Rulers of the Darkness

Nineteen

“See that that gets translated into Algarvian," Hajjaj told his secretary, "but let me review the translation before we send it on to Marquis Balastro, and then… Are you listening to me?"

"I'm sorry, your Excellency." Qutuz had cocked his head to one side and seemed to be listening not to the Zuwayzi foreign minister but to something outside King Shazli's palace. "Is that thunder?"

"Nonsense," Hajjaj said. Aye, fall and winter were the rainy season in Zuwayza, but the day- the whole week- had been fine and dry and sunny. But then his ears also caught the low rumble the younger man had heard before him. He frowned. "That is thunder. But it can't be."

He and Qutuz both found the answer more slowly than they should have. They both found it at the same time, too. "Eggs!" Qutuz blurted, while Hajjaj exclaimed, "The Unkerlanters!"

Ever since the war began, King Swemmel's dragonfliers had occasionally visited Bishah. They hadn't come in large numbers; they could hardly afford to, not with Unkerlant locked in a life-or-death struggle against Algarve. As far as Hajjaj could tell, they'd mounted the attacks more to remind the Zuwayzin that Swemmel hadn't forgotten about them than for any other reason. The Unkerlanter dragons had also done their best to hit the Algarvian ministry in Bishah, but they'd never quite succeeded.

Hajjaj didn't need long to realize this morning would be different. "They're dropping a good many eggs today, aren't they?" he remarked, doing his best to stay calm- or at least not to show he was anything else but.

"Aye, your Excellency, so they are." Qutuz took his cue from Hajjaj, but he had less practice at seeming dispassionate while actually frightened or furious.

More roars of bursting eggs beat against Hajjaj's ears. They were coming closer to the palace now, too, so he no longer had any doubt what they were. The ground started shaking under his fundament, as if at an earthquake. Pen cases and leaves of paper on his desk trembled and quivered.

"Perhaps," Qutuz said, "we ought to look for shelter."

"Where?" Hajjaj asked, not at all rhetorically. He'd read that people in Setubal and Sulingen and other places that often came under attack from the air took refuge in cellars. Cellars, however, had never been a part of Zuwayzi architecture, and no one had ever dreamt the Unkerlanters would really pummel Bishah.

"I'm getting under my desk," Qutuz declared, and hurried off to do just that. Hajjaj nodded approval. It wasn't a bad notion at all. He crawled under his own. For once, he wished he were in the habit of working at it in a chair rather than sitting on the floor; he would have had more room under there. His joints creaked as he tried to fold himself into as small a space as he could.

Then the first eggs fell on the royal palace. For the next little while, Hajjaj had nothing whatever to do with whether he lived or died. The ground shook. Windows blew out. Walls fell in. Chunks of the roof came crashing down. One of them landed where he'd been sitting while talking with his secretary. Another came down on the desk, but wasn't heavy enough to crush it- and, incidentally, Hajjaj.

Someone was screaming. After a moment, Hajjaj realized that was his own voice. He bit down hard on his lower lip to make himself stop. Then he wondered why he bothered. Plenty of people, surely, were screaming right now. But he kept on biting his lip instead. Pride is a strange thing, he thought, a strange thing, but a very strong one.

An eternity later- an eternity probably measurable as a couple of minutes- the eggs stopped landing on and around the palace and started falling farther north in Bishah. Hajjaj had to fight his way out from under the desk; some of the rubble all but caged him there.

"Qutuz!" he called. "Are you all right?"

"Aye, your Excellency." The secretary came running into Hajjaj's office. "Powers above be praised that you're safe."

"I'm well enough," Hajjaj said, "but you're bleeding." He pointed to a gash on Qutuz's left calf.

His secretary looked down at it. When he looked up again, astonishment filled his face. "I didn't even know it was there," he said.

"Well, it needs bandaging- that's plain." Hajjaj used a letter-opener to cut up cushions to get cloth to wrap around Qutuz's leg. He would have had a simpler time of it had either of them worn clothes.

"I thank you, your Excellency," Qutuz said. "There are bound to be plenty of people hurt a lot worse than I am. We'd better see what we can do for them."

"You're right." Hajjaj went over to the little closet that opened onto his office. His ceremonial wardrobe lay in chaos on the floor. He didn't care. He tossed his secretary a couple of tunics and kilts and grabbed some for himself. Seeing Qutuz's bewilderment, he spoke aloud his thought of a moment before: "Bandages."

"Ah." Qutuz's face cleared. "That's clever. That's very clever."

"It's cleverness I wish we didn't need," Hajjaj said grimly. "Come on. Let's make for the audience chamber and the throne room." That was as close as he would come to admitting he was worried about King Shazli. His secretary's eyes widened, but Qutuz didn't worry out loud, either.

And they both had plenty to do before they got anywhere near the throne room. People were down and groaning in the hallways. Some of them, the ones with broken bones, needed more than bandaging. Some were beyond all help. Hajjaj and Qutuz found not only bodies but buried bodies and pieces of bodies. Before long, their sandals left bloody footprints at every stride.

Someone around the corner of a corridor barked peremptory orders: "Get that rubble off him! Grab that roof beam and lift! Maybe we can still save his leg!"

Hajjaj's heart leaped within him. He knew that voice. "Your Majesty!" he called. Behind him, Qutuz whooped.

"Is that you, Hajjaj?" the king asked. "Powers above be praised you're whole and hale. Powers below eat the Unkerlanters for doing this to us." He went back to the rescue he was leading: "Heave there, all of you." A shriek- not King Shazli's- followed. "Easy there, my friend," Shazli said. "It'll be better now."

Dust and dirt and blood covered Shazli when Hajjaj finally reached his side. But the king needed no fancy trappings to gain obedience. When he gave a command, everyone who heard hurried to carry it out. People respected him for the man he was as well as for the rank he held.

"Very good indeed to see you in one piece, your Excellency," he told Hajjaj when the foreign minister reached his side. "Swemmel's whoresons have struck us a heavy blow here."

"Aye, your Majesty." Hajjaj knew more than a little gratitude that the king didn't blame him for the Unkerlanter attack- or, if he did, didn't say so in public.

"We are going to have to strengthen our defenses against dragons around the city," Shazli said. "If the Unkerlanters did this once, they'll come back to do it again."

"That's… true, your Majesty." Hajjaj bowed with no small respect. "I hadn't thought so far ahead." That such a thing could happen once to Bishah was appalling enough. That it might happen again and again… He shivered.

"Do you know whether General Ikhshid lives?" King Shazli asked.

"I'm sorry, but no," Hajjaj answered. "I have no idea. The eggs stopped falling, and the first thing I wanted to do was make sure you were safe."

"Here I stand." Shazli had lived the softest of soft lives. He was inclined to be pudgy, and had never looked particularly impressive. But there was iron in him. "King Swemmel will think he can put fear in us, so that we will do whatever he wants. He will find he is wrong. He will find he cannot make us bend our necks by dropping eggs from the sky."

Several of the people in the damaged hallway clapped their hands. Hajjaj almost clapped himself. He did bow again. "This is the spirit that led your father to reclaim our freedom after the Unkerlanters ruled us for so long."

King Shazli nodded. "And we shall stay free, come what may. Are we not still the men of the desert our forefathers were in days gone by?"

