After the Downfall

“Yes, warrior,” Hasso said hastily. “Not… what is word?” The guard repeated it. Hasso added it to his vocabulary. “No, not wizard,” he repeated. “Only warrior.” He didn’t want the Grenye to think he could work magic. That would only make what was already bad worse. And he didn’t much want to think he was a wizard, either.

Did he protest too much? Was that what Drepteaza’s raised eyebrow meant? Well, better a raised eyebrow than a raised … Hasso managed to walk from the warm pool to the cooler one without embarrassing himself worse than he was already.

He felt like a new man once he’d bathed. The new man was chilly. The natives heated the pools, yeah, but the building that housed them was drafty, and it was winter outside. And he wrinkled his nose when he redonned the outfit he’d been wearing since he was captured. “Can wash clothes, too?” he asked Drepteaza.

First she corrected his grammar and pronunciation. Then she put on her own clothes. He sighed – mentally – when those dark-tipped breasts vanished under her tunic. They’d given him something to think about during lessons besides grammar and pronunciation. Then she said, “Yes. Why not? You can wear ours while we wash yours.”

Hasso didn’t think the Bucovinans would be able to find anything to fit him. But they gave him breeches and an embroidered tunic that were, if anything, on the big side. Then he remembered they had Lenello prisoners – and also Lenello renegades. Those people had to wear something, too.

When he remarked to Drepteaza that he hadn’t met any of them, she said, “No, and you won’t, either, not for a while. We don’t know how far we can trust you. We don’t know how far we can trust all of them, either. Some we know we can’t trust too far.” Her face clouded. “Some Lenelli here want to rule us, not help us.”

The natives were in a bind. They needed help from the Lenelli, who knew too many things they didn’t. But the Lenelli, even the ones here, were imperfectly disinterested. How much were they out to help Bucovin, and how much themselves? How often had the Grenye – not just in Bucovin, but farther west, too – got burned?

Quite a few times, by Drepteaza’s tone.

How do I look innocent? How do I sound innocent? Am I innocent? Hasso wondered. Those were all damn good questions. He wished he knew the answers.

Once the Bucovinans decided he wouldn’t sprout feathers and fly away, they let him out of his cell more often. He always had an escort, though: several unsmiling soldiers – swordsmen, pikemen, and archers – and Drepteaza. The priestess went with him most of the time, anyhow. When she couldn’t for whatever reason, Rautat did.

“You ought to thank me,” Hasso told the veteran underofficer one day. “If not for me, you wouldn’t have soft duty at the palace.”

“I’d thank you more if you hadn’t scragged so many of my buddies,” Rautat answered: he sounded like a sergeant even speaking Lenello. Aiming a blunt forefinger at Hasso’s middle, he continued, “Now go back to Bucovinan. You’re supposed to be learning my language, remember?”

“Right,” Hasso said … in Bucovinan. Rautat grinned. Hasso came to attention and clicked his heels.

“What’s that nonsense all about?” Rautat also fell back into his own tongue.

“Shows…” Hasso had no idea how to say respect or anything like it. “Like this,” he said, and saluted. “My people do.”

“Pretty silly, if you ask me.” Rautat was short – all Grenye were short next to Hasso – but he was feisty. He gestured with his thumb. “C’mon.”

They actually left the palace, the first time they’d let Hasso do that since he came to Falticeni. He wore a heavy sheepskin jacket, but the cold wind still started to freeze his nose. It wasn’t Leningrad or Moscow winter, but it sure as hell wasn’t a holiday on the Riviera, either.

Bundled-up Bucovinans gaped at him the way he’d eyed tigers in the zoo when he was a kid: fascination mixed with dread. But he wasn’t behind stout iron bars, even if he did have guards along. See? The monster is loose! What else were the natives going to think after everything that had happened since the Lenelli landed on their shores?

Somebody yelled something at him. He didn’t understand all of it, but he heard something about his mother and something about his dog. Englishmen called somebody they didn’t like a son of a bitch. Whatever this endearment was, it seemed based on the same principle.

Hasso pointed to a tavern. “A mug of beer to me, please?” he said.

“For me, you mean,” Rautat said. He spoke to the troopers with them. A pike-man went over and stuck his head into the tavern.

“No,” he said when he came back. “One of those big blond buggers is already in there swilling.”

“Drepteaza would – ” Rautat spook too fast for Hasso to follow. When he said so, the underofficer slowed down: “She would murder me if I let you gab with another Lenello. There. You got that?”

“Yes, but I am no Lenello,” Hasso said – one more time.