Harry Turtledove - Jaws of Darkness

There wasn’t quite the desperate dash and scramble there would have been a few months before. For one thing, the redheads’ dowsing techniques had improved, which gave people a little more time to take shelter. And, for another, Unkerlanter dragons over Eoforwic were no longer a horrid surprise. They’d come often enough by now to let folk know what to expect.

One of the things to expect was disaster, if you had the misfortune to be on the upper story of a building that a bursting egg leveled. Vanai started for the door, intending to go downstairs into a cellar herself. As pregnant as she was, she couldn’t go anywhere very fast, and so was grateful for the extra warning time the Algarvian dowsers gave. Not that they’re doing it for the likes of me, she thought.

With a hand on the latch, though, she checked herself. She’d seen those constables leave the Kaunian quarter. She suspected the pair she’d seen hadn’t been the only ones getting out, either. How likely was it that the guards around the edge of the district were all staying at their posts? Not very, unless she missed her guess.

Which meant… “Which means that, if I’m lucky, if they’re in cellars, if an Unkerlanter egg doesn’t tear me to pieces, this is the best chance I’ll ever have to get out of the quarter,” Vanai breathed.

Once the idea came to her, she didn’t hesitate for a moment. She grabbed the long, Forthwegian-style tunic, then checked her pockets to make sure she had the brown yarn and the yellow. It was death to look like a Forthwegian inside the Kaunian quarter. It was also death to look like a Kaunian out of it. But if no one saw her appearance change from the one to the other… I have to try, she thought. What have I got to lose?

She left the block of flats and came out onto the street just as the first eggs began bursting in Eoforwic. Looking up, she saw rock-gray dragons wheeling in the blue sky. “Get into a cellar, you cursed fool!” somebody shouted to her.

But Vanai had no intention of getting into a cellar, and didn’t think herself at all foolish. At the awkward waddle that was the fastest gait she had, she hurried toward the edge of the Kaunian quarter, only a few blocks away. More and more eggs fell, some of them quite close. She moaned with fear, but kept going.

Someone else behind her shouted something. She looked over her shoulder and moaned again-an Algarvian constable, a plumpish one. But he wasn’t close, and he might not have been shouting at her. She still had a chance.

She ducked into a doorway, tore off her Kaunian clothes, and threw on the Forthwegian tunic. Then she raced through the spell that let her look Forthwegian, too. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and trotted-a lumbering trot, but a trot nonetheless-toward safety (barring eggs, of course) now only half a block away.

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.”