"Even so, your Majesty," Hajjaj replied, though he and the king both knew the Zuwayzin were no such thing. This generation was more urban, and more like townsfolk in the rest of Derlavai, than any before it. But Shazli had to know saying such things was the best way to rally his people.

Neither of them mentioned that the king's father had needed to free Zuwayza because the Unkerlanters had been strong enough to hold it down for generations, and neither of them mentioned that enough blows like the one the Unkerlanters had just delivered might break any people's will- to say nothing of ability- to keep on fighting. Hajjaj understood both those things painfully well. This did not seem the best time to ask Shazli whether he did, too.

"I shall find out what we need to learn about Ikhshid," the king said. He pointed at Hajjaj. "I want you to find a crystallomancer and speak to Marquis Balastro. Assure him we are still in the fight, and see what help we can hope to get from Algarve."

"As you say." Hajjaj's cough had nothing to do with the dust and smoke in the air. It was pure diplomacy. "Seeing how things are going for them in their own fight against Unkerlant, I don't know what they'll be able to spare us."

Shazli, fortunately, recognized a diplomatic cough when he heard one. "You may tell the marquis that we need tools to stay in the fight. They have more dragons than we do. They also have more highly trained mages than we do; they're bound to be better off when it comes to things like heavy sticks that can knock a dragon out of the sky."

"Every word you say there is true," Hajjaj agreed. "I'll do what I can." He nodded to Qutuz. "To the crystallomancers." His secretary nodded and followed.

One of the thick mud-brick walls of the crystallomancers' office had a new, yard-wide hole in it. Some of their tables were overturned; some of their crystals were bright, jagged shards on the floor; some of them were bleeding. But one of the men who hadn't been hurt quickly established an etheric connection with the Algarvian ministry. Balastro's image stared out of a surviving crystal at Hajjaj. "Good to see you in one piece, your Excellency," the redhead said.

"And you," Hajjaj answered. "King Shazli expects the Unkerlanters to pay us more such calls."

"I shouldn't be surprised," Balastro said. "They missed me this time, so they'll have to come back and try again."

Hajjaj smiled at his self-importance, which was partly an act and partly typical of a lot of Algarvians. The Zuwayzi foreign minister said, "Any help you can give us, we'll be grateful for and put to good use. We have the men to serve heavy sticks and the men to fly dragons, if only we could get them. Then the Unkerlanters wouldn't have such an easy time of it."

"I'll pass that along," Balastro said. "When we haven't got enough of anything ourselves, I don't know what they'll say about it back in Trapani. But I'll pass it on with my recommendation that they give you all they can." His eyes narrowed. He was shrewd, was Balastro. "After all, we have to keep you fighting Swemmel, too."

"You and King Shazli see things much alike here," Hajjaj said. "I am glad of it." And I hope it does some good. But will it? Will anything?

Captain Orosio stuck his head into Colonel Sabrino's tent. "Sir, the field post is here," the squadron commander said.

"Is it?" Sabrino rose from his folding chair. He winced. The blazed shoulder he'd taken escaping the Unkerlanters after his dragon was flamed out of the sky still pained him. He wore a wound badge along with his other decorations now. He knew how lucky he was to be alive, and savored survival with Algarvian gusto. "Let's see what we've got, then."

He wore the furs and leather in which he would have flown into the frigid upper air. It was frigid enough down here on the ground in the Kingdom of Grelz. The third winter of the war against Unkerlant, he thought with a sort of dull wonder. He'd never imagined, not that first heady summer when the Algarvians plunged ahead on their western adventure, that the war against King Swemmel could last into its third winter. He'd found a lot of things here that he'd never imagined then.

The postman, who wasn't a dragonflier, looked cold, but Algarvian soldiers who stayed on the ground weren't always freezing, as they had that first dreadful winter, for which they'd been so woefully unprepared. The fellow saluted as Sabrino came up to him. "Here you go, Colonel," he said, and handed the wing commander an envelope.

"Thanks." Sabrino recognized the handwriting at once. To Orosio, he said, "From my wife."

"Ah." Orosio stepped back a couple of paces to give him privacy to read it.

Opening the envelope with gloved hands was a clumsy business, but Sabrino managed. Inside were two pages closely written in Gismonda's clear, precise script. As was her way, she came straight to the point. I have good reason to believe that your mistress has taken up with another man, she told him. Fronesia has been seen too much with an infantry officer- some say a major, others a colonel- to leave any doubt that he has seen too much of her. That being so, I suggest you let him pay for her flat and her extravagances.

"And so I shall," Sabrino muttered.

"What's that, sir?" Oraste asked.

"Cut off my mistress' support," Sabrino answered. "My wife tells me some colonel of footsoldiers, or whatever he may be, is getting the benefits from her these days. If he's getting the benefits, by the powers above, he can bloody well pay the freight, too."

"I should say so." But Orosio's rather heavy features clouded. "As long as you're sure your wife's telling the truth, that is."

Sabrino nodded. "Oh, aye, without a doubt. Gismonda has never given me any trouble about Fronesia. I should hope she wouldn't. My dear fellow, do you know a proper Algarvian noble who hasn't got a mistress or two? -aside from the handful who have boys on the side instead, I mean."

"Well…" Captain Orosio hesitated, then said, "There's me."

Sabrino slapped him on the back. "And we know what your problem is: you've been here fighting a war and serving your kingdom. You get back to civilization, you'll need to carry a constable's club to beat the women back."

"Maybe." Orosio kicked at the frozen dirt like a youth just beginning to think about girls. "It'd be nice."

Sabrino slapped him on the back again. "It'll happen," he said, wondering if it would. Orosio was a nobleman, all right, or he'd have had an even harder time making officer's rank than he had, but you needed to squint hard at his pedigree to be sure of it. He'd have risen further and faster otherwise, for he was a first-rate soldier. There were times when Sabrino was glad Orosio hadn't been in position to hope for a wing of his own to command; he was too useful and able a subordinate to want to lose.

"Well, maybe," Orosio said again. He knew what held him back. He could hardly help knowing. After another kick at the dirt, he went on, "The way our losses are these days, we're getting more out-and-out commoners as officers than we probably ever did in all our history till now."

"It could be," Sabrino agreed. "The Six Years' War was hard on our noble families, too. Put it together with this one, and…" He sighed. "When the war is over, the king will have to grant a lot of patents of nobility, just to keep the ranks from getting too thin."

"I suppose so." Orosio's laugh sent fog spurting from his mouth. "And then the families who were noble before the war will spend the next five hundred years looking down their noses at the new ones."

"That's the truth." Sabrino laughed, too. But, as happened so often these days, the laughter didn't want to stick. "Better that than having some other king tell us who our nobles will be and who they won't be."

In centuries gone by, Valmiera and Jelgava and Forthweg and even Yanina had meddled in Algarvian affairs, backing now this local prince, now that one, as puppet or cat's-paw. Once upon a time, Sibiu had ruled a broad stretch of the coastline of southern Algarve. Those bad days, those days when a man was embarrassed to admit he was an Algarvian, were gone. Algarve had taken its right place in the sun, a kingdom among kingdoms, a great kingdom among great kingdoms.

