Time was, when I had secrets from you, but you had none from me, Vanai thought. It’s not like that anymore. When they’d first come together, the year or so she had on him had often seemed like four or five. It wasn’t like that anymore, either. Ealstan was a man, with a man’s silences hanging about him. The thought made Vanai, at twenty-one, feel very old indeed.
She fell asleep at last without noticing she’d done it. Saxburh let her sleep through the night. Sometimes the baby did, sometimes she didn’t. When Vanai woke, gray, gritty light was sneaking through the slats of the shutters. She rolled toward Ealstan, and discovered he wasn’t lying beside her.
She cursed in both classical Kaunian and Forthwegian as she got out of bed. He’d gone off to fight again, and he hadn’t even said good-bye. He’d done that before, and it never failed to infuriate her. She went out to the kitchen to build up the fire in the stove.
Ealstan had left a note on the table there. That was something: not enough, but something. I love you, he’d written in classical Kaunian. Because I love you, I will be careful.
She hoped he wasn’t lying to make her feel better. And she wished he didn’t love Forthweg quite so much. A lot of good that wish does me, she thought, and fought back tears.
“Come on!” Skarnu said. “We’re going home, by the powers above. I’ve been waiting more than four years for this day.”
But Merkela, instead of scrambling up into the seat of the worn-out old carriage the Valmierans had scrounged up for them from who could guess where, hung back, little Gedominu in her arms. “I don’t know,” she said, and Skarnu could indeed hear the doubt in her voice. “I never thought I’d go to Priekule, and I’m not so sure I want to.”
“Dadadadada!” Gedominu said cheerfully. He might even have known what it meant; he sometimes said, “Mama,” too, although, to Merkela’s annoyance, less often than the other.
“Don’t worry about a thing,” Skarnu said. “Priekule’sour city again, Valmiera’s city again, and we’re going back to settle accounts with all the traitors and collaborators. You weren’t afraid to take onCountSimanu, in the days when the kingdom had hardly any hope at all. Now we finally get to pay my sister back for sleeping with that redhead all these years.”
That made Merkela brighten, but less than Skarnu had hoped it would. At last, she came out with what was really bothering her: “When we get to Priekule, you’ll be a marquis again, and I’ll just be a peasant wench.”
“Oh, nonsense,” Skarnu said, or something rather earthier than that.
“When we get to Priekule, you’ll be the woman I’m going to marry and spend the rest of my days with. And if any fancy bitch toting a sandy-haired baby instead of a proper blond”-he reached out and ruffled Gedominu’s fine, white-gold hair; the baby squealed with glee-”says anything different, I do believe I’ll break her pointy nose.”
“That won’t make the bluebloods like me any better,” Merkela said.
She was probably-almost certainly-right. Skarnu was cursed if he would admit it. And he had a point of his own to make: “You’re coming into Priekule with an underground leader. You’re coming into Priekuleas an underground leader. If anybody doesn’t like it, blaze her.”
That got a smile from Merkela. Rather more to the point, it got her to climb into the carriage. Gedominu tried to throw himself out of her arms. He could crawl and pull himself upright, and thought he could do everything. He was wrong, but he didn’t know it. Plenty of people older than ten months had the same problem.
Skarnu flicked the reins. The horse, a gelding almost as decrepit as the carriage it drew, let out a resentful neigh but then got moving. Something felt wrong along the roads leading north toward the capital. Skarnu needed a little while to figure out what it was. When he did, he felt like whooping for joy. All he said was, “No Algarvian patrols!”
“I should hope not,” Merkela said.
“I’ve been hoping not ever since the king surrendered,” Skarnu answered. “Now the wish has finally come true.”
They did run into a patrol after a while: half a dozen armed Valmierans, most of them looking like farmers, four carrying Algarvian-issue sticks, the other two lighter weapons intended for blazing for the pot, and two unarmed men with hands high. When Skarnu spoke the wordPavilosta, he might have unleashed a potent spell. “Pass on, sir,” one of the poorly shaven irregulars said. “It’s our kingdom again, or most of it is.”
