Only the rich got fat down in the Empire. That was one way you could tell they were rich: they always had plenty to eat. Hardly any Bizogots grew fat. In the springtime, the Leaping Lynxes had been the exception. So many ducks and geese and swans and other birds bred at Sudertorp Lake, what the Bizogots took barely dented the abundance.
Now Trasamund’s band was reaping the same benefits. Hamnet could smell duck grease on his own mustache. He said, “You aren’t fat. You’re just right.” He hoped Marcovefa believed him, because he meant it.
“How do I know that?” she asked.
“Well, if I haven’t shown you, I must be older and feebler than I thought I was,” he said. He knew exactly what he could do. For a man his age, it wasn’t bad at all. Of course, he did get magical help every now and then, too.
“You are only a man. Men will say anything so they can do that.” Marcovefa dismissed half the human race with a wave of the hand.
Instead of arguing with her, Hamnet changed the subject: “Have you learned anything worthwhile from Tahpenes?”
“Maybe a little,” Marcovefa said grudgingly. “Not much, but a little.”
“Like what?” Hamnet asked.
“I have learned I would not want to be a woman among the Rulers,” Marcovefa answered. “They are for screwing, for birthing warriors, for doing what men tell them to do. And that is all, poor fools.”
To Hamnet Thyssen, that sounded a lot like women’s life among the Bizogots—or, for that matter, down in the Empire. Women took their revenge with adultery and other betrayal. He knew more about that than he’d ever wanted to find out. If he said something along those lines, he would only make Marcovefa angry. So he asked, “How are things different up on the Glacier?”
“My folk don’t think a woman with a working brain is poison,” Marcovefa answered. “They like clever women, in fact. If women are shamans, then more men can hunt and fight. It is so here, too, I have seen.”
Slowly, Hamnet nodded. That was true enough. Liv filled the bill. His mouth tightened, as it often did when he thought of her. He knew he’d tried too hard to hold on. Knowing didn’t tell him how to stop doing things like that. He wished it would have.
He couldn’t even blame Liv too much, the way he did with Gudrid. Liv hadn’t sneaked around behind his back. She’d warned him what she was going to do, and then she’d done it. And if Audun Gilli made her unhappy—or, more likely, when Audun Gilli made her unhappy—she’d leave him the same way.
As for Gudrid . . . No, he didn’t want to think about her at all. And so he asked Marcovefa, “It’s different with the Rulers?”
“I should say it is!” Indignation snapped in her eyes. “To them, a woman is nothing but a twat with legs. That is how you say it, yes?”
“If that’s what you want to say, that’s how you say it, all right,” Count Hamnet agreed gravely.
“As long as a woman has the brains to lie down and open up”—Marcovefa demonstrated lewdly—“that is all the Rulers want.”
That was all quite a few men from this side of the Glacier wanted in a woman, too. “No woman shamans among them, though?” Hamnet said.
“None,” Marcovefa answered. “This Tahpenes chit, she didn’t think it was possible. Even when Liv worked magic in front of her stupid pointed nose, she still didn’t think it was possible. Some people are so stupid, you wonder how they stay alive. Some people are so stupid, you wonder why they stay alive.”
Count Hamnet wanted whatever weapons he could find against the Rulers. “Do you think we could stir up trouble between their men and women?” he asked. “Once the women find out we let women do more things here, will they squabble with their menfolk? Will that turn into anything we can use?”
Marcovefa kissed him. “You have a sneaky, wicked way of looking at the world—do you know that?”
“It all depends,” Hamnet said. Ulric Skakki thought he was a natural-born innocent. Hamnet feared the adventurer was right. Otherwise, how could he have stayed blind to so many things for so long? But even an innocent by imperial standards might look like a sophisticate to someone who’d come down from the Glacier not long before. “Do you think that might work?”
“It might—no way to know till we try,” Marcovefa said. “But how do we even begin?”
“Not hard.” Sure enough, Hamnet did feel like a sly sophisticate. He cherished the feeling, knowing it might not come again any time soon. “Let Tahpenes see how things are here. Maybe even play things up while she’s watching. Then let her get away. She takes trouble for the Rulers with her, stuck inside her own head.”
“Let her get away?” Marcovefa’s eyes widened. “I would never think of that, not in ten thousand years. When you have a captive, you keep a captive. Maybe you fatten up a little, if you can spare the food, but you keep.”
Once it formed, the picture of Tahpenes’ butchered carcass turning on a spit didn’t want to leave Hamnet Thyssen’s mind. He remembered the smell of roasting man’s flesh. He’d been hungry for it till he realized what it was. To the folk who lived up on the Glacier, people from other clans were, quite literally, fair game.
He scowled at Marcovefa, partly joking, partly not. “You did that on purpose, to make me imagine things I don’t want to think about.”
“As long as you don’t imagine eating Tahpenes while she is still alive.” Marcovefa shrugged. “Not much worry there. Not a pretty woman.”
“No. Not,” Hamnet said, and then, “You make me sound like a man of the Rulers.” He did think the invaders’ strong, harsh features suited their men better than their women.
“I am sorry,” Marcovefa said. “I meant to insult you, but I did not mean to insult you that much.”
“Er—right,” Count Hamnet said. His more-or-less beloved from atop the Glacier could be—and usually was—devastatingly frank. To keep any more arrows from flying his way, he asked, “How can we let Tahpenes escape without her knowing she isn’t doing it all on her own?”
“That is a hard question,” Marcovefa answered. “The Rulers are such fools. They think everything is over if you are a captive. The men don’t try to get away because they know their own folk won’t want them back. Maybe it is different for a woman. We can hope so.”
“Yes.” Hamnet nodded. “Otherwise, it would be like a dog you couldn’t chase away even if you wanted to.”
“Dogs.” Marcovefa made a face. “What good are they? They help with the herding, but is that enough to be worth the food they eat? You people down here don’t eat them unless you are starving. They are nothing but a waste of time.”
There were no dogs up on the Glacier. There wasn’t enough food up there to support them. There was barely enough to support people. Hamnet Thyssen wondered what Marcovefa thought of pampered lap dogs—dogs that didn’t even pretend to earn their keep—down in the Raumsdalian Empire. He also wondered what she made of cats.
But back to dogs . . . “People like them,” Hamnet said. “And they like people. Knowing somebody or something likes you—that’s worth a lot to a lot of people.”
“Maybe. If you can’t find people to like you, though, you have to be pretty hard up to care about a stupid dog,” Marcovefa said.
“A lot of people are pretty hard up,” Count Hamnet said. He didn’t add that he’d been that way himself. Sometimes dogs were easier to deal with than people. Dogs expected so much less from you. Again, he didn’t say anything about cats. Cats didn’t particularly like people. They just exploited them. Parasites with purrs, he thought.
“Dogs are slaves. They’re bred to like people. They have no choice,” Marcovefa said, which was true enough. Then she surprised Hamnet by adding, “Cats, now, cats are free. I liked cats when I saw them in your Empire. Cats do what they want, not what you want. I would make a good cat.”
Count Hamnet needed no more than a moment to nod. “Yes,” he said. “I think you would.”