But Algarve didn't hold Sibiu anymore. And, not far away, eggs burst, a quick, hard drumbeat of noise. Sabrino's head swung in that direction as he gauged the sound and what it might mean. So did Orosio's. "Unkerlanters," Orosio said.

"Aye." Sabrino hated to nod. "They didn't even let the mud slow them down this autumn. Now that the ground's hard again, I don't know how we're going to hold them out of Herborn."

"Neither do I," Orosio said. "But we'd cursed well better, because we'll have a demon of a time hanging on to the rest of Grelz if we lose it."

"Oh, it's not quite so bad as that, I wouldn't say- not good, mind you, but not so bad as that," Sabrino said. Orosio looked glum and cold and disbelieving and said not a word. Sabrino had been hoping for an argument. Silence, skeptical silence, gave him nothing to push against.

A crystallomancer hurried over to his tent and stuck his head inside. Not seeing him, the fellow drew back in confusion. "Here I am," Sabrino called, and waved. "What's gone wrong now?" He assumed something had, or the fellow wouldn't have been looking for him.

With a salute, the crystallomancer said, "Sir, the wing is ordered to attack the Unkerlanter ground forces now pushing their way into map square Green-Three."

"Green-Three? Powers below eat me if I remember where that is," Sabrino said. "Tell the dragon handlers to load eggs onto the beasts. Orosio, call out the dragonfliers, and I'll go find out what in blazes we're supposed to be doing."

While the crystallomancer and Orosio shouted, Sabrino went back to his tent and unfolded the situation map. For a moment, he didn't see any square labeled Green-Three, and he wondered whether the crystallomancer had got the order straight. Then he noticed that the vertical column of squares labeled Green lay east of Herborn, not west where he'd been looking. He cursed under his breath. No, the capital of the Kingdom of Grelz wasn't going to hold. If the Unkerlanters were already beyond Herborn, the fight had to be to keep a corridor open so the troops in the city could pull out.

No help for it, he thought. If we lose Herborn and those men, we'll be worse off than if we just lose Herborn.

He hurried out of the tent again, shouting orders of his own. "Come on, you whoresons!" he yelled to the men of his wing. "Time to make some Unkerlanters sorry they were ever born."

Even now, after so many bitter battles, his dragonfliers gave him a cheer. Somehow, that rocked him. He had trouble believing they had anything to cheer about, or that he'd done anything to deserve those shouts. Waving a mittened hand, he scrambled up onto his dragon and took his place at the base of its neck. The dragon's screech rang high and shrill in his ears. It was younger and smaller than the beast he'd taken into all the fights before it got blazed out of the sky- younger and smaller and, if such a thing was possible, stupider, too.

He whacked it with the goad. It screeched again, this time in fury, and sprang into the air as if hoping to shake him off. He grinned. An angry dragon was a dragon that would fly hard. He activated his crystal and spoke to his squadron leaders: "Green-Three, boys, just like the crystallomancer said. North and east of Herborn."

Would the words slide by without the officers' fully noticing what he'd just said? He hoped so. But no such luck. "North and east?" Captain Orosio exclaimed. "Colonel, that doesn't sound good at all, not even a little bit."

"I wish I could tell you you were wrong, but I'm afraid you're right," Sabrino said. "Nothing we can do about it, though, except hit Swemmel's bastards as hard as we can and help our own boys down on the ground."

Orosio didn't answer that. As far as Sabrino could see, it had no answer. They flew on over the ruined landscape of the Kingdom- not the Duchy (not yet, thought Sabrino) -of Grelz. Two and a half years before, the Unkerlanters had fought hard to hold back the Algarvians. Little of what those battles wrecked was rebuilt, and now Sabrino's countrymen were doing everything they could to keep the Unkerlanters from retaking this stretch of land. If anything hereabouts was left standing by the time these battles were through, Sabrino would have been amazed.

Then he stopped worrying about the local landscape. There down below, just emerging from forest onto open ground, was the head of an Unkerlanter column- surely the force against which his wing had been sent. A few Algarvian behemoths out on the frozen fields started tossing eggs at Swemmel's soldiers, but they wouldn't be able to stall the Unkerlanters for long, not without help they wouldn't.

"Come on!" Sabrino shouted into his crystal. He pointed for good measure. "There they are. Now we make 'em sorry they aren't somewhere else."

Like most of its kind, his new dragon was happy enough to stoop on the enemy, as if it imagined itself a madly outsized kestrel. Getting it to pull up, he knew, would be another problem. It wanted to sink its claws into a behemoth and fly off with the great beast, armor and crew and all: it had not the wit to see such was far beyond even its great strength.

Sabrino loosed the eggs slung beneath the dragon and hit it with the goad. It screeched angrily, but did finally decide to rise rather than flying into the ground. More eggs burst behind Sabrino as the rest of his dragonfliers also loosed their loads of death on the Unkerlanters. He looked back over his shoulder and nodded in solid professional satisfaction. Battered and undermanned though it was, his wing still did a solid professional job. They'd well and truly smashed in the head of this column. Swemmel's men wouldn't be coming forward here, not for a while.

But then more Unkerlanters emerged from the woods north and east of the column the dragonfliers had just attacked. And, as his dragon gained height, Sabrino saw still more men and beasts, some in rock-gray, some in white winter smocks over rock-gray, moving up from the south toward those soldiers coming out of the forest.

Sabrino didn't know whether to groan or to curse. He did both at once, with great feeling. "Powers below eat them!" he shouted to the uncaring sky. "They've got Herborn trapped in one of their stinking kettles!"

"Herborn surrounded." Fernao sounded out the Kuusaman words with care as he fought his way through the news sheet from Yliharma. "Large force of Algarvians trapped inside Unkerlanter lines. Demand for surrender refused."

"I've heard Lagoans who sounded worse," Ilmarinen said. Coming from him, any praise was high praise.

Fernao dipped his head. "Thank you," he said in Kuusaman. He went on in classical Kaunian, in which he remained more fluent: "Reading the news sheets, I learn many military terms. But they are not much use to me in speaking of ordinary things."

"Oh, I don't know." Ilmarinen looked around the refectory till he spotted the serving girl for whom he'd conceived an as yet unrequited passion. Waving to get her attention, he called, "Hey, Linna! If I surround you, will you surrender?"

"You are not asleep, Master Ilmarinen. You are awake," Linna answered. "You are not talking in your dreams, however much you wish you were."

"I see," Fernao said. "Aye, I followed that well enough."

"I was afraid you would," Ilmarinen said glumly. "That wench must spend an hour every morning stropping her tongue to make it sharper." He took a sip of tea, then asked, "Let me see that news sheet, will you?" Fernao passed it to him; Ilmarinen was bound to make smoother, faster going of it than he could. And, sure enough, the Kuusaman master mage soon grunted. "Here's a sweet little story: a Sibian woman who was pregnant by an Algarvian fed her husband rat poison when he came home and found out what she'd been up to."

"Sweet, aye." Fernao had a pretty good idea why Ilmarinen had picked that particular story. He had no intention of admitting as much, since that would also have meant admitting Ilmarinen had a point.

When Fernao said no more, Ilmarinen grunted again and went on, "Aye, poor Commander, ah, Cornelu won't be riding leviathans for King Burebistu any more, and his not-so-loving wife will end up a head shorter. Bad business all the way around."

