Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  “I hope not,” Fernao said. “I hope we are coming out of the darkness of these years just past.” Vorosmarty held his peace, but he did not look convinced. Well, he wouldn‘t, Fernao thought. Somehow, that left him less happy, less secure, than he would have liked after such a triumph.

  From the crenelated battlements of his castle, Skarnu looked out over his new marquisate. The castle, on high ground, was admirably sited for defense; the traitorous Simanu and Enkuru’s ancestors had known what they were doing when they built here. Not till egg-tossers came along would anyone have had much chance of taking this place.

  Merkela came up beside him and pointed to where fields ended and forest began, a mile or two away. “That was where we settled Simanu,” she said. “Good riddance to him, too.”

  “Aye.” Skarnu put his arm around her. “It’s over now. We’ve won. Nobody’s at war with anybody, anywhere in the world.” He shook his head, half in sorrow, half in wonder. “And how long has it been since the last time that was so?”

  His wife shrugged. She didn’t worry much about the world at large. Her worries, as usual, lay closer to home. “There are still collaborators loose. We have to smoke them out.”

  “Aye,” Skarnu repeated. It did need doing, but fewer people, these days, still shared Merkela’s zeal. A lot of them wanted nothing more than to go back to living their lives as if the Derlavaian War had never happened. As day followed day, Skarnu found it harder and harder to blame them.

  Merkela said, “Did you see the news sheet that came yesterday? They put that woman in the witness box against Lurcanio.” She still refused to call Krasta Skarnu’s sister. When she hated, she did a thorough job.

  “I saw it,” Skarnu answered with a sigh. “At least the news of peace pushed it to the back pages. Every time I think we’ve had all the embarrassment we’re going to get from that, I turn out to be wrong.”

  “It doesn’t look like they’ll summon you,” Merkela said.

  “No, it doesn’t,” Skarnu agreed. “I’m not really surprised. The only dealings I ever had with the redhead were the kind the people on opposite sides in a war usually have. He played by the rules then.”

  “I hope they call Vatsyunas and Pernavai,” his wife said. “They can tell the judges what the Algarvians did to Kaunians in Forthweg.”

  The married couple had been aboard the ley-line caravan Skarnu and Merkela helped sabotage as it went past her farm. If that caravan hadn’t been sabotaged, all the captives aboard it would have been sacrificed for their life energy. As things were, a good many of them had scattered over the Valmieran countryside. Vatsyunas and Pernavai had worked on Merkela’s farm for a while, and had both worked with the underground, too.

  “What I remember about Vatsyunas is the way he spoke Valmieran,” Skarnu said. That got a smile and a nod from Merkela. Stern as she was, she couldn’t deny Vatsyunas had sounded pretty funny. His birthspeech, of course, was classical Kaunian. He’d known not a word of Valmieran, one of the old tongue’s daughters, when he found himself here. In learning, he’d seemed like a man stuck in time halfway between the days of the Kaunian Empire and the modern world.

  “He’d make himself understood,” Merkela said, “and he would be able to testify from the other side about what the redheads did to folk of Kaunian blood.”

  “Aye, but would he be able to testify that Lurcanio had anything to do with the caravan he was on?” Skarnu asked.

  “I don’t know,” Merkela replied, “and I don’t much care, either. All I care about is that all the redheads get what’s coming to them. I hope the soldiers in Algarve are taking plenty of hostages, and I hope they’re blazing them, too.”

  She’d lost her first husband when Mezentio’s men took him hostage and blazed him. If they hadn’t seized Gedominu (after whom she’d named her son), she wouldn’t be wed to Skarnu now, and wouldn’t be a marchioness. Skarnu wondered if she ever thought about that. After a moment, he also wondered if it was true. He and Merkela had been drawn to each other before the redheads took Gedominu. What would have happened if they hadn’t?

  No way to know. Would they have kept on holding back? Or would they have lain together even with Gedominu still there? What would he have done if they had? Looked the other way? Maybe-he’d been twice Merkela’s age. But maybe not, too. He might have come after both of them with a hatchet… or with a stick.

