and the legend, A KING FOR THE COMMON PEOPLE.

Seeing that slogan, Talsu slowly nodded. It wasn’t the worst tack the redheads could have taken. Talsu knew how many commoners were disgusted with the Jelgavan nobility and the way the nobles, no doubt with Donalitu’s approval, had governed the kingdom and botched the war.

A couple of women walking toward him along the street glanced at one of the broadsheets. She turned to her friend and said, “That might not be so bad, if only he weren’t a redhead.”

“Oh, aye, you’re right,” the other woman said. After casually passing judgment, they strode past Talsu, intent on their own affairs.

He turned the corner, heading for the market square. A crowd of half a dozen or so had gathered in front of another broadsheet. A man a little older than Talsu’s father who leaned on a cane said, “If we cursed King Donalitu, we’d wind up in his dungeons. Anybody think that, if we curse this new stinking whoreson the redheads have foisted on us, we won’t wind up in an Algarvian dungeon?”

Nobody told him he was crazy. A woman with a basket full of green and yellow squashes said, “I’ll bet the Algarvians have even worse dungeons than we do, too.” Nobody argued with her, either. Like everyone else who heard her, Talsu took it for granted that, however fierce King Donalitu’s inquisitors “were, those of the redheads would have no trouble outdoing them.

In the market square, a farmer was unloading big yellow wheels of cheese. “Give you a hand with those?” Talsu called: the fellow was taking them off a good-sized bullock cart.

“I suppose you’ll want one for yourself if I say aye,” the farmer answered, pausing with hands on hips.

“Either that or the price of one in coin,” Talsu said. “Fair’s fair. I’m not trying to steal from you, friend; I’m trying to work for you.”

“You’re a townman. What do you know about work?” The farmer tossed his head so that the flat leather cap he wore almost flew off. But then he shrugged. “You want to show me what you know about, come do it.”

“I thank you,” Talsu said, and sprang into action. He got the cheeses down from the wagon, stacked them on the burlap mat the farmer had already spread on the cobbles, and set a few of the best ones standing upright so customers could see how fine they were. That done, he told the farmer, “You ought to have a sign you could fasten to the side of the cart there, so people could see it all the way across the square.”

“A sign?” The farmer shook his head now. “Don’t much fancy such newfangled notions.” But then he rubbed his chin. “It might draw folks, though, eh?”

“Like a bowl of honey draws flies,” Talsu said solemnly.

“Maybe,” the farmer said at last—no small concession from a man of his sort. “Well, pick yourself a cheese, townman. You earned it, I will say.” He dug in his pocket. “And here you are.” He handed Talsu a silver coin: a Jelgavan minting, not one with Mezentio’s face on it. “That for your idea. Fair’s fair, like you said.”

“I thank you,” Talsu said again, and tucked it away. He knew just which cheese he wanted, too—a fine round one, golden as the full moon rising. He carried it back to his family’s home.

When he returned to the market square, he discovered half a dozen Algarvian soldiers making off with a large part of the farmer’s stock in trade. They were laughing and chattering in their own language as they hauled away the cheeses. The farmer could only stand and stare, furious but helpless. “Shame!” somebody called, but no one said or did anything more.

Several copies of the broadsheet with King Mainardo’s profile on it looked out over the square. Maybe the Algarvian-imposed king was for the common people, as the broadsheets claimed. The Algarvian soldiers looked to be out for themselves and themselves alone. Somehow, Talsu was not surprised.

Putting a crook in Skarnu’s hands no more made him a shepherd than putting a hoe in his hands had made him a proper cultivator. Gedominu’s sheep seemed to sense his inexperience, too. They strayed much more for him than they did for the farmer. So he was convinced, at any rate.

“Come back, curse you!” he growled at a yearling. When the yearling didn’t come back, he trotted after it and got the crook around its neck. It bleated irately when brought up short. He didn’t care. He wanted it back with the rest of the small flock, and he got what he wanted.

A couple of Algarvians rode unicorns down the road along the edge of the meadow. One of them waved to Skarnu. He lifted the crook in reply. The redheads kept on riding. They took Raunu and him for granted these days. The two Valmieran soldiers—two farm laborers, they were now—had been working for Gedominu as long as the redheads had occupied this district. No one, yet, had bothered letting the Algarvians know Skarnu and Raunu were as much newcomers as they were themselves. With luck, no one would.

Gedominu came limping out towards Skarnu. He glanced at the flock. “Well, you’ve not lost any of ’em,” he said. “That’s pretty fair.”

“Aye, could be worse,” Skarnu said, and the farmer nodded. Skarnu did his best, these days, to talk in understatements, to make himself fit in with the people among whom he was living. That did even more to make him seem to belong than imitating their rustic accent. When he’d first tried that, he’d laid it on too thick, so that he’d sounded more like a performer in a bad show than a true man of the countryside. As with spies, a little of the local dialect served better than a lot would have done.

“Come have a bite of supper,” Gedominu said: understatement again. “Then we’ll look for some more fun.” That was also an understatement, of a slightly different sort.

Together, Skarnu and Gedominu chivvied the sheep back toward the pen where they would spend the night. Gedominu accomplished more without a crook than Skarnu with one. But neither had much trouble, for the animals went willingly enough. They knew grain would be waiting for them, to supplement what nourishment they got from the dwindling grass of the meadows.

