Vanai couldn't have proved otherwise; there, for once, the lie, if it was one, was reassuring. The gizzards he sold her probably did come from chickens- they were too big to belong to crows or pigeons. 'I wouldn't have had 'em by this afternoon,' he told her.
'I know that,' she answered, and took them away.
When she got out on the street, people were nudging one another and pointing. 'Look at him,' somebody said. 'Who does he think he is?' somebody else, a woman, added. 'What does he think he is?' another woman said.
Vanai didn't want to look. She was too afraid of what she'd see: a Kaunian whose magic had run out, most likely. If the fellow had dyed hair, he wouldn't look exactly like a Kaunian, but he wouldn't look like a Forthwegian, either. Before long, the cry for Algarvian constables would go up.
Horrid fascination didn't take long to turn Vanai's eyes in the direction of the pointing fingers. The man at whom people were pointing didn't look just like a Forthwegian, but he wasn't an obvious Kaunian, either. Halfbreed, Vanai thought. Eoforwic held more than the rest of Forthweg put together. Her hand flattened on her belly. She held one herself.
Then she gasped, because she recognized the man. 'Ethelhelm!'
The name slipped from her lips almost by accident. In a moment, it was in everyone's mouth. And the singer and drummer grinned at the crowd that had been so hostile and now paused, uncertain, waiting to hear what he would say. 'Hello, folks.' His voice was relaxed, easy. 'I often use a little magic so I can go out and about without people bothering me. It must've worn off. Can I give you a song to make up for startling you?'
He'd told a great, thumping lie, and Vanai knew it. The redheads were hungry for Ethelhelm. But the crowd didn't know that. With one voice, they shouted, 'Aye!' They might have mobbed an ordinary Kaunian or halfbreed whose luck had run out with his magic. Ethelhelm wasn't ordinary. He might have lost his magic, but he still had some luck.
And he still had his voice. He grabbed a wooden bucket from someone, turned it upside down, and used it to beat out a rhythm as he sang. After one song- he carefully picked one that said nothing about the Algarvians- the crowd howled for another. The impromptu concert was still going on when Vanai left.
He'll get away, she thought. He'll keep playing till he satisfies them, then get off somewhere by himself and renew his spell. And then he'll be an ordinary Forthwegian… the same way I'm an ordinary Forthwegian. But that wasn't quite right. The Algarvians wanted Ethelhelm because of who he was, not what he was. Vanai shook her head in slow wonder. She'd finally found somebody worse off than she was.
When Skarnu had visited Zarasai by himself, he hadn't been much impressed: it was a southern provincial town without much going for it that a man from Priekule could see. Returning to it with Amatu and Lauzdonu was unpleasantly like torture. The two Valmieran nobles who'd come back from Lagoas seemed to him to be doing their best to get caught.
His temper didn't take long to kindle. When he got them alone in the flat the underground had found for them, he snapped, 'Why don't you just carry signs that say WE HATE KING MEZENTIO? Then the constables would nab you and the people who really know what they're doing could get back to doing it instead of spending half their time saving you. Whenever you go outside, you risk yourselves and everybody who helped you get here in one piece.'
'Sorry,' said Lauzdonu, who had some vestiges of sense. 'The kingdom's changed a lot more than we thought it had since we flew our dragons south instead of giving up.'
'Aye.' Amatu had a sharp, rather shrill voice that would have irritated Skarnu no matter what he said. When he said things like, 'It's changed for the worse, that's what it's done,' he irritated Skarnu all the more. And then he went on, 'It looks like nine people out of every ten are stinking traitors, that's what it looks like. And I'm not so bloody sure about the tenth chap, either.' He looked Skarnu full in the face as he made that- perhaps impolitic- remark.
I'm not supposed to bash him in the head, Skarnu reminded himself. We're on the same side. We're supposed to be, anyhow. 'People are trying to live their lives,' he said. 'You can't blame them for that. What's a waiter to do if an Algarvian comes into his eatery? Throw him out? The poor whoreson'd get arrested, or more likely blazed.'
