Out of the Darkness

Tewfik..Hajjaj’s majordomo

One

Ealstan intended to kill an Algarvian officer. Had the young Forthwegian not been fussy about which redhead he killed, or had he not cared whether he lived or died in the doing, he would have had an easier time of it. But, with a wife and daughter to think about, he wanted to get away with it if he could. He’d even promised Vanai he wouldn’t do anything foolish. He regretted that promise now, but he’d always been honorable to the point of stubbornness, so he still felt himself bound by it.

And he wanted to rid the world of one of Mezentio’s men in particular. Oh, he would have been delighted to see all of them dead, but he especially wanted to be the means by which this one died. Considering what the whoreson did to Vanai, and made her do for him, who could blame me?

But, like a lot of rhetorical questions, that one had an obvious, unrhetorical answer: all the other Algarvians in Eoforwic. The Algarvians ruled the capital of Forthweg with a mailed fist these days. Ealstan had been part of the uprising that almost threw them out of Eoforwic. As in most things, though, almost wasn’t good enough; he counted himself lucky to remain among the living.

Saxburh smiled and gurgled at him from her cradle as he walked by. The baby seemed proud of cutting a new tooth. Ealstan was glad she’d finally done it, too. She’d been fussy and noisy for several nights before it broke through. Ealstan yawned; he and Vanai had lost sleep because of that.

His wife was in the kitchen, building up the fire to boil barley for porridge. “I’m off,” Ealstan said. “No work for a bookkeeper in Eoforwic these days, but plenty for someone with a strong back.”

Vanai gave him a knotted cloth. “Here’s cheese and olives and an onion,” she said. “I only wish it were more.”

“It’ll do,” he said. “I’m not starving.” He told the truth. He was hungry, but everyone in Eoforwic except some-not all-of the Algarvians was hungry these days. He still had his strength. To do a laborer’s work, he needed it, too. Wagging a finger at her, he added, “Make sure you’ve got enough for yourself. You’re nursing the baby.”

“Don’t worry about me,” Vanai said. “I’ll do fine, and so will Saxburh.” She leaned toward him to kiss him goodbye.

As their lips brushed, her face changed-literally. Her eyes went from brown to blue-gray, her skin from swarthy to pale, her nose from proud and hooked to short and straight. Her hair stayed dark, but that was because it was dyed- he could see the golden roots, which he hadn’t been able to do a moment before. She seemed suddenly taller and slimmer, too: not stubby and broad-shouldered like most Forthwegians, including Ealstan himself.

He finished the kiss. Nothing, as far as he was concerned, was more important than that. Then he said, “Your masking spell just slipped.”

Her mouth twisted in annoyance. Then she shrugged. “I knew I was going to have to renew it pretty soon, anyhow. As long as it happens inside the flat, it’s not so bad.”

“Not bad at all,” Ealstan said, and gave her another kiss. As she smiled, he went on, “I like the way you look just fine, regardless of whether you seem like a Forthwegian or a Kaunian. You know that.”

Vanai nodded, but her smile slipped instead of getting bigger as he’d hoped. “Not many do,” she said. “Most Forthwegians have no use for me, and the Algarvians would cut my throat to use my life energy against Unkerlant if they saw me the way I really am. I suppose there are other Kaunians here, but how would I know? If they want to stay alive, they have to stay hidden, the same as I do.”

Ealstan remembered the golden roots he’d seen. “You should dye your hair again, too. It’s growing out.”

“Aye, I know. I’ll take care of it,” Vanai promised. One way the Algarvians checked to see whether someone was a sorcerously disguised Kaunian was by pulling out a few hairs and seeing if they turned yellow when removed from the suspect’s scalp. Ordinary hair dye countered that. The Algarvians being who and what they were, thoroughness in such matters paid off; Vanai kept the hair between her legs dark, too.