"Cornelu?" Fernao exclaimed- the name got his notice. "Oh, that poor bugger!"

"You knew him?" Now Ilmarinen sounded surprised.

"Not well, but aye, I knew him," Fernao answered. "He was the leviathan-rider who pulled King Penda of Forthweg and me out of Mizpah, down in the land of the Ice People, when it was on the point of falling to the Yaninans."

"Ah." Ilmarinen nodded. "I suspect that, if we knew more of these webs of casual acquaintance, we could do more with the law of contagion than we've managed up till now. If I had to guess, I'd say that would be for the generation of mages after you."

"It could be." Fernao eyed Ilmarinen with admiration no less genuine for being reluctant. No one could ever say Ilmarinen thought small. In a couple of sentences, he'd proposed a program of research that might well keep a whole generation of mages busy.

Before Fernao could say anything else, Pekka strode into the refectory and spoke in ringing tones: "My fellow mages, we are leaving for the blockhouse in a quarter of an hour. You will be ready." The Kuusaman verb had a form that expressed absolute certainty; Pekka used it then.

And Fernao was ready in a quarter of an hour- done with his breakfast and decked in furs a man of the Ice People wouldn't have disdained. As he dressed, he wondered whether Ilmarinen, who'd lingered in the dining hall, could possibly get to the front door of the hostel within the appointed time. But he found Ilmarinen there before him. The master mage gave a superior smirk, as if to say he knew he'd put one over on Fernao.

Everyone was there: all the theoretical sorcerers who would conduct the next experiment that sprang from the unity at the heart of the Two Laws, the secondary sorcerers who would project their spell to the animals, the sorcerers who would keep the animals from freezing till the spell went forth, and the contingent of mages who would do their best to protect the theoretical sorcerers against any onslaught from Algarve.

Pekka didn't look pleased to find everyone ready on time. She looked as if that were nothing less than her due. Maybe that was what leading meant. "And off we go," she said. "The weather is very fine today."

She came from Kajaani, of course, on the southern coast of Kuusamo. That meant her standards differed from Fernao's. As far as he was concerned, it was bloody cold outside. But several of the other Kuusamans nodded, so he supposed he was the odd man out here.

Odd man out or not, he was glad to snuggle under more furs in a sleigh. He was also glad to snuggle under them beside Pekka. Snuggle down beside her was all he did. Without a word, without a gesture, she'd made it plain that anything else would cost them the friendship they'd built up since he came to Kuusamo. He didn't think that was because she wasn't interested in him. On the contrary- he thought she was, and sternly wouldn't let herself be.

In an abstract way, he admired that… which made it no less frustrating. Still, he didn't suppose he wanted to put her husband Leino in a situation like the one from which poor, luckless Cornelu hadn't escaped. No, he didn't want that at all. All I want is to go to bed with her. If only things were so simple. But he knew too well they weren't.

Pekka said, "In spite of everything, we do make progress. We shall be sending the energies farther from the site of the sorcery than we have ever tried before." She paused before adding, "Almost far enough to be useful in the field."

"Almost," Fernao said. But his comment was rather gloomier than hers: "Almost is one of the saddest words in the language- in any language. It speaks of hopes with nothing to show for them."

"We are already releasing nearly as much energy with our sorcery as the Algarvians are with their murderous magecraft," Pekka said. "And our magic is far cleaner than theirs."

"I know," Fernao replied- the last thing he wanted to do was affront her. "But they still have more control over theirs than we do with ours. We do not yet know how to project the energies from our spell across the Strait of Valmiera, for instance, and we know too well that Mezentio's mages can."

As usual, speaking classical Kaunian gave the conversation a certain air of detachment- some, but not enough here. Pekka's shiver had nothing to do with the icy air through which the sleigh glided. "Aye, we do know that too well," she agreed with a grimace. "Were it not so, we would still have Siuntio on our side, and not a day goes by in which I do not miss him."

"I know," Fernao said again. He might have dragged Siuntio out of the blockhouse when it started to collapse and burn during the Algarvian sorcerous attack. He'd dragged Pekka out instead. She still didn't realize he'd been closer to Siuntio than to her. No matter how much he wanted to bed her, he would never tell her that.

Ptarmigan fluttered away from the sleigh, wings whistling as they took flight. "They are in their full winter plumage now," Pekka said. "The rabbits and the ferrets will be white, too."

"So they will, here," Fernao said. "Up by Setubal- and on the Derlavaian mainland farther north, too- many of them will stay brown the whole winter long. I wonder how they know to go white here, where it snows more, but not to where the winters are milder."

"Savants have puzzled over that for a long time," Pekka said. "They have never yet found an answer that satisfies me."

"Nor me," Fernao agreed. "It almost tempts me to think some inborn sorcerous power is hidden inside animals. But if it is there, no mage has ever been able to detect it, and that makes me not believe in any such thing."

"You are a modern rational man, and I feel the same way you do," Pekka said. "No wonder, though, that our superstitious ancestors thought beasts had the same potential for using magic as people did."

"No wonder at all," Fernao said.

Before he or Pekka could say anything more, the driver reined in and spoke two words of Kuusaman: "We're here."

Fernao got down from the sleigh and extended a mittened hand to Pekka. She set her own mittened hand in his as she alighted. That was the contact of ordinary politeness, and she did not shy away from it. Even through two thick layers of felted wool, her touch warmed him.

Braziers warmed the blockhouse- not nearly so well, as far as Fernao was concerned. Filling it with mages did a better job: did, in fact, too good a job. People shed cloaks and jackets. Fernao started sweating after taking off his coat. He joined the grumbling about how warm it was. But then Pekka's voice crisply cut through that grumbling: "Let us begin, shall we? Crystallomancer, please be so kind as to check with the mages handling the animals. Is everything ready?"

She spoke to the woman in Kuusaman, but Fernao found he had no trouble following her. After a moment, the crystallomancer replied, "They are ready at your convenience, Mistress."

"Good," Pekka said, and recited the ancient phrases with which Kuusamans preceded every sorcery. The other mages in the blockhouse repeated the phrases with her- everyone but Fernao. Nobody bothered him for not joining in the ritual, though one mage or another would sometimes tease him about it back at the hostel.

Before Pekka could begin the spell itself, Ilmarinen let out a sharp bark of warning: "Look out!" Fernao's head came up. He peered north, as if he could see to the Strait of Valmiera, let alone across it. He sensed no sorcerous disturbance, not yet. A moment later, though, one of the mages charged with defending against Algarvian wizardry also exclaimed.

And then Fernao felt it, too- that cantrip that tasted of iron and brimstone and blood, so much blood; that smelled of powers above only knew how many open graves. He couldn't join the Kuusaman mages in their defense against it- their ways were not his. His ways, to his shame, were closer to the school of sorcery that had spawned such monstrousness.

"No!" he shouted in Lagoan, a cry of rejection hardly different from its Algarvian equivalent. He launched his own angry counterspell at Mezentio's mages. He didn't think it would do much good, but he didn't see how it could hurt, either. Then, to his astonishment, he felt his spell lifted, reinforced. He was almost startled enough to break off the chant. Ilmarinen waved for him to continue. So did Pekka. She was incanting furiously.

