And, sure enough, Ealstan’s face lit up like a sunrise. “Aye, she’s pretty,” he said in a low voice. He glanced out toward the doorway of the bedroom they shared, to make sure nobody was standing out in the courtyard and listening. Leofsig thought he was being foolish; on a miserably chilly night like this one, nobody in his right mind would want to linger out there.
“Well, tell me more,” Leofsig urged. “How’d you meet her? What’s her name?” He had trouble thinking of his baby brother as being old enough to care about girls, but Ealstan’s beard was getting on toward man-thick these days.
“I met her gathering mushrooms,” Ealstan answered, still hardly above a whisper. Leofsig laughed again; if that wasn’t the way a quarter of the Forthwegian writers ever born started their romances, he’d eat his shoes. “Well, I did, curse it,” Ealstan said. But something more than silliness at being caught up in a cliche was on his face. Leofsig had trouble naming it, whatever it was.
“What’s her name?” he asked again.
That other thing grew stronger on Ealstan’s face. Now Leofsig recognized it: it was fear. For a moment, he didn’t think his brother would answer him. When at last Ealstan did speak, he said, “I wouldn’t tell anybody but you, not even Father, not yet anyhow. Her name’s . . . Vanai.” The whisper was so quiet, Leofsig had to lean forward to hear it.
“Why are you making such a secret out of. . .” he began, and then, before he’d finished the sentence, he understood exactly why. “Oh.” He whistled softly. “Because she’s a Kaunian.”
“Aye.” Ealstan’s voice was bleak. When he chuckled, the sound might have come from the throat of a weary, cynical old man. “My sense of timing couldn’t be better, could it?”
“Not if you tried for a year.” Leofsig shook his head, as stunned as if an egg had burst close by. “That would be hard enough any time. Now ...”
Ealstan nodded. “Now it’s a disaster. But it happened anyhow. And do you know what?” He stuck out his chin, as if challenging not only Leofsig but the whole world to make him take it back. “I’m glad it happened.”
“You’re head over heels is what you are.” Leofsig knew a stab of jealousy. He’d been taking Felgilde out since before he’d got summoned into King Penda’s levy, and he didn’t think he’d ever felt about her the way Ealstan obviously felt about this Vanai. But his brother had his eyes open, too: his wariness made that plain.
So did his next question: “Leofsig, do you think it’s true, what people are saying about what the redheads did to the Kaunians they shipped off to the west?”
Leofsig started to sigh. His breath caught in his throat; what emerged was more of a choking noise, which seemed to fit. “I don’t know,” he answered, but that wasn’t what Ealstan had asked. With another sigh, a real one this time, he went on, “By the powers above, I hope not. I wouldn’t like to think . . . that of anyone, even the Algarvians.” What he’d like to think wasn’t what Ealstan had asked, either. “I tell you this, though: it could be true. The way they treated Kaunians in the captives’ camp, the way they’re treating them here . . . Aye, it could be true.”
“I thought the same thing--I was hoping you’d tell me I was wrong,” Ealstan said. “If you’re right--if we’re right--King Mezentio’s men could go into Oyngestun for some more Kaunians to send west, and they might take her.” Fear was back on his face; it rubbed his voice raw. “And I wouldn’t be able to do anything about it. I wouldn’t even know about it till I stopped hearing from her.”
Leofsig had never had such worries with Felgilde (for that matter, he suspected she wouldn’t be brokenhearted to see every Kaunian vanish from Forthweg). He eyed his brother with mingled sympathy and surprise. “You’ve got a man’s load of troubles there, sure enough. I don’t know what to tell you. I don’t suppose you could move her here to Gromheort, could you?”
Ealstan shook his head. “Not a chance. She lives with her grandfather. And even if I could, the redheads would be as likely to grab her here as they would there.” He clenched his fists. “What am I going to do?”
“I don’t know,” Leofsig repeated, that being kinder than saying, There’s nothing you can do. After some thought, he added, “You might tell Father. He won’t get mad at you for being sweet on a Kaunian girl--you know better than that--and he may be able to do you some good.”
“Maybe.” Ealstan didn’t sound convinced. “I didn’t want to tell anybody, but you asked just the right questions.” He looked grim. “If I keep getting letters from Oyngestun, I won’t need to do much telling, will I? Not unless I want to do a lot of lying, I mean.” From grim, his features went to grimmer. “Pretty soon, Sidroc’s going to figure things out. That won’t be so good. He already knows about her.”
“How does he--?” Again, Leofsig stopped in the middle of a question and answered it himself: “This is the girl whose basket you brought home last year.” He thumped his forehead with the heel of his hand, angry he hadn’t made the connection sooner.
“Aye, it is,” Ealstan said. “But we were just friends then, not--” Now he stopped abruptly.
“Not what?” Leofsig asked. Ealstan sat on his stool and didn’t answer. By not answering, he said everything that needed saying. Leofsig shook his head in bemusement. He’d only thought he was jealous of his younger brother before. He had hopes he might enjoy Felgilde--probably the night after he asked for her hand, if he ever did. That Ealstan didn’t have to live on hope struck him as most unfair. He found another question: “What are you going to do now?”
“That’s what we’ve been talking about,” Ealstan said impatiently--and Leofsig wasn’t used to his little brother’s being impatient with him, either. “I don’t know what to do, I don’t know if there’s anything I can do, and I don’t want anybody else to know I’ve got to do anything.”
“I still think Father could help,” Leofsig said. “He helped me, remember.”
“Of course I remember,” Ealstan said. “If I think of anything he might do, I’ll ask him.” He suddenly looked very fierce. “But don’t you dare say anything to him till I do--if I ever do. Do you hear me?”
Leofsig had used that tone with Ealstan any number of times. Up till now, Ealstan had never used it with him. He started to bristle. The set look on his brother’s face warned that bristling would do no good and might do a lot of harm. When he did speak, his voice was still rough, but not in the way it would have been a moment before: “Just don’t go and do anything stupid, do you hear me?”
“Oh, aye, I hear you,” Ealstan answered. “The way things are going, though, who knows whether I’ll be able to listen to you?”
“I wish I could argue with that.” Leofsig got up and clapped his brother on the shoulder. “I hope it turns out as well as it can for you.”
“Thanks.” Now Ealstan sounded like the younger brother he’d always been. As he looked up at Leofsig, his smile seemed familiar, too--for a couple of heartbeats. But then his face hardened into that of a near-stranger again. “About as much as anybody can hope for these days, isn’t it?”
“Seems that way.” Leofsig thought about adding the hope that things would get better soon. He held his tongue. As far as he could see, that hope would just rouse Ealstan to bitter laughter. Contemplating it almost roused him to bitter laughter. Instead of laughing, he yawned. “I’m going to bed. Shoving rocks around takes more work than Algarvian irregular verbs.”
“Good night,” Ealstan said, and then used an Algarvian irregular verb that startled Leofsig.