Up on the barn roof, Raunu was hammering new shingles into places; rain a few days before had revealed some leaks. With carpenter’s tools in his hands, the veteran sergeant looked far more at home than he did when he had to try to deal with crops or livestock.

“Come down,” Gedominu called to him as Skarnu closed the gate to the pen after getting the last ewe inside. “Come down and eat a bite, and then we’ll go play.” He chuckled under his breath. “And we’ll see how the redheads like the game.”

“Not much, I hope,” Raunu said as he descended from the roof. He took the hammer and nails into the barn. When he came out, he nodded to the farmer and to Skarnu. “I could eat a little something, I suppose.” He hadn’t needed long to master the art of understatement, either, though it was one for which a sergeant normally found but little use.

Inside the farmhouse, Merkela nodded to her husband and to Skarnu and Raunu. “Sit yourselves down,” she said. “Won’t be but a little bit.”

Gedominu paused briefly to kiss her as he headed for the table. Skarnu looked away. He was jealous of the farmer, and did not want Gedominu to know it. Once, getting up from his bed of straw in the barn, he’d gone outside to make water just as a cry of delight from Merkela came floating out of the upstairs bedroom she shared with her husband. So fiercely had Skarnu wished he’d been the one to make her cry out that way, he’d slept very little all the rest of the night.

Every once in a while, out of the corner of his eye, he caught her watching him, too. He hadn’t done anything about it; that would have been a poor return for Gedominu, who could have handed him over to King Mezentio’s soldiers and hadn’t. But he could not—or maybe he simply didn’t want to—get her out of his mind.

She brought in a tray from the kitchen. On it sat four wooden bowls of stew: beans and peas and onions and cabbage, simmered along with chunks of pork sausage she’d made herself. Farm work turned a man ravenous. Suppers like this one fought hunger the way fresh shingles on the roof fought rain.

Darkness fell early, and fell hard. Merkela got a twig burning at the fireplace and used it to light a couple of oil lamps. No power points, no ley lines close to the farm: no sorcerous light to hold night at bay. Farmers in the days of the Kaunian Empire had lit their homes like this. Skarnu had been used to better; Krasta, no doubt, still was. By now, he took lamps for granted.

After spooning up the last of his stew, Gedominu said, “Night’s our time. Shall we be about it?”

“We’d better,” Skarnu said. “If we don’t, we aren’t fighting the Algarvians, just knuckling under to them.”

“Aye,” Gedominu said. “They’d have been smarter if they hadn’t popped Count Enkuru’s son into his slot, for the brat’s a nasty piece of work in his own right.”

“Better for us this way,” Raunu said. “If they’d put in somebody decent, fewer people would want to go on fighting them.”

Gedominu nodded. “That’s so, I reckon. But not a whole lot of folks in these parts love the redheads. Not like that in some of the bigger towns, the way the news sheets go on.”

“And who says what goes into the news sheets?” Skarnu asked, though what Gedominu had said worried him, too. As if to force that worry behind him, he turned and started for the door.

“Come back safe, all of you,” Merkela said. Skarnu hurried out into the night. To him, her voice was as sweet and intoxicating as a Jelgavan fortified wine. If he thought about what he was going to be doing out in the woods, he wouldn’t think—so much—about what he wished he were doing up in her bedchamber.

He and Raunu and Gedominu got their sticks out from under the straw in the barn. The farmer looped a long coil of rope over his left shoulder and passed other coils to his comrades. “Let’s go have ourselves some fun,” he said, and chuckled. “Don’t suppose the Algarvians will like it so well, though.”

“Pox take ’em,” Raunu said, at which Skarnu and Gedominu nodded.

Once they got off Gedominu’s farm, the three men separated. Because he’d dwelt in these parts since the collapse of the Valmieran army, Skarnu had come to know the paths for several miles around the farm. Gedominu still knew them better, of course; to him, they were as familiar as the way upstairs in his own home. They weren’t to Skarnu, and never would be. But he could make his way along them without the farmer, even in the darkness.

As he knew Gedominu and Raunu were doing, he made for the woods. Despite the stick he carried, he felt more like hunted than hunter. If an Algarvian patrol caught sight of him, he intended to run first and fight only if he had to. That wasn’t heroic, but he hadn’t come out here to be a hero. He’d come to be a nuisance, a role with a different set of requirements.

When he found a couple of trees near the edge of the path, he nodded to himself. He tied one end of the rope to the trunk of one tree, then ran it across the road to the other. He tied it to that one, too, cut off the length of rope, and went on his way looking for another spot to set a trip line.

If he was lucky, an Algarvian horse or unicorn would break a leg and have to be put out of its misery. If he was luckier, an Algarvian might break his leg or, if Skarnu was luckier still, his neck. At best, it would be a pinprick against King Mezentio’s forces. If harassing the redheads was the best Skarnu could do right now, though, he would content himself with the knowledge that it was his best.

He chose where to place his trip lines with several different kinds of care. As many as possible went on land belonging to farmers friendly toward the Algarvians. If he got those farmers into trouble with the occupiers, so much the better: they wouldn’t stay friendly toward them for long. And if the Algarvians blamed men who really were well inclined toward them, they wouldn’t look so hard for people who weren’t.

