Leofsig started to answer, then stopped with his mouth h. foolishly open. He had no special love for Kaunians. His admirable Kaunians was principally limited to their women in clinging trousers needed to think for a bit before he could figure out why he hadn't Merwit against Gutauskas. At last, he said, "The Algarvians have, d ot in the palm of their hand. If we start squabbling in here, they'll laugh themselves sick."
"That is sensible," Gutauskas said after his own pause for thought.
"You would be astonished at how seldom people are sensible."
"My father says the same thing," Leofsig answered.
"Does he?" Gutauskas's eyebrow rose again. "And what, pray, does your father do, that he has acquired such wisdom?"
Is he laughing at me? Leofsig wondered. He decided Gutauskas wasn't; it was merely the Kauman's manner. "He keeps books in Gromheort."
"Ali." Gutauskas nodded. "Aye. I can see reckoning up that on which men spend their silver and gold would give a man vivid insight into the [..in* Id f anifo ollies..] of his fellow men."
"I suppose so," said Leofsig, who hadn't thought about it much.
He waited for Gutauskas to thank him for stopping the fight. The Kaunian did nothing of the sort. He acted as if Leofsig could hardly have acted differently. Kaunians never made it easy for their neighbors to get alone with them. Had they made it easy for their neighbors to get along with them, they wouldn't have been the Kaunians he knew. He wondered what they would have been.
Before he could take that thought any further, a squad of Algarvian guards tramped into the barracks. In bad Forthwegian, one of them said.
"We search. Maybe you try escape, eh? You go out." The others supplemented the order with peremptory gestures with their sticks.
Out Leofsig went, Gutauskas trailing after him. Crashes and thuds inside said the Algarvians were tearing the barracks to pieces. If anyone in there was plotting an escape, Leofsig didn't know about it. He did know what he'd find when the Algarvians let him and his fellow captives return: chaos. The Algarvians were good at tearing things to pieces. They didn't bother setting them to rights again. That was the captives' problem.
He strolled toward the fence around the camp - carefully, because the guards there would blaze without warning Forthwegians who came too close. The fence itself wasn't particularly strong. Captives could rush it.. . if most of the ones who tried didn't mind dying before they got there.
A few captives had escaped, the Algarvians discovering it only when their counts came out wrong. Leofsig didn't know how the escapees had done it. Had he, known - he'd have done it himself.
"You there, soldier!" a Forthwegian officer snapped at him. "If you haven't got anything better to do than waddle around like a drunken duck, draw a shovel and go fill in some slit trenches or dig some new ones. We've got no room in this camp for idle hands, and I'll thank you to remember it."
"Aye, sit," Leofsig said resignedly. Even as captives, officers main tained the tight to give common soldiers orders. The only difference was, even the brigadier who was the captives' commandant had to obey the orders of the lowliest Algarvian trooper. Leofsig wondered how the brigadier, who was also a belted earl and a proud and touchy man, enjoyed being on the receiving end of commands. Maybe the experience would teach him something about what a common soldier's life was like.
Somehow, Leofsig doubted it.
The shovels made a sadly mismatched collection. A few were Forthwegian army issue; more, though, looked to have been looted from the farm surrounding the captives' camp. The officer in charge of the latrines, an intense young captain, had nonetheless arranged them in a neat rack he'd built from scrap lumber.
"Ali, good," he said as Leofsig made his slow approach. "It's nasty work, to be sure, but someone's got to do it. Choose your weapon, soldier." He pointed toward the rack of shovels.
"Aye, sit," Leofsig said again, and took as long as he could deciding among them. No one expected a captive to move fast; on what the Algarvians deigned to feed them, the captives couldn't move fast. Leofsig knew as much, and took advantage of it.
"Now get to it," said the captain, who probably hadn't been deceived.
As Leofsig started off toward the noisome trenches, the officer spoke again, this time with curiosity in his voice: "What did you do to get sent over here? The redheads mostly give this duty to Kaunians."
"It wasn't one of the redheads," Leofsig said sheepishly. "It was one o our own officers. I don't suppose I looked busy enough to suit him."
"Seeing how you went about getting a shovel there, I can't say [..I'hil..] surprised," the captain answered. He sounded more amused than a Leofsig hadn't done anything drastic enough to deserve more punish than latrine duty in a captives' camp. After a moment, the captain on, "Maybe it's just as well you got nabbed. Seeing you, the Kau won't think they're the only ones getting stuck with the shit detail."
"Just as well for you, maybe, sir," Leofsig said, "but I don't see how it's just as well for me."
