Darkness Descending (78 page)

Returning the majordomo’s bow, Hajjaj asked, “And how are things here?”

“Well enough, lord,” Tewfik answered with another creaking bow of his own; his back didn’t bend very far these days. “Peaceful, one might even say, now that that woman is no longer here.”

That woman,
Lalla, had until recently been Hajjaj’s juniormost wife: a pretty amusement with whom to while away some time every now and then. She’d become an increasingly willful and expensive amusement. Finally, to the relief of everyone else in the household, she’d become too expensive and willful for Hajjaj to stand anymore, and he’d sent her back to her own clanfather. Formerly respected for her position, she’d become
that woman
in the blink of an eye.

Tewfik said, “The lady Kolthoum will be glad to see you, your Excellency.”

“And I, of course, am always glad to see my senior wife,” Hajjaj answered. “Why don’t you run along ahead and let her know I will attend her shortly?”

“Aye.” And off Tewfik went, not running but plenty spry for a man of his years. Hajjaj followed more slowly through the buildings and courtyards and gardens that filled the space within the household’s outer wall. Kolthoum would be irked if he didn’t give her enough time to prepare herself and to ready refreshments for him.

When he did step into her chamber, she was waiting with tea and wine and cakes, as he’d known she would be. He embraced her and gave her a peck on the lips. They rarely slept together these days, the scrawny diplomat and his large, comfortable wife, but they were unfailingly fond of each other. Kolthoum understood him better than anyone else alive, save possibly Tewfik.

“Is it well?” she asked him, as usual cutting straight to the heart of things.

“It is as well as it can be,” he answered.

His senior wife raised an eyebrow. “And how well is that?”

Hajjaj considered. “I simply don’t know right now. Ask me again in a few months, and I may have a better notion.”

“You
don’t know?” Kolthoum said. Hajjaj shook his head. Kolthoum raised both eyebrows. “Powers above help us!” This time, Hajjaj nodded.

Seventeen

“H
ome?” Vanai shook her head. “This isn’t home, Ealstan. It’s halfway between a trap and a cage.”

She watched in dismay as Ealstan’s face closed. She was sick and tired of being cooped up, and he was getting sick and tired of listening to her complain about it. He said, “You didn’t have to come with me, you know.”

“Oh, but I did,” she answered. “My grandfather’s house was a cage. Oyngestun was a trap. I still do feel trapped”—she was too proud to pretend not to have the feelings she had—”but at least the company is better when you’re here with me.”

That won a smile from her Forthwegian lover. “Only reason I’m not here more is because I’m working all the cursed time,” he answered. “My father would always say the best bookkeepers were mostly here in Eoforwic, because the capital is where the money is. He usually knows what he’s talking about, but I think he was wrong this time. If the bookkeepers here were so fine, there wouldn’t be so many people who wanted to hire me.”

“I don’t know about that,” Vanai said. “Maybe you’re better than you think.”

He looked very young then, and very confused, as if he wanted to believe that but didn’t quite dare. “My father is that good,” he said. “Me?” He shrugged and shook his head. “I know how much I don’t know.”

Vanai laughed at him. “But do you know how much the other bookkeepers in Eoforwic don’t know?”

She watched him work his way through that. “It would be nice to believe that, but I really don’t,” he said.

“Then why does Ethelhelm want you to keep his books for him?” Vanai countered, using the singer’s name because Ealstan set such stock in him. She set more stock in Ethelhelm than she’d expected, not because of the Kaunian blood he might have, but for the Forthwegian songs he wrote and sang.

But her question didn’t have quite the impact for which she’d hoped. “Why? I’ll tell you why,” Ealstan answered. “Because the fellow who used to cast accounts for him walked in front of a ley-line caravan and got himself squashed, that’s why. That’s why Ethelhelm was doing his own bookkeeping for a bit, too, but he just didn’t have the time to keep on.” He got up from the table and stretched; something crackled in his back. “Ahh, that’s better,” he said. “I spend all my time on a stool, bending over ledgers.”