After Skarnu used the last of the rope, he made his way back toward Gedominu’s farm. He was surprised at how confidently he moved in the dark. Once, not too far away, he heard some Algarvians on horseback. He slid off the path and into the bushes. The Algarvians hadn’t heard him. On routine patrol, they chattered among themselves. Their noise faded and finally vanished.

A lamp was still burning downstairs when Skarnu got back to the farm. He glanced that way, sighed, and opened the barn door so he could roll himself in his blanket there. He must have made some noise, for the door to the farmhouse opened, too. Merkela stood silhouetted against the light within. Softly, she called, “Who is it?”

“Me,” Skarnu answered, just loud enough to let her recognize his voice.

“You are the first one back,” she said. “Come inside and drink a cup of hot spiced ale, if you care to.”

“I thank you,” he said, and had all he could do not to run to her side. When she gave him the ale, he held the big mug in both hands, warming them against the earthenware. He sat at the table where he’d eaten supper, sipping slowly. The ale was good. Watching Merkela was better. He didn’t say anything. Had he said anything, the first words out of his mouth would have been too much.

In the dim light, her eyes were enormous. She kept watching him, too, and not saying anything. At last, she took a deep breath. “I think—” she began. The door opened. In came Gedominu, Raunu only a couple of paces behind him. “I think,” Merkela went on smoothly, “I will pour some more ale.” Whatever else she might have thought, she kept to herself. Likely just as well, Skarnu thought, and wished he could make himself believe it.

A few days later, two squads of Algarvian soldiers tramped up to the farm at first light. In fair Valmieran, the lieutenant leading them said. “We want the peasant Gedominu.” He read the name from a list.

“I am Gedominu,” the farmer said quietly. “Why do you want me?”

“As hostage,” the lieutenant answered. “A warrior of King Mezentio’s was killed by a trip line. We take ten for one, to keep this foolishness from happening more. You come.” His soldiers leveled their sticks at Gedominu. “If the one who did this does not yield, we kill you.”

Skarnu stepped forward. “Take me instead.” The words came out of his mouth before he quite knew they would.

“You are brave,” the Algarvian lieutenant said, and surprised him by sweeping off his hat and bowing from the waist. “But his name is on my paper. Your name is not. And so we take him. You and your wife”—his eyes lingered on Merkela, as any man’s might have; he did not know the mistake he was making—“can keep this farm going without two old men here. One will do.” He waved toward Raunu to show which old man he meant, then spoke to his men in their own language.

A couple of them seized Gedominu and hustled him away. The rest kept Skarnu and Raunu and Merkela so well covered that any try at rescuing the farmer would have been suicide. Off the redheads went, Gedominu limping along in their midst. Skarnu stared helplessly after them. They had the right man and didn’t even know it. They didn’t care, either. They would have been just as happy to blaze him had he been the wrong man.

Count Sabrino had never imagined he could enjoy victory so much. After Valmiera was vanquished, after Jelgava yielded, he’d been ordered back to Trapani. All the civilians there were sure the results of the Six Years’ War had been overthrown forever, and that peace would soon be at hand.

“How can Lagoas go on fighting us?” If Sabrino heard that once, he heard it a hundred times. “Derlavai is ours.”

Lagoan dragons still dropped eggs on southern Valmiera and Algarve. Lagoan warships still raided the coasts of Valmiera and Jelgava. It was still war, but it was war by fleabites. And Algarve could inflict no more than fleabites on Lagoas, either. Sabrino knew that, whether civilians did or not. He never tried to change their minds. Much of what he knew, he could not speak about. Even if he could have, he wouldn’t. Pretty women were much likelier to throw themselves at the feet of a man who had conquered than one in the process of conquering.

One of the things Sabrino knew was that crushing the Kaunian kingdoms did not mean Derlavai belonged to Algarve. He could read a map. So could a great many civilians, of course. But he did it habitually, as part of his duties. More and more these days, he found himself looking west.

Invitations to the royal palace frequently came his way. He would have been insulted had it been otherwise. Not only was he a noble, he was also an officer who had distinguished himself in three of Algarve’s four fights thus far. And so he would don his fanciest uniform tunic and kilt, put on every glittering decoration and badge of rank to which he was entitled, and swagger off to dance and drink and talk and display himself. He seldom came home alone.

He also went to the palace to listen to King Mezentio. Mezentio fascinated him, as the king fascinated most Algarvians. Unlike the vast majority of his countrymen, who could at most occasionally hear the king when he spoke by way of the crystal, Sabrino got to speak with him as well as listen. He took as much advantage of that as he could.

“It comes down to a matter of will,” Mezentio declared one chilly evening. He waved a goblet of hot brandy punch to emphasize his point. “Algarve refused to admit herself defeated after the Six Years’ War, and so, in the end, she was not defeated. She was split up, she was in part occupied, she was robbed—and she was forced to sign a treating declaring all this was good, all this was as it should have been. But defeated? Never! Not in her heart! Not in your hearts, my friends.” He gestured again, this time in scorn of anyone who could think otherwise.

A marquis clapped his hands. A couple of young women dropped the king curtsies, hoping to make him notice them. He did notice them; Sabrino watched his eyes. But his mind was elsewhere—still on what he had caused his kingdom to do, not on what he might be doing himself.

