Darkness Descending (29 page)

The sun was nearing its high point in the north when she came into the oak wood where she and Ealstan had accidentally exchanged baskets—and where they’d met the year before that, too. With her grandfather miles away, she could at last admit to herself that she hadn’t come there altogether by accident. For one thing, she did want to give him his basket if she saw him again. And, for another, he’d been a sympathetic ear, and she hadn’t had many of those lately.

She walked among the trees. Her muddy shoes scuffed through leaves and acorns. Some of the oaks’ gnarled roots lay close to the surface. She wondered if she ought to try digging for truffles. In the days of the Kaunian Empire, rich nobles had trained swine to hunt the precious fungi by scent. Without such aid, though, finding them was a matter of blind luck. She shook her head—she didn’t have time to waste, and not much in the way of luck had come her way lately.

She wandered through the wood, finding a couple of puffballs, which she picked, and quite a few stinkhorns, which she avoided with wrinkled nose. She saw no sign of Ealstan. She wondered if he was out hunting mushrooms at all. For all she knew, he could have been back in Gromheort or out searching in a different direction. It wasn’t as if she could make him step out from behind a tree by wishing.

No sooner had that thought crossed her mind than Ealstan stepped out from behind a tree—not the one she’d been looking at, but a tree nonetheless. Her eyes widened. Had she turned into a mage after all?

If Ealstan had been conjured up, he didn’t realize it. “Vanai!” he exclaimed, a grin stretching itself across his face. Instead of using Forthwegian, he went on in his slow, careful Kaunian: “I had hoped I would see you here. I am very glad to see you here. And look—I remembered your basket.” He held it up.

Vanai laughed. She did that so seldom these days, each time stood out as an occasion. “I remembered yours, too,” she said, and showed it to him.

“Now my family can wonder at me if I bring back my own basket, as they did when I brought back yours last year,” Ealstan said with a chuckle. But the good humor quickly slipped from his face. “I am
very
glad to see you here again,” he repeated. “The Algarvians took many Kaunians out of Gromheort and sent them west. I was afraid they had done the same in Oyngestun.”

“They did,” Vanai answered, “but my grandfather and I were not among them.” She remembered how close they’d come to being chosen. “For his sake, I’m glad; he couldn’t have done the work.” She’d seen he couldn’t do it. That made her think of Spinello again, and then wish she hadn’t.

“In Gromheort, they did not seem to care,” Ealstan said. “They scooped up young and old, men and women, till they had enough to satisfy them. Then they herded them into caravan cars and sent them west with only the clothes on their backs. How can they hope to get any proper work from anyone like that?”

“I don’t know,” Vanai answered in a small voice. “I’ve asked myself the same question, but I just don’t know.”

“I think they are lying about what they want. I think they are doing something. ...” Ealstan shook his head. “I do not know what. Something they do not want to talk about. Something that cannot be good.”

He kept on using Kaunian. Because it was not his birthspeech, he paused every now and then to search for a word or an ending. To Vanai, that deliberation made him sound more impressive, not less. And he sounded more impressive still because he obviously did care about what happened to the Kaunians in Gromheort and Oyngestun.

Vanai wasn’t used to sympathy from Forthwegians. Vanai, lately, wasn’t used to sympathy from anybody, though her own people were less harsh to her now than when Spinello had been visiting Brivibas rather than her. Tears stung her eyes. She looked away so Ealstan wouldn’t see. “Thank you,” she whispered.

“For what?” he said—she’d startled him into Forthwegian.

How was she supposed to answer that? “For worrying about my folk when you don’t have to,” she said at last. “Most people these days have all they can do to worry about themselves.”

“If I do not worry about anyone else, who will worry about me?” Ealstan said, returning to Kaunian.

“When you speak my language, you sound like a philosopher,” Vanai said; she meant his delivery as much as what he said. Whatever she meant, she made him laugh. She laughed, too, but persisted: “No, you truly do.” To emphasize the point, she reached out with her free hand and took his.

Only after she’d done it did she realize she’d astonished herself. Since Spinello began taking advantage of her, she hadn’t wanted anyone male, even her grandfather, to touch her. And now she’d touched Ealstan of her own accord.

