“Powers above, I’m so glad to hear it,” Vanai said. “Come on, sit down, and I’ll get you supper.” Her own belly rumbled, reminding her she hadn’t eaten anything, either. She took the stew off the fire. It wasn’t what it would have been had Ealstan got home on time, but she didn’t care. She poured big cups of rough red wine for both of them.
“This is all splendid. Thank you,” Ealstan said. When he spoke Kaunian, he did so with a slow seriousness that made everything he said more earnest, more important, than it would have in casual Forthwegian. Only a starving man would have called the overcooked stew splendid in any language, but, by the way he shoveled it down, he came pretty close.
“Do you know what made things burst this time?” Vanai asked.
Ealstan shook his head. “I heard four different tales as I was going through the streets. One person says one thing, another something else.” He got all his case endings right there, and grinned in modest triumph.
“The Algarvians are blazing to kill out there,” Vanai said. “I saw them. I was frightened for you.”
“I was a little frightened myself, once or twice,” Ealstan said-no small admission from him. “I took a long time coming home because I did not want to run into the redheads. I already told you that.” Ealstan hesitated, then added, “I saw several bodies in the street.”
“There was one right outside this block of flats-a woman,” Vanai said, “and some wounded men, too.”
“That woman’s body is gone. I saw others.” Ealstan changed the subject, and changed languages with it: “What were you doing there when I got home?”
“Trying to make sense out of You Too Can Be a Mage.” Vanai switched to Forthwegian, too. “I was seeing if I could figure out where that idiot went wrong in translating his transformation spell out of Kaunian and into Forthwegian. If I can figure out how the Kaunian really ran, I can do a better job of turning it back into Forthwegian.”
“Why bother?” Ealstan asked. “If you’re sure you’ve got the Kaunian right, leave it alone and use it. I guess the next question is, how sure are you?”
“Pretty sure,” Vanai said, and felt the corners of her mouth turn down.
Ealstan frowned, too. “You can get into all sorts of trouble using a spell you’re pretty sure is good. Last time, you made me look Kaunian instead of doing anything to yourself. We don’t want that to happen again, and we don’t want anything worse to happen, either.”
“I know,” Vanai said, “but if only I were free to move around in Eoforwic-well, after things calm down again, anyhow. Earlier today, I was thinking that being caged up here wasn’t so bad. I haven’t thought anything like that for a long time. I don’t think I ever thought anything like that before.”
Ealstan nodded. “I don’t blame you. It’s.. pretty bad out there. Some of the fighting came right up to Ethelhelm’s block of flats, and that sort of thing doesn’t usually go on in the fancy parts of town.”
“What did your singer friend have to say?” Vanai asked. “Was he cheering the rioters on? Anybody with Kaunian blood ought to be.”
“I don’t quite know.” Ealstan sighed. “He doesn’t like the redheads- we’ve seen that-but he doesn’t want to lose what he’s got, either. To hang on to it, he has to play along with them, at least some. And when he plays along with them, he starts …” He groped for a phrase.
Vanai suggested one: “Forgiving things?”
“No, that goes too far.” Ealstan shook his head. “Not seeing things, maybe.” He held up a hand before Vanai could say anything. “Aye, I know that’s just about as bad. Maybe not quite, though.”
“Maybe.” Vanai didn’t believe it, but didn’t feel like starting an argument.
Again, Ealstan seemed to want to change the subject: “If you can get the magic to work, that would be wonderful. It would mean we’d be safe moving out of this flat, since. .” He shook his head. “We could move out.”
What hadn’t he said there? Not since you wouldn’t look like a Kaunian anymore. If he’d meant that, he would have said it. What then? Another possibility sprang into Vanai’s mind: since Ethelhelm knows where we live and might blab to the Algarvians. Ealstan wouldn’t want to say that out loud. He probably didn’t even want to think it. But maybe he hadn’t changed the subject after all.
He cocked his head to one side. “I wonder what you’d look like as a Forthwegian. Would you feel different, too?” He used his hands to sketch figures in the air, contrasting her slimness to his own more solid build, which was typical of Forthwegians.
“I don’t know,” Vanai answered. “I’m not really a mage, remember.” Her grandfather would have been able to say. She was sure of that. Brivibas knew a lot about magecraft, especially the history of magecraft. He’d used sorcery in his own historical research. She wondered how much else he might use if he wanted to. A good deal, she suspected. But would he ever think to do so? That was another question altogether.
Ealstan’s thoughts had been running along another, and a distinctively masculine, ley line. With a small chuckle, he said, “If you look different and feel different, too, it would almost be like making love to somebody else.”
“Would it?” Vanai eyed him from under lowered brows. “And do you want to be making love to somebody else?”
He was bright enough to recognize the danger in that one, and hastily shook his head. “Of course not,” he answered, and Vanai had to hide a smile at how emphatic he sounded. But he didn’t quite back away from everything he’d said: “It would just be like choosing a different posture, that’s all.”
“Oh,” Vanai said. Ealstan was fonder of different postures than she was, for Major Spinello had forced them on her. But Ealstan didn’t know about Spinello, for which Vanai was heartily glad. She gave her lover the benefit of the doubt. “All right, sweetheart.”
And then, while Ealstan worked on columns of figures (“Powers above only know when I’ll be able to get these to my clients,” he said, but kept working anyhow), Vanai went back to picking the Forthwegian spell to pieces and rebuilding it in classical Kaunian. When she noticed her new version had a partial rhyme scheme, her hopes lifted: the original surely would have rhymed, to make memorizing it easier. She tried alternative words to give more rhymes. Some she discarded; others fit as well as a snug pair of trousers.
“I have it, I think,” she told Ealstan. “Shall I try it?”
“If you want to,” he answered, “and if you think you can reverse anything that goes wrong.”
Vanai studied her new text. She wasn’t sure of that, and Ealstan, she had to admit, showed good sense in asking her to be. She sighed. “I’ll see what I can do,” she said, and then, “Can you bring me some books on magecraft?”
“Tomorrow? No,” Ealstan said. “When things settle down? Of course.” Vanai sighed again, but then she nodded.
Cornelu didn’t like walking through the streets of Setubal. For one thing, he still had trouble reading Lagoan, which reminded him how much a stranger he was in the capital of Lagoas and how much a stranger he’d remain. He had never wanted to be a Lagoan; what he wanted was to be a free Sibian in a free Sibiu.
But walking through Setubal also reminded him that even a free Sibiu could never hope to measure itself against Lagoas again. That hurt. Setubal alone held as many people, did as much business, as all the five islands of his native kingdom. And, while Setubal was the greatest city in Lagoas, it was far from being the only Lagoan city of consequence.
How do people live here without going mad? Cornelu wondered as Lagoans streamed past him, every one of them moving faster than he cared to. More ley lines came together at Setubal than anywhere else in the world; that was why the city had blazed into prominence over the past couple of hundred years. And the sorcerous energy seemed to fill the people as well as the place. Cornelu knew that couldn’t be literally true, but it felt as if it were.