Vanai was about to offer him the chance to spend some time in an altogether different position when she saw movement down on the street. She went to the window for a better look. “Algarvian constables,” she said over her shoulder to Ealstan.

“What are they doing?” he asked, and then, coming up behind her, set a hand on her shoulder and drew her away from the grimy panes of glass. “Let me look—it won’t matter if they see me here.”

She nodded and stepped back. Ealstan did his best to take care of her. He stood there, his wide back to her, looking down. “Well?” she asked at last.

“They’re putting up broadsheets,” he said. “I can’t make out what the sheets say, not from up here. Once they’ve gone on, I’ll go downstairs and have a look.”

“All right.” Vanai nodded. All at once, with the constables passing through, the flat was a refuge once more. “Maybe they’re just more recruiting sheets for Plegmund’s Brigade.” Those, at least, didn’t have anything directly to do with her.

But Ealstan shook his head. “They don’t look like them,” he said. “The sheets for Plegmund’s Brigade always have pictures on them, so the people who are too stupid to read can figure out what they’re about. These are nothing but words. I can see that much.” He turned away from the window toward her. “Don’t worry about it, sweetheart. Everything will be fine.”

He didn’t really believe that. She could see as much by the lines, deep past his years, that were carved into the skin by the corners of his mouth. She could also see he didn’t really expect her to believe it, either. But he said it anyhow, in the hope, however forlorn, it would make her feel better. And his caring for her feelings did make her feel better, even if she didn’t think everything would be all right.

She stepped up and gave him a hug. He hugged her, too, and kissed her. One of his hands closed on her breast. When Major Spinello had done that, all Vanai had wanted to do was tear herself away. Now, though Ealstan was doing the same thing, her heart beat fast and she molded herself against him. It was, if you looked at it the right way, pretty funny.

Warmth flowed through her. But when she started to go back toward the bedchamber, Ealstan didn’t come along. Instead, he returned to the window. “They’ve gone down the street,” he said. “I can go down and look at the broadsheets without drawing any notice—plenty of people coming out to see what the latest nonsense is.”

“Go on, then,” Vanai answered. Putting business ahead of pleasure was like Ealstan. Right at the moment, she wasn’t sure she liked that so well.

“I’ll be back in a minute,” he said. “And then—” Something sparked in his eyes. He hadn’t forgotten her, not at all. Good ... well, better. She waved toward the door.

But when he did come back, his face was as grim as Vanai had ever seen it. Any thoughts of making love right then flew out of her head. “What have the Algarvians gone and done?” she asked, dreading the answer.

“They’re ordering all Kaunians to report to the Kaunian quarter here in Eoforwic,” Ealstan answered. “They’re all supposed to live there and nowhere else in town. Anybody who brings in word of one who hasn’t reported to the Kaunian quarter gets a reward—the broadsheet doesn’t say how much.”

Vanai’s voice went shrill with alarm: “You know why they’re doing that.”

“Of course I do,” Ealstan replied. “With all the Kaunians in one place, the redheads won’t have to work so hard to round your people up and ship you west whenever they need some more.”

“Some more to kill,” Vanai said, and Ealstan nodded. She turned away from him. “What am I going to do?” She wasn’t asking Ealstan. She was asking the world at large, and the world had long since shown that it didn’t care.

Whether she’d asked him or not, Ealstan answered: “Well, you’re not going into the Kaunian quarter and that’s flat. Out here, you’ve got a chance. In there? Forget it.”

“A price on my head,” Vanai said wonderingly. She giggled, though it wasn’t funny—perhaps
because
it wasn’t funny. “What am I, a famous highwayman?”

“You’re an enemy of the Kingdom of Forthweg,” Ealstan told her. “That’s what the broadsheet says, anyhow.”

Vanai laughed louder, because that was even less funny than the other.
“I’m
an enemy of the kingdom?” she exclaimed. “
I
am? Who beat the Forthwegian army? Last I looked, it was the Algarvians, not us Kaunians.”