"Go on," the Forthwegian officer said again. "You're not going to get me to waste any more of my time arguing with you."
Leofsig wouldn't have minded doing exactly that. Since he hadn't managed it, he went off to work. He wished he could hold his nose and dig at the same time. A couple of Kaunians in trousers were already working among the slit trenches. The captain in charge of the latrines had been right; they seemed surprised to have a Forthwegian for company.
Leofsig started filling in a trench. Flies rose, resentful, in buzzing clouds.
Seeing he was doing the same thing they were, the Kaunians went back to it themselves. Leofsig noted that with some small relief, then forgot about them. He was working as fast as he could now, to get the job over with. If the Kaunians liked that, fine. If they didn't, he thought, too cursed bad.
"You've got the wrong man, I tell you!" the prisoner shouted as Bembo marched him up the stairs of the constabulary building in central [..Ttican'co..]. Bembo had clapped manacles on him; they clanked with every step he climbed.
When the prisoner's complaints started to get on Bembo's nerves, he pulled the club off his belt and whacked it into the palm of his hand. "Do you want to see how loud you can yell with a mouthful of broken teeth?" he asked. The prisoner suddenly fell silent. Bembo smiled.
At the top of the stairs, Bembo gave him a shove that took him into the door face first. Clucking at the prisoner's clumsiness, Bembo opened the door and gave him another shove. This one sent him through the doorway.
The constabulary sergeant at the front desk was at least as portly as Bembo. "Well, well," he said. "What have we here?" Like a lot of questions Algarvians asked, that one was for rhetorical effect. The next one wasn't: "Why'd you haul in our dear friend Martusino this time, Bembo?"
"Loitering in front of a Jeweler's, Sergeant," Bembo answered.
"Why, you lying sack of guts!" Martusino yelled. He addressed the sergeant: "I was just walking past the place, Pesaro - I swear on my mother's grave. That last stretch of Reform did the trick for me. I've gone straight, I have."
He wasn't so persuasive as he might have been; the manacles kept him from talking with his hands. Sergeant Pesaro looked dubious. Bembo snarled. "Oh, he's gone straight, all right - straight back to his old tricks.
After I spotted him, I grabbed him and searched him. He had these in his belt pouch." Bembo reached into his own pouch and pulled out three golden rings. One was a plain band, one set with a polished, faceted piece ofjet, and one with a fair-sized sapphire.
"I never saw them before," the prisoner said.
Pesaro inked a pen and started to write. "Suspicion of burglary," he said. "Suspicion of intent to commit burglary. Maybe they'll get sick of this and finally hang you, Martusino. It'd be about time, if anybody cares what I think."
"This fat son of a sow is framing an innocent man!" Martusino cried.
"He planted those rings on me, the stinking lump of dung. Like I just said, I never saw'em before in my life, and there's not a soul can prove I did."
Being a constable required Bembo to take more abuse than most Algarvians would tolerate, as it let him deal out abuse with more impunity than most Algarvians. But he took only so much. Sack of guts had come up to the edge of the line and fat son of a sow went over it. He pulled out his club again and hit Martusino a good lick. The prisoner howled.
"Struck while resisting arrest," Pesaro noted, and scribbled another line on the form he was filling out. Martusino yelled louder than ever, partly from pain, partly from outrage. Pesaro shook his head. "Oh, shut up, why don't you? Take him for his pretty picture, Bembo, and then to the lockup, so I don't have to listen to him any more."
"I'll do that, Sergeant. He's giving me a headache, too." Bembo ges tured with the club. "Go on, get moving, or I'll give you another taste."
Martusino got moving. Bembo escorted him to the recording section, to get the particulars on him down in permanent form. A pretty little sketch artist took his likeness. Bembo marveled at the way she could get a man's essence on to paper with a few deft strokes of pencil and char1coal stick. It wasn't sorcery, not in any conventional sense of the word, but it seemed miraculous all the same.
He also marveled at the way the sketch artist filled out her tunic. "Why won't you go out to supper with me, Saffa?" he asked, not quite whining but not far from it, either.
"Because I don't feel like wrestling," Saffa answered. "Why don't I just slap your face now? Then it'll be as if we'd gone to supper." She bent her head to her work.
Martusino was rash enough to laugh. Bembo trod on his foot, hard.
The prisoner yelped. Bembo did his best to grind off a toe or two, but didn't quite succeed. Saffa kept right on sketching. Such things happened all the time in constabulary stations. Sometimes worse things happened.