“What next, your Majesty?” Sabrino asked. “Now that we have come this far, what next?”

He didn’t know how much King Mezentio would say. He didn’t know whether the king would say anything. One of Mezentio’s advisers plucked at his sleeve. Mezentio shrugged the man off. Smiling at Sabrino, he replied, “When we commence, my lord count, the world will hold its breath and make no comment!”

“What does he mean?” one of the young women murmured to the other. The second woman shrugged, a gesture worth watching. Sabrino watched it. So did King Mezentio. Their eyes met. They both smiled.

And then Mezentio’s smile changed from the one any Algarvian man might give after watching a pretty girl to one of a different sort, one of complicity. He asked, “Are you answered, my lord count?”

Sabrino bowed. “Your Majesty, I am answered.” He knew enough to draw his own conclusions from the little more the king gave him. Around him, those who knew less looked puzzled. Some of them looked resentful because Sabrino plainly could see things they could not.

“What did he mean?” one of the young women asked the dragonflier.

“I’m sorry, my sweet, but I can’t tell you,” he answered. She pouted. Sabrino still said nothing. She was plainly unused to not getting her way. When she realized she wouldn’t this time, she poked him in the ribs with an elbow as she flounced away. He laughed, which only made her strides longer and angrier.

“You are a wicked man,” Mezentio said.

“I must be,” Sabrino agreed dryly.

“Oh, you are, never fear,” Mezentio said with a chuckle. “A wicked, wicked man.” Then the smile faded from his face like water flowing out of a copper tub. “But you are not so wicked as the Kaunians, who provoked this war in the first place and have now begun to pay the price for their arrogant folly.”

“Begun? I should say so, your Majesty,” Sabrino exclaimed. “King Gainibu doing whatever we tell him in Valmiera, King Donalitu fled and your own brother on the throne in Jelgava—oh, what a great wailing and gnashing of teeth that must cause the blonds. I don’t know what higher price they could pay, as a matter of fact.”

“They have only begun.” Mezentio’s voice went flat and harsh, the voice of a king who would brook no contradiction. “For a thousand years—for more than a thousand years—they have sneered at us, laughed behind their hands at us, looked down their noses at us. I say that will never happen again. From this war forth, from this day forth, whenever Kaunians think of Algarvians, they shall think of us with fear and trembling in their hearts.”

He’d spoken louder and louder, until at the end he might almost have been addressing a crowd of thousands gathered in the Royal Square. All over the salon, other conversations fell silent. When Mezentio finished, people burst into applause. Sabrino clapped with everybody else. “We’ve owed the Kaunians for a long time,” he said. “I’m glad we’re paying them back.”

“We have owed most of our neighbors for a long time, my lord count,” King Mezentio said. “We shall pay them back, too.” As Sabrino had done from time to time, he turned and looked toward the west.

“Can it be done, your Majesty?” Sabrino asked quietly.

“If you doubt it, sir, I invite you to return to your estate and leave the doing to those who have no doubts,” Mezentio said, and Sabrino’s ears burned. The king continued, “We have only to kick in the door and the whole rotten structure will come crashing down.”

Sabrino stared. A couple of high-ranking officers had used those very words not long after Forthweg fell. Then, Sabrino had had no way of knowing what they were talking about. Now, a good many rotten structures already having come crashing down, he could see only one still standing. How long, he suddenly wondered, had Mezentio been preparing for the day when war would break out again? The Kaunian kingdoms had declared war on Algarve, but Algarve was the kingdom that had been ready to fight.

Sabrino raised his goblet high. “To his Majesty!” he exclaimed.

Everyone drank. Not to drink a toast to the king of Algarve would have been unthinkable. But Mezentio’s hazel eyes glinted as he acknowledged the honor Sabrino and the salon full of notables had done him. He studied the dragonflier, then slowly nodded. Sabrino was convinced the king knew what he was thinking, and was telling him he was right. Asking any more would have been asking Mezentio to say too much. Mezentio might already have said too much, for those with ears to hear.

Not everyone had such ears. Sabrino had already insulted one pretty girl close to the king by not explaining what she thought she had the right to know. The other young woman there did not ask him to enlighten her. Instead, she chose an official from the ministry of finance. The fellow was plainly flattered to gain her attentions, but as plainly understood no more of what Mezentio had said and what he’d implied than she did.

Laughing a little to himself, Sabrino slipped off toward a sideboard and took another glass of wine. The pleasure that filled him, though, had little to do with what he’d drunk and what he was drinking. As Mezentio had done, he looked west. Slowly, he nodded. Algarve had been a long time finding her place in the sun. All her neighbors had tried to hold her down, hold her back. Once the Derlavaian War came to a proper end, though, they wouldn’t be able to do that any more.

Never again, Sabrino thought, echoing Mezentio. He was old enough to remember the humiliation and the chaos that followed the loss of the Six Years’ War. Never again, he thought once more. Victory was better. Whatever victory required, he wanted Algarve to do.

You can’t make war halfheartedly, he thought. As if that needed proving, Valmiera and Jelgava had proved it to the hilt. And now, as King Mezentio had said, they were paying the price. Well, Algarve had paid. It was their turn.

