Through the Darkness

“That’s worth doing,” Vanai said. Her husband nodded and left.

My husband, Vanai thought. It still bemused her. It would have horrified Brivibas: not just because Ealstan was a Forthwegian, though that alone would have been plenty, but because of the mean little ceremony with which they’d been formally joined. And what her grandfather would have thought about the two woman-loving matrons who’d checked the hair on her secret place. . She laughed, imagining the look on his face if she ever told him about that.

She knew exactly what had let her get through it without smacking them. It was simple: the Algarvians had already shown her worse. What Ealstan wished on his cousin, she wished on Major Spinello.

For a long time after she’d had to start giving herself to him, she’d doubted she would ever feel clean again. Falling in love with Ealstan had gone a long way toward curing her there. But, after the two of them came to Eoforwic, she’d had trouble feeling clean in the literal sense of the word. Washing with a pitcher and basin here in the flat wasn’t a patch even on Oyngestun’s public bath. And Oyngestun was only a village. Eoforwic had the finest baths in all of Forthweg.

Up till very recently, of course, they’d done her no good at all. She hadn’t been able to show her face in public, let alone her body. Now, though, she looked like a Fortliwegian to everyone around her as long as her magic held. When she looked in a mirror, she saw her familiar Kaunian features framed by much less familiar dark hair. What she saw didn’t matter, so long as no one else could see it.

She went through the spell again, to make sure it wouldn’t wear off while she was out and about in Eoforwic. Then she put some coppers in her belt pouch and left the flat. Now that she could head for the public baths, she did, usually every other day. She had trouble thinking of anything she enjoyed more about the freedom she’d sorcerously found.

With a sneer, she walked past the bathhouse closest to her block of flats. Oyngestun’s was better; whoever’d built this one seemed to have thought, Well, it’s plenty good enough for poor people. Here, unlike in Oyngestun, she had other choices.

The bathhouse not far from the farmers’ market was a great deal finer. She strode up the stairs that led to the women’s side, paid her little fee to the bored-looking attendant who sat there with a coin box, and went inside. She stripped off her tunic and gave it and her belt pouch and her shoes to another attendant, who put them on a shelf and handed her a numbered token with which she could claim them when she finished bathing.

A couple of Forthwegian women stripped off as casually as she had. They didn’t give her a second glance, for which she was grateful, but went off chatting with each other. She followed, a little more slowly. In her own eyes, she remained too thin and far too pale to make a proper Forthwegian, and her black bush seemed even more unnatural than the hair on her head. But nobody else could see her fair skin and her pink nipples. Were that untrue, she would have long since been caught.

One of the Forthwegian women slid down into the warm pool. “It’s not what it used to be, is it?” she said to her friend. “Time was when you got in here it didn’t matter how things were outside-you’d be warm. Nowadays…” A curl of her lips said what she thought of nowadays.

Vanai had known warmer pools, too, but this wasn’t so bad. And Eoforwic, like most of Forthweg, had a mild climate even in winter. She was also sure the soap had been finer once upon a time, though that would come later in the bath. It was always harsh and alkaline these days, and varied between a nasty stink and an almost equally nasty, cloying perfume. Today, it was perfumed- Vanai could smell it across the bathhouse. She tried not to notice. That wasn’t too hard. She had plenty of water here, and didn’t need to worry about dripping all over the kitchen floor.

She ducked down under the surface of the warm pool, running her fingers through her hair. When she stood up straight again, the two Forthwegian women in the pool with her were making shocked noises. For a dreadful moment, she feared she’d botched her magecraft and the charm had worn off much too soon. Then she realized the Forthwegians weren’t staring at her but back toward the vestibule. “The nerve!” one of them said.

“The brazen hussies,” the other agreed.

If the two Algarvian women approaching the pool understood Forthwegian, they didn’t show it. Forthwegians-and Kaunians in Forthweg-took nudity in the baths for granted. These women didn’t. They walked- strutted-as if they were on display. . and both of them had a good deal to display, even if the women in the plunge weren’t the ideal audience for their charms. Vanai wondered why they’d come to Eoforwic. Were they officers’ wives? Officers’ mistresses? Wouldn’t Algarvian officers have found new mistresses here?

