"Hello, friend," one of them said with a polite nod and a smile that didn't quite reach his eyes. "What can we do for you today?"
"Want to buy some dishes," Ealstan answered. "My wife keeps throwing 'em at me, and we're running out."
The guards relaxed and laughed. The one who'd spoken before said, "This is the place, all right. I used to hang around with a woman like that. Aye, she was good in bed, but after a while she got to be more trouble than she was worth, you know what I mean?"
Ealstan nodded. "I hear what you're saying, but you know how it is." His shrug suggested a man who was putting up with a lot for the sake of a woman. Laughing again, the guards stepped aside to let him into the warehouse.
After the bright sunshine outside, Ealstan's eyes needed a moment to adjust to the gloom within. When they did, he gaped at aisle on aisle of crockery, every one with a sign that said SALE! or MARKED DOWN! or PYBBA'S LOW PRICES! As best Ealstan could tell, his boss didn't miss a trick.
He couldn't stand there gaping very long. A woman said, "Get out of the way," and pushed past him before he could. She made a beeline for a display of cups and saucers with a mustard-yellow glaze. Ealstan thought them very ugly, but Pybba was going to rack up a sale no matter what he thought.
Ealstan ambled up one aisle and down the next, making as if to examine more different kinds of pottery than he'd ever seen under one roof. Nothing he spotted on the floor of the main room gave him the slightest hint about where Pybba's money was going. He hadn't really thought anything would. Anything obvious to him would be obvious to other people, too- to the Algarvians, if Pybba really was trying to fight them.
Several doors led into back rooms. Ealstan eyed those as he pretended to examine dishes. Going through one of them might tell him what he wanted to know. It also might land him in more trouble than he could afford. Whatever he did, he wouldn't get the chance to go through more than one. He was sure of that.
Which one, then? From this side, they all looked alike. He chose the one in the middle of the back wall, for not better reason than its being in the middle. After fidgeting in front of it for a minute or two, he opened it and walked into the back room. A man sitting at a desk looked up at him. Ealstan scowled and said, "That fellow out there said this was where the jakes were at."
"Well, they bloody well aren't," the man replied in some annoyance.
"You don't have to bite my head off," Ealstan said, and closed the door behind him. He chose four dinner plates in a flowered pattern, paid for them, and left. The guards nodded to him as he went. He walked away from the ley-line caravan stop, not toward it. Once he was around the corner from the warehouse, he doubled back and found his way to the stop.
To his relief, a caravan car glided up a few minutes after he got to that corner. He put another small silver coin in the fare box and sat down for the ride back to the heart of Eoforwic. The plates rattled against one another in his lap.
A man sitting across the aisle pointed to them and said, "Powers below eat me if you didn't get those at Pybba's."
"Best prices in town," Ealstan answered- one of the many slogans Pybba used to promote himself and his business.
"That's the truth," the other passenger said. "I've bought plenty from him myself."
"Who hasn't?" Ealstan said. Nobody gave him any trouble the rest of the way home, though a couple more people asked if he'd got his plates from Pybba. By the time he got off at the stop closest to his flat, he'd started to think his boss could have occupied all of Forthweg if the Algarvians hadn't beaten him to it.
Vanai wasn't deceived when he brought the plates home. She asked, "Did you learn anything while you were snooping around?"
"Well, no," Ealstan admitted, "but I didn't know I wouldn't before I started out." He was ready to do a more thorough job of defending himself than that, but Vanai only sighed and dropped the subject. That left him feeling bloated: he had what he thought a pretty good argument trapped inside him, but it couldn't get out.
As he went off to cast accounts for Pybba the next morning, he decided that argument could stay right where it was. It would have done him no good had he had to use it to sweeten his boss. Pybba was not a man arguments could sweeten. The only arguments he listened to were his own.
"About time you got here," he shouted when Ealstan walked into his office. Ealstan wasn't late. He was, if anything, early. But Pybba was there before him. Pybba was there before everybody. He had a wife and family, but Ealstan wondered if they ever saw him.
That, though, was Pybba's worry. Ealstan settled down and got to work. Before long, Pybba started shouting at somebody else. He had to shout at someone. The louder he yelled, the more certain he seemed that he was alive.
Halfway through the day, somebody said, "Oh, hello," to Ealstan. He looked up from endless columns of numbers and saw the man who'd been behind the desk in that back room at the potter warehouse. The fellow went on, "I didn't know you worked for Pybba, too."
Pybba overheard. Despite the racket he always made, he overheard a lot. Pointing to Ealstan, he asked the other man, "You know him?"
"I don't really know him, no," the man replied. "Saw him at the warehouse yesterday, though. He was looking for the jakes."
"Was he?" Pybba rumbled. He shook his head in what looked like real regret, then jerked his thumb from Ealstan toward the door. The gesture was unmistakable, but he added two words anyhow: "You're fired."
