Out of the Darkness

“It’s over, then,” Lurcanio said dully, and the runner nodded. He looked not far from tears.

It wasn’t quite over, of course. Around Trapani and here and there in the north, the Algarvians still fought on. Surrendering to Unkerlant was different from yielding to Lagoas and Kuusamo-different and much more frightening. The Algarvians had plenty of reason to worry about how their enemy in the west would treat them once they gave up, and even about whether King Swemmel would let them give up.

But that wasn’t Lurcanio’s concern. He took a certain pride in knowing he’d made a tolerably good combat soldier. It hadn’t mattered, though. However well he’d fought, Algarve still lay prostrate.

When the sun rose, he led his men out of their holes. Lagoan soldiers relieved them of their weapons and whatever small valuables they had. Lurcanio strode into captivity with his head up.

Eleven

News-sheet vendors in Eoforwic shouted that Gromheort had fallen. Vanai cared very little about that. The vendors also shouted about the hard fighting Forthweg’s Unkerlanter allies had done. Vanai cared very little about that, either. But she did fear hard fighting in Gromheort would have taken a toll on the civilians there. She hoped Ealstan’s family had come through as well as possible.

News-sheet vendors said never a word about Oyngestun. Vanai would have been astonished if they had. Her home village, a few miles west of Gromheort, wasn’t important enough to talk about unless you lived there. She didn’t worry about her own family; her grandfather was all she’d had left, and Brivibas was dead. Vanai wasn’t particularly sorry, either. Tamulis the apothecary was the only person in the village she cared about even a little. He’d been kind to her after her grandfather took up with Major Spinello, and even after she’d had to take up with Spinello herself. But Tamulis was as much a Kaunian as she was, which meant the odds he’d come through weren’t good.

Saxburh pulled herself upright with the help of the sofa in the flat and cruised from one end to the other, holding on. As soon as she let go, she fell down. She laughed. It hadn’t hurt her a bit. Of course, she didn’t have very far to fall. She looked over at Vanai. “Mama!” she said in an imperious tone that couldn’t mean anything but, Pick me up!

“I’m your mama,” Vanai agreed, and did pick her up. Saxburh called her mama much more often than dada these days. She said a couple of other words, too-hat most often, after a cheap linen cap she loved to jam down onto her head-and a lot of things that sounded as if they ought to be words but weren’t. She was getting close to her first birthday. Vanai found that preposterously unlikely, but knew it was true.

Saxburh tried to eat her nose. That was the baby’s way of giving kisses. Vanai gave her a kiss, too, which made her squeal and giggle-and, a moment later, screw up her face and grunt. Vanai sniffed. Aye: what she thought had happened had happened.

“You’re a stinker,” she said, and set about cleaning up the mess. Saxburh didn’t like that so well. And, being more mobile than before, she kept doing her best to escape. Vanai had to hold her with one hand and wipe her bottom and put a fresh rag on her with the other. Battle won, she kissed Saxburh again and asked, “How would you like to go down to the market square with me?”

It wasn’t really a question, for Saxburh had no choice. Vanai scooped her up and stuffed her in her harness. She also scooped up some silver, grimacing as she did so. The money wouldn’t last a whole lot longer, and she didn’t know what she would do when it looked like running out. Whatever I have to do, she thought, and made another sour face.

Whatever I have to do reminded her of something else. She renewed the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian. She did that whenever she went outside these days. She couldn’t see the effect of the magic on herself, and didn’t want it wearing out where other people could see her. It was again legal to be a Kaunian, but that didn’t mean it was easy.

She chanted a third-person version of the disguising spell over Saxburh, too. With her daughter, she could see it work. Thanks to Ealstan, Saxburh already had dark hair and eyes, but her skin was too fair and her face too long for her to look quite like a full-blooded Forthwegian. A little sorcery, though, mended that for hours at a time.

Vanai clicked her tongue between her teeth as she carried the baby down to the street. “I am going to teach you Kaunian,” she said softly. “If I have to teach you when to speak it and when not to, I’ll do that, too.” Maybe Kaunianity wouldn’t be extinguished in Forthweg. Maybe it would just go into hiding. Considering what the Algarvians had tried to do to her people, that would be something of a triumph.

Little by little, Eoforwic showed signs of coming back to life. A postman nodded to Vanai as she lugged Saxburh toward the market square. “Good morning,” he said, and tipped his hat. She nodded back. No one had sent her or Ealstan anything for a long time, but she’d started checking the brass box in the lobby to her block of flats again. These days, the idea of finding something there wasn’t an absurdity.

Maybe Ealstan will post me a letter, the way he did when I was still living in Oyngestun, she thought. If he had sent her any, they hadn’t got to her. She wondered whether Unkerlanter soldiers were even allowed to write letters. For that matter, she wondered how many Unkerlanters even knew how to write. Her opinion of Forthweg’s western neighbors was no higher than the view Forthwegians had of their more numerous cousins.

Guthfrith’s band thumped and blared away in a corner of the market square. Vanai stayed away from that corner of the square, and hoped Guthfrith- who, when not sorcerously disguised himself, was also the much more famous Ethelhelm-hadn’t noted her arrival.

She bought black olives and raisins and smoked almonds. She fed raisins to Saxburh as they went back to the block of flats. Only when she was halfway there did she realize she’d taken no pains to keep Ethelhelm from seeing which way she went. She shrugged. She didn’t think he’d given her any special notice. She hoped not. He made her nervous.

When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw no one following her. She cocked her head to one side and listened. The band was still playing, which meant Ethelhelm was still where he belonged. Vanai sighed with relief and went on. She let Saxburh walk beside her for a few paces holding her hand. The baby seemed to think she was a very large person indeed after that, and didn’t want to go back into her harness again.

In the lobby of the block of flats, Vanai tried the mailbox. To her astonishment, it held an envelope with an image of King Beornwulf in one corner-a rather smeary image, plainly turned out in a hurry to avoid having to use frankings from Algarve or from King Penda’s day. The envelope was addressed to her as Thelberge and to Saxburh.

“It’s your father!” she exclaimed to Saxburh. Who else would know the baby’s name? But that wasn’t Ealstan’s script, which she knew as well as her own. With her daughter and the food on her hands, opening the envelope was impractical down here. She thrust it into her handbag and raced up the stairs to her flat faster than she’d ever gone before.

She took the baby out of the harness and set her on the floor. As always after going to and from the market square, Saxburh was glad to escape and crawl around. Vanai tore the envelope open, and had to be careful not to tear the letter inside it, too. She unfolded the leaf of paper and began to read.

To her surprise, the letter inside was in accurate classical Kaunian, not Forthwegian. To my daughter-in-law and granddaughter: greetings, Vanai read. I hope that this finds both of you well, and that it reaches you safely. Now that Gromheort and Eoforwic are once more under the same administration, I have some hope that this may be so, and send it in that hope.

She smiled; that was an opening as formal as any in the surviving letters from the glory days of the Kaunian Empire. But the smile fell from her face as she read on: I must tell you that Ealstan was wounded in the leg during the final Unkerlanter attack on Gromheort. He discovered we had come through the siege by one of those coincidences that would embarrass a writer of romances: he was nursed at a station for the wounded by his sister Conberge.

The wound is healing. It threatens neither life nor the limb, though he may have something of a limp even after the healing is complete. I am doing everything I can to have him formally released from Unkerlanter service. Not only has he shed his blood for King Swemmel, but he is unlikely to be on his feet before the war against