bookcases filled with secondhand books. Back before Vanai had come up with the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian, she’d had to stay in the flat all the time, with words on paper her only escape from boredom.
Ealstan’s eye fell on the slim book calledYou Too Can Be a Mage. He scowled at it. “Miserable, useless thing,” he said. Vanai had tried to use a charm in it to make herself look like a Forthwegian. The one time she cast that spell, all she’d accomplished was the opposite of what she’d intended: for a little while, she’d made Ealstan look like a Kaunian.
Fortunately, she’d figured out how to reverse that. But then she’d had to take apart the spell inYou Too Can Be a Mage, see where the bumbling author must have mistranslated from classical Kaunian into Forthwegian, and reconstruct what the original Kaunian had been. That gave her a spell she could really use, not one that offered hope and then immediately betrayed it.
Ealstan had heard her use the spell dozens of times. With a couple of bits of yarn, he could have cast it himself. But so what? He already looked like a Forthwegian. Turning himself into one wouldn’t do him any good.
He tookYou Too Can Be a Mage off the shelf and found the sorcery Vanai had modified. In its original, unchanged form, it would let him look like a Kaunian. For a moment, excitement blazed in him. That would get him into the Kaunian quarter. It would let him see Vanai. It would let him be with her.
But it wouldn’t let him bring her out. That was what he needed, above all else. Going into the Kaunian district to keep her company was romantically splendid but altogether useless. All it would accomplish, in the long run- maybe in the not-so-long run-was getting both of them sent west.
“That won’t do,” he said, as if someone-someone inside himself, perhaps-had suggested it would. The idea wasn’t for him to die looking like a Kaunian. The idea was for Vanai to live looking like a Forthwegian… or whatever else she had to look like to go on living. Ealstan nodded. He did clearly see what had to be done. He was the practical son of a practical father. Hestan would never have wasted time on a futile romantic gesture, either.
Fair enough, Ealstan thought. Isee what doesn‘t work. What does, though? The Algarvians had set things up so that no Forthwegians could go into the Kaunian quarter and no Kaunians could pass out of it into the rest of Eoforwic-not unless they seized them and took them to the ley-line caravan depot. Their system wasn’t slipshod, as it had been before. These days, they couldn’t afford to waste Kaunians. With the war in Unkerlant not going well, they needed every blond they could catch and hold.
No Forthwegians inside. No Kaunians outside. Ealstan hurledYou Too Can Be a Mage across the room. He slammed his fist down on the little table in front of the sofa on which he sat. Pain blazed up his arm. That left… nothing.
There has to be something. He shook his head. He wanted there to be something. That didn’t mean it had to be. How many Kaunians had thought there had to be something? How many of those Kaunians were dead now? Too cursed many. Ealstan knew that.
Wearily, he got to his feet and picked upYou Too Can Be a Mage. The pages were almost ready to part company with the binding: this wasn’t the first time he or Vanai had flung the book. With a curse, Ealstan put it back on the shelf.
“There has to be something.” He said it aloud, even if he’d already figured out it wasn’t true. The redheads had closed off every possibility involving Forthwegians and Kaunians, and what else was there? “Nothing. Not a stinking thing.” He said that aloud, too, to remind himself not to be a fool. Then he went to bed.
When he woke up, he was smiling. At first, still half asleep, he didn’t understand why. But as full awareness came, the smile only got broader. He knew what he had to do. A moment later, he paused and shook his head. He knew what he had to try. It might not work. If it didn’t work, he was ruined. But if it did, he had a chance.
His breakfast was much the same as his supper had been, only with olives as a relish instead of almonds. He hurried downstairs, hurried out of the block of flats, hurried to the pottery works, hurried into Pybba’s sanctum.
He’d been sure the pottery magnate would be there before him. And he’d been right. Pybba sat behind his desk, sorting through papers and muttering unhappily to himself. He looked up at Ealstan with no great liking. “What do you want?”
Before answering, Ealstan closed the door behind him. Pybba’s eyebrows rose. They rose higher when Ealstan told him exactly what he wanted.
