Darkness Descending (65 page)

By that, Talsu knew he meant,
If only you’d fought harder.
His father felt guilty about not seeing battle. Because he did, he had a low opinion of those who had seen it and hadn’t prevailed—like Talsu.

With a sigh of his own, Talsu answered, “No. Instead you’d be sewing jewels onto some noblewoman’s cloak, and you’d be grumbling about that.”

Traku grunted and ran his fingers through his hair. He was going gray but, like his son and most of his countrymen, was so blond it hardly showed. “Well, what if I would?” he said. “At least she’d be one of our own noblewomen, not a cursed redhead.”

Before Talsu answered, he looked out into the street. No one there looked like coming into the tailor’s shop above which Traku and Talsu and his mother and sister lived. Satisfied he could speak frankly, Talsu said, “If it weren’t for all out idiot noblemen clogging up the officer corps, maybe we wouldn’t have a cursed redhead calling himself King of Jelgava these days. I had to follow their orders, remember—I know what kind of soldiers they made.”

Traku opened the cash box, took out a small silver coin with Bang Mainardo’s beaky portrait stamped on it, and ground it under his heel. “That’s what I think of having
any
Algarvian, let alone King Mezentio’s worthless brother, set up as the ruler of a decent Kaunian kingdom.”

“Oh, aye, I have no love for him, either,” Talsu said. “Who does? But if King Donalitu hadn’t run away to Lagoas after the redheads broke in here, we wouldn’t have an Algarvian calling himself king now. You ask me, Father, Donalitu was as useless as his nobles.”

“That’s what the Algarvians want you to say,” his father answered. “A king doesn’t have a use, except to
be
king. He stands for his kingdom, or else he’s no use at all. And how can an Algarvian king stand for a Kaunian kingdom? It’s against nature, that’s what it is.”

Talsu had no good comeback for that. By everything he knew of magecraft—which wasn’t much—Traku was right. But Traku thought of the Jelgavan nobility in terms of luxuries used up and money wasted. That was how Talsu had thought of the nobles before the war. Now he thought of dukes and counts in terms of lives wasted, which were far more expensive.

“I’ll see you later,” he said, starting out of the shop. “Mother asked me earlier this morning to get her some olive oil and some garlic, and I haven’t done it yet.”

“Go on, then.” Traku was willing to let the argument lie. “You’d better, if you expect to eat supper tonight.”

Laughing—though his father hadn’t been joking—Talsu headed for the grocer’s a couple of blocks away. The weather was mild. Winter in Skrunda only rarely got chilly; the beaches on Jelgavas northeastern coast, the ones that looked across the Garelian Ocean toward equatorial Siaulia, were subtropical themselves. In happier times, they were a popular holiday resort for folk fleeing nasty weather farther south.

The grocer’s lay in the direction of the market square. As always, Talsu looked toward the square on the off chance he might spy something interesting. He didn’t but gave a small double take anyhow. That was foolish; the Algarvians had wrecked the triumphal arch from the days of the Kaunian Empire months before. But he still wasn’t used to its being gone.

One reason Talsu didn’t mind going to the grocer’s was his pretty daughter, Gailisa. She was behind the counter when he walked in, and smiled to see him. “Hello, Talsu,” she said. “What can I get you today?”

“A pint of the middle-grade olive oil and some fresh garlic,” he answered.

Gailisa said, “There’s plenty of garlic, but we’re out of the middle-grade oil. Do you want the cheap stuff or the extra-virgin?” Before he could answer, she held up a warning hand. “If you make jokes about that the way the miserable Algarvians do, I’ll clout you with the jar, do you hear me?”

“Did I say anything?” Talsu asked, as innocently as if such thoughts had never entered his mind. The grocer’s daughter snorted; she knew better. Talsu went on, “Let me have the good oil, if you please.”

“All right—since you asked for it so pretty.” Gailisa reached behind her, pulled an earthenware jar off the shelf, and set it on the counter. “Do you want to choose your own garlic, or shall I grab one for you?”

“Go ahead,” Talsu told her. “You’d do a better job than I would.”

“I knew that,” Gailisa said. “I wondered if you did.” She pulled a good-sized head off a string and handed it to him, then said something in classical Kaunian.

