Darkness Descending

Oyngestun.” It wasn’t enormous praise, but she could give it without feeling like a hypocrite.

“Life’s hard,” Tamulis said gruffly. “Life’s hard for everybody, and especially for everybody with yellow hair. Go on, get out of here. I hope your grandfather feels better, the old fool. If he gets well, maybe you won’t have to come in here so often and listen to me complain.”

“It’s not as if there’s nothing to complain about.” Vanai bobbed her head and then turned and went out the door.

A couple of Forthwegian men two or three years older than she leaned against the wall of the apothecary’s shop. Vanai wasn’t too surprised to see them in the Kaunian part of Oyngestun; Tamulis knew three times as much as his Forthwegian counterpart, and had plenty of stocky, swarthy, dark-haired customers.

But one of the Forthwegians pointed at her and said, “So long, blondy!” He drew a thumb across his throat and made horrible gagging, gargling noises. While he was laughing, the other fellow grabbed his crotch and said, “Here, sweetheart. My meat’s got more flavor than an Algarvian sausage any day.”

That the earth did not swallow them proved the powers above were deaf. Vanai stalked past them, pretending they didn’t exist. She’d had plenty of practice doing that with both Forthwegians and Kaunians. But now she had to hide more fear than usual. Since the Algarvians sent that shipment of Kaunians west, Oyngestun’s Forthwegians had grown bolder toward their neighbors. Why not? Would the redheads punish them for it? Not likely!

If these two laid hands on her . . . I’ll fight, Vanai thought. I don’t have to lie there and take it, the way I did with Spinello. She chose not to dwell on what her odds would be against two men both stronger than she. To her vast relief, they did nothing worse than taunt her. After she slipped round a corner, she breathed easier.

She passed the postman on the way home. He was a Forthwegian, too, but decent enough. “Letter for you,” he said. “Something for your granddad, too.”

“I’ll take it to him,” Vanai said. She almost always took him whatever mail there was; these days, she made a point of getting it first. Holding up the little green bottle, she added, “He’s down with the grippe.”

“Aye, it’s been going around; my sister and her husband have it,” the postman said. “Hope he feels better soon.” With a nod, he went on his way.

Vanai hurried the rest of the way to the house she shared with Brivibas. Her heart sang within her. A letter for her had to be a letter from Ealstan. No one else wrote to her. She’d feared Spinello would, but he must have realized any letter he sent her would only go into the fire. Ealstan’s letters she cherished. Strange how a few minutes of fondling and grunting and thrashing could make two people open their souls to each other. She had no idea how that happened, but was ever so glad it did.

As far as her grandfather knew, no one sent her letters. That was why she made a point of picking up the mail before Brivibas could. It wasn’t hard; even well, he usually stayed in his study, on the far side of the house from the doorway.

But when Vanai opened the door, no letters shoved in under it lay on the entry-hall floor. She wondered if the postman had delivered them to the house next door by mistake, though he didn’t usually do things like that. Then she heard her grandfather moving about in the kitchen, and she realized she might have a problem.

She had to go into the kitchen anyhow, to mix the bitter willow-bark decoction with something sweet to make it more palatable for Brivibas. “I greet you, my grandfather,” she said when she saw him. “I have your medicine. How are you feeling?”

“I have been better,” he answered, his voice a rasping croak. “Aye, I have been better. I came out here to make myself a cup of herb tea, and heard that ignorant lout of a postman slide something under our door. I went to get it and found--this.” He’d taken Ealstan’s letter out of the franked envelope in which it had come.

“You read it?” Anger pushed fear from Vanai’s mind. “You read it? You had no business doing that. Whatever Ealstan says there, it’s not meant for you. Give it to me this instant.”

“Very well, my dearest sweet darling Vanai.” Brivibas quoted Ealstan’s greeting with savage relish. Two spots of color, from fever or outrage or both at once, burned on his cheeks. He crumpled the letter into a ball and flung it at Vanai. “As for its being none of my business, I would have to disagree. I would say, just as a guess from the style, that this is not the first such letter you’ve received.”

“That’s not your business, either,” Vanai snapped, cursing his literary analysis. She bent and picked up the letter and unfolded it far more carefully than Brivibas had wadded it up. Why couldn’t he have stayed in bed till she got back?

“I think it is.” His eyes glittered. “You still live under my roof. How much more shame must I endure on account of you?”