But she's not aiming at the Algarvians, a tiny part of his mind thought. She's going on with the magic she would have tried anyhow. He didn't dwell on that. He dwelt on nothing but his own magecraft, and on the astonishing boost Ilmarinen was giving it. He couldn't see to the Strait of Valmiera, no, but he felt as if he might reach it and cross it.

He wanted to loose his bolt of sorcerous power, but felt someone- Ilmarinen again? -delaying him, making him hold back. Then he could delay no more- but when he launched it, he also launched all the tremendous energy from the spell Pekka had shaped. Unlike the Kuusamans, the Algarvian mages had been ready only for attack; they hadn't dreamt they would need to defend. Fernao felt the sorcerous counterstroke shatter them. He cried out in triumph and pitched forward on his face in a faint.

"We did it!" Pekka exclaimed for about the dozenth time since the mages returned to their hostel. "We truly did it! I didn't think we could, but we did it!"

"So we did." Fernao spoke in classical Kaunian rather than Kuusaman. He still looked pale and drawn, though a couple of mugs of ale had gone some way toward restoring his color. "Not quite the experiment we had in mind when we went to the blockhouse, but success is never an orphan: only failure has to look for a father."

"It was your success," Pekka said. "Everyone else thought only of holding off the Algarvians. You were the one who struck back."

He shrugged. "Ilmarinen here helped. And I have Algarvic blood in me, and I am trained in Algarvic-style magecraft. I hoped they would prove all sword and no shield, and I was lucky enough to be right. It turned out better than I thought it would, in fact."

"It turned out better than I dreamt it could," Pekka exclaimed. She sipped from a small goblet of brandy flavored with almond paste. "The Algarvians will not try to strike us again any time soon, not that way."

Ilmarinen gave her a sour stare. "If you gush any more, my dear, you'll turn into a hot spring."

She reminded herself that Fernao had needed the master mage's help to launch his counterspell at Mezentio's mages. That helped her keep her temper now. "The Algarvians are the ones gushing hot tears now," she said. "We put a lot of their sorcerers out of business today."

"Well, so we did." But even that didn't much impress Ilmarinen. He went on, "It won't bring the Kaunians they killed back to life, though."

"Did I say it would?" Pekka returned. "But it may give them less reason to kill more of them. That also counts for something."

Perhaps because of the brandy, she felt her temper slipping out from under her control whether she wanted it to or not. Had Ilmarinen argued further, she would have scorched him. To her relief, he didn't, or not very much, anyhow. He said, "Aye, I suppose that's true, not that it does the poor blond buggers they sacrificed this time any good." Then he gulped the last of the ale in his mug, slammed it down on the table, and stalked away.

Fernao stared after him. "I almost think he would be happier if we were losing than he is to have struck the Algarvians a solid sorcerous blow," the Lagoan mage observed.

With a sigh, Pekka answered, "I fear you are exactly right. He would feel more needed were that so, and we would be more inclined to make the kind of experiments he wants." She shrugged. "As things are, I am the one who judges what is important and what is not, and I say that what we did here today was one of the most important things we have ever done."

"I think you are right," Fernao said. "We proved we could project that power a long way- a lot farther than we would have tried had the Algarvians not pushed us."

"Everything we have done up till now, we have done because the Algarvians are pushing us," Pekka said. "This time, though, we pushed back."

"Aye." Fernao turned in his chair till he was facing north and ever so slightly west. He pointed in that same direction. "Along this bearing- this is the direction from which their attack came, and the direction along which we aimed our answer. If we sent a dragon flying along this line, I wonder what its flier would see after it got to the coast of Valmiera."

"We ought to do that," Pekka said, and scribbled a note to herself. "We ought to find out what our magic does in the field rather than on the testing range, as we have been using it here."

"When do you suppose we really shall start using it in the field?" Fernao asked. He passed the back of his hand across his forehead, as if wiping away sweat. "I do not know how often any one mage would want to serve as the channel through which that energy runs. Once was plenty for me, I think."

"This strike was a makeshift," Pekka said. "It might be easier if we planned it more beforehand."

"It might." But Fernao did not sound convinced.

Pekka went on, "I cannot answer your question yet, not altogether. I can say this, though: before we start work in the field, we shall have to train more mages to use these spells- ordinary practical mages, I mean, not theoretical sorcerers like the ones we have gathered here. That will take some time." She scribbled another note. "It is something we ought to think about beginning, though, is it not?"

Fernao nodded. "It may well be."

She only half heard the answer. Ordinary practical mages, she thought. Mages like Leino, to whom I just happen to be married. Could he have done what Fernao did there today? He might have- he likely would have- had the presence of mind. Would he have had the strength, the will?

Angry at herself for raising the question in those terms, she knocked back the rest of her brandy. Fernao raised an eyebrow. And what does that mean? she asked herself. Is he surprised to see me guzzle so, or is he hoping I'm doing it to give myself an excuse to do something with him?

Is that why I'm doing it?

Pekka got to her feet- indeed, almost sprang to her feet. The refectory swayed a little when she did: sure enough, she'd had more brandy than she thought. "I," she declared, "am going upstairs to bed. To sleep," she added, so as not to leave Fernao in any possible doubt about what she meant.

If he offered to escort her… I'll have to pretend to be angrier than I am, Pekka thought. But Fernao nodded. "I intend to do the same thing in a little while," he said. "I have not drunk quite enough yet, though."

"Try not to have too thick a head come morning," Pekka warned. "You will need to draft a report on what we did today."

"I remember," Fernao answered, and Pekka had to fight against a giggle. The Lagoan mage might have been Uto dutifully saying, Aye, Mother. Pekka got to her feet and hurried away. She'd had that thought about Ilmarinen a good many times. What did it mean when she also started having it about the other mages with whom she worked? That you think being in charge of them means mothering them? She wasn't sure she liked that. She was sure they wouldn't if they found out about it.

She almost ran to the stairway, as if running from her own thoughts. Had she had long legs like Fernao's, she would have gone up the stairs two at a time. As things were, she just climbed them as fast as she could. That proved plenty fast to startle two people embracing halfway up to the second floor.

Ilmarinen and… Linna? Pekka wondered if she'd drunk enough to start seeing things. Then Ilmarinen demanded, "Did you have to come by at the most inconvenient possible moment?" and his annoyance convinced her her imagination hadn't run wild after all.

"I didn't intend to," Pekka answered. "I am allowed to go up to my own room, you know."

"I suppose so." Ilmarinen sounded as if he supposed nothing of the sort. He turned back to the serving girl. "And how would you like to go up to my own room?"

"Better that than blocking the stairway," Pekka said.

Linna didn't say anything right away. Pekka hoped she wouldn't have to listen to Ilmarinen begging. That didn't suit her image of the way a master mage should act. Of course, a lot of the things Ilmarinen did failed to suit her image, and he cared not a fig. But humiliation seemed somehow worse than outrageousness.

Then Linna answered, "Well, why not? I've already come this far." Ilmarinen beamed and kicked up his heels like a frisky young reindeer. Pekka thought he would have carried Linna up the stairs if she'd shown any sign of wanting him to. The next question was, would he measure up once he lay down beside her? For his sake, Pekka hoped so. If he didn't, he was liable to be devastated.