  Skarnu shrugged. It hadn’t happened. It belonged in the vague, ghostly forest of might-have-beens, along with such things as Valmiera holding her own against Algarve and magic being impossible. They might be interesting to think about, but they weren’t real and never would be.

  Merkela said, “I’m going down to tend to the herb garden.”

  “All right,” Skarnu answered, “but don’t you think the cook’s helper could handle the job well enough?”

  “Maybe, but maybe not, too,” his wife said. “I’m sure I know at least as much about it as she does, and I don’t care to sit around twiddling my thumbs all day. I was taking care of an herb garden as soon as I was big enough to know how. Why should I stop doing it now?”

  Because noblewomen don’t do such things. Because it makes the servitors nervous when they do. Skarnu might have thought that, but he didn’t say it. It made sense to him. He knew it would have made perfect sense to Krasta. But he also knew it would have been meaningless to Merkela. As she’d said, she’d worked since she got big enough to do it. Stopping because her social class had changed was beyond her mental horizon.

  Come to that, Skarnu himself had been more useless back in Priekule before the war than he was here and now. He looked out over his domain. Everything he could see, near enough, was his to administer. True, that would have meant more a few centuries earlier, when being a marquis was like being a king in small. King Gainibu held the ultimate authority here these days, and Skarnu was no rebellious vassal.

  But he still had low justice in this domain-subject to an appeal to the king’s courts, but such appeals were rare. And he was doing his best to get to the bottom of real cases of collaboration, and to make sure people didn’t launch false accusations to pay back old enemies. He’d fined a couple of people for doing exactly that, and dared hope the rest would get the message.

  High overhead, a goshawk called out: “Kye-kye-kye!” The hawk had a better view than Skarnu did, and better eyes, too. In the old days, Skarnu thought, I might have flown a bird like that at game. Falconry, though, was one thing of which he knew nothing. He laughed softly. I have enough trouble keeping Merkela’s feathers unruffled.

  That was a joke, but it also held no small amount of truth. His wife was as she was, and nothing he could do would change her very much. He’d taken a while to realize that, but was convinced he’d touched truth there. So far as he could tell, Merkela hadn’t tried very hard to make him over. Maybe that showed good sense. Maybe it just showed she’d been married once before.

  He waved up toward the goshawk. The bird, of course, paid him no attention. It rode the breeze that ruffled his hair. The air was its element, as the ground was his. “Good hunting,” he called to it, and he went down the spiral stair to his own proper place.

  They made them turn this way so attackers would have the wall hampering their right arms, while defenders could freely swing their swords, he thought. Even in the long-gone days, they worried about tactics.

  When he came down into the main hall, Valmiru the butler said, “I’m glad to see you, your Excellency.” His tone implied, I’d have come to get you if you’d stayed up there much longer.

  “Are you?” Skarnu asked suspiciously. Any time a servitor used a tone like that, it made him doubt he was glad to see the said servitor. “What’s gone wrong now?”

  Valmiru gave him an appreciative nod. “A gentleman-a country gentleman- requests a few moments of your time.” He coughed. “His request was, ah, rather urgent, your Excellency.”

  A junior servant piped up: “He said he’d whale the stuffing out of anybody wh
o got in his way. He’s drunk as a lord, he is.” Then, realizing he hadn’t picked the best simile, he gulped. “Begging your pardon, your Excellency.”

  “It’s all right.” Skarnu turned to the butler. “And what is this. . country gentleman’s name, and why does he want to see me so badly?”

  “He called himself Zemaitu, sir,” Valmiru answered. “He would not tell me precisely what he wants. Whatever it is, though, he is most emphatic in wanting it. And he is indeed somewhat elevated by spirits.”

  “Well, I’ll listen to him,” Skarnu said. “If he’s too greatly elevated, we’ll just throw him out.” After his time in the army and the underground, dealing with one drunken peasant didn’t worry him.

  But when he saw Zemaitu, he had second thoughts. Here stood a bear of a man, taller than Skarnu and broad as an Unkerlanter through the shoulders. By the aroma that hovered around him, he might have come straight from a distillery. He gave Skarnu a clumsy bow. “You’ve got to help me, your Excellency,” he said. His voice was surprisingly high and light for a man of his bulk.

