After the Downfall

“Yes, they do.” Hasso had, too, when he was in Drammen. Now he was glad to get the chance to speak of the folk he resembled as they. Compared to the Lenelli, the Bucovinans were on the barbarous side. But, as he’d seen, that didn’t make them stupid. The Lenelli just knew some tricks of the trade that they didn’t. Well, no, not just: the Lenelli could also work magic.

Lord Zgomot pursed his lips. “Wheels inside of wheels, eh?”

“Always,” Hasso said. “When do bones get to Falticeni?”

“I do not know.” The Lord of Bucovin turned to the messenger. “Yurgam?”

“Ten days or so,” Yurgam answered. “Once they made it over the border, they got horses instead of donkeys, but they are still pulling a heavy wagon.”

Hasso shrugged. “It has to do.” He would have wanted the bones here sooner, but he couldn’t turn a horse-drawn wagon into an Opel truck or, better yet, a captured American Studebaker. That wouldn’t have been magic; it would have been a bigger miracle than the one that brought him here. He nodded to Zgomot. “We need saws to cut bone. We need drills to put holes in pieces. We need cord or thongs to hold them in place.”

“What are the bones for, if not manuring?” Yurgam asked.

Before Hasso could speak, Zgomot did: “I do not want to tell you, not yet. The fewer people who know, the better. The more things we learn, it seems, the more secrets we need to keep.”

Hasso beamed. Sure as hell, Zgomot was starting to see what security was all about. He might be a mindblind Grenye, but he was one damn sly mindblind Grenye. There’d almost been some security hiccups about gunpowder and dragon bones. If the Lord of Bucovin had anything to do with it, there would be no more. He learned from his mistakes.

That’s more than Hitler ever did, Hasso thought.

And, if the dragon-bone amulets worked, how much would being mindblind matter in a few years? Oh, some. Magic would still be able to do things to the world, if not directly to people. Wizards would still be able to ride unicorns. Hasso grinned. He could ride one himself, as he’d proved. The Grenye still wouldn’t be able to.

Yeah, magic would matter some. But it wouldn’t mark enormous distinctions between one folk and another, the way it did now.

Equality. This is equality. Hasso hadn’t had much use for it when he saw it in action – and in inaction – during the Weimar Republic. But he’d also seen that the Fuhrerprinzip had some flaws in practice. The Fuhrer led, the people followed – right over a goddamn cliff. Maybe making everybody as good as everybody else worked better.

He could hope so. In fact, he had to hope so. If the Lenelli had magic and the Grenye didn’t, and if that magic stayed important, he feared the big blonds would win in the end no matter what he did.

Someone called his name through the echoing corridors of dreams: “Hasso! Hasso Pemsel!”

He tried to shape the ward spell again, this time in his sleep. He had some luck with that, anyhow: enough to let him wake up without waking up screaming. Once awake, he went to the door of his room and told one of the guards, “Ask Drepteaza to come here, please.”

The winter before, a Bucovinan guardsman would have laughed in his face at the idea of bothering her in the middle of the night. This fellow nodded and said, “All right. If she chooses not to come, though, don’t blame me.”

“Fair enough,” Hasso said. The guard set off down the corridor.

Drepteaza was yawning and rubbing her eyes when she came back with the soldier. “What is it?” she asked blurrily, around another yawn. “Something important, I expect.” It had better be. She didn’t say that – or need to.

“Maybe. I hope you are not angry at me.” He led her into the room and shut the door behind them. “The Lenello wizard and the goddess are hunting me in dreams again.”

“And so? What has that got to do with me?” No, Drepteaza wasn’t awake yet, or thinking very fast. Then she remembered. The dim lamplight shadowing her face only made her smile look more crooked. “Oh. A woman will hold that away from you, for a night at least. A new way to tell me you care, eh?”

“Sorry,” Hasso said. “Should I get someone like Leneshul? I don’t much want her, but if you want me to use her for medicine and not bother you, I can do that.”

Drepteaza started to laugh. “The really funny part is, I believe you when you say you don’t much want her,” she said. “What kind of fool am I, though, if I give you the chance to change your mind? I may not be at my best, but I’ll try.”

Hasso feared he wasn’t at his best, either. Maybe they matched each other, because it turned out all right, or better than all right. “You are the best medicine,” he said afterwards, stroking her cheek. “They should make you into syrup and put you in bottles.”

She laughed again, on a startled note. “That’s the most ridiculous sweet thing – or maybe the sweetest ridiculous thing – anyone ever told me.”

“It’s true,” Hasso said.