She let the two of them go up the stairs ahead of her. Now that she'd escaped Fernao, any more rushing seemed pointless. She walked past Ilmarinen's chamber on the way to her own, but made a point of not listening to whatever was going on in there. Officially, it was none of her business. And Ilmarinen's attitude the next time she saw him would tell her everything she needed to know, anyhow.

The inside of her own room, bare and spare, was not the most welcoming place in which she'd ever found herself. Hoping to lose herself in the intricate business of trying to record events exactly as they'd happened, she inked a pen and began to write. But, after she'd set down a couple of sentences, she shook her head and pushed the leaf of paper away.

"He's saved your life twice, maybe three times now," she said aloud, as if someone had denied it. "This last time, he may have saved everything. Why are you running away from him, then?"

Part of her knew the answer to that. The rest, the larger part, proved not to want to think about it. Looking out the window, she saw it was snowing again. She ran a finger under the collar of her tunic. It felt unpleasantly warm inside the hostel- certainly inside her room. She set down the pen. With a sigh that was the next thing to a sob, she got up and headed for the refectory.

When she walked past Ilmarinen's room, Linna's giggle gave her pause. Indeed, it almost sent her running back to her own chamber. But she shook her head and kept going. She wondered if she would bump into Fernao on the stairway, and what would happen if she did.

She didn't. And when she went back into the refectory and looked around, she didn't see him there, either.

She stood in the entranceway looking around till one of the serving women came up to her and asked, "May I help you with anything, Mistress Pekka?"

Pekka jumped as if the woman had asked her something shameful. "No," she said, louder and more sharply than she'd intended. "I was just… looking for someone, that's all."

"Ah." The serving woman nodded. "Master Fernao went up to his chamber a couple of minutes ago."

"Did he?" Pekka said, and the woman nodded again. She knows whom I'd be looking for, does she? She probably knows why I'd be looking for him, too. And she probably knows why better than I do myself.

"Aye, he did." The woman nodded again. She sounded very certain- more certain than Pekka was herself. Oh, she understood why she might be- no, why she was- looking for Fernao. What she didn't know was whether she wanted to do anything about her understanding.

The serving woman eyed her curiously, as if to say, I told you where he was. Why are you wasting your time here? When Pekka turned to go, out of the corner of her eye she spied the other woman nodding. She shook her own head. You may think you know everything that's going on, but you're wrong this time.

She did go back upstairs, but not to Fernao's room. Whatever she was thinking, she wasn't ready to be so brazen as that. Not quite, she told herself, whether with relief or disappointment even she couldn't tell. When she attacked the report again, in earnest this time, she got a lot of work done.

Captain Recared had a new cry now: "Hold them!" It was one Sergeant Leudast was delighted to echo. The Unkerlanters had drawn their ring all the way around Herborn. If they could keep it shut tight, the Algarvian forces trapped inside would beat themselves to death trying to break out.

"Hold them!" Leudast shouted. Along with the rest of the men in the regiment, he'd done a prodigious lot of marching to move east as far and as fast as he had. Now he faced west again, to keep the redheads and their Grelzer puppets from pulling the stopper out of the bottle that contained them.

Eggs kicked up clouds of snow when they burst in and around the Grelzer village his company was holding. Fragments of metal from the eggshells whined through the air. But instead of cratering the ground, as they would have in summertime, the eggs only knocked holes about the size and depth of a small washtub in it; it was frozen too hard for anything more.

"Here they come!" somebody shouted.

Leudast peered out from the hut in which he sheltered. Sure enough, the Algarvians and Grelzers were trying to press home their attack against the village. They had better gear now than they'd used the first winter of the war in Unkerlant: they all wore white snow smocks, and almost all of them snowshoes. Some of them shouted, "Mezentio!" Others, presumably the Grelzers, yelled, "Raniero!"

"Plenty of time," Leudast called to his men as the enemy slogged across the snow-covered fields outside the village. "Make sure you've got a good target before you start blazing."

Before the Algarvians and Grelzers even got into stick range of the village, Unkerlanter egg-tossers started pounding them. Leudast knew a moment's abstract pity for the foe. With the ground hard as iron, the soldiers out there couldn't very well dig holes in which to shelter from the eggs. They had to take whatever the Unkerlanters could dish out.

Rock-gray dragons dropped out of the sky on the redheads and the traitors who fought on their side. More eggs burst, these delivered with pinpoint precision and released only a few feet above the enemy's heads. Flame yellow as the sun- and far hotter than the winter sun down here in Grelz- burst from the dragons' jaws. Leudast watched a kilted Algarvian blacken and writhe and shrink in on himself like a moth that had just flown into a campfire.

Recared's whistle screamed. "Forward- now!" the regimental commander shouted. "If we hit them hard, we can break them."

A bit more than a year earlier, battling down in the wreckage of Sulingen, Leudast would have laughed at the thought of breaking Algarvians. Overwhelming them, certainly. But breaking them? Making them run? It would have seemed impossible. A lot had happened since then. "Aye!" he shouted. "We can do it, by the powers above! Urra! King Swemmel! Urra!"

The Unkerlanters burst from the village and rushed at the redheads. Eggs kept falling on the enemy, helping to pin him in place. Some of the Algarvians tried to flee anyway, and were flung aside when eggs bust near then. Others threw their sticks down in the snow, raised their hands, and went willingly enough into captivity. And some of the redheads, good, stubborn, resourceful soldiers that they were, held on as long as they could to let their comrades escape.

Fighting alongside Mezentio's soldiers were men who looked like Leudast and his comrades, but who wore dark green tunics rather than rock-gray under their snow smocks. Few Grelzers tried to surrender. Few of those who did try succeeded. The men who'd chosen Raniero over Swemmel had discovered the Unkerlanters weren't much interested in taking them alive.

"Keep your eyes and ears open," Leudast warned the soldiers in his company. "You see somebody you don't know, watch him, especially if he talks with a Grelzer accent. The traitors will strip our dead for their tunics so they get the chance to sneak out of the fight."

He knew he wasn't the only Unkerlanter passing along that warning. He also knew a few perfectly loyal Unkerlanter soldiers who chanced to spring from Grelz would get blazed because their countrymen went for sticks without bothering to ask questions first. His broad shoulders moved up and down in a shrug. As long as the Grelzers got rooted out, he didn't much care what else happened.

Captain Recared hadn't been the sole commander to order a counterattack. Shouting "Urra!" and King Swemmel's name, Unkerlanter soldiers stormed forward all along the line. Instead of trying to break out of the cauldron around Herborn in which they were trapped, the Algarvians and Grelzers had to try to hold back a foe who outnumbered them in men, in egg-tossers, in horses and unicorns, in behemoths, and in dragons.

They tried. They tried bravely. But they could not hold. Here and there, they would form a line and battle the Unkerlanters in front of them to a standstill- for a while. But then Swemmel's soldiers would find a way around one flank or the other, and the Algarvians and Grelzers would have to give ground again: either that or be slaughtered where they stood.

The progress Leudast's countrymen made left him slightly dazed. That evening, he sat down to barley cakes and garlicky sausage filched from an Algarvian sergeant he'd captured. Toasting a length of sausage over a fire on a stick, he said, "Curse me if they're not starting to fall apart."

