Out of the Darkness

Beornwulf seemed to be doing what he could (and, perhaps, what the Unkerlanters would let him) to be a good king. Broadsheets outlawing price-gouging in the marketplace went up alongside sheets singing the praises of Swemmel’s soldiers. Vanai looked out her kitchen window. A work crew was pasting up fresh broadsheets even now. I wonder if I could put glass in the window again, Vanai thought. It wouldn‘t get broken right away, not any more.

She couldn’t afford to look out the window for long. She looked back toward Saxburh instead. It wasn’t a dead cockroach this time--just a dust bunny. Vanai got it away from the baby. When Saxburh fussed, Vanai said, “Come on--let’s go see what the new sheets say.”

Scooping her daughter off the floor, she carried her down the stairs and out into the street. A few other people were looking at the new broadsheets, too, but only a few. There’d been too many broadsheets--from King Penda, from the Algarvians, and now from the Unkerlanters and their puppet king--for anybody to get very excited over one more. Vanai wasn’t very excited, just curious and looking for an excuse to get out of the flat for a little while.

A Forthwegian man reading one of the new broadsheets pasted to a fence turned away with a disgusted gesture. Another one said, “Well, here’s something else that won’t fly.”

The first fellow said, “And what if it did? Doesn’t hardly matter anymore, does it? I ask you, is this a waste of time or what?” Shaking his head, he walked off.

Vanai went up to a broadsheet. “Oh,” she said softly when she saw its title; the headline was CONCERNING KAUNIANS. She still wore her sorcerous disguise, and so still looked like a Forthwegian herself. Back before the war, Eoforwic had a name as the place where Forthwegians and Kaunians got on better than they did anywhere else in the kingdom. The reputation held some truth; Forthwegians and Kaunians here had rioted together on learning that the Algarvians were shipping blonds west to be murdered. But plenty of Forthwegians here despised Kaunians, too. Vanai had seen that along with the other.

And what would King Beornwulf have to say on the subject? She went up closer to the broadsheet so she could read the smaller print. The new edict came straight to the point, declaring, All laws, orders, and regulations imposed by the Algarvian occupiers of the Kingdom of Forthweg concerning persons of Kaunian blood are henceforth and forevermore null and void. Persons of Kaunian blood legally residing in the Kingdom of Forthweg are and shall remain citizens of the said Kingdom, with full rights and privileges appertaining thereto, including the right to publish works in the Kaunian language (subject to the same limits of taste and decency as hold for works in the Forthwegian language). The status of persons of Kaunian blood residing in the Kingdom of Forthweg shall be and shall remain precisely what it was before the obscene and vicious Algarvian occupation, which in law shall be judged never to have occurred. Issued this day by order of King Beornwulf I of Forthweg, with the concurrence of his Unkerlanter allies.

Unkerlanters didn’t care much one way or the other about Kaunians. Only a handful of blonds lived in the far northeast of Unkerlant, not enough to make anyone in Swemmel’s kingdom nervous about them. That was one of the few good things Kaunians from Forthweg had to say about Unkerlanters: they weren’t Algarvians.

Vanai read aloud from the edict: “... the obscene and vicious Algarvian occupation, which in law shall be judged never to have occurred.” She looked around at the wreckage and rubble of Eoforwic and laughed bitterly. And the wreckage of the city--the wreckage of the whole kingdom--wasn’t the worst of it. People could rebuild ruined shops and houses and schools. How to go about rebuilding the lives the redheads had stolen, to say nothing of those they’d wrecked?