Читать «Rulers of the Darkness (хвв-4)» онлайн - страница 423

He nodded. "I've noticed. With the tunic, though, it hardly shows, even yet."

"With the tunic, no," Vanai said. "Without it…" She shrugged. Her body had stayed much the same ever since she became a woman. To watch it change, to feel it change, almost from day to day was disconcerting, to say the very least.

Ealstan shrugged, too. "I like the way you look without your tunic just fine, believe me."

Vanai did believe him. She'd heard of men who lost interest in their wives when the women were expecting a baby. That hadn't happened with Ealstan, who remained as eager as ever. In fact, from the look in his eye now… The supper dishes got cleaned rather later than they might have.

When they woke up the next morning, Ealstan spoke in classical Kaunian, as if to emphasize his words: "You look like Vanai again, not like Thelberge."

"Do I?" Vanai spoke Forthwegian, annoyed Forthwegian: "But I renewed the spell just before we went to sleep, and you told me I'd got it right. It really isn't holding as long as it used to."

"I don't know what to tell you." Ealstan returned to Forthwegian, too. "You need to be careful, that's all." He got out of bed and put on fresh drawers and a clean tunic. "And I need to get going, or Pybba will have me for breakfast when I get to his office. He just about lives there, and he thinks everybody else should, too."

"I am careful," Vanai insisted. "I have to be." She got out of bed, too. "Here, I'll fix your breakfast."

It didn't take much fixing: barley bread with olive oil, some raisins on the side, and a cup of wine to wash things down. Vanai ate with Ealstan, and then, while he shifted from foot to foot with impatience to be gone, went through the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian. When she was through, he said, "There you are, sure enough- you look like my sister again."

She didn't even let that annoy her, not this morning. "As long as I don't look like a Kaunian, everything's fine," she said. "I spent too much time cooped up in this flat. I don't care to do it again."

"If you have to, you have to," Ealstan answered. "Better that than getting caught, wouldn't you say?" He brushed his lips across hers. "I really do have to go. By the powers above, don't do anything foolish."

That did make her angry. "I don't intend to," she said, biting the words off between her teeth. "Going out and making sure we don't starve doesn't count as foolish to me. I hope it doesn't to you, either."

"No," Ealstan admitted. "But getting caught does. I've bought food for us before. I can do it again."

"Everything will be fine," Vanai repeated. "Go on. You're the one worrying about being late." She shoved him out the door.

Once he was gone, she washed the handful of breakfast dishes. Then, more than a little defiantly, she put money in her handbag and went out the door herself. I won't be caged up anymore. I won't, curse it, she thought.

No one paid any attention to her when she left the lobby of her block of flats and went down the stairs to the sidewalk. Why should anyone have paid attention to her? She looked as much like a Forthwegian as anyone else on the street.