that without speaking Algarvian. Were he a woodcutter who’d understood it, what would he do? He did it: he nodded, looked frightened, and hurried away. Behind him, the Algarvian laughed. Cornelu knew what a leviathan’s jaws could do to a man. He wished the beast in the pen would do that to the sailor: one more wish he wouldn’t see fulfilled.
After starting toward a dockside eatery, he checked himself. He’d eaten there too often back in the days when Sibiu was a free kingdom, and he an officer in King Burebistu’s service. Someone might recognize him in spite of his poorly shaved chin and shabby clothes. Most Sibians loathed their Algarvian occupiers. A few, though . . . The posters calling for Sibians to join the fight against Unkerlant were still pasted to walls and fences. King Mezentio had to be drawing recruits from the five islands of Sibiu. That he was shamed Cornelu.
Farther inland, he could crumble twice-baked bread into pea soup at a place where he’d never gone while wearing Sibiu’s uniform. The meal he got showed he’d known what he was doing when he stayed away, too. But it made his belly stop growling like an angry dog. He set silver on the table and stalked out.
Before long, he found himself walking along his own street. That was stupidly dangerous, and he knew it. Old neighbors were far likelier to know him for who and what he was than were waiters at a seaside eatery. He couldn’t help himself, though.
There stood his house. It looked very much as it always had. The flowers in front of it were dead and the grass yellow and dying, but that happened every winter. Smoke rose from the chimney. Someone was at home. Costache? Just Costache? Well, just Costache and Brindza? Or was one of the Algarvian officers quartered there, or more than one, at the house, too?
If one of the Algarvians answered, he could beg and then shamble away.
They’d be none the wiser. But if it was Costache, if it was Costache ... He’d posted a note saying he was coming into town and suggesting they meet tomorrow. To protect her and himself, he’d signed it
All at once, tomorrow seemed impossibly far away. He started up his own walk. Aye, a risk, but one he couldn’t help taking.
He was about to set his foot on the first step leading up to the porch when a man spoke inside the house. Those trilling “r”s could only come from an Algarvian’s mouth. Cornelu hesitated, hating himself for hesitating. But the risk had just gone up.
As he was about to go on despite that risk, Costache laughed. She’d always had an easy, friendly laugh. It had brightened Cornelu’s day whenever he heard it. Now he heard her lightly giving it to one of King Mezentio’s men. That wounded him almost as much as if he’d peeked in their bedroom window and seen her limbs entwined with the Algarvian’s in the act of love.
He turned away, staggering a little, as if he’d taken a beam from a stick. But his stride firmed faster than it would have after a physical wound. He no longer worried about being recognized; who would know him with this black scowl distorting his features?
“Tomorrow,” he muttered under his breath as he hurried away from his neighborhood. Tomorrow, if the powers above were kind, he’d see his wife. Maybe she would have an explanation that satisfied him.
For the life of him, he couldn’t imagine what it would be.
With the remains of naval discipline, he walked past half a dozen taverns. If he started drinking, he would either drink himself blind or drink himself angry. He could easily see himself storming up to his own front door with ale or spirits coursing through him and trying to kill all the Algarvians in his house or maybe trying to slap Costache around for not being distant enough to them. That he could also see the tragedy that would follow immediately thereafter made the picture only a little less tempting.
He bought a sack of crumbs at the edge of a park and tossed them to pigeons and sparrows till late autumn’s early dusk came. A couple of Algarvian soldiers walked by, but they didn’t bother him. He wasn’t the only fellow passing time in the park feeding the birds.
As soon as the sun sank below the northwestern horizon, the wind picked up. It seemed to blow straight through him, and carried the bite of the land of the Ice People, where it had originated. It blew the park empty in short order. Cornelu hoped the others who were leaving had better places to go than he.
He ate fried clams and allowed himself one mug of ale at a tavern that also sold meals. The clams weren’t bad, but the ale had been watered to the point where two or three mugs would have done little to him. Next door stood a rooming house where he bought a cubicle for the night. The tiny chamber barely had room for the bed and the cheap nightstand that held a cup, basin, and pitcher.
