Darkness Descending

But Vanai didn’t laugh at the romance, not any more, though she had when she first started reading. Being her grandfathers granddaughter, she saw through all the lies the writer was telling. But what would some ignorant Algarvian or Forthwegian think after reading The Wicked Empire Aflame} He’d think Kaunians were cowards and villains, that’s what, and their women sluts. He’d think they deserved the massacre so lovingly described in the last chapter.

And if he thought that about the ancient Kaunians, what would he think about their modern descendants? Wouldn’t he be more likely to think they deserved whatever happened to them, too, than if he hadn’t read the romance?

Vanai wondered how many copies of The Wicked Empire Aflame were floating around in Algarve and, now, in Forthweg. She wondered how many similar romances Algarvian writers had churned out and how many copies of them were floating around. She wondered what else the redheads had done to convince their own people and those they’d subjected that Kaunians weren’t quite human.

Her mouth twisted. A lot of Forthwegians wouldn’t need much convincing about that. A lot of Algarvians probably didn’t need much convincing, either. Were things otherwise, how could they put Kaunians on caravan cars heading toward the miserable end awaiting them in the west?

She shivered. That had nothing to do with the weather; the flat, whatever its other shortcomings, was warm enough. But she and her grandfather had come within a hair’s breadth of being herded aboard one of those caravan cars themselves. One Algarvian constable had persuaded another to pick a couple of different Kaunians from Oyngestun. They were surely dead now, while Vanai and Brivibas lived.

“If you call this living,” Vanai muttered. She went out of the flat as seldom as she could. If the Algarvians saw her on the street, they were liable to seize her. She knew that. But staying cooped up with nothing to do had no appeal, either. The flat probably hadn’t been so clean since the week after it was built.

Opening the shutters and looking out the window gave her some relief. It would have given her more had she been able to see anything but a narrow, winding street and, across from it, another block of flats as grimy and neglected as the one in which she was living.

Almost all the people on the street were Forthwegian. From everything she’d heard, Eoforwic was home to a large number of Kaunians. Either most of them were hiding as she was or a lot had already been shipped away. One of those prospects was bad, the other worse.

Three Algarvian constables strode up the street, sticks in hand. Vanai shrank back from the window. She didn’t know they were trolling for Kaunians, but she didn’t know they weren’t, either. She didn’t want to find out. The constables kept walking. Everyone who saw them scrambled out of their way. That no doubt appealed to their vanity. But if they were such heroes as their strides made them out to be, why did they always travel in groups of at least three?

Time crawled on. A pigeon landed on the windowsill and peered in at Vanai with its beady little red eyes. She knew several recipes that dated back to the days of the Kaunian Empire for roast squab, squab seethed in honey, baked squab stuffed with mushrooms and figs. . . . Thinking about them made her hungry enough to start to open the window. At the noise and the motion, the pigeon flew off.

Darkness had already fallen before Ealstan came upstairs with a couple of days’ worth of groceries. The flat had no rest crate with spells to keep food from going bad, so he couldn’t shop very far ahead. “I’ve got a nice soup bone here,” he said. “A good bit of meat on it, and plenty of marrow inside. And I bought some ham. That’ll keep till tomorrow.”

“I’ll get the fire going in the stove and chop some vegetables for the soup,” Vanai said. “That does look like a good bone.”

“Don’t go yet.” Ealstan was rummaging at the bottom of the cloth sack in which he’d brought home the food. “Here--I found these for you.” He held up three Forthwegian romances--one, The Deaf Mute’s Song, a great classic. Apologetically, he went on, “I couldn’t find you anything in Kaunian. I looked, I really did, but the redheads have made it against the law to print anything in your language, and I didn’t dare ask too many questions.”

“I know they’ve done that,” Vanai answered. “I remember how furious my grandfather was when he had to try to compose in Forthwegian. Thank you so much! I was just thinking earlier today that I needed something to do, and now you’ve given me something.”

“I was thinking the same thing--about you, I mean,” Ealstan said. “Sitting up here by yourself all the time can’t be easy.”