Rulers of the Darkness

She didn't trust the butcher, either, but for different reasons: suspicion that he called mutton lamb, that he put grain in his sausages when he swore he didn't, that his scales worked in his favor. Writers had complained about such tricks in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Brivibas, no doubt, could have cited half a dozen examples, with appropriate citations. Vanai bit her lip. Her grandfather wouldn't be citing any more classical authors. Half the distress she felt was at not feeling more distress now that he was dead.

Marrow bones would flavor soup. The butcher said they were beef. They might have been horse or donkey. Vanai couldn't have proved otherwise; there, for once, the lie, if it was one, was reassuring. The gizzards he sold her probably did come from chickens- they were too big to belong to crows or pigeons. "I wouldn't have had 'em by this afternoon," he told her.

"I know that," she answered, and took them away.

When she got out on the street, people were nudging one another and pointing. "Look at him," somebody said. "Who does he think he is?" somebody else, a woman, added. "What does he think he is?" another woman said.

Vanai didn't want to look. She was too afraid of what she'd see: a Kaunian whose magic had run out, most likely. If the fellow had dyed hair, he wouldn't look exactly like a Kaunian, but he wouldn't look like a Forthwegian, either. Before long, the cry for Algarvian constables would go up.

Horrid fascination didn't take long to turn Vanai's eyes in the direction of the pointing fingers. The man at whom people were pointing didn't look just like a Forthwegian, but he wasn't an obvious Kaunian, either. Halfbreed, Vanai thought. Eoforwic held more than the rest of Forthweg put together. Her hand flattened on her belly. She held one herself.

Then she gasped, because she recognized the man. "Ethelhelm!"

The name slipped from her lips almost by accident. In a moment, it was in everyone's mouth. And the singer and drummer grinned at the crowd that had been so hostile and now paused, uncertain, waiting to hear what he would say. "Hello, folks." His voice was relaxed, easy. "I often use a little magic so I can go out and about without people bothering me. It must've worn off. Can I give you a song to make up for startling you?"

He'd told a great, thumping lie, and Vanai knew it. The redheads were hungry for Ethelhelm. But the crowd didn't know that. With one voice, they shouted, "Aye!" They might have mobbed an ordinary Kaunian or halfbreed whose luck had run out with his magic. Ethelhelm wasn't ordinary. He might have lost his magic, but he still had some luck.

And he still had his voice. He grabbed a wooden bucket from someone, turned it upside down, and used it to beat out a rhythm as he sang. After one song- he carefully picked one that said nothing about the Algarvians- the crowd howled for another. The impromptu concert was still going on when Vanai left.

He'll get away, she thought. He'll keep playing till he satisfies them, then get off somewhere by himself and renew his spell. And then he'll be an ordinary Forthwegian… the same way I'm an ordinary Forthwegian. But that wasn't quite right. The Algarvians wanted Ethelhelm because of who he was, not what he was. Vanai shook her head in slow wonder. She'd finally found somebody worse off than she was.

***

When Skarnu had visited Zarasai by himself, he hadn't been much impressed: it was a southern provincial town without much going for it that a man from Priekule could see. Returning to it with Amatu and Lauzdonu was unpleasantly like torture. The two Valmieran nobles who'd come back from Lagoas seemed to him to be doing their best to get caught.

His temper didn't take long to kindle. When he got them alone in the flat the underground had found for them, he snapped, "Why don't you just carry signs that say WE HATE KING MEZENTIO? Then the constables would nab you and the people who really know what they're doing could get back to doing it instead of spending half their time saving you. Whenever you go outside, you risk yourselves and everybody who helped you get here in one piece."

"Sorry," said Lauzdonu, who had some vestiges of sense. "The kingdom's changed a lot more than we thought it had since we flew our dragons south instead of giving up."

"Aye." Amatu had a sharp, rather shrill voice that would have irritated Skarnu no matter what he said. When he said things like, "It's changed for the worse, that's what it's done," he irritated Skarnu all the more. And then he went on, "It looks like nine people out of every ten are stinking traitors, that's what it looks like. And I'm not so bloody sure about the tenth chap, either." He looked Skarnu full in the face as he made that- perhaps impolitic- remark.