Another shout rang out behind her-another shout, and the thud of boots on flagstones. However much she didn’t want to, she turned her head. A stick in his hand, that Algarvian constable came thundering after her.
Ealstan felt as if he’d been running for a hundred miles. His heart sledged in his chest. He’d been wrong before, so often that hope was almost dead. He didn’t think he could stand to be wrong again. But I have to try, he thought, and kept running as hard as he could.
He rounded a corner… and saw no one ahead of him. Panting, he cursed loudly-in Algarvian. Then somebody ducked out of a doorway and hurried toward the edge of the Kaunian district. Ealstan cursed again, louder and more furiously-but still in Algarvian. He’d been running after a blond woman, and this was a Forthwegian. If she hadn’t been so very pregnant, she would have looked a lot like his sister, Conberge… He started running as if he’d never run before.
He let out another great shout-”Vanai!”-as he thudded toward her. She glanced back over her shoulder and came to a stop, every inch of her sagging, her face full of hopeless despair. “Vanai!” he yelled again, and then, “Thelberge!” and then, most important of all, “Darling!”
She stared. She swayed. For a moment, he thought she would faint. An egg burst only a block or so away. Ealstan hardly noticed it. He didn’t think Vanai noticed it at all. “Ealstan?” she whispered as he dashed up and swept her into his arms. “I don’t believe it,” she went on, though the words were muffled because he was doing his best to smother her with kisses.
“It’s true, by the powers above,” he said in the brief moments when he wasn’t otherwise occupied.
“But you’re an Algarvian,” she said. “I mean, you look like an Algarvian. How can you be-?”
“You Too Can Be a Mage,” Ealstan said solemnly. “I’m an Algarvian the same way you’re a Forthwegian.” He took her by the elbow and steered her in the direction she was already going. “Come on. Let’s get you out of the quarter here. As soon as we’ve done that, we can worry about everything else.”
If he ran into any guards at the edge of the quarter, Ealstan intended to talk his way past them. The constabulary uniform he was wearing, which Pybba had got him despite grumblings, would give him a long head start toward that. But there was no need. Like any men of sense, the guards had sought shelter from the Unkerlanter eggs. So had everybody else; but for the two of them, the streets were empty.
“Out!” he said triumphantly as they passed into the part of Eoforwic where Forthwegians could go and Kaunians-at least Kaunians who looked like Kaunians-couldn’t.
“Out,” Vanai echoed. She raised an eyebrow in an expression unmistakably hers, no matter how much the magic made her look like Conberge. “I could have done this myself, you know.”
“I know, sweetheart,” Ealstan said. “Now I know. But I didn’t know before I started coming into the quarter looking for you.” His chuckle was grim. “Any Algarvian constables who saw me-any real Algarvian constables, I mean-must have figured I had a Kaunian girlfriend.” He squeezed her hand. How fine the touch of her flesh felt! “And they were right, but not the way they thought.”
Eggs burst only a couple of blocks away. Ealstan waved to the Unkerlanter dragons still circling overhead, still looking for targets in Eoforwic. The longer they stayed up there, the better his chances of getting back to his flat with Vanai.
He poked his head into the lobby of a block of flats just outside the Kaunian quarter. As he’d hoped, it was empty. Everyone there had run for a cellar. He pulled Vanai inside and stripped off his constable’s uniform. After pulling out a proper Forthwegian tunic from a pouch on his belt, he stuffed the Algarvian-style tunic and kilt and hat into the pouch. “Pybba may need them again,” he told Vanai.
“Pybba!” she said. “But Pybba’s got no use for Kaunians. I don’t know how many times you’ve told me that.”
“No, but he hasn’t got any use for Algarvians, either,” Ealstan answered. “And he has got some use for me, and so I managed to persuade him to get me this.” He hugged his wife. “I know what’s important, by the powers above.”
From another, smaller, pouch he took a length of coppery yarn and one of dark brown. He went through the spell he’d devised to shift him back from looking like an Algarvian to his usual self. Vanai clapped her hands together, which told him he’d succeeded. She said, “You patterned that charm after the one I made.”
“Well, of course I did,” he answered. “I know what works-and having a model helps when I compose in classical Kaunian.”
“You did splendidly,” Vanai said, which warmed him all over. “You must have done splendidly twice, in fact, or you wouldn’t have been able to look like an Algarvian in the first place.”
He kissed her. Even as he did, though, something else struck him. “You’d better renew your spell, too, while you’ve got the chance. No telling how long you’ll keep looking Forthwegian. We need to be back to the flat before you go back to looking like your regular self.”
“You’re right,” she said, and did just that. Her looks didn’t change, but she would keep on looking a lot like his sister for a while longer. Long enough? Maybe I’ll have her renew it again before we get home, if I see a chance, Ealstan told himself. Vanai’s thoughts were running along a different ley line: “I’ll have to get a new bottle of hair dye. No point to dyeing it-no way, either-when I was caught there.”