Someone not far away shouted angrily. Sabrino turned his head. A Yaninan in shoes with decorative pompoms, tights, and a puffy-sleeved tunic was waving his finger in an Algarvian’s face. “You are wrong, I tell you!” the Yaninan said. “I tell you, I was up by the Raffali River myself last week, and the weather was sunny—warm and sunny.”

“You are mistaken, sir,” the Algarvian said. “It rained. It rained nearly every day—quite spoiled the horseback ride I had planned.”

“You call me a liar at your peril,” the Yaninan said; his folk took slights even more seriously than Algarvians did.

“I do not call you a liar,” the redheaded noble replied with a yawn. “A senile fool who cannot recall today what happened yesterday: that, most assuredly. But not a liar.”

With a screech, the Yaninan flung his drink in the Algarvian’s face. Among Algarvians, their friends would have made arrangements for them to meet again. The Yaninan was too impatient to wait. He hit his foe in the belly, and then a glancing blow off the side of his head.

The Algarvian grappled with him, pulled him down, and started pummeling him. The Yaninan didn’t like that so well, as his foe was about half again as big as he was. By the time Sabrino and the other men pulled the Algarvian off him, he was more than a little worse for wear.

“You would be well advised to learn some manners,” the Algarvian told him.

“You would be well advised to—” the Yaninan began as he climbed to his feet.

“Shall I give you another lesson on why you would be well advised to learn manners?” the Algarvian asked, as politely as if he were offering another glass of brandy punch rather than another punch in the eye. The Yaninan did not lack spirit, but he didn’t altogether lack sense, either. Instead of starting up the fight again, he took himself elsewhere.

Sabrino bowed to the Algarvian victor, saying, “Well done, sir. Well done.”

“You do me too much honor.” His countryman returned the bow. “All these westerners—if you take a firm line with them, they are yours to command.”

“Aye.” Sabrino laughed. “That is the way of it, sure enough.”

Marshal Rathar strolled through King Swemmel Square, which was said to be the largest paved-over open space in the world. He had no idea whether that was true, or whether everything associated with King Swemmel had to be the biggest or the most of whatever it was simply because of its association with the king. He wondered whether anyone had actually measured all the great plazas of the world and compared them one to another. Then he wondered why he worried his head about such unimportant things. It wasn’t as if he had not important things about which to worry.

A wind howling up from the south blew little flurries of snow into his face. He pulled his cloak more tightly around him, and tugged the hood down low on his forehead. The cloak was the rock-gray of Unkerlanter army issue, but, unlike the long tunic beneath it, did not show his rank. Thus swaddled, he could have been anyone. He enjoyed his few minutes of anonymity. All too soon, he would have to return to the palace, return to his work, return to the knowledge that King Swemmel might order him dragged off to the headsman at any time.

Statues of past Unkerlanter kings, some in stone, some in bronze, marked the outer boundary of the square. One statue towered twice as tall as any of the others. Rathar did not need to glance at it to know it was made in King Swemmel’s image. Swemmel’s successor would no doubt knock it down. Maybe he would replace it with one to match the others in size. Maybe, having knocked it down, Swemmel’s successor would not replace it at all.

Under the shielding hood, Rathar shook his head. He might have been a man bedeviled by gnats, but no gnats could withstand Cottbus’s winter weather. No, he knew what he was: a man bedeviled by his own thoughts. Those were harder to shake off than gnats, and more dangerous, too.

He sighed. “I had better get back to it,” he muttered. If he buried himself in work, he would not—he hoped he would not—have much time to think about King Swemmel the man even as he carried out the orders of King Swemmel the sovereign.

He turned back toward the palace. As he did so, a couple of other men in nondescript rock-gray cloaks who had also been walking through King Swemmel Square turned in the same direction. Not enough other people were abroad in the square to let them disguise their movements, try as they would.

Rathar laughed. The wind tore apart the puff of vapor that burst from his mouth. He’d been a fool to imagine he could stay anonymous even for a few minutes.

Inside the palace, he took off the cloak at once, draping it over his arm. As if to make up for the savage weather outside, Unkerlanters commonly heated their dwellings and workplaces beyond the comfortable.

Major Merovec saluted him when he came into the office. “My lord Marshal, a gentleman from the foreign ministry has been waiting to see you,” his adjutant said. As usual, Merovec’s voice and face revealed little.

“And what does he want?” Rathar asked.

“Sir, he says he will discuss that only with you.” Merovec wasn’t shy about letting the marshal know what he thought of that: it infuriated him.

“Then I’d better see him, hadn’t I?” Rathar said mildly.

“I will get him, sir,” Merovec said. “I did not wish to leave him alone in your private office.” He’d probably found a broom closet for the foreign ministry official instead, if the gleam in his eye was any sign. That gleam still there, he hurried away.

When he returned, sure enough, he had an angry official with him. “Marshal, this man of yours has not granted me the deference due the deputy foreign minister of Unkerlant,” the fellow snapped.

“My lord Ibert, I am sure he only sought to keep secrets from spreading,” Rathar replied. “My aides can sometimes be more zealous on my behalf than I would be were I here in person.”

Ibert kept on glaring at Merovec, who might have been carved from stone. The deputy foreign minister muttered under his breath, but then said, “Very well, my lord Marshal, I will let it go—this time. Now that you are here in person, shall we closet ourselves together to keep secrets from spreading?” He kept an eye on Merovec: he wanted his own back.

