Harry Turtledove - After the downfall

"Why should we be?" Drepteaza asked. "The only reason the blonds' goddess ever notices us is to hurt us. She will do that anyway. But you — you may teach us things we need to know so she can't hurt us so badly."

She was bound to be right about the goddess. About Hasso… Still using Lenello — he wanted to make sure she followed him — he said, "How can I show you anything if you keep me locked in this cursed cell all the time?"

He expected her to say no, or to say she couldn't decide anything by herself. Asking her sovereign would let her stall for a couple of days, keep Hasso's hopes up, and let him down easy when Lord Zgomot told him he had to stay locked up. But Drepteaza asked, "Will you give your parole not to try to escape?"

"You believe me if I do that?"

"Yes," she answered, switching from her tongue to Lenello to add, "You may even swear by the goddess if you like."

Hasso considered that. He needed no more than a heartbeat to decide it was a bad idea. "I will give it. If saying isn't good enough for you, why should swearing be better?" he asked, also in Lenello: he wanted to be as sure as he could of saying just what he meant.

And he judged Drepteaza — and, presumably, Lord Zgomot as well — aright. The priestess looked pleased, which didn't happen every day; most of the time, she was all business. "Well said," she told him in Bucovinan. "Come, then, if you care to."

"May I please wash first?" he asked, still in Lenello.

She nodded. "Yes, you should be fit to go out in public. We will take you to the baths."

The baths were public and mixed, partly like ancient Rome and partly like Japan. You rubbed yourself in a small hot pool with a root that smelled something like licorice; it did a pretty good job of getting rid of dirt and grease. Then you rinsed off in a larger, cooler communal pool. Perhaps a dozen little pools surrounded the big one.

Communal meant what it said: men and women bathed together. Their relaxed attitude among themselves showed the difference between nudity and nakedness. Hasso, by contrast, drew startled stares and whispers. He understood why, too — a swan couldn't have been more conspicuous at a conclave of crows.

Even the tallest natives hardly came up to the bottom of his chin. He wasn't a shrimp any more, as he had been among the Lenelli. That felt good. The hair on his body, like that on his head, was yellow, not dark or grizzled. His skin was pink rather than olive. Even his battle marks were strange. Bullets left round, puckered scars, not the long, thin traces of knife and sword wounds.

Some of his guards had stripped with him. Others wore mailshirts and helms and kept weapons. Parole or no parole, they were being careful. One of the bathing guards pointed to a bullet wound on Hasso's leg and asked, "What did this? An arrow?" He sounded as if he didn't believe it.

And it wasn't true. Shaking his head, Hasso answered, "No." They were speaking Bucovinan, so he kept things as simple as he could. He imitated the noise of the submachine gun.

He got back a blank look. The guard must not have been at the battle where he used up the last of his Schmeisser ammo. From the next pool over, Drepteaza spoke too fast for Hasso to follow. She'd also taken off her clothes and started bathing. Her figure was even sweeter and riper than Hasso had guessed. He looked at her only in glances out of the corner of his eye. He'd gone a long time without a woman, and didn't think the natives would appreciate a bathhouse hard-on.

Whatever she said, it seemed to ease the guard's mind. "So you are a warrior, then, and not a — " he said.

"Don't understand last word," Hasso said.

"A wizard," Drepteaza told him in Lenello.

"Yes, warrior," Hasso said hastily. "Not… what is word?" The guard repeated it. Hasso added it to his vocabulary. "No, not wizard," he repeated. "Only warrior." He didn't want the Grenye to think he could work magic. That would only make what was already bad worse. And he didn't much want to think he was a wizard, either.

Did he protest too much? Was that what Drepteaza's raised eyebrow meant? Well, better a raised eyebrow than a raised… Hasso managed to walk from the warm pool to the cooler one without embarrassing himself worse than he was already.

He felt like a new man once he'd bathed. The new man was chilly. The natives heated the pools, yeah, but the building that housed them was drafty, and it was winter outside. And he wrinkled his nose when he redonned the outfit he'd been wearing since he was captured. "Can wash clothes, too?" he asked Drepteaza.

First she corrected his grammar and pronunciation. Then she put on her own clothes. He sighed — mentally — when those dark-tipped breasts vanished under her tunic. They'd given him something to think about during lessons besides grammar and pronunciation. Then she said, "Yes. Why not? You can wear ours while we wash yours."

Hasso didn't think the Bucovinans would be able to find anything to fit him. But they gave him breeches and an embroidered tunic that were, if anything, on the big side. Then he remembered they had Lenello prisoners — and also Lenello renegades. Those people had to wear something, too.

When he remarked to Drepteaza that he hadn't met any of them, she said, "No, and you won't, either, not for a while. We don't know how far we can trust you. We don't know how far we can trust all of them, either. Some we know we can't trust too far." Her face clouded. "Some Lenelli here want to rule us, not help us."

The natives were in a bind. They needed help from the Lenelli, who knew too many things they didn't. But the Lenelli, even the ones here, were imperfectly disinterested. How much were they out to help Bucovin, and how much themselves? How often had the Grenye — not just in Bucovin, but farther west, too — got burned?

Quite a few times, by Drepteaza's tone.

How do I look innocent? How do I sound innocent? Am I innocent? Hasso wondered. Those were all damn good questions. He wished he knew the answers.

Once the Bucovinans decided he wouldn't sprout feathers and fly away, they let him out of his cell more often. He always had an escort, though: several unsmiling soldiers — swordsmen, pikemen, and archers — and Drepteaza. The priestess went with him most of the time, anyhow. When she couldn't for whatever reason, Rautat did.

"You ought to thank me," Hasso told the veteran underofficer one day. "If not for me, you wouldn't have soft duty at the palace."

"I'd thank you more if you hadn't scragged so many of my buddies," Rautat answered: he sounded like a sergeant even speaking Lenello. Aiming a blunt forefinger at Hasso's middle, he continued, "Now go back to Bucovinan. You're supposed to be learning my language, remember?"

"Right," Hasso said… in Bucovinan. Rautat grinned. Hasso came to attention and clicked his heels.

"What's that nonsense all about?" Rautat also fell back into his own tongue.

"Shows…" Hasso had no idea how to say respect or anything like it. "Like this," he said, and saluted. "My people do."

"Pretty silly, if you ask me." Rautat was short — all Grenye were short next to Hasso — but he was feisty. He gestured with his thumb. "C'mon."

They actually left the palace, the first time they'd let Hasso do that since he came to Falticeni. He wore a heavy sheepskin jacket, but the cold wind still started to freeze his nose. It wasn't Leningrad or Moscow winter, but it sure as hell wasn't a holiday on the Riviera, either.

Bundled-up Bucovinans gaped at him the way he'd eyed tigers in the zoo when he was a kid: fascination mixed with dread. But he wasn't behind stout iron bars, even if he did have guards along. See? The monster is loose! What else were the natives going to think after everything that had happened since the Lenelli landed on their shores?