Talsu hadn’t spent enough time in school to learn much of the old language, and modern Jelgavan had drifted too far from it to let him understand the phrase. He had to ask, “What was that?”

“The stinking rose,” Gailisa translated. “I don’t know why they called it that back in the days of the Empire—it doesn’t look anything like a rose—but they did.”

“It doesn’t stink, either,” Talsu said. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like garlic. Powers above, even the redheads eat it.”

“They eat everything,” Gailisa said with a fine curl of the lip. “They’re eating my father out of food, and they only pay half what it’s worth. If he complained, they wouldn’t pay anything at all—they’d just take. They’re the occupiers, so they can do as they please.”

“They’ve always paid my father—so far, anyhow,” Talsu said. “I don’t know what he’d do if one of them didn’t; he gets a lot of his business from them these days.”

“They’re thieves.” Gailisa’s voice was flat. “They’re worse thieves than our own nobles, and they give us back less. I never thought I’d say that about anybody, but it’s true.”

“Aye.” Talsu nodded. “They could have made a lot of people like them if they’d put down the nobles and walked small themselves, but they haven’t bothered. King Mainardo! As if an Algarvian has any business being king here!”

“We lost the war. That means they can do whatever they want, like I said,” Gailisa answered. “They beat us, and now they’re beating us.”

Talsu paid her for the garlic and the oil and left the grocers shop in a hurry. Gailisa sounded almost like his father, blaming him for losing the fight. Maybe she didn’t mean it that way, but that was how it sounded.
If I’d been in charge of things
.. . , Talsu thought, and then laughed at himself. If he’d been in charge of things, the Jelgavan army would still have lost. He didn’t know how to run an army or a war. But the nobles who’d run the army were supposed to.

He stopped in a tavern and bought a glass of red wine flavored with orange and lime juice. The wine was rough and raw and cheap, but better than the thin, sour beer army rations had served up with breakfast every morning. Somebody’d probably promised better, then pocketed half of what he should have spent. That was how things had gone during the war.

As Talsu was leaving the tavern, a couple of Algarvian soldiers strode in. If he hadn’t stepped back in a hurry, they would have walked right over him. He wanted to smash them for their arrogance, but didn’t dare. Two against one was bad odds, and all the occupiers in Skrunda would come after him even if he won.

Hating the Algarvians, hating himself, he went home. His father, having sewn one half of the Algarvian officer’s tunic, was muttering the charm that would finish the stitching. It wasn’t quite a straight application of the law of similarity, because the left half was a mirror image of the right. Talsu wouldn’t have wanted to try it himself; he knew he didn’t have the skill. But his father was the best tailor in Skrunda and for several towns around, not only for his handwork but also for the craft spells that meant he didn’t have to do everything by hand.

As soon as Traku spoke the final word of command, the thread he’d laid on the left side of the tunic writhed as if alive, then stitched itself through the fabric, duplicating his careful sewing on the right side. He watched anxiously, trusting even long-familiar magic less than his needlework. But everything turned out as it should have.

“That’s a nice piece of work, Father,” Talsu said, setting the oil and the garlic on the counter by the newly finished tunic.

“Aye, it is, if I say so myself,” Traku agreed. “Cursed pity I’m wasting it on the redheads.” Talsu grimaced and had to nod.

Eoforwic was like no place Vanai had ever known. Of course, she hadn’t known many places in her young life: only Oyngestun and a few visits to Gromheort. She’d thought Gromheort a great city. Next to Oyngestun, it surely was. But measured against the capital of Forthweg—
the former capital of former Forthweg,
she thought—Gromheort sank down to what it was: a provincial town like two dozen others in the kingdom.

Gromheort had at its heart the local count’s palace. Eoforwic had at its heart the royal palace. The palace was badly battered. Forthwegian soldiers had defended it against invading Unkerlanters, and then, less than two years later, the Unkerlanters had defended it against invading Algarvians. Even battered, though, it was far larger, far grander, and far more elegant than the count of Gromheort’s residence. And the rest of Eoforwic was in proportion to its heart.

“Aye, it’s a big place,” Ealstan said one morning, doing his resolute best not to show how impressed he was. “More chances for us not to get noticed.” His wave took in the cramped little flat they were sharing. “Like this, for instance.”

