Ealstan walked the Street of Tinkers from one end to the other, as he had every day since coming to Oyngestun. Vanai lived in one of the houses along the street. Ealstan knew that from the letters they’d sent back and forth. But he didn’t know which one. They all looked much alike, presenting only walls--some whitewashed, some painted--and doorways and tiny windows to the street. Most Forthwegian houses were like that: built around a central courtyard, and not showing the outside world whatever ostentation lay within.
He kicked at the cobblestones in frustration. He hadn’t dared ask after Vanai. That might have involved her in his trouble--and it might have got back to the constables or the redheads. Even had he known which house was hers, she shared it with her grandfather. Ealstan had no doubt Brivibas was as appalled at the notion of his daughter’s falling in love with a Forthwegian as most Forthwegians would have been at the idea of one of their kind’s loving a Kaunian.
“Powers above,” Ealstan muttered to himself. “Doesn’t she ever come outside? Doesn’t she even look outside?”
As best he could tell, Vanai didn’t. He couldn’t spend every waking moment pacing up and down the Street of Tinkers, however much he wanted to. That would get him noticed, the last thing he wanted.
“I ought to go away,” he murmured. “I ought to go far away, go someplace where nobody’s ever heard of me, and wait for things to blow over.”
He’d said that before. Logically, intellectually, it made good sense. No matter how much sense it made, he couldn’t do it. Vanai was here . . . somewhere. Of course she drew him now, as a lodestone drew bits of iron.
Shaking his head, he went back to the tavern where he was renting a nasty little chamber above the taproom. The drunken racket below made his nights hideous, but he couldn’t very well complain. The taverner made more from the noisy drunks than he did from Ealstan.
A few doors up the street from the tavern was an apothecary’s shop run by a plump Kaunian named Tamulis. Ealstan had been in there a couple of times, in search of a nostrum to knock down the headaches he got from not sleeping enough. He hadn’t had much luck.
He was just coming up to the apothecary’s door when it opened and someone came out of the shop. He had to step smartly to keep from running into her. “I’m sorry,” he said in Forthwegian. Then he stopped in his tracks, his mouth falling open. “Vanai!”
She hadn’t recognized him, either, not for a moment. Her jaw dropped, too; her blue-gray eyes opened enormously wide. “Ealstan!” she exclaimed, and flung herself into his arms.
They separated almost at once, as if each found the other burning hot. To be seen embracing was to court danger from Algarvians, Forthwegians, and likely Kaunians as well. But the memory of Vanai pressed against him warmed Ealstan better--deeper--than his long, heavy tunic and the wool cloak he wore over it.
“What are you doing here?” Vanai demanded. She spoke Forthwegian as readily as Kaunian; Ealstan could use Kaunian, but only more slowly. She held a green glass bottle in her hand. Ealstan had an identical bottle of willow-bark decoction up in his room. It might have helped fight fever from the grippe; he couldn’t tell that it did any good against a headache.
In a few terse sentences, he explained what he was doing in Oyngestun, finishing, “After Sidroc wouldn’t wake up, I knew I had to get out of Gromheort. There was only one place I wanted to come, and here I am.”
Vanai flushed; with her fair skin, far paler than Ealstan’s, the progress of the blush was easy--and fascinating--to watch. She knew why he wanted to come to Oyngestun. “But what will you do now?” she asked. “You can’t have a lot of money.”
“More than you think,” he answered. “But I’ve been doing odd jobs, too: anything I can to get my hands on some extra cash so I don’t go through what I’ve got so fast.” As a bookkeeper’s son, he understood he needed income to balance his expenses.
“All right. Good.” Vanai nodded; she had a briskly practical streak. Then she repeated the question she’d asked before: “What will you do now?”
Ealstan knew what he wanted to do. Holding Vanai would have put the thought in his mind had it not been there already. But that wasn’t what she meant. And he’d had time to think, pacing along the Street of Tinkers. He said, “If you want, we could go to Eoforwic together. From all I’ve heard, there are more mixed couples there than in the rest of Forthweg put together.”
Vanai flushed again. “Maybe there were, back before the war--in fact, I know there were, back before the war,” she said. “But now, under the Algarvians... Do you want to put yourself through that?”