His hand closed on hers. That was almost enough to make her pull away—almost, but not quite. Even if she didn’t finish the motion, though she must have begun it, for he let go at once, saying, “You must have enough things to worry about without putting a Forthwegian you scarcely know on the list.”

Vanai stared at him. They were much of a height, as was often true of Kaunian women and Forthwegian men. Slowly, she said, “You care what I think.” By the way she said it, she might have been announcing some astonishing discovery in magecraft.

He heard her surprise. “Well, of course I do,” he said, surprised in turn.

Plainly, he meant it. Having been used and scorned and condescended to so much, Vanai hardly knew what to make of caring. She astonished herself again, this time by leaning forward and brushing her lips across Ealstan’s.

He wasn’t too swarthy to keep her from watching him flush. Something sparked in his eyes.
He wants me,
she thought. Seeing that should have disgusted her. It always had with Spinello. Somehow, it didn’t. At first, she thought that was because Ealstan didn’t forthwith try to grope her, as Spinello would have. Then, belatedly, she realized the warmth inside her had nothing to do with the weather, which, was on the chilly side.
I
want him,
she thought, and that was most astonishing of all: she’d been sure Spinello had curdled desire within her forever.

“Vanai. . .” Ealstan said in a hoarse voice.

She nodded and, much later than she should have, set down her basket of mushrooms. “It will be all right,” she said, not pretending she didn’t know what he had in mind. Then she found something better to add: “We’ll make it come out all right.”

And, in spite of everything, they did. It was, clearly, Ealstan’s first time. Had it been Vanai’s, too, it probably would have ended up a clumsy botch. As things were, what Spinello had made her learn came in handy in ways she hoped the redhead would not have appreciated. She guided Ealstan without being too obvious about it.

But, after a while, she began to enjoy what they were doing for its own sake. Ealstan didn’t come close to Spinello as far as technique went; maybe he never would. It turned out not to matter too much. The Algarvian’s touch, no matter how knowing—perhaps because it was so knowing—had always made her want to cringe. Ealstan cared for her as Vanai, not as a nicely shaped piece of meat. That made all the difference. How much difference it made she discovered when she gasped and arched her back and squeezed Ealstan tight with arms and legs, Major Spinello utterly forgotten.

Ealstan stared down into Vanai’s face, only a hand’s breadth below his own. His heart thudded as if he’d just run a long way. Next to the delight that filled him, the pleasure he’d got from touching himself hardly seemed worth remembering.

He started to lean down to taste the sweetness of her lips again, but she said, “You’re not as light as you think you are. And we’d better get dressed before somebody who’s looking for mushrooms comes along and finds us instead.”

“Oh!” Ealstan exclaimed. He’d forgotten about that, and was glad Vanai hadn’t. He scrambled to his feet, yanked up his drawers, and threw on his tunic. Vanai’s clothes were more complicated, but she got into them about as fast as he did.

“Turn around,” she told him, and brushed leaves off him. Then she nodded. “No stains on your tunic. That’s good. Now you take care of me.”

“Aye,” Ealstan said. Despite what they’d just finished doing, he hardly dared touch her. Warily, he picked bits of dry leaf from her hair. Even more warily, he brushed some from her backside. Instead of slapping him, she smiled thanks over her shoulder. “Your clothes are all right,” he told her.

“That’s good,” she said again. Slowly, her smile faded. “I didn’t come here . . .expecting to do this.” The expression her face took on alarmed Ealstan. It would have alarmed him more had he thought it aimed at him.

“I did not, either,” he said, which was nothing but the truth. He might have imagined it once or twice, but he’d told himself he was being foolish. He felt foolish now, delightfully foolish, as if he’d had too much wine. Trying not to wear an idiotic grin, he went on, “I did hope I would see you, though.” Speaking Kaunian helped. It made him sound serious, even if he wasn’t.

Vanai’s face softened. “I know. You brought my basket.” She looked down at the dead leaves on the ground. “And I brought yours.”

Ealstan felt like cutting capers. Instead, very much his practical father’s son, he said, “Shall we trade some of what we have found?” As long as they were doing that, she wouldn’t go away. He didn’t want her to go away.

