Through the Darkness

Pekka shook her head, for two reasons. “I would not try it in a laboratory--we need open space, I think, to make sure we can do it without wrecking ourselves and our surroundings. And we will not test it.” She gestured at herself and her Kuusaman colleagues. “We will.” This time, her gesture included Fernao. His smile got wider. Pekka smiled, too, and told him, “With this, you have earned your place among us.”

Ilmarinen sniffed again. Pekka stuck out her tongue at him.

Every so often, Ealstan made a point of walking by the edge of the Kaunian quarter in Eoforwic. Looking at the blonds reminded him that however much he’d done by keeping Vanai safe, it was only a drop in the ocean. Too many, far too many, people went on suffering.

The Algarvian constables were jumpier than they had been before Vanai’s cantrip got into the Kaunian quarter. Almost every time Ealstan went near it, they clipped a lock from his hair. That didn’t worry him; he really was a Forthwegian, after all. That any of his people could like the Kaunians and wish them well seemed a notion alien to the redheads.

They certainly didn’t want Forthwegians wishing Kaunians well. New broadsheets went up every few days. THIS IS A KAUNIAN WAR! one shouted, showing Kaunian hands reaching into Algarve from all directions. Another cried, BRING DOWN THE NEW KAUNIAN EMPIRE! It showed ancient Algarvic warriors striding through the burning ruins of a Kaunian town.

But Kaunians weren’t the only ones the broadsheets savaged. UNKERLANT IS FORTHWEG’S FOE, TOO, one of them told passersby. Another was more sweeping: UNKERLANT IS DERLAVAl’s ENEMY. That one showed all the continent east of Unkerlant served up on a platter before a wild-eyed King Swemmel, who was about to devour it with a mouth full of pointed fangs.

Another broadsheet showed Algarvian soldiers and men from Plegmund’s Brigade marching side by side above the legend, WE ARE THE SHIELD OF DERLAVAI. When Ealstan saw one of those on a quiet street where nobody was paying him any attention, he spat on it.

He was lucky in his timing; an Algarvian constable came round the corner a moment after he’d let fly. Seeing him, the redhead asked, “You living here?”

“No,” Ealstan answered. “Just on my way somewhere.”

“Getting going, then,” the constable told him, and set a hand on the bludgeon he wore on his belt. Ealstan left in a hurry.

Inside the Kaunian quarter, life tried to go on as it always had. Blonds bought and sold from one another, although, from the glimpses Ealstan got of the goods they showed for sale, they had little worth having. And even in the Kaunian quarter, all the signs were in Forthwegian or Algarvian. Mezentio’s men had forbidden the Kaunians to write their own language not long after they overran Forthweg.

Out from the Kaunian distract came a squad of Algarvian constables leading several dozen glum-looking blonds: men, women, children. They headed off toward the ley-line caravan depot in the center of town. Fight! Ealstan wanted to yell at them. Run! Do something!

But he kept quiet, for fear of what would happen if he shouted. Shame choked him. The Kaunians stolidly marched along. Did they not believe what would happen to them once they got into a caravan car? Ealstan didn’t see how that could be, not after so long. Did they fear what would happen to the blonds still in the quarter if they showed fight? Maybe that made more sense.

Or maybe nothing made sense any more. Maybe the whole world had gone mad when the war started. Maybe I was the one who went mad, Ealstan thought. Maybe one day I’ll wake up and I’ll be home. Leofiig will be fine. None of this will really have happened.

How tempting to believe that! But Ealstan knew too well he couldn’t. What he wanted and what was real were--and would stay--two different things. And, if he woke up from a dream, he would wake up without Vanai. Having her at his side made everything else .. . pretty close to bearable.

He walked on through Eoforwic, into the richer parts of town. Broadsheets were fewer there, as if the Algarvians worried more about offending prosperous folk than the poor of the city. And they probably did. They squeezed more taxes out of the rich, and relied on them to help keep the poor quiet. In exchange for being let alone otherwise, well-to-do Forthwegians were all too often willing to work hand in glove with the redheaded occupiers.

And one broadsheet he saw in the prosperous districts but nowhere else put things as starkly as could be. UNKERLANT WOULD BE WORSE, it read. A lot of Forthwegians--Forthwegians of non-Kaunian blood, of course--probably believed that. But the broadsheet said nothing about a free and independent Forthweg. For Ealstan, that was the only thing worth having.