money wasn't a worry yet, and wouldn't be for a while. She still found the handbag a minor annoyance. Trouser pockets were more convenient for carrying things. But Forthwegian women didn't wear trousers. If she wanted to look like a Forthwegian, she had to dress like one, too.
She'd just lifted the bar from the door when someone knocked on it. She jerked back in surprise and alarm. She hadn't expected visitors. She never expected visitors. Visitors meant trouble. 'Who is it?' she asked, hating the quaver in her voice but unable to hold it out.
'Mistress Thelberge?' A man's voice, deep and gruff. Unquestionably Forthwegian- no Algarvian trill.
'Aye?' Cautiously, Vanai opened the door. The fellow standing in the hallway was a vigorous fifty, with shoulders like a bull's. She'd never seen him before. 'Who are you? What do you want?'
He drew himself up straight. 'Pybba's the name,' he rumbled. 'Now where in blazes is your husband?' He spoke as if Vanai might have had Ealstan in her handbag.
'He's not here,' she said coldly. 'He's out looking for work. Thanks to you, he'll probably have a hard time finding any. What more do you want to do to him?'
'I want to talk to him, that's what,' the pottery magnate answered.
Vanai set a hand on the door, as if to slam it in his face. 'Why should he want to talk to you?'
Pybba reached into his belt pouch. He pulled out a coin and tossed it to her. 'Here. This'll give him a reason,' he said as she caught it. She stared at the coin in her hand. It was gold.
Vanai couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a goldpiece, let along held one. Silver circulated far more freely in Forthweg than gold, and Brivibas, back in Oyngestun, had not been the sort of man who attracted any of the few goldpieces the kingdom did mint. 'I don't understand,' Vanai said. 'You just sacked Ealstan. Why- this?' She held up the gold coin. It lay heavier in her hand than silver would have.
'Because I've learned some things I didn't know when I gave him the boot, that's why,' Pybba replied. 'For instance, he's got- he had- a brother named Leofsig. Isn't that so?' Vanai stood mute. She didn't know where the pottery magnate was going with his questions or why he was asking them. Pybba seemed to take her silence for agreement, for he went on, 'And some son of a whore from Plegmund's Brigade killed his brother. Isn't that right?'
He didn't know everything; he didn't know that the fellow from Plegmund's Brigade who'd killed Leofsig was Ealstan's- and poor Leofsig's- first cousin. But he knew enough. Vanai asked, 'What's this to you?'
'It's worth gold to me to see him, that's what it is. You tell him so,' Pybba said. 'Aye, tell him just that. And keep the money whether he decides he wants to see me or not. He'll be stubborn. I know cursed well he will. Some ways, he reminds me of the way I was back in my puppy days.' He laughed. 'Don't tell him that. It'll just put his back up. So long, sweetheart. I've got work to do.' Without another word, he hurried toward the stairs. Vanai got the idea he always hurried.
She went through the rest of the day in a daze. She didn't want to take the goldpiece with her when she went down to the market square to buy oil, but she didn't want to leave it back in the flat, either. She knew that was foolish; aye, it was worth sixteen times its weight in silver, but the flat already held a good deal more than sixteen times as much silver as there was gold in that one coin. The nervousness persisted even so.
When she got back with the olive oil, the first thing she did was make sure the gold coin was where she'd left it. Then she had to wait for Ealstan to come home. The sun seemed to crawl across the sky. It was sinking down behind the block of flats across the street when he finally used the familiar coded knock.
One glance at his face told Vanai he'd had no luck. 'About time for me to start paving roads, looks like,' he said glumly. 'Pour me some wine, will you? If I get drunk, I won't have to think about what a mess I'm in.'
Instead of pouring wine, Vanai brought back the goldpiece and displayed it in the palm of her hand. As Ealstan's eyes widened, she said, 'Things may not be quite so bad.'
'Where-?' Ealstan coughed. He had to break off and try again. Speaking carefully, he asked, 'Where did that come from?'