And Rathar could not refuse him. “As you wish, my lord,” he said. “If you will do me the honor of accompanying me …” He led Ibert into his private office, closing the door behind them. The last he saw of the outside world was Merovec’s face. He knew he would have to make things right with his adjutant, but that could wait. He nodded to the deputy foreign minister. “And for what reason have we closeted ourselves together here?”

Ibert pointed to the map behind Rathar’s desk. “My lord Marshal, when we go to war against Algarve come spring, are we prepared to defend ourselves against a Zuwayzi attack from the north?”

Rathar turned to the map himself. Pins with colored heads showed concentrations of Unkerlanter soldiers and, somewhat less certainly, those of Algarve and Yanina. Almost all the gold-headed pins that represented Unkerlant’s war-ready forces were near the kingdom’s eastern border. The marshal clicked his tongue between his teeth. “Not so well as we might be, my lord,” he answered. “If we are to beat the redheads, I have no doubt we shall need every man we can scrape up.” He looked back to Ibert. “You are telling me we should prepare for such a misfortune, aren’t you?”

“I am,” Ibert said flatly. “Our spies and his Majesty’s minister in Bishah report there can be no doubt that Zuwayza and Algarve are conspiring against us.”

Sighing, Rathar tried to seem more surprised than he was. “That is too bad,” he said, and marveled at how large an understatement he could pack into four short words. Another of King Swemmel’s pigeons had come home to roost—and had shit on the windowsill as it flew in. Had Rathar been wearing King Shazli’s shoes (all Shazli was in the habit of wearing), he would have thought about avenging himself on Unkerlant, too.

“What do you propose to do about this?” Ibert demanded, sounding almost as petulant as his sovereign.

However petulant he sounded, it was the right question. Rathar said, “Since you assure me we do need to ready ourselves to meet this danger, I shall consult with my officers and develop a plan to do so. My immediate response”—he glanced at the map again—“is not to worry a great deal.”

“How not?” Ibert said. “The Zuwayzin were a thorn in our side during our last fight against them. Why should they prove any different now?”

Patiently, Rathar answered, “During the last war, they fought on the defensive. The going is usually harder when one attacks. And, even if the black men should win some early successes—if you will pardon my blunt-ness, my lord, so what?”

Ibert’s eyes almost bugged out of his head. “ ‘So what,’ my lord Marshal? Is that all you care for the soil of Unkerlant, that you would let the naked savages of the north seize it for their own?”

“Seizing it is one thing,” Rathar answered. “Keeping it is another. With the worst will in the world toward us, the Zuwayzin cannot go far beyond the borders they had before we forced them back a year ago. They have not the men, the behemoths, or the dragons to do more.”

“That would be quite bad enough,” Ibert said.

“Would it?” Rathar asked. “If we weaken the force with which we fight Algarve, we shall surely regret it, because it will mean we are less likely to beat the redheads. Once we have beaten the Algarvians, though, how can Zuwayza hope to stand alone against us?”

He studied Ibert. The man had held his post for some time, no mean achievement under King Swemmel. The easiest way to do so, though, was to do nothing but mirror the king’s thoughts and desires. Rathar waited to discover whether the deputy foreign minister had any thoughts of his own.

Ibert licked his lips. “Suppose you take no troops from the Algarvians, and they and the Zuwayzin defeat us anyhow?”

That was a very good question. Rathar wished Swemmel would ask such questions from time to time. So Ibert did have wits of his own: something worth knowing. The marshal said, “If that should happen—which the powers above prevent—it will be the redheads who beat us, not the black men. I would not wish to move soldiers away from the stronger foe to ward myself against the weaker.”

“That strikes me as a reasonable reply, my lord Marshal,” Ibert said. “I shall bear your words to his Majesty.”

And if Swemmel threw a tantrum and ordered an all-out assault on Zuwayza instead of the attack on Algarve… Rathar would obey him, and would obey him with a small sigh of relief. He did not relish the prospect of assailing King Mezentio’s men. He would have obeyed an order to attack Zuwayza with a large sigh of relief rather than a small one had he not begun to worry that the Algarvians were also contemplating an attack on Unkerlant.

But when he mentioned that to Ibert, the deputy foreign minister shook his head. “We’ve seen little evidence of it, aside from the attempted seduction of Zuwayza. Our ministries otherwise report unusually cordial relations with the redheads, in fact.”

“We are not the only ones moving soldiers toward our common border,” Rathar insisted.

“Neither the foreign ministry nor the king views these movements with alarm,” Ibert said. “His Majesty is confident we shall enjoy the advantages of surprise when the blow falls in the east.”

“Very well,” Rathar said, somewhat reassured. Swemmel saw conspiracies all around him. If he did not think the Algarvians suspected anything here, then the chance that they truly did not seemed pretty good to the marshal of Unkerlant. Of course, Swemmel had made mistakes before—about Rathar himself, for instance—but the marshal chose not to dwell on those.

Besides, Rathar told himself, then Swemmel was seeing danger where none existed. He wouldn’t miss danger where it truly lurked… would he?

Ibert said, “Submit to his Majesty a formal plan based on what you have discussed with me. I believe he will accept it.”

