Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  As long as he was doing what Pinhiero wanted, the Grandmaster took care of him. Whatever he wanted in the way of food and drink came up from the kitchens in the blink of an eye. Mages fetched sorcerous tomes from the guildhall library whenever he needed to check a point. If he felt like soaking for an hour in a tub full of steaming water, he could. And once, even though he hadn't made any such request, a very friendly young woman visited the room.

  She shook her head when he tried to give her something. "It's all arranged," she said. "The Grandmaster told me he'd turn me into a vole if I took even a copper from you." By the melodramatic way she shivered as she put her kilt back on, she believed Pinhiero would do just as he'd said.

  "Pinhiero would never waste an important natural resource like that," Fernao said, which made the girl smile as she left. Fernao went to sleep that night with a smile on his face, too. But in the morning, after breakfast, he had to go back to writing. He started to look forward to returning to the Naantali district. He hadn't had to work nearly so hard there.

  ***

  Sooner or later, Talsu knew, he would run into Kugu the silversmith again. Skrunda wasn't a big city, where they might easily have avoided each other. And, sure enough, one day in the market square Talsu came face-to-face with the man who'd betrayed him to the Algarvians.

  Talsu was haggling with a farmer selling salted olives, and paid little attention to the man buying raisins at the next stall till the fellow turned around. He and Kugu recognized each other at the same instant.

  Kugu might have been a treacherous whoreson and an Algarvian puppet, but he had his share of nerve and more. "Good morning," he said to Talsu, as coolly as if he hadn't had him flung into a dungeon. "It's good to see you here again."

  "It's good to be here again," Talsu answered, all the while thinking, I can't wring his neck here in the middle of the market square. People would talk. He couldn't even glare so fiercely as he wanted to. If he roused Kugu's suspicions, the Algarvians would seize him again.

  "I'm glad you've seen the light of day in the metaphorical as well as the literal sense of the words," Kugu said.

  Before studying classical Kaunian with Kugu, Talsu would have had no idea what a metaphor was. But he'd learned more than metaphors from the small, precise silversmith. He just nodded now. If Kugu wanted to think him a traitor to Jelgava, too- well, so what? A lot of people thought that. What difference could one more make?

  Kugu nodded, too, as if he'd passed a test. Maybe he had. The silversmith said, "One of these days, we'll have to have a talk."

  "I'd like that," Talsu said. "I'd like to learn some more of the old language, too."

  "Would you?" Kugu said. "Well, perhaps it can be arranged. But now, if you will excuse me…" He went back to looking at raisins.

  I know what he'll want. He'll want me to help him trap other people who don't think Jelgava ought to have an Algarvian king. Talsu wondered how many of the people who'd been studying classical Kaunian with Kugu remained outside of Algarvian dungeons. Some still would; he was sure of that. If people Kugu taught started disappearing every week or so, the ones who remained at large wouldn't take long to realize what was going wrong.

  "You going to buy those olives, pal, or are you just going to gawk at them?" asked the farmer by whose cart Talsu stood.

  Talsu did end up buying the olives. Running into Kugu left him too distracted to haggle as hard as he should have. The farmer didn't bother hiding a self-satisfied smirk as Talsu gave him silver. When Talsu's wife and mother found out what he'd paid, they would have something sharp to say to him. He was mournfully certain of that.

  And he proved right in short order, too. Laitsina said, "Do you think your father mints the coins himself?"

  "No. He wouldn't put Mainardo's face on them," Talsu answered, giving his mother a better comeback than he'd had for the farmer.

  "You could have got a better price than that at my father's shop," Gailisa said reproachfully after she came back from working there.

  "I have an excuse, anyhow," Talsu said. His wife raised an eyebrow. By her expression, no excuse for spending too much on food could possibly be good enough. But then Talsu explained: "I ran into Kugu in the market square."

  "Oh," Gailisa said. A moment later, she repeated the word in an altogether different tone of voice: "Oh." Kugu wouldn't have wanted to hear the way it sounded the second time. Gailisa went on, "Did you leave him dead and bleeding there?"

  Regretfully, Talsu shook his head. "I had to be polite. If I'd done what I wanted to do, I'd be back in the dungeons now, not here."

