but he didn't. Instead, he set out for his dockside barracks.
Not being a native of Setubal, he didn't unerringly find his way to them. He did manage to get aboard one of the many ley-line caravans gliding through the streets of the city. It wasn't any of those that went down to the harbor district, but it took him to a stop where he could catch a caravan that would carry him where he needed to go. He felt pretty good about that.
He didn't feel so good when reveille pried him out of his cot the next morning. Yawning, he staggered to the galley and gulped cup after cup of strong tea. One of his fellow exiles teased him: 'You'll be pissing all day long.'
'I probably will,' Cornelu agreed, yawning again. 'At least all the running to the jakes and back will keep me awake.'
'Must have been quite a night last night.' His countryman sounded jealous.
'Not so bad,' Cornelu said. Janira, had she heard that, would have been irate; it implied he'd had his way with her, which he hadn't. But she wasn't there and the other Sibian was, and so Cornelu boasted a little.
He was going back for yet another mug of tea when a Lagoan officer he'd never seen before strode briskly into the mess hall. Suspicion flamed in Cornelu; an unfamiliar Lagoan with something on his mind was the last thing he wanted to see early in the morning- or any other time of day, either.
Sure enough, the Lagoan spoke up in his own language: 'How many of you understand me?' About half the Sibians raised their hands. Cornelu followed well enough, but kept his down. The Lagoan switched to Algarvian: 'How many of you understand me now?'
This time, Cornelu raised his hand. So did most of his countrymen. One of them called out in his own language: 'Why don't you speak Sibian, if you want to talk to us?'
The Lagoan ignored that. Lagoans were generally good at ignoring anything they didn't want to hear. In Algarvian, the fellow continued, 'You will all report to the Admiralty offices after breakfast for an important briefing.'
'What's it about?' Cornelu called.
He got no answer. He hadn't really expected one. Having delivered his message, the Lagoan officer turned on his heel and marched away. Muffled curses followed him- and some that weren't so muffled. 'High-handed son of a whore,' one of the exiles said, and everybody else nodded. Lagoans were like that.
But the Sibians all tramped over to the Admiralty offices at the required time, too. Cornelu wondered what sort of orders- or lies- they would hear from the Lagoan officers in charge of getting the most out of them. Cornelu sometimes thought the Lagoans were as intent on using up the Sibians as they were on using them. He shrugged. He couldn't do anything about that.
At the Admiralty, a grizzled Lagoan petty officer whose ribbons and medals declared that he'd fought bravely during the Six Years' War spoke to the Sibians: 'Down the hallway to the conference room.' Unlike a lot of his countrymen- including plenty with fancier ranks and fancier educations- he spoke Sibian, not Algarvian. He even had a Facaceni accent.
'Where did you learn my language?' Cornelu asked him.
'Always a bit of dealing going on,' the Lagoan answered, and said no more. Smuggler, Cornelu guessed. Whether he was right or wrong, he couldn't do anything about it now.
Gold letters over the entrance to the conference room proclaimed that it was named for Admiral Velho, one of Lagoas' heroes in the last naval war against Sibiu a couple of hundred years before. Assembling Sibians here to listen to whatever the Lagoans had to say struck Cornelu as less than tactful, but the Lagoans had been less than tactful ever since the Sibian exiles arrived.
Cornelu turned to complain to one of his countrymen as he started into the conference room, but stopped with the words unuttered. One look at the map on the far wall swept them out of his head. The other Sibians were pointing and staring, too. Their talk rose to an excited buzz.
A Lagoan officer in tunic and kilt darker than the Sibian sea-green stood beside the map. 'Have we got your attention?' he asked the exiles- in Algarvian. For once, Cornelu didn't care. With that map in front of him, he would listen to anything.
Fifteen
“To sing a song of victory.' Words bubbled inside Garivald like stew bubbling in a pot over a hot fire. 'The day they thought they'd never see.' He paused, waiting for the next couplet to form. 'They thought they'd hit us hard in summer. But now we know their days are numbered.' He shook his head. That wouldn't do, not even with music to make the bad rhyme and scansion less obvious.