Captain Recared had some sausage, too. He pulled it away from the flames, examined it, and then thrust it back to cook some more. "Aye, they are," he agreed while the sausage sizzled and dripped grease into the fire. "By this time tomorrow, they'll have figured out that they can't pound their way through our ring. They'll start trying to sneak through in small bands. We have to smash as many of them as we can. Every soldier we kill or capture now is one more we won't have to worry about later on."

"I understand, sir," Leudast said. "And when they're hungry and scared and their sticks are low on charges, they're a lot easier to deal with than when they've got their peckers up."

"That's right. That's just right." Recared nodded. He took his sausage off the fire and looked at it again. With another nod, he began to eat.

He proved a good prophet, for over the next couple of days the spirit did leak out of the Algarvians, like water leaking from a cracked jar. They stopped standing up to the Unkerlanters and started trying to escape whenever and however they could. When they couldn't run and couldn't hide, they surrendered in a hurry, glad to do it before something worse happened to them.

After a couple of days of that, Leudast was as rich as he'd ever been in all his born days. He didn't suppose it would last; when he came to a place where he could spend the money he was taking from captured Algarvian officers, he probably would. But a heavy belt pouch wasn't the worst thing in the world, either.

One of his men asked, "Sergeant, what do we do with the coins we take that have false King Raniero on 'em?"

"Well, Kiun, if I were you, I'd lose the Grelzer copper," Leudast answered. "It'll never be worth anything on its own, if you know what I mean. But silver's silver, even if it is stamped with Raniero's pointy-nosed face. Somebody'll melt it down for you and give you what it's worth in metal, even if not in coin."

"Ah." The soldier nodded. "Thanks. That makes good sense."

The next morning, Leudast's company came on the tracks of a squad of men trying to make their way east. With snow on the ground, following the trail was child's play. Before long, his troopers caught up with the fleeing Algarvians. A couple of men started blazing at the redheads. As soon as steam puffed up from the smoke around them, the Algarvians raised their hands in surrender.

"Aye, you have us," one of them said in pretty good Unkerlanter as Leudast and his men came up: a bald fellow in his late middle years who wore a colonel's uniform. "We can run no more."

"You'd best believe it, pal." Leudast cocked his head to one side. "You talk funny." The officer's accent wasn't a typical Algarvian trill, but something else, something familiar.

"I was, in the last war, colonel of a regiment of Forthwegians in Algarvian service," the redhead answered.

"That's it, sure enough." Leudast nodded. His own home village, up in the north, wasn't so far from the Forthwegian border. No wonder he thought he'd heard that accent before- he had.

"Sergeant-" Kiun, the fellow who'd asked him about Grelzer money, plucked at his sleeve. "Sergeant, powers below eat me if that's not Raniero his own self."

"What?" Leudast shook himself free. "You're out of your fornicating…" But his voice trailed away. He shuffled a couple of paces sideways so he could look at the Algarvian in profile. His lips pursed in a soundless whistle. The captive in the colonel's uniform certainly had the right beaky nose. "Are you Raniero?"

A couple of the captive's comrades exclaimed in Algarvian. But he shook his head and drew himself up very straight. "I have that honor, aye." He bowed. "And to whom do I present myself?"

Numbly, Leudast gave his own name. He gestured with his stick. "You come along with me." What would they give the man who'd just captured the King of Grelz? He didn't know- he had no idea- but he looked forward to finding out. He also waved to a couple of his own men, who were all staring wide-eyed at Raniero. "You boys come along, too." He didn't want his prisoner stolen out from under him. He made sure he included Kiun- the trooper also deserved a reward.

A lieutenant well back of the line glared at him. "Why didn't you just send your captive to the rear, Sergeant?" he growled, meaning, Why do you think you deserve to get out of the fight for a while?

"Sir, this isn't just any captive," Leudast answered. "This is Raniero, who calls himself King of Grelz." The lieutenant's glare turned to a gape. He didn't have the presence of mind to ask to accompany Leudast.

Raniero's name was the password that got Leudast taken from division headquarters to army headquarters to a battered firstman's house in a village that looked to have changed hands a good many times. The soldier who came out of the house had iron-gray hair and big stars on the collar tabs of his tunic. Marshal Rathar eyed the captive, nodded, and told Leudast, "That's Raniero, all right."

Leudast saluted. "Aye, sir," he said.

Rathar seemed to forget about him then. He spoke to Raniero in Algarvian, and King Mezentio's cousin answered in the same language. But Rathar wasn't one to forget his own men for long. After giving Raniero what looked like a sympathetic pat on the back, he turned to Leudast and asked, "And what do you expect for bringing this fellow in, eh, Sergeant?"

"Sir, whatever seems right to you," Leudast answered. "I've figured you were fair-minded ever since we fought side by side for a little while up in the Zuwayzi desert." He didn't expect the marshal to remember him, but he wanted Rathar to know they'd met before. And he added, "Kiun here was the one who first recognized him."

"A pound of gold and sergeant's rank for him. And, Lieutenant Leudast, how does five pounds of gold on top of a promotion sound for you?" Rathar asked.

Leudast had expected gold, though he'd thought one pound likelier than five for himself. The promotion was a delightful surprise. "Me?" he squeaked. "An officer?" Officer's rank wasn't quite so much the preserve of bluebloods in Unkerlant's army as in Algarve's- King Swemmel had killed too many nobles to make that practical- but it wasn't something to which a peasant could normally aspire, either. "An officer," Leudast repeated. If I live through the war, I've got it made, he thought dizzily. If.

Vanai had heard that there came a time when a woman actually enjoyed carrying a child. During the first third of her pregnancy, she wouldn't have believed it, not for anything. When she hadn't been nauseated, she'd been exhausted; sometimes she'd been both at once. Her breasts had pained her all the time. There had been days when she'd not cared to do anything but lie on her back with her tunic off and with a bucket beside her.

This middle stretch seemed better, though. She could eat anything. She could clean her teeth without wondering if she would lose what she'd eaten last. She didn't feel as if she needed to prop her eyelids open with little sticks.

And the baby moving inside her was something she never took for granted. Maybe, in a way, Ealstan had been right: no matter how emphatically she'd known before that she was with child, its kicks and pokes did make that undeniably real, the more so as they got stronger and more vigorous with each passing week.

And… "Just as well I'm Thelberge in a Forthwegian-style tunic these days," she told Ealstan over supper one evening. "If I still wore trousers, I'd have to buy new ones, because I wouldn't be able to fit into the ones I had been wearing anymore."

He nodded. "I've noticed. With the tunic, though, it hardly shows, even yet."

"With the tunic, no," Vanai said. "Without it…" She shrugged. Her body had stayed much the same ever since she became a woman. To watch it change, to feel it change, almost from day to day was disconcerting, to say the very least.

Ealstan shrugged, too. "I like the way you look without your tunic just fine, believe me."

Vanai did believe him. She'd heard of men who lost interest in their wives when the women were expecting a baby. That hadn't happened with Ealstan, who remained as eager as ever. In fact, from the look in his eye now… The supper dishes got cleaned rather later than they might have.

When they woke up the next morning, Ealstan spoke in classical Kaunian, as if to emphasize his words: "You look like Vanai again, not like Thelberge."

