“Then you do not want to make it again,” Leofsig answered, also in Kaunian.
That got the old man’s notice. “Your pronunciation is not all it should be,” he said, “but what, in these wretched times, is! Since you do speak this language somewhat, perhaps you will not betray me. May I trouble you with a question before I go my way?”
“Your being here is trouble,” Leofsig said, but then he relented. “Ask. Better you pick me than someone else.”
“Very well, then.” The Kaunian’s voice, like his bearing, was full of fussy precision. “Ask I shalclass="underline" am I mistaken, or is this the street on which dwells a young man of Forthweg named Ealstan?”
Leofsig stared. “I haven’t seen Ealstan in months,” he answered, startled back into Forthwegian. “He’s my younger brother. What’s he to you?” He wondered if he should have said even that much. Could the Algarvians have persuaded a Kaunian to spy for them? He knew too well they could-the promise of a few square meals might do the job. But if the redheads were after anybody in his family, they were after him, not Ealstan-he was the one who’d escaped from an Algarvian captives’ camp. Maybe this would be all right.
“What is he to me?” the Kaunian repeated in his own language. “Well, I see I must ask another question beyond the one you gave me: did your brother ever mention to you the name Vanai?”
“Aye,” Leofsig said in a faintly strangled voice. He pointed at the old man. “Then you would be her grandfather. I’m sorry-I don’t recall your name.”
“Why should you? I am only a Kaunian, after all.” As Leofsig had gathered from Ealstan, the old fellow carried venom in his tongue. He went on, “In case your memory should by any chance improve henceforward, I am called Brivibas. Tell me at once whatever you may know of my granddaughter.”
How much to tell? How much to trust? After a few seconds’ thought, Leofsig answered, “Last I heard, she was well, and so was my brother.”
Brivibas sighed. “There is the greatest weight off my mind. But, you see, one question does indeed lead to another. Where are they? What are they doing?”
“I’d better not tell you that,” Leofsig said. “The more people who know, the more people who are likely to find out.”
“Do you think I have a tongue hinged at both ends?” Brivibas demanded indignantly.
Before Leofsig could answer, somebody threw a rock that missed Brivibas’ head by scant inches and shattered against the whitewashed wall behind him. A shout followed the rock: “Get out of here, you miserable, stinking Kaunian! I hope the Algarvians catch you and whale the stuffing out of you.”
The look Brivibas sent the raucous Forthwegian should have left him smoking in the street like dragonfire. When it didn’t, Brivibas turned back to Leofsig. “Perhaps you have a point after all,” he said quietly. “My thanks for what you did tell me.” He hurried away, his shoulders hunched as if awaiting blows only too likely to fall on them.
That could have been worse, went through Leofsig’s mind as he walked on toward his own house. If Cousin Sidroc had come upon them, for instance, it could have been much worse. But Sidroc was away, training in Plegmund’s Brigade with other Forthwegians mad enough to want to fight for Algarve. Or if Brivibas had come to the house and spoken with Uncle Hengist, Sidroc’s father.. Oh, the unpleasant possibilities had few limits.
When Leofsig rapped on the door, Hengist opened it. “Hello, boy,” he said as Leofsig stepped in. Leofsig was taller than he was, and thicker through the shoulders, but he didn’t seem to notice.
“Hello,” Leofsig said shortly. He didn’t mind his father and mother thinking of him as a child; it grated when Uncle Hengist did it. Leofsig strode past his father’s brother and into the house.
As Hengist shut and barred the door, he said, “The Algarvians are on the move in Unkerlant again, no denying it now.”
“Huzzah,” Leofsig said without stopping. If all the Algarvians in the world moved into Unkerlant and got killed there, that would have suited him fine. But Hengist, like Sidroc, kept finding reasons not to hate the invaders so much. Leofsig thought it was because the redheads were strong, and his uncle and cousin wished they were strong, too.
Now, though, Hengist had a new reason for thinking well, or not so badly, of King Mezentio’s men: “As long as the Algarvians move forward, Plegmund’s Brigade won’t be going into such danger.”
“I suppose not,” Leofsig admitted. If he’d been one of Mezentio’s generals, he would have spent Forthwegians’ lives the way a spendthrift went through an inheritance. Why not? They weren’t Algarvians. But he didn’t say that to his uncle. He couldn’t afford to antagonize Hengist, who knew how he’d got out of the captives’ camp. Muttering to himself, he left the entry hall and went into the kitchen.
“Hello, son,” his mother said as she pitted olives. “How did it go today?”
“Not too bad,” Leofsig answered. He couldn’t talk about Brivibas, not with Uncle Hengist still liable to be in earshot. That would have to wait. “Where’s Conberge?” he asked.
“Your sister is primping,” Elfryth answered primly. “She won’t be having supper with us tonight. Grimbald-you know, the jeweler’s son-is taking her to the theater. I don’t know what they’re going to see. Something funny, I hope.”
“Most of the plays they put on these days are funny, or try to be, anyhow,” Leofsig said. He paused in thought. “This isn’t the first time Grimbald’s come by for Conberge, is it?”
His mother laughed at him. “I should say not! And if you’d been paying any attention at all, you’d know how far from the first time it was, too. I wouldn’t be surprised if his father started talking with your father before long.”
That rocked Leofsig back on his heels. Thinking of his sister married. . He didn’t want her to be an old maid, but he didn’t want her moving away, either. For the first time in his life, he felt time hurrying him along faster than he wanted to go.
Quietly, he said, “I have news. It’ll have to keep, though.” He jerked his chin toward the entry hall. He didn’t know that Uncle Hengist was still hanging around there, but he didn’t know that Hengist wasn’t, either.
Elfryth nodded, understanding what he meant. “Good news or bad?” she murmured. Leofsig shrugged. He didn’t know what to make of it. His mother fluttered her hands, looked a little exasperated, and went back to the olives.
When someone knocked on the door a few minutes later, Leofsig opened it. There stood Grimbald. Leofsig let him in, gave him a cup of wine, and made desultory small talk till Conberge came out a couple of minutes later. By the way she beamed at Grimbald, she might have invented him. Away they went, hand in hand.
“Let’s have supper,” Elfryth said after they’d gone. The casserole of porridge and cheese and onions, with the pitted olives sprinkled over the top, filled the pit in Leofsig’s belly. Afterwards, he and his mother and father sat quiet and replete.
Uncle Hengist tried several times to get a conversation going. He had no luck, not even when he twitted Leofsig’s father about the way the Algarvians were still advancing. After a bit, he rose to his feet and said, “I think I’d need to be a necromancer to squeeze any talk from you people. I’m heading off to a tavern. Maybe I can find some live bodies there.” And out he went into the night.
Hestan smiled at Leofsig. “Your mother told me you knew something interesting. My thought was that, if we were all dull enough, my brother might get impatient. Hengist has been known to do that.”
“Well, it worked.” Elfryth rounded on Leofsig. “Now-what happened that you couldn’t tell me about before?”
Leofsig recounted the meeting with Brivibas. When he’d finished, his father said, “I’d heard they’d brought the Kaunians from Oyngestun to Gromheort. I wondered if Ealstan’s… friend had any relatives among them. He had nerve, coming out of the Kaunian district.” He clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I hope I would have done the same for my kin.”