He cast about for a better line. Before he could find one, the Unkerlanter regular named Tantris came up to him. Whatever line might have taken shape flew away instead. He gave Tantris a dirty look.
The regular ignored it. He said, 'We need to strike the followers of Raniero the pretender, to show them they aren't safe even though his Majesty's troops haven't yet started taking Grelz back from the invaders. Can we do it?'
'You're asking me now?' Garivald said, intrigued. Tantris nodded. Garivald persisted: 'You're not giving orders? You're not saying you know everything and I don't know anything, the way you did before?'
'I never said that,' Tantris protested.
'No?' Garivald glowered at him. 'Where's Gandiluz, then? Dead, that's where. Dead because you wouldn't listen to me when I told you Sadoc could no more work magic than a bullfrog can fly. You had it all planned, the two of you. But you weren't quite as efficient as you thought, were you?'
Tantris gave him a long, expressionless look. 'You do want to have some care in how you speak to me.'
Garivald wanted nothing of the sort. Tantris put him in mind of all the inspectors and impressers he'd had to obey his whole life long. But he didn't have to obey this whoreson. The band of irregulars in the woods west of Herborn was his, not Tantris'. One word from him and the regular soldier would meet with an unfortunate accident. Garivald smiled. Power was heady stuff.
Tantris nodded as if Garivald had spoken his thoughts aloud. 'Everything gets remembered, you know,' Tantris said. 'Everything. With his Majesty's armies moving forward again, debts will be paid, every single one of them. Before very long, Grelz will find out exactly what that means.'
Birds chirped. Leaves were green. The sun shone brightly. But, just for a moment, winter lived in Garivald. He held the whip hand right now. But behind him stood only his irregulars. Behind Tantris stood the whole great apparatus of Unkerlanter intimidation, reaching all the way back to the throne room in Cottbus and to King Swemmel himself. Which carried more weight in the end? Garivald knew too mournfully well. With a sigh, he said, 'We hate the redheads and the traitors worse than we hate each other. We'd better, anyhow.'
'Aye. We'd better.' Tantris' smile was crooked. 'And we'd better show the traitors that we're still in business around these parts. Their hearts will be down in their boots anyhow, with the Algarvians falling back toward the borders of Grelz. A lot of them will be looking for ways out of the fight. Their hearts won't be in it anymore.'
'Maybe,' Garivald said. 'Some of them follow King Raniero-'
'False King Raniero,' Tantris broke in.
'False King Raniero,' Garivald agreed dutifully. 'Some of them follow him for the sake of a full belly or a place to sleep at night. But some of them…' He paused, wondering how to say what needed saying without putting his own head in the noose. 'Some of them, you know, really mean it.'
Tantris nodded. 'Those are the ones who really need killing. We can't let people think they can side with the redheads and against our kingdom and get away with it. This isn't a game we're playing here. They'd get rid of every one of us if they could, and we have to treat them the same way.'
Garivald nodded. Every word of that was true, however much he wished it weren't. 'What have you got in mind?' he asked. 'If it's something we can do, we'll do it.' He couldn't resist a last jab: 'If it's more of Sadoc's magic, maybe you'd better think again.'
Tantris winced. The lightning Sadoc had called down could have seared him instead of Gandiluz. It could have seared Garivald, too. Garivald knew what had saved him, though: Sadoc had aimed the lightning his way. And Sadoc had proved he couldn't hit what he was aiming at.
'No more magic,' Tantris said with another shudder. 'What I have in mind is hitting one of the villages around the woods that the Grelzers garrison. If we kill a few Algarvians in the fighting, all the better.'
'All right,' Garivald said. 'As long as you don't want to make us stand and fight if they turn out to be stronger than we expect going in.' King Swemmel was liable to reckon it efficient to get rid of men bold enough to be