'From Pybba,' Vanai answered, and her husband's eyes got wider still. Handing him the goldpiece, she went on, 'He wants to talk with you.'
Ealstan tossed the coin up into the air. 'That means this is probably brass,' he said as he caught it. Vanai shook her head. Ealstan didn't push it; he knew the heft of gold when he felt it, too. He scowled in bewilderment. 'What does he want? What can he want? For me to come in so he can gloat?'
'I don't think so,' Vanai said. 'He knows about Leofsig.' She explained what Pybba had said, finishing, 'He said that whole business with your family was why he wanted to see you again.'
'I don't understand,' Ealstan muttered, as if he didn't want to admit that even to himself. He gave the goldpiece back to Vanai. 'What do you think I ought to do?' he asked her.
'You'd better go see him,' she replied; she'd been thinking about that ever since Pybba left. 'I don't think you have any choice, not after this.' Before he could indignantly deny that and insist that he could do as he pleased, she forestalled him by choosing that moment to get the wine after all, leaving him by himself to think for a minute or two. When she brought it back, she asked, 'Can you tell me I'm wrong?'
'No,' he said darkly, and gulped down half the cup at once. 'But powers above, how I wish I could.'
'Let me get supper ready.' Vanai chopped cabbage and onions and radishes and dried mushrooms, adding crumbly white cheese and shaved bits of smoked pork for flavor. She dressed the salad with spiced vinegar and some of the olive oil she'd bought. Along with bread and more oil and some apricots, it made a quick, reasonably filling meal.
Her own appetite was pretty good, and everything looked like staying down. She still had occasional days when she gave back as much as she ate, but they were getting rarer. Ealstan seemed so distracted, she might have set anything at all before him. Halfway through supper, he burst out, 'But how am I supposed to trust him after this?'
Vanai had no trouble figuring out who him was. 'Don't,' she answered. 'Do what business you have to or you think you should with him, but that hasn't got anything to do with trust. Even if you go back to work for him, he's just your boss. He's not your father.'
'Aye,' Ealstan said, as if that hadn't occurred to him. Maybe it hadn't. He'd looked for great things from Pybba. He'd looked too hard for great things from Pybba, in fact. Maybe now he would see the pottery magnate as a man, not a hero.
When they made love later that evening, Ealstan didn't show quite the desperate urgency he'd had lately. He seemed a little more able to relax and enjoy himself. Because he did, Vanai did, too. And she slept well afterwards. Of course, she would have slept well afterwards even if she hadn't enjoyed herself making love. Carrying a child was the next best thing to getting hit with a brickbat for ensuring sound sleep.
In the morning, after more bread and oil and a cup of wine, Ealstan said, 'I'm off to see Pybba. Wish me luck.'
'I always do,' Vanai answered.
Then she had nothing to do but wait. She'd done so much of that since coming to Eoforwic. She should have been good at it. Sometimes she even was. But sometimes waiting came hard. This was one of those days. Too many things could go very wrong or very right. She had no control over any of them. She hated that.
The longer she waited for Ealstan, the more worried she got. Waiting all the way into the early evening left her something close to a nervous wreck. When at last he knocked, she all but flew to the door. She threw it open. 'Well?' she said.
'Well,' he answered grandly, breathing wine fumes into her face, 'well, sweetheart, I think we're back in business. Back in business, aye.' He savored the phrase. 'And what a business it is, too.'
The summer before, the fight in the forests of western Unkerlant had been as grand as the attacking Gyongyosians could make it. They'd driven the goat-eating Unkerlanters before them, almost breaking through into the open country beyond the woods. Now… Now Istvan counted himself lucky that the Unkerlanters weren't driving his own countrymen west in disorder. King Swemmel's men seemed content to harass the Gyongyosians without doing much more.
'I'll tell you what I think it is,' Corporal Kun said one evening.
'Of course you will,' Istvan said. 'You've always got answers, you do, whether you know the question or