“You’re out of your bloody mind, boy,” the pottery magnate said when he was through.
“Probably,” Ealstan agreed. “Can you get it for me? No-I’m sure you can. Will you get it for me?”
“I’d be crazy if I did,” Pybba answered. Ealstan folded his arms across his chest and waited. Pybba said, “Anything goes wrong…” and sliced his thumb across his throat. Ealstan didn’t move. Then Pybba said, “Odds are I’d be well rid of you anyhow,” and Ealstan knew he had won.
Ukmerge had one park-or, at least, Skarnu hadn’t been able to find more than one. In winter, with the weather cold and the grass dead and the trees bare-branched, not so many people came there. He could still walk through it, though, or sit down on one of the benches without drawing notice from the constables, if he came at noon. Even in the wintertime, some workers escaped from the nearby shoe manufactory to eat their dinners in the park.
The air stank of leather. In Ukmerge, the air stank of leather so much that Skarnu had almost stopped noticing it. Almost. He still found himself wrinkling his nose every now and again.
Most of the benches in the park faced a broad expanse of bare ground without trees, without even much in the way of dead grass. “Did something used to be here?” Skarnu asked the underground leader who called himself “Tytuvenai” after his hometown one noontime. “Something worth looking at, I mean?”
“Tytuvenai” nodded. “An arch from the days of the Kaunian Empire. The Algarvians put eggs under it and knocked it down, same as they did with the Column of Victory in Priekule, same as they’ve done all over Valmiera- all over Jelgava, too, if half what we hear from there is true.”
“Powers below eat them,” Skarnu growled. “They’re trying to make us forget our Kaunianity.”
“Aye, no doubt,” “Tytuvenai” said. “They’re trying to make themselves forget it, too-that we were civilized while they were just woodscrawlers. But that’s not why I asked you to meet me here today.”
“No, eh?” Skarnu tried to imagine what the arch had looked like. He had no trouble getting a general idea; he’d seen plenty of imperial monuments in Priekule and elsewhere. But he didn’t know what this one had been for, what reliefs and statuary and inscriptions it had borne. He wouldn’t be able to find out now, either. Nor would anyone else. That growl still in his voice, he said, “Maybe it should have been.”
“Maybe.” “Tytuvenai” didn’t sound convinced. He explained why: “One of these days, when we have time, we’ll worry about arches and columns and tombs. We don’t have that kind of time now. We’ve got to worry about putting the Algarvians in tombs, and keeping them from putting any more of us into them. Isn’t that more important than old marble and granite?”
“I suppose so,” Skarnu said grudgingly. “It’s more urgent, anyhow. Whether urgent is the same thing as important is something we can argue about another day.”
“It’s something we’d better argue about another day,” “Tytuvenai” told him. “I called you here to ask if you were ready to get back to work.”
“Ah,” Skarnu said. That certainly was more urgent than marble. As his comrade had done, he got straight down to business: “Here in Ukmerge? What have you got in mind, planting eggs inside the shoe manufactories?”
“You laugh,” “Tytuvenai” said, and he was smiling himself. “If you knew how many shoes this town’s made for Mezentio’s men, you’d laugh out of the other side of your mouth, believe you me you would. It’d be a shrewd blow against the Algarvians. If we can bring it off, itwill be a shrewd blow against the Algarvians. But it isn’t what we have in mind for you.”
“Whatdo you have in mind for me?” Skarnu knew he sounded relieved. The shoe manufactories, the whole town of Ukmerge, oppressed him almost as badly as they did Merkela. He would have loved to see the manufactories go up in smoke, but he didn’t want to have anything to do with them himself.
“You’ll know, better than most, how the Algarvians will bring Kaunians from Forthweg through Valmiera down to the coast of the Strait when they want to strike a sorcerous blow against Lagoas or Kuusamo,” “Tytuvenai” said.
Skarnu’s answering nod was grim. “Aye, I know about that. I’d better. I sabotaged one of those ley-line caravans before it could get where it was going, and a lot of those Kaunians escaped before the redheads got the
