pleases, and I have the masters’ work and Father’s, too, that’s why,” Ealstan snapped. Then he paused and looked sheepish. “It could be worse, couldn’t it?”
“Just a bit,” Leofsig said dryly. “Aye, just a bit.” But he paused, too. “It could be worse for me, too, now that I think on it.”
This time, Ealstan did not miss the point even for a moment. “Of course it could,” he said. “You could be a Kaunian.” He lowered his voice. “At least you know. So many people don’t even want to, or else say the blonds have it coming.” He looked around, then spoke more softly still: “Some of those people are right in this house.”
“Aye, I know that,” Leofsig said. “If you ask me, Sidroc wishes he were an Algarvian. Uncle Hengist, too, though not so bad.”
Ealstan shook his head. “That’s not it--close, but not right. Sidroc just wants to be on top, and the Algarvians are.”
“If he wants to be on top--” Leofsig broke off. Ealstan hadn’t been through the army, and didn’t take crudity for granted. Leofsig shrugged. “You know him better than I do--and you’re welcome to him, too, as far as I’m concerned.”
“Thanks,” his younger brother said in a way that wasn’t thankful at all. They both chuckled. Then Ealstan grew serious once more. “I’d like to pop him right in the face for the way he rides me about the problems Father sets me, but I don’t quite dare.”
“Why not?” Leofsig asked. “I think you can thump him--and if you have trouble, I’ll pitch in. A set of lumps’ll shut him up.”
“Maybe I can, maybe I can’t, but that’s not it,” Ealstan said. “And if I ever do mix it up with him, I want you to stay out of it.”
Leofsig frowned. “I’m not following this. What are big brothers for, if they’re not for thumping people who give little brothers trouble?”
Ealstan licked his lips. “If you thump him, he’s liable to go to the redheads and remind them nobody ever let you out of that captives’ camp. I don’t know that he would, but I don’t know that he wouldn’t, either.”
“Oh.” Leofsig pondered that. Slowly, he nodded. “When you lift up a rock, you find all sorts of little white crawling things under it, don’t you? That he’d do such a thing to his own flesh and blood . . . But he might, curse it. You’re right. He might.” He rubbed his chin. His black beard was a man’s now, thick and coarse, not soft fuzz like Ealstan’s. “I don’t want him having that kind of hold on me. I don’t want anyone having that kind of hold on me.”
“I don’t know what we can do about it,” Ealstan said.
“I’ve frightened him once or twice already, when he started blowing in that direction,” Leofsig said. “If I put him in fear of his life . . .” He spoke altogether matter-of-factly. Before going into King Penda’s levy, he’d been as mild as anyone would expect from a bookkeeper’s son. Now the only thing holding him back was doubt about how well the ploy would work. He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “The stinking worm might just run straight to the Algarvians.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Ealstan said. “I don’t know what to do.
Maybe sitting tight and waiting would be best. It’s always worked pretty well for Father.”
“Aye, so it has.” Leofsig gnawed at the inside of his lower lip. “I don’t like it, though. Powers above can’t make me like it, either.” He pounded a fist down onto his thigh. “I wonder if Uncle Hengist would sell me, too.”
Ealstan looked startled. “He’s never said anything--”
“So what?” Leofsig broke in. “Sometimes the ones who don’t blab beforehand are more dangerous than the ones who do.”
In Skrunda, as in so many Jelgavan towns, ancient and modern lived side by side. A couple of blocks beyond the market square stood an enormous marble arch from the later days of the Kaunian Empire celebrating the triumph of the Emperor Gedimainas over the Algarvian tribe known as the Belsiti. Below a relief of kilted barbarians being led away in chains, Gedimainas’ inscription declared to the world what a hero and conqueror he was.
Talsu took the arch and its inscription as much for granted as he did the oil-seller’s shop next to it on the street. He’d walked under it a couple of times a week ever since he’d got big enough to go so far from home. He rarely bothered looking up at the relief or at the vaunting inscription below it. He could barely make sense of the inscription, anyhow; he hadn’t studied classical Kaunian in school, and Jelgavan, like Valmieran, had drifted a long way from the old language.
