having their belt pouches slit.
Sure enough, the stairwell in his block of flats stank of piss. He wondered which neighbor had got drunk and been unable to hold it in. It was curiosity of the most abstract sort; he didn’t really want to find out.
He knocked on the door to the flat he shared with Vanai in the rhythm of a Forthwegian children’s verse. She unbarred the door, which she wouldn’t have done had he knocked in an ordinary way. An ordinary knock meant a stranger, and strangers, these days, were deadly dangerous to Kaunians.
“Hello, sweetheart,” Ealstan said, and quickly slipped inside. He barred the door again before Vanai could. The bar was reinforced with iron. The brackets on which it rested and the screws that secured those brackets to the wall were the strongest Ealstan could find, far stronger than the ones the landlord had used in the flat. Anyone who wanted to come in after Vanai wouldn’t have an easy time of it.
“Tell me everything you did,” Vanai said after they’d kissed. “Everything, from the moment you went out the door.” Cooped up in here, she relied on him to be her eyes and ears on the outside world, as a blind man might rely on a cleverly trained dog to take him through streets he could not see.
His arms still around her, Ealstan obliged. Not only did he have a good memory for detail, he also had a most appreciative audience. And, as he talked, his hands wandered, now to the small of Vanai’s back, now farther down, now straying upward to cup her breast. Touching her got him as drunk as wine did, with never a hangover afterwards.
She snuggled against him, too. He’d discovered she didn’t like being surprised by touch. Her face would go hard and tight, and she would stand as stiff as if carved from wood. Something bad must have happened to her back in Oyngestun, but she’d never said what it was, and he didn’t have the nerve to ask. But when she wasn’t taken aback, he pleased her as much as she pleased him.
And what he had to say pleased her this evening. “Ethelhelm said that about me?” she demanded, and made Ealstan repeat it. “He said that? Really? He
“Aye--but I think he would have said the same thing even if he weren’t,” Ealstan answered. “You don’t have to be part Kaunian to like Kaunians--I ought to know.” He stroked her hair. She tilted her face up. They kissed for a long time.
At last Vanai broke away. “Let me go take the pot off the fire so supper doesn’t scorch,” she said. She was gone only a moment. Then they went into the bedchamber together.
When they’d finished, they lay side by side for a while, one of her legs hooked over his. He leaned over, taking his weight on an elbow, so he could caress her with his free hand. He knew he would rise again pretty soon; at seventeen, he could make love about as often as he wanted to. But his stomach had other things on its mind, and growled loud enough for Vanai to hear.
She giggled. Ealstan’s ears heated. She said, “Shall we eat now? We can always come back.” With so little else to do and with both of them so young, they spent a lot of time in the bedchamber.
As if to leave no possible doubt about its opinion, Ealstan’s stomach rumbled again. He laughed, which was the easiest way to hide his embarrassment. “All right,” he said. “I’d better, or my belly will shake the building down.”
He spooned up barley and onions and chopped almonds and a few tiny bits of smoked pork, thoughtfully smacking his lips. “You did something different this time.”
Vanai nodded. “You got me that fennel I asked for, so I used it.”
“Is that what it is?” Ealstan said. For Forthwegians, fennel was medicine, especially useful in hemorrhoid preparations. Kaunians did more cooking with it, a tradition that went back to the days of the Empire. Ealstan smacked his lips again. “Tastes better than I thought it would.” Listening to himself, he admired his own calm. He hoped Vanai did, too.
By the way the corners of her mouth twitched, she was trying not to smile, or maybe not to laugh out loud. “You shouldn’t have bought it if you didn’t expect me to put it in the food, you know.”
“I suppose not.” Valiantly, Ealstan kept eating. People did cook with fennel, and they didn’t perish as a result. He
They’d just finished supper when shouts down on the street made them both hurry to the window to find out what was going on. Night had already fallen, and the street was poorly lit, but Ealstan didn’t need long to make sense out of what was happening: a couple of men in kilts