Fourteen
Skarnu had no trouble ambling along a road in southern Valmiera as a peasant would have done. He didn't look to be in much of a hurry, but mile after mile disappeared behind him. That wasn't so bad. He wished even more, though, that Amatu would disappear behind him.
No such luck there. The noble who'd come back from Lagoan exile stuck like a burr, and was just about as irritating. Not only that- Skarnu feared that Amatu would get both of them caught by the Algarvians or by the Valmieran constables who did their bidding. Amatu couldn't walk like a peasant, not- literally- to save his life. The concept of ambling seemed alien to him. He marched, and if he didn't march, he strutted. He might almost have been an Algarvian himself, as far as swagger went.
"Maybe we ought to put some pebbles in your shoes," Skarnu said in something close to despair.
Amatu looked down his nose at him- not easy, when Skarnu stood several inches taller. "Maybe you ought to let me be what I am, and not carp so much about it," he replied, his voice dripping aristocratic hauteur.
He risked giving himself away every time he opened his mouth, too. Skarnu had trouble putting on a rustic accent. But by not saying much, and by speaking in understatements when he did talk, he got by. Amatu, on the other hand, always overacted. He might have been the foolish, foppish noble in a bad play.
Back before the war, Skarnu hadn't thought such people really existed. He supposed Amatu had acted the same way then. Powers above, he'd probably acted the same way himself. But it hadn't mattered in those days, not among the aristocracy of Priekule. Now it did. Skarnu had adapted. As far as Amatu was concerned, adapting meant betraying his class.
"Being what you are is one thing," Skarnu said. "Getting me caught because you won't see reason is something else again."
"You haven't got caught yet, have you?" Amatu said.
"No thanks to you," Skarnu retorted. "You keep trying to stick your neck- and mine- in the noose."
"You keep saying that," Amatu answered. "If there's so bloody much truth to it, how come I'm still running around loose when the Algarvians grabbed everybody in the underground in Ventspils- everybody who knew just what he was doing?"
"How come? I'll tell you how come," Skarnu said savagely. "Because you were with me when we came back to our building, that's how come. If you hadn't been, you would have strolled right up to the flat where we were staying- and right into the redheads' arms, too. Or had you forgotten that, your Excellency?"
He used Amatu's title of respect with as much scorn as an angry commoner might have. And he succeeded in angering the returned exile, too. "I'd have done fine without you," Amatu snarled. "For that matter, I can still do fine without you. If you want me to go off on my own, I'm ready. I'm more than ready."
Part of Skarnu- a large, selfish part of Skarnu- wanted nothing more. But the rest made him answer, "You wouldn't last an hour on your own. And when the Algarvians nailed you- and they would- they'd squeeze out everything you knew, and then they'd come after me."
"You're not my mother," Amatu said. "I'm telling you they wouldn't catch me."
"And I'm telling you-" Skarnu broke off. Two Algarvians on unicorns came around a bend in the road a couple hundred yards ahead. Skarnu lowered his voice: "I'm telling you to walk soft now, by the powers above, if you want to keep breathing."
He wondered if Amatu would have the least idea what he was talking about. But the returned exile had spotted Mezentio's men, too. Amatu hunched his shoulders forward and pulled his head down. That didn't make him walk like a peasant. It made him walk like somebody who hated Algarvians and was trying not to show it.
And, sure as sunrise following morning twilight, it made the redheads notice him. They reined in as they came up to the two Valmierans walking along the road. Both of them had their hands on their sticks. One spoke to Amatu in pretty good Valmieran: "What's chewing on you, pal?"
Before Amatu could speak, Skarnu did it for him. "We just came from a cockfight," he said. "My cousin here lost more silver than he's got." He sadly shook his head at Amatu. "I told you that bird wasn't good for anything but chicken stew. Would you listen? Not likely."
Amatu glared at him. But then, given what he'd said, Amatu had plausible reason to glare at him. The Algarvian who spoke Valmieran translated for his companion, who evidently didn't. They both laughed. Skarnu laughed, too, as he would have at the folly of a silly cousin. The redhead who knew Valmieran said, "Never bet on cockfights. You can't tell what a cock will do, any more than you can with a woman." He laughed again, on a different note. "I know what I want my cock to do."
He tried to translate that into Algarvian, too, but the pun must not have worked in his own language, because his pal looked blank. Skarnu managed a laugh, too, to show he appreciated the trooper's wit. Then he asked, "Can we go on now, sir?"
"Aye, go, but keep your cocks out of mischief." Like a lot of people, the Algarvian ran what had been a good joke into the ground. He laughed again, louder than ever. Skarnu smiled. Amatu kept on looking mutinous. The Algarvian cavalrymen dug their knees into their mounts' barrels and flicked the reins. The unicorns trotted on down the road.
"Cocks!" Amatu snarled when the redheads were out of earshot. "I ought to put a curse on theirs."
"Go ahead and try, if you want to waste your time," Skarnu answered. "You're no trained mage, and they're warded against all the little nuisance spells, same as we were. You want to kill a soldier, you have to blaze him or cut him."