They sat down where they’d lain together, sat down and swapped mushrooms. They sat very close together. Their hands clung as they passed the mushrooms back and forth. Every so often, they paused to kiss. Ealstan discovered how quickly desire revived at his age. But when he reached for one of the toggles on her tunic, she set her hand on his and kept him from undoing it. “We were lucky once,” she said. “I don’t know if we would be again.”

“All right,” he said. It wasn’t quite, but he would make the best of it. He took his hand away. Vanai’s face showed he’d passed a test. “Shall we take back our old baskets?” he asked, and then answered his own question before Vanai could: “No, we had better not. That would tell people we had met. This way, no one has to know anything—no one except us.”

“Aye, you’re right: better if we don’t,” Vanai agreed. She studied him. “It’s good you think of things like that.”

He shrugged, pleased and embarrassed at the same time. “I do my best,” he said, and again had no idea how much he sounded like Hestan. He looked at Vanai. Regardless of what they’d just done, they hardly knew each other. He coughed. “I do want to see you again, though; before next mushroom season.” He hoped that didn’t sound too much like,
I want to lie with you again, as soon as I can.
He did, but that wasn’t what he meant, or wasn’t all of what he meant, anyhow.

“I want to see you again, too,” Vanai said, and once more Ealstan had all he could do to keep from jumping up and turning handsprings. She went on, “Tomorrow is market day, so I don’t think I can get away, but I can come here the day after.”

His heart leaped—and then fell. “My schoolmasters will beat me,” he said glumly, “the ones not out gathering mushrooms themselves, at any rate.” He could think the switchings he got worthwhile as long as he lay in Vanai’s arms—but not, he feared very long afterwards.

To his relief, he saw his unwillingness to drop everything for her sake hadn’t offended her. Instead, she was nodding. “You have a head on your shoulders,” she remarked. Anyone who knew him would have said the same. But she didn’t, not yet, not with the mind as well as the body.

Out beyond the oak grove, someone called to someone else. It wasn’t aimed at

either Ealstan or Vanai, but both their heads came up in alarm. Nervously, Ealstan asked, “Did your grandfather come hunting mushrooms with you?” Brivibas, that was the old man’s name. If Ealstan had to be polite in a hurry, he could.

But Vanai shook her head. “No. He’s searching by himself.” Her voice went cold and distant. She hadn’t talked about her grandfather like that before. Something must have happened between them. Ealstan wondered what. He saw no way to ask. Vanai found a question of her own: “What about your cousin—Sidroc?” She’d remembered things about Ealstan, too. He felt outrageously flattered.

“He went off to the north awhile ago. We are supposed to meet back at the city gate at sunset.” Ealstan leaned over and kissed Vanai. She clung to him. The kiss went on and on. They started to lie back on the leaves again, but whoever was outside the little wood called out again, louder and closer this time. “We had better not take the chance,” Ealstan said, and heard the regret in his own voice.

“You’re right.” Vanai slipped out of his embrace and got to her feet. “You can send me letters, if you like. I live on the Street of Tinkers in Oyngestun.”

Ealstan nodded eagerly. “And I live on the Avenue of Countess Hereswith, back in Gromheort. I
will
write to you.”

“Good.” Vanai nodded, too. “My grandfather will wonder when I start getting letters from Gromheort, but I don’t much care what my grandfather wonders, not any more.” Something had indeed happened between her and Brivibas. Maybe she would tell him what in a letter.

“I had better go,” he said, though he didn’t want to leave her.

But she nodded once more. “And I,” she said, and then, as an afterthought, “I will address my letters to you in Forthwegian. I wouldn’t want to put you in danger by letting anyone know you’re friendly to Kaunians.”

He was grateful, and ashamed of himself for being grateful. “If I can do anything for you—or for your grandfather,” he remembered to add, “let me know. My father is not a man without influence.”

“I thank you,” Vanai said, “but would he use that influence for the cursed blonds?” She didn’t try to hide her bitterness.

“Aye,” Ealstan said, and nothing more.

He saw he’d startled her. “Well,” she said, “if he’s your father, perhaps he would.”

“He will,” Ealstan said, though he didn’t know if Hestan’s influence reached to Oyngestun. “And so will I.” He had no influence at all and did know that. But he would have promised Vanai anything just then. By the way her eyes shone, she believed him, too, or at least was glad he’d said what he had.