No one could have hidden anything out on platform twelve, which stood open to a chilly breeze blowing out of the west. Once upon a time, the platform had had a wooden roof; the stumps of a few charred support pillars were all that remained of it.
There by the edge of the platform, the cars of the caravan floated a couple of feet above the ley line from which they drew their energy and along which they would travel. Looking at those cars, Bembo said, “Where are we going to fit this lot of blonds? I don’t think there’s room for ‘em.” He didn’t think there was room for about a third--maybe even half--of the Kaunians already jammed in there.
“We’ll shoehorn ‘em in somehow,” Oraste said. “Where there’s a will, there’s a lawyer.” He chuckled nastily. “And we can feel up the broads as we shove ‘em in.”
The blond man who knew Algarvian turned to him and said, “I already knew better than to expect mercy from you. Is the smallest decency too much to ask for?”
“You Kaunians spent years and years and years grinding a foot down on Algarve’s neck, and nobody ever heard a word about mercy or decency from you,” Oraste said. He chuckled again. “Now you’re going to get it in the neck and see how you like it.”
Guards opened doors on some of the cars. They and the constables herded the Kaunians into them. It did take a lot of pushing and shoving. The seat of the trousers was one obvious place to shove. Oraste enjoyed himself. Bembo confined his shovings to the back, though he couldn’t have said why he bothered.
Even before the last of the Kaunians were inside the cars, workmen--Forthwegians with an Algarvian boss--began nailing over the windows wooden grates with only the narrowest of openings between the slats. “What’s that all about?” Bembo asked.
At last, the job was done. The guards forced the caravan-car doors closed, then barred them from the outside. From within, Bembo could still hear the moans and cries of the Kaunians as they sought whatever comfort they could find. He doubted they would find much.
Oraste waved to the cars, though with those grates on the windows the men and women inside could hardly have seen him. “So long,” he called. “You think it’s bad now; it only gets worse later. Off to Unkerlant with the lot of you!” He threw back his head and laughed.
A couple of the Forthwegian carpenters must have understood Algarvian, for they laughed, too. But Sergeant Pesaro rounded on Oraste, growling, “Shut up, curse you! They won’t want trouble on the caravan while it’s going west, so don’t stir up the stinking Kaunians.”
“He’s right,” said Bembo, who as usual on roundup duty wished he were doing anything but. Oraste nodded to Pesaro and gave Bembo a dirty look.
As soon as the carpenters had nailed a grate over the last window, the ley-line caravan silently glided away. For a moment, Bembo simply watched it. Then he gaped. “It’s going east!” he exclaimed. “East, toward Algarve! Why are they sending Kaunians that way?” No one had a good answer for him; all the Algarvians on the platform looked as surprised as he was.
Skarnu laughed softly as he strode through Pavilosta toward the market square. Merkela, who walked beside him, sent him a curious look. “What’s funny?” she asked. “The town hasn’t changed much, not that I can see.”
“No, the town hasn’t changed,” Skarnu agreed, “but I have. I’ve been on your farm so long now, and spent so much of my time there, that Pavilosta’s starting to look like a big city to me.”
“It looks big to me,” she answered, matching him stride for stride. She wasn’t far from his height or from his strength; she’d done farm work all her life, not just over the past year and a half. Looking first to one side of the street and then to the other, she murmured, “Buildings all around, and some of them three, four stories high. Aye, it looks plenty big enough.”
“It does to me, too--now,” Skarnu said. “I grew up in Priekule, though. Pavilosta didn’t used to seem so much of a much, not after the capital. It’s all what you get used to, I suppose.”
An Algarvian soldier carrying several links of sausage looked Merkela up and down and gave her a saucy smile as he walked by. Her answering stare would have chilled live steam to ice on the instant. It didn’t chill the soldier, who went on up the street laughing.
“Some things you never get used to,” Merkela said. “Some things you keep on fighting, even if they slay you for it.”
“Aye,” Skarnu said. Unlike most of Valmiera, Merkela and he were still fighting.
“Vengeance,” Merkela murmured softly. It was, these days, the most important thing she lived for. One reason she favored Skarnu these days was that he lived for it, too.
They walked past a broadsheet pasted on a wall. FOR THE KILLER OF COUNT SIMANU, 1,000 GOLD PIECES, it proclaimed. Merkela reached out and squeezed Skarnu’s hand. He’d slain Simanu, after all. And if he