  "I suppose so." His wife sighed. "I wish you could have. I'm surprised he didn't try to talk you into trapping people along with him- he must think you're safe."

  "As a matter of fact, he did drop a hint or two," Talsu said. At that, Gailisa let out such a furious squawk, everyone else hurried up to find out what was wrong. Talsu had to explain all over again, which led to more furious squawks.

  Traku said, "Don't go back and study the old language with him again. Don't have anything to do with him, if you can help it."

  "I would like to learn more classical Kaunian," Talsu said. "If the redheads think it's worth knowing- and they do- we ought to know it, too."

  "Fair enough." His father nodded. "But don't study with that son of a whore of a silversmith. Find somebody else who knows it or find yourself a book and learn from that."

  "I was thinking that if I got close to him…" Talsu's voice trailed away.

  "No. No, no, and no," Traku said. "If you hang around him and something happens to him, what will the Algarvians do? Blame you, that's what. That's not what you want, is it? It had better not be."

  "Ah," Talsu murmured. His father made an uncomfortable amount of sense. He did want something to happen to Kugu, and he didn't want Mezentio's men to pin it on him. But after a little thought, he said, "I may not have as much choice as I'd like. If I act like I can't stand the bugger, that's liable to be enough to get him to give me to the Algarvians all over again."

  Gailisa spoke up: "Just tell him you're too busy working to go out of nights. He won't be able to say a word about that. The way the Algarvians squeeze us these days, everybody has to run as fast as he can to stay in one place."

  "That's not bad," Talsu said. "It's not even a lie, either."

  "Maybe you won't see him at all," his mother said. "I'll send Ausra to the market instead of you for a while. And I don't suppose Master Kugu would have the crust to stick his nose through this door after the trouble he caused you- the trouble he caused every one of us."

  Ausra stuck out her tongue at Talsu. "See? Now I'm going to have to do your work," she said. "You'd better find a way to make that up to me."

  "I will," he said, which looked to astonish his sister. In fact, he only half heard her. He was thinking about ways to make things up to Kugu, ways to make something dreadful happen to the silversmith without drawing suspicion to himself.

  Gailisa must have seen as much. That night, while they lay crowded together in their narrow bed, she said, "Don't do anything foolish."

  "I won't." Talsu hugged her to him. "The only really foolish thing I ever did was trust him in the first place. I won't make that mistake again any time soon."

  The next morning, his father remarked, "You don't want to do anything right away, you know."

  "Who says I don't want to?" Talsu answered. They sat side by side in the tailor's shop, working on heavy wool quilts for a couple of Algarvians who would be going from warm, sunny Jelgava to Unkerlant, a land that was anything but. Traku looked at him in some alarm. He went on, "I won't, because it would give me away, but that doesn't say anything about what I want to do."

  "All right," Traku said, and then, a moment later, "No, curse it, it isn't all right. Look what you made me do. You frightened me so there, my finishing spell went all awry." The pleat he'd sewn by hand was perfectly straight. The spell should have made all the others match it. Instead, they twisted every which
way, as jagged as the skyline of the Bratanu Mountains on the border between Jelgava and Algarve.

  "I'm sorry," Talsu said.

  "Sorry? Sorry doesn't cut any cloth. I ought to box your ears," Traku grumbled. "Now I'm going to have to remember that spell of undoing. Powers above, I hope I can; I haven't had to use it in a while. I ought to make you rip all these seams out by hand, is what I ought to do."

  Still fuming, Talsu's father muttered to himself, trying to make sure he had the words to the spell of undoing right. Talsu would have offered to help, but wasn't sure he could. No good tailor needed the spell of undoing very often. When Traku did begin his new chant, Talsu listened intently. No, he hadn't had all the words straight. He would now, though.

  After calling out the last command, Traku grunted in relief. "There. That's taken care of, anyhow. No thanks to you, either." He glared at Talsu. "Now I get to do the finishing spell over again. You're going to cost me an hour's work with your foolishness. I hope you're happy."

  "Happy? No." But Talsu glanced over to his father. "D'you suppose we could build the spell of undoing into some of the clothes we make for the redheads, so their tunics and kilts would fall to pieces, say, six months after they got to Unkerlant?"

