Before he had to find an answer, someone from farther up the street- someone behind the constables now, someone they couldn't see- cried out, 'Aye, bugger off!'
Again, the Algarvians spun. Again, they hurried past Ealstan. Again, they seized no one, for more insults rained down on them whenever they turned their backs. Algarvians often had tempers that burst like eggs. These redheads proved no exception. One of them shook his fist and shouted in pretty fluent Forthwegian: 'You fornicating bigmouths, you yell much more, we treat you all like stinking Kaunians!' To leave no doubt about what he meant, his partner stuck his chin in the air and drew a forefinger across his throat.
'Shame!' Ealstan yelled. That might have got him into trouble, but other Forthwegians were also yelling, and yelling worse things. As Ealstan knew too well, most of them cared little about what happened to the Kaunian minority in Forthweg, but they all cared about what happened to them.
The constable who'd shouted the threat was the one who'd taken the stick off his belt. Cursing now in his own language, he blazed between a couple of Forthwegians standing not far from him. His beam missed them both, but bit into the wooden wall of the wineshop behind them. The wall began to smolder. The Forthwegians fled.
So did everyone else on the street. Ealstan wasted no time ducking around the first corner he came to. He kept on running after that, too, the hem of his long wool tunic flapping just below his knees. 'Those bastards have gone daft!' another man making himself scarce said.
'What's daft about it?' Ealstan returned bitterly. 'They probably get a bonus for anybody they blaze.'
When the other fellow didn't argue with him, he decided he'd made his point. Having made it, he went right on trotting. He didn't know whether a new round of rioting was about to flare up in Eoforwic, and didn't care to stay around to find out. That was the trouble with people feeling feisty: no matter how much trouble they stirred up, they still couldn't get rid of the Algarvians.
'One of these days, though,' Ealstan murmured. 'Aye, one of these days…' He heard the longing in his own voice. Mezentio's men had been sitting on Forthweg for three and a half years now. He smiled when he passed another scribbled SULINGEN. Surely they couldn't hold down his kingdom forever.
His own block of flats lay in a poor part of town, one already scarred again and again by rioting. He wouldn't have minded seeing another round of that if it meant throwing Mezentio's men out of Eoforwic. Since he didn't think it would, he was glad things seemed quiet.
The stairwell smelled of stale cabbage and staler piss. He sighed as he trudged up toward his flat. He'd been used to better in Gromheort before he had to flee the eastern town and come to the capital. As a matter of fact, he could afford better here. But staying in a district where no one cared about you or what you were and no one expected you to be anybody much had advantages, too.
He walked down the hall and knocked on the door to his flat- once, twice, once. A scraping noise came from inside as Vanai lifted the bar that held the door closed. His wife worked the latch and let him in. He gave her a hug and kissed her. The magecraft that hid her Kaunianity and made her look Forthwegian made her look astonishingly like a particular Forthwegian: his older sister, Conberge. He'd needed a while before that stopped bothering him.
'We could stop using the coded knock, you know,' he said. 'Now that you don't look Kaunian anymore, there's not much point to it.'
'I still like to know it's you at the door,' she answered.
That made Ealstan smile. 'All right,' he said, and sniffed. 'What smells good?'
'Nothing very exciting,' Vanai told him. 'Just barley porridge with a little cheese and some of those dried mushrooms I got from the grocer the other day.'
'Must be the mushrooms,' Ealstan said, which made Vanai smile and nod in turn: both Forthwegians and the Kaunian minority in Forthweg were mad for mushrooms. Ealstan reached out and stroked her hair. 'You must be glad to be able to go to the grocer's yourself.'
'You have no idea,' Vanai said. Ealstan couldn't argue with her. Until she no longer looked like what she was, she'd had to stay holed up inside the flat. Had an Algarvian spotted her on the street, or had a Forthwegian betrayed her to the redheads, she would have been taken off to the Kaunian district- and then, all too likely, shipped west so her life energy could help power the sorceries the Algarvians used in their war against Unkerlant.
