Into the sudden silence, Sergeant Pesaro said, “That’s better. You will be on Platform Three at the depot by an hour before noon. No excuses-not a chance. Anybody who misses the caravanwill go straight to Unkerlant, and that’s a promise. Don’t bring anything more than you can carry, either. Questions?”
“Why did you pickus, Sergeant?” someone asked.
“Because you’re so sweet,” Pesaro growled. “Any more questions?” After that, there were none. Pesaro waved a hand. “Dismissed.”
Bembo went back into the barracks and started loading a duffel bag. It got full long before he’d gone through everything around his cot. Cursing, he started editing his earthly goods. He needed three tries before finally deciding he could do no better. Even then, the canvas sack left him panting and sweating by the time he’d lugged it to the caravan depot.
“What have you got in there?” demanded the Algarvian who checked his name off a list.
“Your wife,” Bembo snarled. He and the fellow with a clipboard cursed each other till, grunting with effort, he hauled the duffel bag onto the caravan car.
Oraste was already aboard. His sack held about a quarter as much as Bembo’s. “Have you got everything you need?” he asked.
“No,” Bembo said. He would have flung his bag against the wall of the car, but it was too heavy to fling. He eased it over there and flung himself into a seat. Oraste, who laughed at very little, laughed at him. Bembo petulantly glared at his partner till the ley-line caravan glided west out of Gromheort.
Before long, he was in country he’d never seen before. He took a while to realize it; the countryside didn’t look much different from that around Gromheort. Fields with growing wheat and barley slid past his window. So did groves of olives and almonds and citrus fruit. And so did villages full of whitewashed houses, some with red tile roofs, others-more and more as he got farther west-with roofs of thatch.
War had touched the countryside only lightly. Peasants went about their business as they had whenKingPenda ruled Forthweg. As the ley-line caravan passed through towns-it stopped three or four times to pick up more constables-the ruined buildings nobody had bothered to repair stood out much more noticeably, as they did in Gromheort. Once the caravan got into the territory Unkerlant had occupied before Algarve went to war with her, the wreckage got fresher and worse. KingSwemmel ’s men had fought hard every inch of the way.
Eoforwic surprised Bembo, who said, “I didn’t think this miserable excuse for a kingdom had such a big city.”
“It’s still full of Forthwegians,” Oraste replied with a shrug. “Them and Kaunians.” He made as if to spit on the floor of the caravan car, but reluctantly thought better of it. When the car stopped at the depot, he shouldered his sack and hurried out. Bembo’s duffel bag hadn’t got any lighter while it lay there. Swearing, bent almost double under it, he followed his partner onto the platform.
Another cheerful fellow with a clipboard checked his name off a list. Then the other Algarvian said, “We’ve got carriages waiting for you people, to take you to your barracks.”
“Oh, powers above be praised!” Bembo said fervently. “I was afraid I’d have to walk.” He carried his duffel bag with jauntier style, not least because he knew he wouldn’t have to carry it far. They did things with class here in the capital.
That impression lasted till he got to the barracks, which were every bit as crowded and gloomy as the ones in Gromheort. He got an iron cot in the middle of a room full of constables-a room full, mostly, of strangers.
Someone called his name in a loud voice. “Here,” he answered, and then, seeing the pips on the other constables’ shoulder boards, “Here, Sergeant.” He wondered what sort of a new boss he was getting.
“I’m Folicone,” the sergeant said. He was younger and skinnier than Pesaro. Of course, even Bembo was skinnier than Pesaro, so that didn’t say much. Folicone went on, “I’m going to partner you with Delminio here.” He nodded toward a constable whose cot stood only a couple of spaces away from Bembo’s.
“Pleased to meet you,” Delminio said, and clasped wrists with Bembo. He wore bushy red side whiskers, and mustachios and chin beard waxed to spikes.
“Pleased to meet you, too,” Bembo answered. But then he turned to Folicone and said, “Sergeant, Oraste and I, we’ve been partners a long time, you know what I mean?”
“And maybe you will be again, in a while,”SergeantFolicone said. “But I want you with somebody who knows the ropes here while you’re breaking in.”
That made too much sense for Bembo to argue with it. He nodded and said, “No offense,” to Delminio.
“It’s all right,” Delminio answered. “Getting a new partner is a funny business. I know that.” He eyed Bembo the same way Bembo was eyeing him. What sort of partner will you be? “You want to go into the Kaunian quarter with me?” Delminio asked. He hesitated. “You do know about the business with the Kaunians?”
“Oh, aye,” Bembo said, and Delminio visibly relaxed. Bembo added, “I’m not what you’d call happy about it, but what can you do? It’s wartime.”
“Sounds like you’ve got some sense,” Delminio said. SergeantFolicone nodded. Bembo beamed. He’d made a good first impression. Delminio went on, “Just come with me. The quarter isn’t far.”
Bembo went past the same sorts of warning signs he would have seen in Gromheort. The Kaunian district here looked much the same as Gromheort’s, too, though it was larger. He watched Kaunian women’s backsides, as the blonds went around in trousers. So did Delminio. They noticed each other doing it, and they both grinned. “I think I can manage here,” Bembo said. His new partner nodded. Bembo wondered if he could find a Kaunian wench for himself. It might not be too hard.
Up till the time when the redheads swept through the Kaunian quarter of Eoforwic, Vanai had been through only one roundup. And back then, she hadn’t even known what the Algarvian constables were doing when they took Kaunians out of Oyngestun. They’d told soothing lies then: they’d said they were sending people west as laborers. Some of her fellow villagers had even gone with them of their own free will.
It wasn’t like that anymore. The surviving Kaunians knew the Algarvians wanted them for one thing and one thing only: their life energy. And so, when the redheads swarmed into the Kaunian district, the blonds did their best to hide.
The roundup, of course, came without warning. Anyone the hunters caught on the street was simply nabbed and grabbed and hauled away. But the captured Kaunians’ cries of despair and the Algarvians’ shouts of triumph warned others of the raid. Like any hunted animals, most of the Kaunians who weren’t caught in the open had holes in which to hide.
Vanai was no exception. After she was captured and brought into the Kaunian district, she’d expected something like this to happen sooner or later-probably sooner. And so she’d gone exploring in the block of flats where the redheads had put her. Waiting quietly in her flat for them to come get her and take her away… She shook her head. By the powers above, I’m not going to make it easy for them, she thought.
Exploring had been easier because so many of the flats stood empty. She didn’t like to think about that. But it gave her a lot more choices than she would have had otherwise.
She’d found a good spot in a vacant ground-floor flat: a closet that had a lot more room than it seemed to, and one where a searcher peering in, even with a lamp, wouldn’t be able to spy her. He would have to step all the way into the closet to notice it took an unexpected dogleg. Whoever’d made it that way might have had a hidey-hole in mind.
When the first terrified cries rang out, Vanai knew at once what they meant, what they had to mean. She wasted not an instant. She had to get downstairs and into her hiding place before constables started swarming through the building. If she didn’t, she was ruined. The baby she carried made her awkward and slow, but she forced herself to hurry downstairs anyhow.