Rulers of the Darkness

"I don't think so," Vanai said. "He knows about Leofsig." She explained what Pybba had said, finishing, "He said that whole business with your family was why he wanted to see you again."

"I don't understand," Ealstan muttered, as if he didn't want to admit that even to himself. He gave the goldpiece back to Vanai. "What do you think I ought to do?" he asked her.

"You'd better go see him," she replied; she'd been thinking about that ever since Pybba left. "I don't think you have any choice, not after this." Before he could indignantly deny that and insist that he could do as he pleased, she forestalled him by choosing that moment to get the wine after all, leaving him by himself to think for a minute or two. When she brought it back, she asked, "Can you tell me I'm wrong?"

"No," he said darkly, and gulped down half the cup at once. "But powers above, how I wish I could."

"Let me get supper ready." Vanai chopped cabbage and onions and radishes and dried mushrooms, adding crumbly white cheese and shaved bits of smoked pork for flavor. She dressed the salad with spiced vinegar and some of the olive oil she'd bought. Along with bread and more oil and some apricots, it made a quick, reasonably filling meal.

Her own appetite was pretty good, and everything looked like staying down. She still had occasional days when she gave back as much as she ate, but they were getting rarer. Ealstan seemed so distracted, she might have set anything at all before him. Halfway through supper, he burst out, "But how am I supposed to trust him after this?"

Vanai had no trouble figuring out who him was. "Don't," she answered. "Do what business you have to or you think you should with him, but that hasn't got anything to do with trust. Even if you go back to work for him, he's just your boss. He's not your father."

"Aye," Ealstan said, as if that hadn't occurred to him. Maybe it hadn't. He'd looked for great things from Pybba. He'd looked too hard for great things from Pybba, in fact. Maybe now he would see the pottery magnate as a man, not a hero.

When they made love later that evening, Ealstan didn't show quite the desperate urgency he'd had lately. He seemed a little more able to relax and enjoy himself. Because he did, Vanai did, too. And she slept well afterwards. Of course, she would have slept well afterwards even if she hadn't enjoyed herself making love. Carrying a child was the next best thing to getting hit with a brickbat for ensuring sound sleep.

In the morning, after more bread and oil and a cup of wine, Ealstan said, "I'm off to see Pybba. Wish me luck."

"I always do," Vanai answered.

Then she had nothing to do but wait. She'd done so much of that since coming to Eoforwic. She should have been good at it. Sometimes she even was. But sometimes waiting came hard. This was one of those days. Too many things could go very wrong or very right. She had no control over any of them. She hated that.

The longer she waited for Ealstan, the more worried she got. Waiting all the way into the early evening left her something close to a nervous wreck. When at last he knocked, she all but flew to the door. She threw it open. "Well?" she said.

"Well," he answered grandly, breathing wine fumes into her face, "well, sweetheart, I think we're back in business. Back in business, aye." He savored the phrase. "And what a business it is, too."

***

The summer before, the fight in the forests of western Unkerlant had been as grand as the attacking Gyongyosians could make it. They'd driven the goat-eating Unkerlanters before them, almost breaking through into the open country beyond the woods. Now… Now Istvan counted himself lucky that the Unkerlanters weren't driving his own countrymen west in disorder. King Swemmel's men seemed content to harass the Gyongyosians without doing much more.

"I'll tell you what I think it is," Corporal Kun said one evening.

"Of course you will," Istvan said. "You've always got answers, you do, whether you know the question or not."

"Here, the question's simple," Kun said.

Szonyi boomed laughter. "Then it's just right for you, by the stars." He hugged himself with glee, proud of his own wit.

Kun ignored him and went on talking to Istvan: "Remember how people were saying the Unkerlanters would hit us hard if they got into trouble with Algarve?" He waited for his sergeant to nod before going on, "Since they haven't hit us, doesn't it follow that they didn't get into trouble against the Algarvians?"

Istvan plucked at his beard. "That sounds like it ought to make sense. But our allies have hammered Unkerlant two summers in a row. Why shouldn't they be able to do it again?"

"If you hit a man but you don't knock him down and kick him till he quits, pretty soon he's going to start hitting you, too," Kun said. "That's what the Algarvians did. Now we're going to see how well they stand getting hit. That's my guess, anyhow."

Before Istvan could reply, a sentry called a challenge: "Halt! Who comes?" Everybody in the redoubt grabbed for his stick.