Vanai nodded. “Aye. Like this.” After the comfortable house in which she’d lived with her grandfather, the flat, in a rundown part of town, seemed especially small and especially dingy.

But living with Ealstan rather than Brivibas made a lot of difference. Her grandfather had neither known nor much cared about what she was thinking. Ealstan, by contrast, thought along with her: “I know it’s not much. I’m used to better, too. But nobody who’s not really looking hard for us would ever find us here. And the company’s good.”

She went around the rickety kitchen table and gave him a hug. After serving as an Algarvian officer’s plaything, she’d thought she would never want another man to touch her, let alone that she would want to touch a man herself. Finding she’d been wrong was a wonder and a delight.

Ealstan pulled her down onto his lap—which made his chair, as decrepit as the table, creak—and kissed her. Then he let her go, something Major Spinello hadn’t been in the habit of doing. “I’m off,” he said matter-of-factly. “The last fellow I worked for has a friend who’s also glad to find a bookkeeper who can count past ten without taking off his shoes.”

“He couldn’t possibly pay you what you’re worth,” Vanai said. This time, she kissed him. Why not? The door was closed, the window shuttered against late-winter chill. No one would know. No one would care.

“He’ll pay me enough to keep us eating a while longer and keep a roof over our heads,” Ealstan answered with a bleak pragmatism she found very appealing. He headed out the door as if he’d been going off to work every day for the past twenty years.

Vanai washed the breakfast dishes. She’d been doing that ever since she was able to handle plates without dropping them; her grandfather, while a splendid historical scholar, was not made for the real world. Then she went back into the bedroom and sprawled across the bed she and Ealstan shared at night.

Looking at the bare, roughly plastered wall only a couple of feet from her face made her sigh. She missed the books she’d left behind in Oyngestun. Until she met Ealstan, books were almost the only friends she’d had. She missed the books more than she missed Brivibas. That should have shamed her, but it didn’t. Her grandfather had been perfectly hateful toward her since she started giving herself to the Algarvian to get him out of the labor gang.

The only book in the flat was a cheap, badly printed volume the previous tenant had forgotten when he moved out. At the moment, it lay on the nightstand. Vanai picked it up, sighed, and shook her head. It was a Forthwegian translation of an Algarvian historical romance called
The Wicked Empire Aflame.

Because it was the only book she had, she’d read it. It was laughably bad in any number of different ways. She had trouble deciding whether it took liberties with history or simply ignored it. All the Algarvian mercenaries were virile heroes. The men of the Kaunian Empire were cowards and villains. Their wives and daughters fairly panted to find out what the Algarvians had under their kilts—and find out they did, in great detail.

But Vanai didn’t laugh at the romance, not any more, though she had when she first started reading. Being her grandfathers granddaughter, she saw through all the lies the writer was telling. But what would some ignorant Algarvian or Forthwegian think after reading
The Wicked Empire Aflame}
He’d think Kaunians were cowards and villains, that’s what, and their women sluts. He’d think they deserved the massacre so lovingly described in the last chapter.

And if he thought that about the ancient Kaunians, what would he think about their modern descendants? Wouldn’t he be more likely to think they deserved whatever happened to them, too, than if he hadn’t read the romance?

Vanai wondered how many copies of
The Wicked Empire Aflame
were floating around in Algarve and, now, in Forthweg. She wondered how many similar romances Algarvian writers had churned out and how many copies of them were floating around. She wondered what else the redheads had done to convince their own people and those they’d subjected that Kaunians weren’t quite human.

Her mouth twisted. A lot of Forthwegians wouldn’t need much convincing about that. A lot of Algarvians probably didn’t need much convincing, either. Were things otherwise, how could they put Kaunians on caravan cars heading toward the miserable end awaiting them in the west?

She shivered. That had nothing to do with the weather; the flat, whatever its other shortcomings, was warm enough. But she and her grandfather had come within a hair’s breadth of being herded aboard one of those caravan cars themselves. One Algarvian constable had persuaded another to pick a couple of different Kaunians from Oyngestun. They were surely dead now, while Vanai and Brivibas lived.

“If you call this living,” Vanai muttered. She went out of the flat as seldom as she could. If the Algarvians saw her on the street, they were liable to seize her. She knew that. But staying cooped up with nothing to do had no appeal, either. The flat probably hadn’t been so clean since the week after it was built.