“A lot of Forthwegians will forget all about that, though,” Ealstan said bleakly. “Cousin Sidroc would, I think; maybe Uncle Hengist, too. Kaunians have always been easy to blame.”

“Of course we are.” Vanai didn’t try to hide her bitterness. She might almost have been speaking to another Kaunian as she went on, “There are ten times as many Forthwegians as there are of us. That makes us pretty easy to blame all by itself.”

“Aye, it does, though not all of us”—Ealstan didn’t forget he was a Forthwegian—”feel that way about Kaunians.”

Slowly, Vanai nodded. She knew how Ealstan felt about her. But from everything he’d said, his father and brother would never have done anything to harm Kaunians—and neither of them had fallen in love with one. Following that thought along its ley line brought fresh alarm to Vanai. “What will the redheads do to anyone who helps hide Kaunians outside the quarter?”

Ealstan looked unhappy. Maybe he’d hoped that wouldn’t occur to her. The hope was foolish; the Algarvian edict would surely be plastered all over the news sheets, too. Reluctantly, he answered, “There is a penalty for harboring fugitives—that’s what they call it. The broadsheet doesn’t say what it is.”

“Whatever the Algarvians want it to be, that’s what,” Vanai predicted, and Ealstan had to nod. She pointed at him, as if the broadsheet were his fault. “And now you’re going to be in danger on account of me.” That seemed even worse than her being in danger herself.

Ealstan shrugged. “Not many people know you’re here. I’m not sure the landlord does, and that’s a good thing—landlords are a pack of conniving, double-dealing whoresons, and they’d do anything to put another three coppers in their belt pouches.”

In their pockets,
Vanai would have said, but the long tunics Forthwegians wore didn’t come with pockets. She wondered how he spoke with such assurance about landlords, having lived at home all his life till fleeing after the fight with his cousin. She was about to twit him on that when she remembered he was a bookkeeper, and the son of a bookkeeper for good measure. He would know more about landlords and their habits than she might have guessed.

He went on, “I don’t know if we’ll be able to get you to any more of Ethelhelm’s performances, or anything like that.”

When he said he didn’t know if she’d be able to go out, he meant he knew perfectly well she wouldn’t. Vanai could see that. Even so, she was grateful for the way he phrased it. It left her hope, and she had little else. She looked around at the imperfectly plastered walls of the dingy flat. Aye, they might have been the bars of a cage in the zoological garden.

“You’ll have to bring me more books,” she said. “A lot more books.” Brivibas had given her one thing for which to remember him kindly, at any rate: as long as her eyes were going back and forth across a printed page, she could forget where she was. That was not the smallest of sorceries, not when this was the place she had to try to forget.

“I will,” Ealstan said. “I’d already thought of that. I’ll scour the secondhand stores. I can get more for the same money in places like that.”

She nodded and looked around again. Aye, this would be a cage, sure enough. She wouldn’t even dare look out on the street so much as she had been doing, lest someone looking up spy her golden hair. “Get me some cookbooks,” she said. “If I’m going to spend all my time cooped up in here, cooking will help make the days go by.” She pointed at Ealstan. “You’ll get fat, you wait and see.”

“I don’t mind trying,” he said. “Fattening me up won’t be easy, though, not on what passes for rations these days.”

Something unspoken hung in the air between them.
If Algarve wins the war, none of this matters.
Mezentio’s men wouldn’t need their savage sorceries anymore after that, but by then they would have got into the habit of killing Kaunians. And that, as the history of her people in Forthweg attested, was a habit easier to acquire than to break.

There was one other thing she could think of to make time go by here in this little flat. She went over to Ealstan and put her arms around him. “Come on,” she said, doing her best to recapture the excitement that had been growing in her before the redheads ran up their broadsheets. “Let’s go back to the bedchamber. . . .”

Trasone tramped through the battered streets of Aspang. The burly Algarvian soldier looked on the devastation around him with a certain amount of satisfaction. The Unkerlanters had done everything they could to throw his comrades and him out of the place, but they’d failed. Algarve’s banner of red and green and white still flew from flagpoles all over Aspang.