“I know that, sir,” the crystallomancer said. “One of the mages… one of ‘em got killed while I was talking with him, sir. The energy, it’s… hard for a man to take.” That no doubt explained his punch-drunk state.

More eggs burst, all over Gleina. Spinello smelled smoke and heard flames crackling. A metal fragment of eggshell buried itself in the doorframe a few inches from his head. He hardly even flinched. “We’ve got to fight back as hard as we can,” he said. “If the Unkerlanters break through our lines, the powers below will eat our whole army in the north.”

The crystallomancer nodded, but just then a man on a unicorn splashed with green and brown paint galloped through the village shouting, “Behemoths! Unkerlanter behemoths! There’s millions of’em, and they’re all heading this way!”

Spinello peered west. The cloud of dust there wouldn’t hold millions of behemoths, but it would hold dozens or hundreds. And it wasn’t the only such cloud he saw. “We aren’t going to hold Gleina,” he said, and then, “I wonder if we can hold Waldsolms.” One more thought flashed through his mind: I wonder if we can hold anywhere. He looked back over his shoulder at Jadwigai. “You ready to move fast, sweetheart?” She nodded, her eyes enormous but less afraid than they had been before Spinello first lowered his mouth to her pink-tipped breasts. “Good,” he told her. “Now we have to see if we can stay ahead of Swemmel’s little chums till we’re able to throw them back. If we ever are. Come on.” More dragons painted in Unkerlanter rock-gray flew low over Gleina as they fled the burning village.

News-sheet vendors cried their wares as Ealstan came home from Pybba’s pottery works. “Heavy fighting in northern Unkerlant!” they shouted. “Algarvians inflict heavy losses on Swemmel’s savages in fierce defensive battles!”

Ealstan fumbled in his belt pouch and came up with a couple of coppers for a sheet. The redheads had occupied Forthweg for close to five years now. He’d learned to read between the lines of their lies to get some notion of the truth hiding behind them. When they talked about “fierce defensive battles,” that meant the Unkerlanters were hitting them hard. He was always willing-no, eager-to read about anybody hitting the Algarvians hard.

With his nose in the news sheet, he almost walked past his block of flats. He almost broke his neck going upstairs, because he kept trying to read and climb steps at the same time. He almost walked too far down the hall and gave the coded knock on the door to the wrong flat. And he still had the news sheet in front of his face when Vanai opened the right door.

She looked indignant when he finally lowered the sheet. Kissing her didn’t mollify her much. But when he said, “I think the redheads are really in trouble this time,” she was suddenly all smiles.

“Tell me,” she urged. “Tell me right now.”

“They’re talking about defensive battles,” Ealstan said. “Whenever they talk about defensive battles, that means they’re taking a pounding. And they’re talking about fighting in Sommerda, and Sommerda was a long way behind their line not so long ago. They think people are too stupid to look at a map to find out where these places are, but they’re wrong.”

“We can look at a map.” Vanai went and pulled an atlas from a bookshelf. “You got this for me when I had to hide here all the time.” She made a face and corrected herself: “The last time I had to hide here all the time, I mean.” She didn’t leave the flat these days. Her sorcerous disguise still worked, but for shorter and shorter-and ever less predictable-stretches of time.

Ealstan flipped the atlas open to a map of Derlavai. He started to laugh. “I didn’t realize it was this old.”

“I did,” Vanai told him. “It dates from back before the Six Years’ War.” No kingdom of Forthweg showed on the map; Algarve ruled the eastern half of the land, with Unkerlant holding the west. She went on, “This map doesn’t show where Sommerda is. Go to the one of Unkerlant.”

“All right.” Ealstan turned pages till he found it. When he did, he whistled in surprise. “Even I hadn’t realized it was that far east of the Cottbus River. Powers above, the Algarvians are in trouble if the Unkerlanters have come that far this fast.”

“Good.” Vanai wrapped her arms around her enormous belly. Surely the baby couldn’t wait more than another few days. “I hope they take back all their own kingdom. Then I hope they come into Forthweg and take it away from the Algarvians, too. I hope they do it fast. It’s the only way I can think of to have even a few Kaunians left alive here.”

Ealstan nodded. He couldn’t deny that. He had his own worries about the Unkerlanters. If they overran Forthweg, would King Penda ever return? Or would King Swemmel try to rule the kingdom as his father had in the distant days when the atlas was printed? That mattered a great deal to him. But he had to admit that Vanai’s concern was more urgent.

Kaunian-lover. In Forthweg, even before the Algarvians overran it, that had been a name with which to tar a man. Ealstan didn’t care. He reached out and touched Vanai’s hand.

She looked up, startled; she’d been studying the map hard. But she’d been thinking along with him, too, as she often did. She said, “I wonder if the Kaunians who are left will have to go on disguising themselves- ourselves-as Forthwegians. That would be the end of Kaunianity in Forthweg.”

“I know,” Ealstan said quietly. He didn’t know what to do about it. He didn’t think anyone could do anything about it. He also didn’t think he could say that to Vanai. What he did say was, “Turn to the map of Jelgava. I want to see where the fighting’s moved there.”

“All right.” Vanai turned pages with what looked like relief.

“The news sheet says there’s fighting in Salacgriva, and says that’s an oceanfront town,” Ealstan said. He and Vanai bent over the map, their heads close together. “Why, those lying whoresons!” he exclaimed. “Salacgriva is more than halfway from the sea to Balvi.”

“They are in trouble,” Vanai said softly. “I’ve dreamt for so long that they would be, and now they finally are. But will anything still be standing by the time they’re finally beaten?”

That was another question with no good answer. Instead of trying to answer it, Ealstan kissed her. She smiled at him, which made him think he’d done about as well as he could do.

When he went off to work the next morning, the news-sheet vendors were yelling about the terrible price the Unkerlanters had paid for overrunning Sommerda. Ealstan smiled and walked on without buying a sheet. He could figure out what that meant: Sommerda had fallen. The news sheets were putting the best face they could on it, but they couldn’t deny the brute fact.

Pybba waited for Ealstan when he walked into the pottery. “Do you sleep in your kilns?” Ealstan asked him. As far as he could tell, Pybba was always there. He talked about having a home, but that seemed talk and nothing else.

“Only when I’m in my cups. Get it-my cups?” Pybba laughed uproariously. “Now that you’re finally here, you lazy good-for-nothing, come on into my office. We’ve got things to talk about, you and I.” He pointed with a stubby finger, much scarred from old burns, toward the door to his sanctum.

With that door slammed shut behind them, Ealstan spoke first: “Mezen-tio’s bastards really are taking it on the chin now.”

“Aye, they are,” Pybba agreed. “That’s one of the things I want to talk to you about: won’t be long, if things keep going the way they are, before we’ll be able to rise up against the redheads, throw ‘em out of Eoforwic, maybe throw ‘em out of the whole of Forthweg, too.”

Excitement blazed through Ealstan. “That would be wonderful,” he breathed. “And about time, too.”

Voice dry, the pottery magnate answered, “It does help to have the Algarvians distracted, you know. But we’ve got to rise up before the Unkerlanters do all the work for us, or else we’ll never get our own kingdom back again.”