"Do I?" Vanai spoke Forthwegian, annoyed Forthwegian: "But I renewed the spell just before we went to sleep, and you told me I'd got it right. It really isn't holding as long as it used to."

"I don't know what to tell you." Ealstan returned to Forthwegian, too. "You need to be careful, that's all." He got out of bed and put on fresh drawers and a clean tunic. "And I need to get going, or Pybba will have me for breakfast when I get to his office. He just about lives there, and he thinks everybody else should, too."

"I am careful," Vanai insisted. "I have to be." She got out of bed, too. "Here, I'll fix your breakfast."

It didn't take much fixing: barley bread with olive oil, some raisins on the side, and a cup of wine to wash things down. Vanai ate with Ealstan, and then, while he shifted from foot to foot with impatience to be gone, went through the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian. When she was through, he said, "There you are, sure enough- you look like my sister again."

She didn't even let that annoy her, not this morning. "As long as I don't look like a Kaunian, everything's fine," she said. "I spent too much time cooped up in this flat. I don't care to do it again."

"If you have to, you have to," Ealstan answered. "Better that than getting caught, wouldn't you say?" He brushed his lips across hers. "I really do have to go. By the powers above, don't do anything foolish."

That did make her angry. "I don't intend to," she said, biting the words off between her teeth. "Going out and making sure we don't starve doesn't count as foolish to me. I hope it doesn't to you, either."

"No," Ealstan admitted. "But getting caught does. I've bought food for us before. I can do it again."

"Everything will be fine," Vanai repeated. "Go on. You're the one worrying about being late." She shoved him out the door.

Once he was gone, she washed the handful of breakfast dishes. Then, more than a little defiantly, she put money in her handbag and went out the door herself. I won't be caged up anymore. I won't, curse it, she thought.

No one paid any attention to her when she left the lobby of her block of flats and went down the stairs to the sidewalk. Why should anyone have paid attention to her? She looked as much like a Forthwegian as anyone else on the street.

How many of the other people on the street also were sorcerously disguised Kaunians? Vanai had no way to tell. In Forthweg as a whole, about one in ten had shared her blood before the Derlavaian War began. More Kaunians had lived in and around Eoforwic than anywhere else. On the other hand, the redheads had already shipped a lot of Kaunians off to Unkerlant, to fuel the Algarvian there with their life energy. How many? Vanai had no way to know that, either, and wished the question had never crossed her mind.

A pair of Algarvian constables came up the street toward her. One of them reached out, as if to pat her on the bottom. She squeaked indignantly and sidestepped before he could. He laughed. So did his pal. Vanai glared at them, which only made them laugh harder. The fellow who'd tried to feel her up blew her a farewell kiss over his shoulder as he kept on walking his beat.

So long as he keeps walking, Vanai, thought. It wasn't just that she didn't want him groping her. He might have noticed she felt different to his hand from the way she looked to his eye. Her spell affected only her visual appearance; Ealstan had remarked on that more than once. She couldn't afford to let an Algarvian discover it, no matter how much like a Forthwegian she looked.

And I have to hurry, she reminded herself. I can't know how long I'm going to keep on looking like a Forthwegian, not anymore. Her hand went to her belly in an involuntary gesture of annoyance. She was convinced her being with child was what weakened the magecraft. It hadn't changed a bit from the day she perfected it till she found herself pregnant. Now… For all she knew, the baby inside her looked as if it were fully Forthwegian, too.

Smiling at that, she walked on toward the market square. Before she got there, she went past more Algarvian constables. These fellows weren't grinning and doing their best to be friendly. They were grabbing men off the street for a work gang, pointing toward walls and fences, and shouting, "Getting those down!" in their rudimentary Forthwegian.

Those were broadsheets. Vanai hurried forward to get a look at them before they all came down. DEATH TO THOSE WHO MURDER KAUNIANS! screamed one in lurid red characters. Another cried, VENGEANCE ON ALGARVE!

She couldn't even stare. She had to keep walking. It's got to be Kaunians who put those up, she thought. Of course it's got to be Kaunians- how many Forthwegians care about us?

But no Kaunian underground had shown itself since Algarve overran Forthweg, or none to speak of. How could such a thing start now, with so many Kaunians already gone? However it had happened, Vanai was savagely delighted to learn of it, a delight that only grew stronger because it had to stay hidden.

In the market square, she bought olive oil and almonds and green onions and a good-sized bream. She was just starting off toward her block of flats when an egg burst back where the Algarvians were making the Forthwegian work gang strip the broadsheets off the walls.

It was a big egg. The roar of its bursting was more a blow against the ears than an ordinary noise. The next thing Vanai knew, she was on her knees. She'd dropped the jar, and it had shattered, oil spilling and sliding across the cobbles of the market square. She cursed as she got to her feet. She wasn't the only one who'd fallen, or the only one who'd had something break, either.

When she staggered upright, she first started back toward the stall where she'd bought the olive oil. Then she started thinking straight, and realized she had more important things to worry about. Chief among them was that she couldn't afford to be recognized as a Kaunian at this of all moments. Forthwegians and Algarvians alike would assume she'd helped plant the egg, and she probably wouldn't last long enough to get shipped west.

That meant she had to return to the flat as fast as she could. Only when she headed back across the square did she realize how lucky she'd been not to have stood closer to the egg when it burst. Some people were down and shrieking. Other people, and parts of people, lay motionless. Blood was everywhere, puddling between cobblestones and splashed up onto walls and stalls the sorcerous energies hadn't knocked down.

The street by which she'd entered the square, the street on which the Forthwegians had been pulling down broadsheets, suddenly had an opening twice as wide as it had been. Fewer people- fewer whole people, anyway- and more body parts lay closer to where the egg must have been hidden. Gulping, trying to avert her eyes, Vanai picked her way past them, and past the crater the egg had blown in the ground.

By some miracle, one of the Algarvian constables who'd been on the street had survived. His tunic and kilt were half torn off him. Blood streamed down his face, and from cuts on his arms and legs. But he was up and walking, and in that state of eerie calm where he hardly seemed aware of his own injuries.

"Stinking Kaunians sneaking back from Zuwayza must've done this," he said to Vanai in Algarvian, as if to a superior. "Zuwayzin are supposed to be allies, curse 'em." He spat- spat red- and then noticed to whom he was talking. "Powers above, you probably don't understand a word I'm saying." Off he staggered, looking for an officer to brief.

But Vanai followed Algarvian well enough. She thought the constable was very likely right. The difference was, he hated the Kaunian raiders, while she hoped they would do more and worse.

People were rushing toward the burst. Some paused to help wounded men and women. Nobody took any special notice of unhurt or slightly hurt folk coming away. Vanai wasn't the only one- far from it. For all she knew, she wasn't the only Kaunian hurrying to get out of the public eye before concealing sorcery concealed no more.

Her street. Her block. The entrance to her block of flats. The stairway up to the dingy lobby. The stairway up to her flat. The hallway. Her front door. Her front door, opening. Her front door, closed behind her.

She took the almonds and the onions and the bream into the kitchen. Then she poured herself a full mug of wine and gulped it down. It would probably make her go to sleep in the middle of the day. She didn't care. She would probably look like a Kaunian when she woke up, too. She didn't care about that, either- not now. What difference did it make, here inside the flat where she was safe?