Rathar hoped the deputy foreign minister was right. King Swemmel, though, had an enormous attachment to Unkerlanter territory. Would he be willing to yield any, even temporarily, to gain more? The marshal had his doubts. He wished he were free of them, but he wasn’t. Still, he could only say, “He will have it before the week is out.” What he did with it… Whatever he did with it, the sooner he did it, the more time Rathar would have to try to set things to rights again.

Ibert departed, looking pleased with himself. He looked even more pleased as he strutted past Merovec. Rathar’s adjutant looked as if he wanted to see the deputy foreign minister shipped off to some distant village to keep a crystal going. As best he could, Rathar soothed Merovec’s ruffled feathers. That was part of his job, too.

“Come on,” Ealstan said to Sidroc. “New semester today. New masters. Maybe we’ll get some decent ones, for a change.”

“Fat chance,” his cousin answered, as usual dawdling over his breakfast porridge. “Only difference will be new hands breaking switches on our backs.”

“All right, then,” Ealstan said. “Maybe we’ll have a bunch of old men who can’t hit very hard.”

As he’d hoped it would, that made Sidroc smile, even if it didn’t make him eat any faster. After a swig of watered wine, Sidroc said, “Curse me if I know why we bother with school, anyhow. Your brother had a ton of it, and what’s he doing? Roadbuilding, that’s what. You could train a mountain ape to put cobblestones in place.”

Leofsig had already gone off to labor on the roads. “He would be helping my father, if it weren’t for the war,” Ealstan said. “Things can’t stay crazy forever.” Even as he said that, though, he wondered why not.

So did Sidroc. “Says who?” he replied, and Ealstan had no good answer. Sidroc got to his feet. “Well, come on. You’re so eager, let’s go.”

They both threw cloaks over their tunics. Snow didn’t fall in Gromheort more than about one winter in four, but mornings were chilly anyhow. So Ealstan thought, at any rate; maybe someone from the south of Unkerlant would have had a different opinion.

Ealstan was soon glad they had started out with time to spare, for they had to wait at a street corner while a regiment of Algarvian footsoldiers tramped by heading west. They weren’t men from Gromheort’s garrison; they kept looking around and exclaiming at the buildings—and at the good-looking women—they saw. Ealstan found he could understand quite a bit of their chatter. Master Agmund had a heavy hand with the switch, but he’d made his scholars learn.

At last, the redheads passed. Sidroc moved at a brisk clip after that. He didn’t like getting beaten. The trouble was, most of the time he didn’t like doing the things that kept him from getting beaten, either.

“We’re here in good time.” Ealstan knew he sounded surprised, but couldn’t help himself.

“Aye, we are,” his cousin answered, “and what does it get us? Not a cursed thing but the chance to queue up for the registrar.”

He was right. A long line of boys already snaked out of the office. Ealstan said, “We’d be even farther back if we were later.” Sidroc snorted. Ealstan’s cheeks heated. It had been a weak comeback, and he knew it.

Little by little, the line advanced. More boys took their places behind Ealstan and Sidroc. Ealstan liked that. It didn’t change how many boys were in front of him, but he wasn’t a tailender any more.

As he got nearer to the registrar’s office, he heard voices raised in anger. “What’s going on?” he asked the fellow in front of him.

“I don’t know,” the youth said. “They’re only letting in one at a time, and people aren’t coming out this way.” He shrugged. “We’ll find out pretty soon, I guess.”

“Something’s going on.” Sidroc spoke with authority. “This isn’t how they did things last semester, and that means they’re up to something. I wonder what.” His nose quivered, as if he were one of the dogs some rich nobles trained to hunt truffles and other extra-fancy mushrooms.

Ealstan wouldn’t have figured that out so quickly, but saw at once that his cousin was likely to be right. Sidroc had a gift for spotting the underhanded. Ealstan preferred not to wonder what else that said about him.

“It’s an outrage, I tell you,” the youth in the registrar’s office shouted. Ealstan leaned forward, trying to hear what kind of reply the scholar got. Whatever it was, it was too soft for him to make out. He slammed a fist into the side of his thigh in frustration.

Before long, the fellow in front of him in the queue went inside. Now Ealstan could hear whatever happened. But nothing happened. The scholar got his list of classes and didn’t say a word about it. “Next!” the registrar called.

Ealstan was in front of Sidroc, so he went in. The registrar looked up at him over a pair of half glasses. Having gone through this twice a year for a good many years, Ealstan knew what was expected of him. “Master, I am Ealstan son of Hestan,” he said. He didn’t think anyone at the school shared his name, but ritual required that he give his father’s name, too, and sticking to ritual was as important in registration as in sorcery. The registrar thought so, anyhow, and his was the only opinion that counted.

“Ealstan son of Hestan,” he repeated, as if he’d never heard the name before. But his fingers belied that; they sorted through piles of paper with amazing speed and sureness. The registrar plucked out the couple of sheets that had to do with Ealstan. Glancing at one, he said, “Your fees were paid in full at the beginning of the year.”

“Aye, Master,” Ealstan answered with quiet pride. In spite of everything, his father did better than most in Gromheort.

“Here are your courses, then.” The registrar thrust the other sheet of paper at Ealstan. Did he wince as he did so? For a moment, Ealstan thought he was imagining things. Then he remembered the shouts and arguments he’d heard. Maybe he wasn’t.

