the Algarvians had come far enough to make the claim did not speak well for the fight King Swemmel’s men were putting up.
Another Algarvian soldier strolled by, this one arm in arm with a girl who spoke Sibian with a Tirgoviste accent like Cornelu’s. They didn’t always understand each other, but they were having fun trying. The girl’s face shone as she looked up at the man who had helped bring her kingdom to its knees.
Again, Cornelu had to fight to keep from showing what he felt. He’d already come into the city a couple of times since swimming ashore after Eforiel, his leviathan, was killed, and had seen the same kinds of things then. They tore at his heart. Some--too many--of his countrymen were willing to accept that they had been conquered.
“Not I,” he muttered under his breath. “Not I. Not ever.”
He made his way along the hilly streets till he came to an eatery that had been fine once but had gone down in the world. He nodded as he set his hand on the latch. He’d gone down in the world himself.
Inside, the place was cool and dim. It smelled offish and the oil in which the cook fried them. A couple of old men sat at one table nursing glasses of pear brandy. A fisherman was demolishing a platter of fried prawns at another. The rest were empty. Cornelu sat down on a stool at one of those.
A waiter came over with an expectant look. Cornelu glanced at the bill of fare chalked on a board behind the bar. “Fried cod, boiled parsnips and butter, and a mug of ale,” he said.
“Aye.” The waiter went into a back room. He didn’t come out right away; maybe he was the cook, too. He didn’t have so much trade that he couldn’t be both.
Presently, the door from the street opened. Cornelu started to leap to his feet. A tired-looking fisherman came in and sat down with the fellow eating prawns. Cornelu sank back onto his stool.
Out came the waiter, with his supper on a tray. He set it down, then took his new customer’s order. That fellow wanted prawns, like his friend. Cornelu started eating his fish. It wasn’t bad. He’d had better, but also worse. He sipped the ale. Like the fish, it was middling good.
He ate slowly, stretching out the meal, making it last. That wasn’t easy. He felt hungry as a wolf. He’d come up onto the island without a copper banu to his name and stayed alive doing odd jobs. He really had herded sheep for a while. He’d spent a lot of time hungry.
Coins clinked as the old men paid for their brandy. They got up and left. The waiter scooped their money into a leather pouch he wore at the front of his kilt. Cornelu raised a forefinger and asked for another mug of ale. The waiter looked him over, then raised an eyebrow. He understood the challenge, and set silver on the table. Mollified, the waiter gave him what he wanted.
He’d almost finished the parsnips and was halfway down that second ale when the door opened again. A worn woman pushing a baby carriage paused in the doorway and looked at the handful of customers in the eatery.
A worn woman pushing a carriage ... for a moment, to his shame, that was all Cornelu saw. He salved his conscience by noting she’d needed a moment to recognize him, too. Then he did leap up, as he’d started to do before. “Costache!” he exclaimed.
“Cornelu!”
He’d expected his wife to run to him. In his dreams, that was how it had been. His dreams, though, had left out the carriage. Carefully pushing it ahead of her, she made her way to his table. Then he embraced her. Then he kissed her. As if from very far away, he heard the fishermen sniggering. He didn’t care. As far as he was concerned, the powers below could swallow them both.
At last, Costache asked, “Do you want to see your daughter?”
What he wanted was a chance to start another child then and there. He knew he couldn’t have that. As naturally as he could, he looked down into the carriage. “What is her name?” he asked. He’d been able to write to his old address, to the house where Costache still lived, but he’d had no address of his own, drifting from one place to another. Till this moment, he hadn’t known whether his child was boy or girl.
“I called her Brindza, after your mother,” Costache answered.
Cornelu nodded. It was good. It was fitting. He wished the baby could have been named Eforiel, but that would have been wrong. The leviathan had still been living when she was born.
“And what would milady care for today?” the waiter asked. He might have been standing there for some time, waiting to be noticed. Had he not spoken up, he would have kept on waiting quite a while, too.