Whatever they were, they giggled as they slid down into the water. Giggling still, they rubbed each other. That wasn’t the custom in public baths; the Forthwegian women looked scandalized, and hastily got out of the hot pool. Vanai followed. She didn’t want to seem like an abnormal Forthwegian in any way.

Evidently she didn’t, for one of the Forthwegian women turned back to her and said, “Aren’t they disgraceful?” She kept her voice down, but not well enough; if the Algarvian women did know Forthwegian, they would have had no trouble catching the disparaging comment. Vanai just nodded. That wouldn’t get her into any trouble unless the redheads chanced to look straight at her.

She and the Forthwegian women jumped into the cold plunge together. They all yipped. The warm pool had been only indifferently warm; the plunge was anything but indifferently cold. Some people stayed out of the warm pool altogether, and did all their soaking in the cold plunge. Vanai thought such folk were out of their minds. The two Forthwegians must have agreed with her, for they scrambled out as fast as she did. All over gooseflesh, they hurried toward the soaping area.

Up close, the scent of the soap was even more irksome than it had been at a distance. Vanai had a couple of little scrapes; the suds stung fiercely. She was lathering her legs when a splash and a couple of small shrieks came from the cold plunge. “Maybe they didn’t expect that,” she remarked.

“Hope not,” one of the Forthwegian women said. “Serve ‘em right if they didn’t.”

“You don’t suppose …” The other Forthwegian paused with left leg sudsy and right leg not. “You don’t suppose they’ll put soap on each other, too?”

After her unfortunate experience with the Forthwegian matrons, Vanai had no interest in learning more about such things. She finished soaping herself in a hurry. Then she grabbed a bucket with a perforated bottom, filled it in a great tub of lukewarm water, and hung it on a hook that came down from the ceiling. She stood under it to rinse the soap off her skin and out of her hair.

Rubbing at her hair after that first bucket went dry, she discovered she still had some suds in it. With a small sigh, she took the bucket off the hook, refilled it, and got back under it once more.

She was still under it when the two Algarvian women, soapy all over, came up and got their own buckets. The Forthwegian women had already gone off to swaddle themselves in towels. One of the Algarvians nodded to Vanai and asked, “Do you speak this language?” in pretty good Kaunian.

“No,” Vanai answered, more sharply than she’d intended-were they trying to entrap her? She wouldn’t fall for that.

Both redheads shrugged and went back to getting themselves clean. As they filled buckets and stood under them, they talked back and forth in Algarvian. Thanks to her grandfather, Vanai could read it after a fashion, but she didn’t speak much and didn’t understand much when she heard it spoken. But she did hear the word Kaunians several times, mostly in the mouth of the woman who’d asked her if she spoke the classical tongue.

The other one pointed to Vanai and said something more in Algarvian. Vanai thought she knew what it meant: something like, Why expect her to speak it? They’re all gone. If she let on she had any idea what they were saying, it would only land her in trouble. She knew that, and kept rinsing her hair. What she wanted to do was scream at the Algarvians, or, better, bash out their brains with a bucket.

Had only one of them been there with her, she might have tried that. She didn’t think she could kill two, no matter how enraged she was. Both Algarvian women laughed. Why? Because they thought all the Kaunians in Forthweg were dead and gone? She wouldn’t have been surprised. But they were wrong, curse them, wrong. She wanted to scream that, too, wanted to but didn’t. She only finished rinsing and went off to get a towel of her own.

She dried quickly, threw the towel into a wickerwork hamper, and handed her claim token back to the woman in charge of bathers’ clothes. The women gave back her garments, which she put on as quickly as she could. She didn’t want to be there when the Algarvians came out to dress.

But she was; they’d done a faster job of rinsing than she had. Out they came, outwardly conforming to the