  “I will if I can,” Skarnu answered. “What am I supposed to help you about, though? Till I know that, I don’t know what I can do.”

  “I want to marry my sweetheart,” Zemaitu said. “I want to, but her old man won’t let me, even though we made our promises back before the war.” A tear ran down his stubbly cheek; he was very drunk indeed.

  “Why won’t he?” Skarnu asked. He thought he could guess the answer: one of them, would-be groom or prospective father-in-law, was accusing the other of getting too cozy with the redheads.

  And that turned out to be close, though not quite on the mark. “I was in the army,” Zemaitu said, “and I got captured when Mezentio’s whoresons broke through in the north. I spent a while in a captives’ camp in Algarve, and then they put me to work on a farm there, growing things so their men could go off and fight. And now Draska’s pa, he says I sucked up to the Algarvians, and he don’t want me in the family no more. You got to help me, your Excellency, sir! What in blazes could I have done but work where they told me to?”

  “That’s all you did? You worked on a farm?” Skarnu asked sternly.

  “By the powers above, sir, I swear it!” Zemaitu said. “You got a mage, sir, he can see for hisself. I ain’t no liar, not me!”

  A truth spell was a simple thing. Skarnu set a hand on the peasant’s shoulder. “We’ll do that,” he said. “Not because I don’t believe you, but to convince your sweetheart’s father. When you were in their power, they could set you to work where they pleased. You’re lucky they didn’t do worse to you.”

  “I know that, sir,” Zemaitu said. “I know that now.”

  “All right, then. I’ll settle it,” Skarnu said. Zemaitu started sniffling again. Skarnu clapped him on the back. Sometimes, his post was worth having.

  Eighteen

  Good day to you,” Valamo said in classical Kaunian as Talsu walked into the Kuusaman tailor’s shop.

  “Good day to you, sir,” Talsu answered in Kuusaman. A word, a phrase, a conjugation at a time, he was picking up the language of the land that had taken him in. The flat vowels, some short, some long, still felt strange in his mouth, but people understood him when he spoke. Unless they slowed down for him, though, he had trouble understanding them.

  “How are you today?” Valamo asked, switching to Kuusaman himself.

  “I am well, thank you.” Talsu came out with another stock phrase. Then he had to fall back on classical Kaunian: “What is there for me to do today?”

  “Some leggings, a cape to finish, a few other things,” Valamo said, also in the old tongue. He smiled at Talsu. “Since you taught me that wonderful charm, we get more done in less time.”

  Talsu smiled back, and managed a dutiful nod. He still had mixed feelings about that charm. It was everything the Algarvian who’d taught it to his father and him said it would be. If only he hadn’t learned it from a redhead! The spell itself was surely clean, but hadn’t it grown in tainted soil?

  “Well, to work,” he said, pushing down his qualms as he did almost every day. He had that bit of Kuusaman down solid; Valamo said it at any excuse or none. Talsu’s new boss was a sunnier man than his own father, but no less dedicated to doing what needed doing and making sure everyone else did, too. Talsu asked, “What do you want me to do first?” He could never go wrong there, either, even if he did have to say it in classical Kaunian.

  “Do the cape,” Valamo told him. “Once you get done with that, tell me, and I will see what wants doing next.”

  That was also in classical Kaunian; Talsu could answer in Kuusaman, and did: “All right.”

  He was busy working on the cape-a much heavier garment than anyone in Jelgava would have worn, and one more like those he’d made for Algarvian soldiers bound for Unkerlant-when the bell above the door to Valamo’s shop chimed. When Talsu looked up, he started in alarm, for he thought the man walking into the shop was himself an Algarvian. The fellow was a tall redhead, and wore a tunic and kilt.

  But he also had narrow eyes set on a slant, and wore his hair gathered in a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck. A Lagoan, Talsu realized, and let out a sigh of relief.

  If he was a Lagoan, though, he spoke excellent Kuusaman-spoke it too fast for Talsu to follow, in fact. He blinked when Valamo turned to him and said, “He does not want to talk to me. He wants to talk to you.”

  “To me?” Talsu said, startled into Jelgavan. Switching to classical Kaunian, he nodded to the newcomer. “What do you want, sir?”

