"There's something else about having extra food," Ulric Skakki put in. "We don't all have to hunt or gather all the time. Some of us can make the things Bizogots don't have, yes. And some of us can try to think up new things, things even we don't have, things it would be nice if we did have."
"New things." Liv frowned. "Like what? When you have all this, what more could you want?"
"If I knew, I'd think up new things myself," Ulric said.
"Old men say that when their grandfathers were boys no one made lamps with mirrors behind them to shed more light. I've heard that more than once," Hamnet Thyssen said. "It's a small thing, but it's the kind of thing I mean. Every craft probably has secrets someone thought of not so long ago. Wizards make new spells all the time. Audun Gilli would know more about that than I do." There-he'd said it.
"Thank you, your Grace. That's what I was talking about, sure enough," Ulric Skakki said.
"We do come up with new spells now and then," Liv said. "The rest of the way we live . . . That hasn't changed much, not so far as anyone can remember."
"Ah, but the Three Tusk clan lives hard by the Glacier," Ulric said. "The Bizogot clans farther south trade with the Empire." He turned to Hamnet Thyssen. "Remember those ugly wool caps the Musk Ox Bizogots wore?"
"I'm not likely to forget them," Hamnet said with a shudder. To Liv, he went on, "You're lucky we came back farther west, so you didn't have to see those. But some of the Bizogots take things we make and use them in ways we'd never think of. And the Leaping Lynxes, up by Sudertorp Lake-the shorebirds they take there let them live in a town half the time. They're having to figure out how to do that when most of them have never seen a real town."
"I see." Liv nodded. "Every folk has clever people and fools in it. But in the Empire your clever people have more room to be clever than they do up on the plains."
"Yes, I think that's likely so," Count Hamnet said.
"Maybe. Or rather, sometimes," Ulric Skakki said. "Just remember, most people in the Empire live on farms, not in towns. They're born on a farm, they grow up on a farm, they get old-if they get old-on a farm, and they die on a farm. The clever ones might make better farmers than their stupid neighbors, but that's about it. Farmers don't change the way they do things any faster than Bizogots do. Sometimes they don't change any faster than their beasts."
"You sound like you know what you're talking about," Hamnet remarked. Ulric was always chary of talking about his own past. Was he doing it now without naming names?
His foxy features were perfectly opaque as he smiled at Hamnet. "Well, I try to do that. Harder to be taken for a fool when you do, eh?"
"Er-yes." Hamnet had to drop it. Ulric left nothing on which to get a conversational grip.
The street zigzagged again. Jesper Fletti, who was riding ahead of Hamnet and Liv and Ulric, let out a war whoop no Bizogot in the world would have been ashamed to claim. "The palace!" he shouted. "The palace!" He might have spotted water in the southwestern desert. In an instant, all the guardsmen who'd gone north with Gudrid were shouting the same thing. "The palace! The palace!"'They'd come home at last, and probably all of them had wondered if they ever would.
Come to that, Hamnet Thyssen had wondered if he would come back to Nidaros, too, even if he was still a long way from his castle in the southeast at the forest's edge. A moment later, very much to his surprise, he found himself shouting, too.
Sigvat II didn't stint. He let the travelers use the imperial bathhouse. That was luxury by anyone's standards. Soft robes waited when the newcomers emerged. The gown the Emperor's maidservants presented to Liv told Count Hamnet what a fine figure she really had. Seeing her clean and dressed so was a far cry from the grubby woman in Bizogot-style furs and leathers. Those clothes, the same for women as for men, hardly showed which sex she belonged to. The wine-colored gown left no room for doubt.
It also flustered her. "How do your women stand outfits like this?" she asked Hamnet. "It's drafty!"
The gown did reveal more of her than he'd seen except when they were making love. "It shows the world how beautiful you are," he said.
Liv blushed. Now that she was clean, he could watch the flush rise from her throat all the way to her crown. "It's none of the world's business," she said, which alone would have proved her no Raumsdalian.
"Well, I like the way you look," Hamnet said.
"That's different. You already know more than this. But-" Liv waved her bare arms. "I feel like I'm naked in front of everyone. And it is drafty, even though more fires burn in this palace than in all the tents of the Three Tusk clan put together."
"Which bothers you more? The cold, or everyone looking at you?" he asked.
"Everyone looking at me," Liv said at once. "What will people think?"
"The women will think, I wish I looked that good," Hamnet Thyssen answered. "And the men? The men will think, I wish she were on my arm, not that gray-bearded count's."
Liv flushed again. "Your beard isn't gray," she said. "Only streaked."
"A matter of time." Hamnet didn't worry about his own looks. They were what they were, and he couldn't do much about them. "If things really bother you," he went on, "ask the servingwomen for a fur stole. That will warm you up and cover you up. I think it would be a shame, but do what you like."
"You're a man," Liv said, more or less tolerantly. "Of course you like to look at women."
"Pretty ones, yes."
"There is a what-do-you-call-it at sunset tonight," Liv said. "Could I really come to it dressed like this?"
"A reception. Gudrid will, or in something that shows even more of her," Hamnet answered. "So will plenty of other noblewomen, and noblemen's mistresses. And they'll all say, Who is that fair stranger?"
"You're making that up." But Liv's back stiffened. Hamnet smiled to himself. She liked the idea of outdoing Gudrid, and she thought she could, too. He judged she was right-she was a fine-looking woman with about a twelve years' head start. If they were born on the same day? Count Hamnet wasn't so sure. But, while the calendar might not be fair, it was part of life.
Liv did wear the gown to the reception. She wore it with a stern, jut-jawed determination that warned people not to dare to look at her twice. Because of that, some didn't look at her even once. Others, of course, couldn't get enough.
Hamnet Thyssen proved right about that, and about Gudrid. Her gown revealed and emphasized instead of concealing. She had a lot to show, and showed it to best advantage. When she strode into the reception hall with Eyvind Torfinn, the men already there gave her a couple of heartbeats of… respectful . . . admiration. Then most of them had to turn to the women they were with and pretend they’d done no such thing.
There, at least, Count Hamnet had no problem with Liv. She knew he was content-more than content-with her, and not ogling the woman to whom he'd once been married. All she said was, "Well, you knew what you were talking about." A bit later, she added, "If she tried to wear that up in the Bizogot country, she'd freeze."
"No doubt." Hamnet hid a smile. "But you're not in the Bizogot country anymore."
"Yes, I'd noticed that," Liv said.
"It has its advantages," he told her. "Come drink some wine."
She'd put up with beer and ale on the way south from the frontier. They were different from the smetyn she was used to, but not necessarily better. Wine, even in Nidaros, was an expensive imported luxury. One thing being Emperor meant, though, was not worrying about expense.
The tapman dipped her up a cup of wine red as blood, and another for Hamnet Thyssen. Liv's eyes widened as her nose caught the bouquet. "It even smells sweet," she said, and Hamnet nodded. She raised the silver cup to her lips. "Oh," she whispered.