“We’ll get the rest before too long,” Skarnu said confidently, and the other irregulars nodded in unison. After the carriage bumped around a corner, Skarnu turned to Merkela. “I wonder what they were going to do with those couple of captives they had with them.”
“Nothing good, I hope.” No, there was no compromise in Merkela, not when it came to people who might have collaborated with the redheads. And Skarnu only nodded; when it came to such people, he felt very little compromise inside himself, either.
Getting to Priekule took three days. By the way the horse complained, Skarnu might have made it gallop all the way instead of taking it at the slow walk that seemed to be the beast’s only gait this side of a dead stop. Little Gedominu was complaining, too, even more loudly than the horse. He didn’t like being held so much. He wanted to get down and make trouble.
Another patrol, this one of men in actual Valmieran uniform, halted the carriage on the southern outskirts of Priekule. Again, Skarnu had no trouble convincing them who and what he was. One of them said, “Oh, aye, sir, we know about you. You’re theMarchionessKrasta ’s brother, isn’t that right?”
“That’s right,” Skarnu agreed sourly. “What about it?”
“Well, sir, if what we hear tell is right, she’s friendly withViscountValnu,” the fellow answered. “Valnu, he’s been a big blaze in the underground since dirt, or so they say. Good man to be friendly with, if you ask me-and if that’s how things really go.”
Not knowing what to say to that, Skarnu didn’t say anything. He drove past the checkpoint and on into Priekule. “Friendly withViscountValnu?” Merkela said. “With an underground leader?”
Skarnu spread his hands helplessly. “I heard the same thing you did. Who knows? Maybe Lurcanio was lying to me when he said what he said. I wouldn’t put it past an Algarvian.” He flicked the reins. “Or maybe this fellow didn’t know what he was talking about. I can’t tell you. AllI know is, she’s been with Lurcanio since the redheads marched in, and she never seemed unhappy about it that I heard.”
So I have been given to understand. That was how Lurcanio had answered when Skarnu asked if Krasta’s baby was his: not a ringing endorsement of her fidelity. Krasta had collected lovers like beads on a string in the days before the war. Who hadn’t, back then? Why would she have changed since? She was constant, even in things like inconstancy.
As they went deeper into Priekule, Merkela’s eyes got bigger and bigger. “It’s so huge,” she said. “I never believed a city could be this size.”
She’d thought the provincial towns in which they’d stayed were a match for the capital. Now she was finding out otherwise. Skarnu kept looking around, too; he hadn’t been here for a long time. Something was wrong. At last, he put his finger on it: “The Kaunian Column of Victory is gone! You could see it from almost anywhere in the city.”
“You already knew the redheads knocked it down,” Merkela pointed out.
“I knew,” he said, “but I hadn’t seen it.”
A bonfire blazed on a street corner. Skarnu could still see some of the Algarvian signs burning there: signs that had directed Mezentio’s soldiers to theaters and eateries and, no doubt, brothels as well. No longer, Skarnu thought. Never again.
But then another thought went through his mind. My sister is a whore, no matter what that fellow said. He shook his head. I have no sister.
A downcast woman who’d been shaved bald walked by. People whistled and jeered at her: “Mattressback!” “Algarvian slut!” “Stinking bitch!” She seemed to shrink in on herself even more, trying to become invisible.
“She deserves worse than that,” Merkela said, her voice and eyes cold as the land of the Ice People.
“Maybe she’ll get it, too,” Skarnu said, which seemed to satisfy her.
After what seemed both a very long time and hardly any time at all, they came to the mansion on the outskirts of town. An Algarvian signpost still stood at the entranceway, directing Mezentio’s men, Skarnu supposed, toColonelLurcanio and whatever he’d done. But then he forgot about that, for Merkela whispered, “You… lived here?”
“Aye,” Skarnu answered, and saw the astonishment on her face. “And will again-and so will you, if you want