'And who'd arrest him?' Lauzdonu put in. 'Not the redheads, most likely. It'd be a Valmieran constable. You bet it would.'
'They're the real traitors,' Amatu snarled. 'They all need shortening by a head, powers below eat 'em.' He was quick to condemn. 'And the waiters, too. If an Algarvian comes into their eatery, the redhead ought to go out with a case of the runs or the pukes. That'd teach him a lesson.'
'So it would,' Skarnu agreed, 'the lesson being that something dreadful ought to happen to the waiter who messed with his stew or his chop. You haven't got any sense, Amatu.'
'You haven't got any balls, Skarnu,' retorted the noble returned from exile.
Lauzdonu had to step between them. 'Stop!' he said. 'Stop! If we quarrel, who laughs? Mezentio, that's who.'
That was enough to halt Skarnu in his tracks. Amatu still seethed. 'I ought to call you out,' he snarled.
'Aye, go ahead- imitate the Algarvians,' Skarnu said. That brought the other noble up short, where nothing else had done the job. Pushing his edge, Skarnu went on, 'Can we look for ways to hurt the enemy instead of each other?'
'You don't seem to know who the enemy is.' But now Amatu only sounded sulky, not incandescent.
'We do what we can,' Skarnu answered. 'We came here, remember, because a lot of ley lines run south through Zarasai. We want to keep the redheads from sending Kaunians to the seashore and slaughtering them to strike at Lagoas and Kuusamo.'
Amatu's lip curled. 'Maybe you came here for that. I came here to strike at the Algarvians and their lickspittle lapdogs. Who cares what happens to the kingdoms on the far side of the Strait of Valmiera?'
Doing his best to be reasonable, Lauzdonu said, 'Except for Unkerlant, they're the only two kingdoms still in the fight against Algarve. That counts for something.' All he got was another sneer from Amatu.
Skarnu said, 'My lord, if you're not interested in doing the job you were sent here to do, if you'd sooner do what you think best, you can do that. But you'll have to move out of this flat and find one on your own, and you'll have to strike at the redheads on your own, too. No one from the underground will help you.'
'Find a flat on my own?' Amatu looked horrified. Without a doubt, he'd never had to look for lodgings in his whole life. Skarnu wondered if he had any idea how to go about it. By his expression, probably not.
'The fight against Algarve is bigger than any one man.' Skarnu knew he sounded like a particularly gooey kind of recruiting poster, but he didn't much care. Anything to get some use out of Amatu.
'All right. All right!' The returned exile threw his hands in the air. 'I'm yours. Do with me as you will. And once you're done, once I have time of my own, have I got your gracious leave to go after the Algarvians in my own way?' He bowed himself almost double.
He really did want to go after the redheads. Skarnu recognized as much. The trouble was, he made almost every Valmieran commoner and a lot of nobles want to go after him. When betrayal was as simple as a word whispered in the ear of a Valmieran constable, that wouldn't do. Skarnu had to remember to bow back, lest Amatu think he was offering a deadly insult. 'Of course you may, as long as you try not to do anything that'll get us killed or captured and tortured. Betraying our friends isn't what we've got in mind, either.'
'I understand that. I'm not an idiot,' Amatu said testily, though Skarnu might not have agreed with him. The noble went on, 'I'll haunt the caravan depot, if that's what you need from me. If I could sleep upside down in the rafters like a bat, I'd do that. Are you satisfied?'
'No,' Skarnu said at once, which made Amatu glare at him all over again. He went on, 'You and Lauzdonu and a lot of other people we don't even know will wander through the depot every so often- not often enough to make the Algarvians or their Valmieran hunting dogs notice us. If we see anything- powers above, if we smell anything, because those cars stink- there's a little eatery where we can go. In the back of that eatery, there's a crystal. Here's hoping we don't have to use it.'
'Aye,' Lauzdonu said. 'That would mean trouble for us, and trouble for the poor Kaunians in the caravan car,