Ealstan shook his head. “No, you won’t. There’s still plenty left at home. I didn’t throw it away-I thought you’d be back.” I hoped you’d be back was closer to the truth, but he said it the way he wanted to.
Vanai kissed him for it. That made it worthwhile, and more than worthwhile. She took his hand. “Come on. Let’s go.”
Eggs were still bursting all over Eoforwic. Ealstan said, “Now that I’ve got you back, I want the Unkerlanters to go away and leave us alone. Before, all I wanted them to do was knock Eoforwic topsy-turvy.”
“So did I,” Vanai said as they went out onto the street once more. She grinned at him. “I wanted to get back to the flat by myself and be there waiting when you walked in. You spoiled my surprise.” The grin disappeared. “You almost frightened me to death, too.”
“I’m sorry,” Ealstan said. “I’m so sorry. But looking like one of the redheads was the only way I could find to get into the Kaunian district.” He drew himself up. “It worked, too.”
Vanai couldn’t argue with that, and she didn’t try. The Unkerlanter dragons did fly away. After the eggs stopped falling, people started coming back out onto the streets. No one looked twice at Ealstan and Vanai; the only thing in the least out of the ordinary about them was her pregnancy.
They stopped in a tavern for a glass of wine to celebrate, though they didn’t say why they were celebrating. When Vanai asked if she could use the pot, the fellow behind the bar just nodded and pointed to the right door. “My wife was always running back and forth when she was expecting, too,” he said.
“Thank you.” Vanai closed the door behind her. When she came out, she nodded to Ealstan. The spell would last a while longer.
It lasted long enough for them to climb the stairs to the flat. Ealstan made Vanai hold the splintery bannister with one hand and his own hand with the other. “I’m not made of glass, you know,” she said tartly.
“We’ve come this far,” he said. “I don’t want anything-anything-to go wrong now. Is that all right?” Vanai made a face at him, but she didn’t say anything more, so he supposed he’d won his point.
He opened the door to the flat. He stood aside to let Vanai go in ahead of him. He closed the door. He barred it. He turned back to Vanai. “I love you,” he said.
They held each other for a long time. Then Vanai said, “Thank you,” and squeezed him harder than ever. “There were… times when I didn’t think I would ever see you again.”
Ealstan knew what that had to mean. Vanai trembled against him. He felt like trembling, too. He stroked her hair. “You’re safe here,” he said.
“Don’t be silly,” she answered. “I’m a Kaunian. I’m not safe anywhere. How are you going to bring a midwife here when the baby comes? I’m liable to start looking like what I am right in the middle of labor.”
He hadn’t thought of that. “Somehow or other, we’ll manage,” he said.
“We’ll manage without a midwife, is what we’ll do,” Vanai said.
“I suppose so.” Ealstan kept his reservations to himself. If anything looked as if it was going wrong, he vowed he would get a midwife and think about everything else later. He had a good deal of silver. He could bribe her, enough to keep her quiet for a little while, and then move before she brought the redheads down on Vanai and him and the baby.
Vanai said, “We can worry about that when the time comes.” She smiled at him. “I know what you’re thinking now.”
That wasn’t thought. That was automatic bodily response to holding the woman he loved in his arms. “Should you, so close to your time?” he asked.
“Once won’t hurt,” she answered. “And if you think I haven’t missed you, too, you’d better think again.” She pulled the tunic off over her head.
Her body startled him. Because she’d been locked away in the Kaunian quarter, he hadn’t been able to watch it change day by day. He hadn’t realized just how much her belly bulged. And… “Is your navel supposed to stick out like that?” Ealstan reach out a gentle, cautious finger to touch it.
“I don’t know,” Vanai answered. “All I know is that it does.” When Ealstan pulled off his own tunic and drawers, she laughed. “I’m not the only one sticking out, either.”
“I know I’m supposed to,” Ealstan said, an odd mix of dignity and eagerness in his voice. He led her back to the bedchamber.
Because of her bulging belly, they fumbled a bit before finding a way that suited them both. She lay on her back, a pillow under her bottom. He poised himself on his knees between her legs. “Oh,” she said softly as he went into her.
“I love you,” he said, which meant about the same thing. Slowly and carefully, he began to move. The posture made it easy for him to tease her with a fingertip at the same time. His pleasure built. By her sighs, Vanai’s did, too. Then, all at once, he laughed in surprise and lost his rhythm. Vanai made a noise wordless but indignant. “I’m sorry,” he told her. “Your magic just wore off. I didn’t expect it to.”
“Oh,” she said, this time thoughtfully. “All right.” They resumed.
Not much later, it was a great deal better than all right. When Vanai gasped and quivered, her belly went tight and hard for a little while.
Ealstan laughed again when her flesh rippled from the inside out. “I can really see the baby move now,” he said.