He looked at the list. The Algarvian language, history of Algarve, something called nature of Kaunianity… “What’s this?” he asked, pointing to it.

“New requirement,” the registrar said, which was less informative than Ealstan would have liked. By the set of the man’s chin, though, it was all he intended to say on the subject.

With a mental shrug, Ealstan glanced down the rest of the list: Forthwegian language and grammar, Forthwegian literature, and choral singing. “Where’s the rest of it?” he asked. “Where’s the stonelore? Where’s the ciphering?”

“Those courses arc no longer being offered,” the registrar said, and braced himself, as if for a blow.

“What?” Ealstan stared. “Why not? What’s the point of school, if not to learn things?” He sounded very much like his father, though he didn’t fully realize it.

By the look on the registrar’s face, he didn’t want to answer. But he did, and in a way that relieved him of all responsibility: “Those courses are no longer offered, by order of the occupying authorities.”

“They can’t do that!” Ealstan exclaimed.

“They can. They have,” the registrar said. “The headmaster has protested, but he can do no more than protest. And you, young sir, can do no more than go out that door yonder so I can deal with the next scholar in line.”

Ealstan could have done more. He could have pitched a fit, as several of his schoolmates had done before him. But he was too shocked. Numbly, he went out through the door at which the registrar had jerked his thumb. He stood in the hallway, staring down at the class list in his hand. He wondered what his father would say on seeing it. Something colorful and memorable, he had no doubt.

Sidroc came through the door less than a minute later. Smiles wreathed his face. “By the powers above, it’s going to be a pretty good semester,” he said. “Only hard course they’ve stuck me with is Algarvian.”

“Let’s see your list,” Ealstan said. His cousin handed him the paper. His eyes flicked down it. “It’s the same as mine, all right.”

“Isn’t it fine?” Sidroc looked about to dance for joy. “For once in my life, I won’t feel like my brains are trying to dribble out my ears when I do the work.”

“We should be taking the harder courses, though,” Ealstan said. “You know why we’re not, don’t you?” Sidroc shook his head. Ealstan muttered something his cousin fortunately did not hear. Aloud, he went on, “We’re not taking them because the redheads won’t let us take them, that’s why.”

“Huh?” Sidroc scratched his head. “Why should the Algarvians care whether we take stonelore or not? I care, on account of I know how hard it is, but what difference does it make to the Algarvians?”

“Have I told you lately you’re a blockhead?” Ealstan asked. Sidroc wasn’t, not in all ways, but he’d missed the boat here. Before he could get angry, Ealstan went on, “They want us to be stupid. They want us to be ignorant. They want us not to know things. You don’t see Forthwegian history on this list, do you? If we don’t know about the days of King Felgild, when Forthweg was the greatest kingdom in Derlavai, how can we want them to come back?”

“I don’t care. I don’t much care, either,” Sidroc said. “All I know is, I’m not going to be measuring triangles this semester, either, and I’m cursed glad of it.”

“But don’t you see?” Ealstan said, rather desperately. “If the Algarvians don’t let us learn anything, by the time our children grow up Forthwegians won’t be anything but peasants grubbing in the dirt.”

“I need to find a woman before I have children,” Sidroc said. “As a matter of fact, I’d like to find a woman whether I have children or not.” He glanced over at Ealstan. “And don’t tell me you wouldn’t. That blond wench in mushroom season—”

“Oh, shut up,” Ealstan said fiercely. He might not have sounded so fierce had he found Vanai unattractive. He had no idea what she thought of him, or even if she thought of him. All they’d talked about were mushrooms and the Algarvians’ multifarious iniquities.

Sidroc laughed at him, which made things worse. Then his cousin said, “If you’re going to cast books like Uncle Hestan, I can see why you might want more ciphering lessons, I suppose, but what do you care about stonelore any which way? It’s not like you’re going to be a mage.”

“My father always says the more you know, the more choices you have,” Ealstan answered. “I’d say the Algarvians think he’s right, wouldn’t you? Except with them, it’s the other way round—they don’t want us to have any choices, and so they don’t want us to know anything, either.”

“My father always says it’s not what you know, it’s who you know,” Sidroc said, which did indeed sound like Uncle Hengist. “As long as we can make connections, we’ll get on all right.”

That had more than a little truth in it. Ealstan’s father had used his connections to make sure no one looked too closely at where Leofsig had been before he came back to Gromheort. In the short run, and for relatively small things, connections were indeed splendid. For setting the course of one’s entire life? Ealstan didn’t think so.

He started to say as much, then shook his head instead. He couldn’t prove he was right. He wondered if he could even make a good case. Whether he did or not, Sidroc would laugh at him. He was sure of that.

Even though Ealstan kept his mouth shut, Sidroc started laughing anyhow, laughing and pointing at Ealstan. “What’s so cursed funny?” Ealstan demanded.

“I’ll tell you what’s so cursed funny,” his cousin replied. “If you can’t get the courses your father thinks you ought to have here at school, what’s he going to do? I’ll tell you what: he’ll make you study those things on your own. That’s what’s funny, by the powers above. Haw, haw, haw!”

“Oh, shut up,” Ealstan said again, suddenly and horribly certain Sidroc was right.