Andlau, she saw, was well beyond Durrwangen, three quarters of the way from where the fighting had begun in spring to Sulingen. Sure enough, Mezentio’s men seemed to be moving as fast as they had the summer before.
“But they can’t,” Vanai said out loud, defiantly using her Kaunian birth-speech. “They can’t. What will be left of the world if they do?”
What would be left of the world for her if the Algarvians won their war was nothing. But they kept right on rolling forward all the same. The news sheet went on, in the boasting Algarvian style even though it was written in Forthwegian, Algarvian dragons hammered Sulingen on the Wolter, dropping eggs by the thousand and leaving the city, an ungainly sprawl stretched along the northern bank of the river, burning in many places. Casualties are certain to be very heavy, but King Swemmel continues his useless, senseless resistance.
“Good for him,” Vanai muttered. Forthwegians despised their Unkerlanter cousins, not least for being stronger and more numerous than they were. Living in Forthweg, Vanai had picked up a good deal of that attitude. And her grandfather despised the Unkerlanters for being even more barbarous-which is to say, less under Kaunian influence-than the Forthwegians. She’d picked up a good deal of that attitude, too.
But now, if the Unkerlanters were giving King Mezentio’s men a run for their money, Vanai would cheer them on. She wished she could do more. If she left the flat, though, she was all too likely to end up sacrificed to fuel the Algarvian mages’ assault on Unkerlant. And so she stayed hidden, and thought kinder thoughts about King Swemmel than she’d ever imagined she would.
From the atlas and the news sheet, her eyes went to the little book called You Too Can Be a Mage. She wondered why she hadn’t pitched it into the garbage. She’d worked magic with it, all right: magic that had almost got her in more trouble than she’d known before. If you were already a mage, the spells in You Too Can Be a Mage might be useful.. but if you were already a mage, you wouldn’t need them, because you’d already know better.
She complained about that to Ealstan when he came home that evening. He laughed, which made her angry. Then he held up a placating hand. “I’m sorry,” he told her, though he didn’t sound very sorry. “It reminds me of something my father would say sometimes: ‘Any child can do it-as long as he has twenty years of practice.’ “
Vanai worked through that, then smiled in spite of herself. “It does sound like your father, or what you’ve said about him,” she answered. Then her smile faded. “I wish we’d hear from him again.”
“So do I,” Ealstan said, his own face tight with worry. “With Leofsig gone, he must be going mad. My whole family must be, come to that.”
She reached across the small supper table to set her hand on his. “I wish you’d been able to do something about your cousin.”
“So do I,” he growled. “But his regiment or whatever they call it had left the camp outside Eoforwic just before I got the news. And even if it hadn’t…” He grimaced. “What could I have done? Sidroc’s worth more to the Algarvians than I’ll ever be, so they’d surely back him, curse them. Powers below eat them and leave them in darkness forever.”
“Aye,” Vanai whispered fervently. But the Algarvians had to be immune to curses. So many had been aimed their way since the Derlavaian War started, but none seemed to bite.
“I think this may be what growing up means,” Ealstan said, “finding out there are things you can’t do anything about, and neither can anybody else.”
In one way, Vanai was a year older than he. In another, she was far older than that. The second way didn’t always show itself, but this was one of those times. “Kaunians in Forthweg suck that up with their mothers’ milk,” she said. “They have ever since the Kaunian Empire fell.”
“Maybe so,” Ealstan said. “But it’s not bred in you, any more than it’s bred in us. You learn it one at a time, too.”
Vanai remembered Major Spinello. “Aye, that’s so,” she said softly, hoping the redhead who’d taken his pleasure with her to keep her grandfather from working himself to death had met a horrible end in Unkerlant. Then she burst out with what she couldn’t hold in any more: “What will we do if Algarve wins the war?”
Ealstan got up, went over to the pantry, and came back with a jug of wine. After pouring, he answered, “I heard-Ethelhelm says-Zuwayza is letting Kaunians land on her shores.”
“Zuwayza?” Vanai’s voice was a dismayed squeak. “They’re-” She caught herself. She’d been about to say the Zuwayzin were nothing but bare black barbarians. Her grandfather would surely have said just that. She tried something else: “They’re allied with Mezentio, so how long can that last?”
“I don’t know,” Ealstan said. “Ethelhelm says the Algarvians are hopping mad about it, though.”
“How does he know?” Vanai demanded. “Do the redheads whisper in his ear? Why do you believe him when he tells you things like that?”
“Because he’s not wrong very often,” Ealstan said. “What he doesn’t hear, the people in his band do.”
“Maybe,” Vanai said, dubious still. “But where do they hear them? The Algarvians don’t like Etlielhelm’s music.”
“No, but Plegmund’s Brigade does, remember?” Ealstan answered. “He’s played for them, remember, no matter how much I hated that. I still do hate it, but it’s true.”
“Maybe,” Vanai said, this time in rather a different tone of voice. She reached for the jug of wine and poured her own mug full. “I don’t know why I don’t just stay drunk all the time. Then I wouldn’t care.”
“Hard work staying drunk all the time,” Ealstan said. “And it hurts when you start sobering up, too.”
“I know.” What Vanai also knew, and didn’t say, was how much staying sober hurt. Ealstan wouldn’t understand-or he wouldn’t have before Leofsig got killed. Now, he might.
Vanai washed the supper dishes, then returned to her books. She was reading a tale of adventure and exploration in the jungles of equatorial Siaulia. Back when she was living in Oyngestun, she would have turned up her nose at such fare. But when her world was limited to a cramped flat and what she could see out a window-provided she didn’t get too close to the glass-a story of exploration set on the tropical continent made her feel she was traveling even when she really couldn’t. Leopards and gorgeous, glittering butterflies and hanging vines covered with ants seemed real enough for her to reach out and touch them. And when she read about the enormous fungus the natives would boil in the stomach of a buffalo. .
When she read about that fungus, she started to cry. She thought she was being quiet about it, but Ealstan looked up from the news sheet he was reading and asked, “What’s the matter, sweetheart?”
She turned a stricken face to him. “When fall comes, I won’t be able to go out hunting mushrooms!”
He came over and put his arm around her. “I don’t even know if I’ll be able to, except maybe in a park or something. This is a big city, without a whole lot of open country around it. But I’ll bring back the best ones I can buy, I promise you that.”
“It won’t be the same.” Vanai spoke with doleful certainty. She pulled a handkerchief out of her pocket and blew her nose. Tears were still sliding down her cheeks. “I’ve gone out hunting mushrooms every fall since… since my mother and father were still alive.” She couldn’t think of any stronger way to say for a very long time.
“I’m sorry,” Ealstan said. “If you were shut up inside the Kaunian quarter here or back in Gromheort, do you think you could go mushroom hunting then?”
In one way, it was a perfectly reasonable question. In another, it was infuriating. Vanai stuck her nose in her book and left it there. “When Ealstan said something else to her a few minutes later, she ignored him. She made a point of ignoring him, and kept right on doing it till they went to bed that night.
When he leaned over to kiss her good night, she let him, but she didn’t kiss him back. He said, “I can’t help it, you know. I wish I could, but I can’t.”