  “Can you follow my Valmieran?” the fellow asked. Talsu nodded; his own tongue and that of the other Kaunian kingdom in the east were close kin. “Good,” the redheaded man said. “I want you to make me a wedding suit.”

  “A wedding suit?” Talsu echoed, still taken aback. Then his wits started to work. “Why me? You seem to know who I am.”

  “Aye, I do,” the Lagoan answered. “You see, the woman I am marrying is named Pekka.” He waited to see if that would get a reaction from Talsu.

  “Oh!” Talsu exclaimed. “Please make her happy. . ah?”

  “My name is Fernao,” the Lagoan said.

  “Thank you, Master Fernao,” Talsu said. “Please make her happy. I owe her so much. If it weren’t for her, I would still be sitting in a Jelgavan dungeon.”

  “I translated your wife’s letter,” Fernao told him. “She had a little something to do with this, too.”

  “Then I thank you, too, sir,” Talsu said. “If I had my own shop, I would be proud to make you your suit for nothing. As things are. .” He glanced over toward Valamo.

  “I did not come in here for that,” Fernao said. “I can afford to pay you, and to pay your boss.”

  Talsu’s boss took advantage of the pause to ask, “What is going on? I see the two of you know each other, but I cannot follow the language you use.”

  He spoke in classical Kaunian. Fernao started to reply in the same language- he used it more fluently than Valamo, much more fluently than Talsu-but then switched to Kuusaman, in which he was also very quick and smooth. How many languages does he know? Talsu wondered. He wished Fernao hadn’t switched to Kuusaman; it gave him no chance to follow what was going on.

  Valamo went back to classical Kaunian: “This is your friend, then?”

  “I would like to think so, aye,” Talsu answered in the same tongue. “I would be honored to think so.”

  “I would like to think so, too,” Fernao said. With Algarvic courtesy, he bowed. Talsu nodded in return. He’s not an Algarvian, he reminded himself. All the redheaded kingdoms have some of the same customs, and Lagoans helped free Jelgava. After seeing so much of Mezentio’s men in Skrunda, he needed the reminder.

  “Good.” Valamo beamed. “Very good. A wedding suit, is it? That is very good, too. I am sure Talsu will do a splendid job. He is a clever fellow. As soon as he learns our tongue and saves up a stake, he will do very well in a shop of his own. A wedding suit.” Hi
s narrow eyes narrowed further. “Shall we speak of price now?”

  “Take the price from my pay,” Talsu said. “I want to do this.”

  “No, no, no.” Fernao shook his head. “I will go somewhere else before I let that happen. I want to bring you business, not to cost you money.”

  “Seeing what I owe the lady you are marrying-” Talsu began.

  “Hush,” Valamo said sharply. “He has said he will pay. Good enough-he will pay.” Sure enough, the tailor was all business. But just when that thought went through Talsu’s mind, Valamo went on, “I will offer some discount-say, one part in four.”

  Now Fernao bowed to him. “That is very generous, sir.”

  “We have several styles,” Valamo said. “While the gentleman is here, I will show him some of the possibilities.” He took a big book off a shelf and opened it on the counter. “Sir, if you would. . Aye, and you, too, Talsu. You should get a notion of what you will be doing.”

  With a sheepish smile, Talsu said, “I certainly should. I have to find out what a Kuusaman wedding suit looks like. I do not make-have not made-a Kuusaman wedding suit before now.”

  To Fernao, Valamo added, “Understand, these are only for guidance. If what you see does not please you, or if you want to combine two styles you do see, we can do that, too.”

  Fernao studied the illustrations. So did Talsu. To him, the clothes Kuusamans wore to get married were ridiculously gaudy, but nobody wanted his opinion. Fernao pointed to one and said, “This ought to suit me.”

  “You are a man of taste,” Valamo said. “That is a very fine style for a man who is tall and slim, as you are.”

  “Except for my eyes, I am never going to look like most Kuusamans,” Fernao said. “But this should do well enough.”

  “Not all of us look like me,” Valamo said generously. “Most, aye, but not all. You have that Lagoan accent, and I do not suppose you will lose it, but how did you come to speak Kuusaman like a man from the south coast? Most foreigners try to talk like folk from Yliharma.”