Carrying his meager lunch, Ealstan went downstairs and out onto the street. The two blocks of flats across from his own were only piles of rubble these days. The Algarvians had smashed both of them during the Forthwegian uprising. Ealstan thanked the powers above that his own building had survived. It was, he knew, only luck.

A Forthwegian man in a threadbare knee-length tunic scrabbled through the wreckage across the street, looking for wood or whatever else he could find. He stared up in alarm at Ealstan, his mouth a wide circle of fright in the midst of his shaggy gray beard and mustache. Ealstan waved; like everyone else in Eoforwic, he’d spent his share of time guddling through ruins, too. The shaggy man relaxed and waved back.

Not a lot of people were on the streets: only a handful, compared to the days before the uprising and before the latest Unkerlanter advance stalled-or was allowed to stall? — in Eoforwic’s suburbs on the west bank of the Twegen River. Ealstan cocked his head to one side. He didn’t hear many eggs bursting. King Swemmel’s soldiers, there on the far bank of the Twegen, were taking it easy on Eoforwic today.

His boots squelched in mud. Fall and winter were the rainy season in Eoforwic, as in the rest of Forthweg. At least I won’t have to worry much about snow, the way the Unkerlanters would if they were back home, Ealstan thought.

He spotted a mushroom, pale against the dark dirt of another muddy patch, and stooped to pick it. Like all Forthwegians, like all the Kaunians in Forthweg- and emphatically unlike the Algarvian occupiers-he was wild for mushrooms of all sorts. He suddenly shook his head and straightened up. He was wild for mushrooms of almost all sorts. This one, though, could stay where it was. He knew a destroying power when he saw one. His father Hestan, back in Gromheort, had used direct and often painful methods to make sure he could tell a good mushroom from a poisonous one.

I wish the redheads liked mushrooms, he thought. Maybe one of them would pick that one and kill himself.

Algarvians directed Forthwegians hauling rubble to shore up the defenses against the Unkerlanter attack everyone in the city knew was coming. Forthwegian women in armbands of blue and white-Hilde’s Helpers, they called themselves- brought food to the redheads, but not to their countrymen, who were working harder. Ealstan scowled at the women. They were the female equivalent of the men of Plegmund’s Brigade: Forthwegians who fought for King Mezentio of Algarve. His cousin Sidroc fought in Plegmund’s Brigade if he hadn’t been killed yet. Ealstan hoped he had.

Instead of joining the Forthwegian laborers as he often did, Ealstan turned away toward the center of town. He hadn’t been there for a while: not since he and a couple of other Forthwegians teamed up to assassinate an Algarvian official. They’d worn Algarvian uniforms to do it, and they’d been otherwise disguised, too.

Back then, the redheads had held only a slender corridor into the heart of Eoforwic-but enough, curse them, to use to bring in reinforcements. Now the whole city was theirs again … at least, until such time as the Unkerlanters chose to try to run them out. Ealstan had a demon of a time finding the particular abandoned building he was looking for. “It has to be around here somewhere,” he muttered. But where? Eoforwic had taken quite a pounding since he’d last come to these parts.

If this doesn’t work, I’ll think of something else, he told himself. Still, this had to be his best chance. There was the building: farther into Eoforwic than he’d recalled. It didn’t look much worse than it had when he and his pals ducked into it to change from Algarvian tunics and kilts to Forthwegian-style long tunics. Ealstan ducked inside. The next obvious question was whether anyone had stolen the uniforms he and his comrades had abandoned.

Why would anybody? he wondered. Forthwegians didn’t, wouldn’t, wear kilts, any more than their Unkerlanter cousins would. Ealstan didn’t think anybody could get much for selling the clothes. And so, with a little luck. .

He felt like shouting when he saw the uniforms still lying where they’d been thrown when he and his friends got rid of them. He picked up the one he’d worn. It was muddier and grimier than it had been: rain and dirt and dust had had their way with it. But a lot of Algarvians in Eoforwic these days wore uniforms that had known better years.