for the kingdom nor for yourself.”
“Nor will the penalties--for me, anyhow--be small if we fail,” Fernao said. “The kingdom, I expect, will survive it.” He sighed. “At least I’ll have till spring to prepare for this . . . adventure.”
“Oh, no.” Peixoto shook his head. “It will not be at once, but we aim to move later in the winter. The bad weather in the south will make it harder for the Algarvians to spy out what we’re doing, and we have more practice sailing in those waters during wintertime than they do.”
“Practice dodging icebergs, you mean,” Fernao said, and the colonel, curse him, nodded. The mage went on, “And I suppose you intend landing your army at the edge of the ice pack and letting everyone march to real ground.”
He’d intended that for sarcasm. To his dismay, Colonel Peixoto nodded. “Aye. Nothing better than taking the foe by surprise.”
“A blizzard at the wrong time would take
“We’ll manage,” Peixoto said. “After all, the Ice People do.”
“You’re mad,” Fernao said. “Your superiors are mad. And you want me to help save you from yourselves.”
“If that’s how you care to put it,” Peixoto said. “I’m going along, when we go. I’m not asking anything of you I dare not do myself.”
“Oh, don’t turn Algarvian on me,” Fernao said crossly. “I’ll go.” He wondered how big a fool he was being. No--he didn’t wonder. He knew.
Eight
Leofsig turned to his younger brother and asked, “Who’s your friend in Oyngestun? This is the third letter you’ve got from there in the last couple of weeks.”
He hadn’t meant anything in particular by the question. The last thing he expected was for Ealstan to blush and look embarrassed and stammer out, “Oh, just, uh, somebody I, uh, got to know, that’s all.”
It so patently wasn’t all, Leofsig started to laugh. Ealstan glared at him. “Somebody you got to know, eh? Is she pretty?” he asked, and then went on, “She must be pretty, to get you all flustered like that.”
And, sure enough, Ealstan’s face lit up like a sunrise. “Aye, she’s pretty,” he said in a low voice. He glanced out toward the doorway of the bedroom they shared, to make sure nobody was standing out in the courtyard and listening. Leofsig thought he was being foolish; on a miserably chilly night like this one, nobody in his right mind would want to linger out there.
“Well, tell me more,” Leofsig urged. “How’d you meet her? What’s her name?” He had trouble thinking of his baby brother as being old enough to care about girls, but Ealstan’s beard was getting on toward man-thick these days.
“I met her gathering mushrooms,” Ealstan answered, still hardly above a whisper. Leofsig laughed again; if that wasn’t the way a quarter of the Forthwegian writers ever born started their romances, he’d eat his shoes. “Well, I did, curse it,” Ealstan said. But something more than silliness at being caught up in a cliche was on his face. Leofsig had trouble naming it, whatever it was.
“What’s her name?” he asked again.
That other thing grew stronger on Ealstan’s face. Now Leofsig recognized it: it was fear. For a moment, he didn’t think his brother would answer him. When at last Ealstan did speak, he said, “I wouldn’t tell anybody but you, not even Father, not yet anyhow. Her name’s . . . Vanai.” The whisper was so quiet, Leofsig had to lean forward to hear it.
“Why are you making such a secret out of. . .” he began, and then, before he’d finished the sentence, he understood exactly why. “Oh.” He whistled softly. “Because she’s a Kaunian.”
“Aye.” Ealstan’s voice was bleak. When he chuckled, the sound might have come from the throat of a weary, cynical old man. “My sense of timing couldn’t be better, could it?”
“Not if you tried for a year.” Leofsig shook his head, as stunned as if an egg had burst close by. “That would be hard enough any time. Now ...”
Ealstan nodded. “Now it’s a disaster. But it happened anyhow. And do you know what?” He stuck out his chin, as if challenging not only Leofsig but the whole world to make him take it back. “I’m glad it happened.”
“You’re head over heels is what you are.” Leofsig knew a stab of jealousy. He’d been taking Felgilde out since before