Ealstan went into the kitchen, pulled the stopper from a jar of wine, and filled two cups. He carried one of them back to Vanai and raised the other in salute. 'To freedom!' he said.
'Or something close to it, anyhow,' Vanai answered, but she did drink to the toast.
'Aye, something close to it,' Ealstan agreed. 'Maybe something getting closer, too.' He told her how the Forthwegians had given the Algarvian constables a hard time.
'Good!' she said. 'I wish I'd been there.' After a moment, the fierce smile slipped from her face. 'Of course, if I'd been there looking the way I really do, they'd have been just as happy to throw rocks at me and yell, 'Dirty Kaunian!' '
Her eyes held Ealstan's, as if challenging him to deny it. He looked away. He had to look away. The most he could do was mumble, 'We're not all like that.'
Vanai's gaze softened. 'Of course not. If you were like that, I'd be dead now. But too many Forthwegians are.' She shrugged. 'Nothing to be done about it, or nothing I can see. Come on. Supper should be ready.'
After supper, Ealstan read a book while Vanai cleaned the dishes and silverware. He'd brought a lot of books home while she was trapped in the flat- reading was almost the only thing she'd been able to do while he went out and cast accounts and got them enough money to keep going. He read them, too. Some- the classics he'd had to study in his academy in Gromheort- proved much more interesting when he read them because he wanted to than when they were forced down his throat.
When Vanai came out of the kitchen, she sat down on the sofa beside him. She had a book waiting on the rickety table in front of the sofa. They read side by side for a while in companionable silence. Presently, Ealstan slipped his arm over Vanai's shoulder. If she'd gone on reading, he would have left it there for a while and then withdrawn it; one thing he'd learned was that she didn't care to have affection forced on her.
But she smiled, set down her book- a Forthwegian history of the glory days of the Kaunian Empire- and snuggled against him. Before long, they went back to the bedchamber together. Making love was the other thing they'd been able to do freely when Vanai was trapped in the flat- and, because Ealstan was only eighteen even now, they'd been able to do it pretty often.
Afterwards, they lay side by side, lazy and happy and soon to be ready to sleep. Ealstan reached out and ran his fingers through Vanai's hair. Some people, he'd heard, eventually grew bored with making love. Maybe that was true. He pitied those people if so.
When he woke the next morning, rain was drumming against the bedchamber windows. Winter was the rainy season in Forthweg, as in most northerly lands. Yawning, Ealstan opened one eye. Rain, sure enough. He opened the other eye and glanced over at Vanai.
He frowned. Her features had… changed. Her hair remained dark. It would: she regularly dyed it. But it looked straight now, not wavy. Her face was longer, her nose straight, not proudly hooked. Her skin had matched the swarthy tone of his. Now it was fairer, so the blood underneath showed through pink.
Before long, the rain woke her, too. As soon as her eyes opened, Ealstan said, 'Your spell's worn off.' Those eyes should have seemed dark brown, but they were their true grayish blue again.
Vanai nodded. 'I'll fix it after breakfast. I don't think anyone will come bursting in to catch me looking like a Kaunian till then.'
'All right,' Ealstan said. 'Don't forget.'
She laughed at him. 'I'm not likely to, you know.'
And she didn't. After they'd washed down barley bread and olive oil with more red wine, Vanai took a length of yellow yarn and a length of dark brown, twisted them together, and began to chant in classical Kaunian. The spell was of her own devising, an adaptation of a Forthwegian charm in a little book called You Too Can Be a Mage that hadn't worked as it should have. Thanks to the training she'd had from her scholarly grandfather, the one she'd made did.
As soon as she spoke the last word of the charm, her face- indeed, her whole body- returned to its Forthwegian appearance. Kaunians in Eoforwic and throughout Forthweg used that same spell now. A lot of them had escaped from the districts in which the redheads had sealed them so they'd be handy when Algarve needed the life energy they could give. Mezentio's men weren't happy about that.
Ealstan was. He kissed Vanai and said, 'If these were imperial times, you'd come down in history as a great