  "We could, maybe, but I wouldn't." Traku shook his head. "You don't shit where you eat, and we eat with the clothes we make."

  Talsu sighed. "All right. That makes sense. I wish it didn't. We have to be able to do something about the Algarvians."

  "Doing something about our own people who suck up to them would be even better," Traku said. "Algarvians can't help being Algarvians, any more than vultures can help being vultures. But when people in your own town, people you've known for years, suck up to Mezentio's men, that's cursed hard to take."

  With a nod, Talsu went back to the kilt he was working on. Thinking about the Jelgavans who sucked up to the redheads inevitably brought him back to thinking about Kugu. His hands folded into fists. He wanted to ruin the silversmith- more, he wanted to humiliate him. But he wanted to do it in a way that wouldn't put him back inside a dungeon an hour later.

  He came up with nothing that suited him then, nor in the couple of days that followed. He was walking home from taking a cloak to a customer- an actual Jelgavan customer, not one of the occupiers- when he ran into Kugu on the street.

  As they had in the market square, they eyed each other warily. Kugu said, "I gave my lessons last night. I wondered if you would come by. When you didn't, I missed you."

  "My wife and family took things the wrong way," Talsu answered. "They don't understand how things are in the bigger world. So I'm having to be quiet about my change of heart, if you know what I mean. I don't want to stir anybody up, and so I think I'd be smarter to stay home for a while."

  Kugu nodded, swallowing the lie as smoothly as if it were truth. "Aye, that can prove troublesome," he agreed. "Perhaps you could arrange to have something happen to one of them."

  Perhaps I could arrange to have something happen to you, you son of a whore, Talsu thought. But all he said was, "People would wonder about it, you know."

  "Well, so they would," the silversmith admitted, "and that kind of gossip would make you less useful. We'll think of something sooner or later, I'm sure."

  Useful, am I? went through Talsu's mind. We'll see about that, by the powers above. He smiled at Kugu. "So we will."

  ***

  Vanai hated it when Ealstan was gloomy. She did her best to cheer him up, saying, "You're bound to find more work soon."

  "Am I?" He sounded anything but cheered. "Pybba wasn't joking, curse him. After he gave me the sack, he slandered me to everybody he knew. Finding anybody who'll trust me not to steal hasn't been easy."

  "Powers below eat Pybba," Vanai said, in lieu of saying something like, Why didn't you keep your nose out of his business when he told you to? The good sense in a question like that was plain to see, but it didn't help her now. She'd said the same thing before, and Ealstan hadn't wanted to listen.

  "The powers below will eat us if I don't start bringing in more money again." His voice was raw with worry.

  "We're all right for a while yet," Vanai said, which was true. "We got ahead of the game when you did so well there for a while, and I spent a lot of time being poor. I know how not to spend very much."

  Her husband drained his breakfast cup of wine. He made a face. Vanai understood that; it was about as cheap as it could be while staying this side of vinegar. She'd already started economizing. With a sigh, he said, "I'll go out and see what I can scrape up. I'll give it another few days. After that, if nobody wants me to cast books for him anymore…" He shrugged. "My brother spent the last couple of years of his life building roads. There's always work for somebody with a strong back." He got up, gave Vanai a quick kiss, and went out the door.

  As she washed bowls and mugs, she remembered her grandfather after Major Spinello set him to work building roads outside Oyngestun. A few days of that had almost killed Brivibas. A few weeks of it surely would have, and so she'd started giving herself to Spinello to save Brivibas from the road crew.

  Because of all that, the notion of Ealstan building roads filled her with irrational dread. At least I know it's irrational, she thought: small consolation, but consolation nonetheless. Ealstan was young and strong, not an aging scholar. And he was Forthwegian, not Kaunian- an overseer wouldn't be tempted to work him to death for the sport of it.

  She looked in the pantry and sighed. She hadn't wanted to go shopping today, but she couldn't very well cook without olive oil, and only a little was left in the bottom of the jar. A yawn followed the sigh. More than a little ruefully, she looked down at her belly. The baby didn't show yet, but it did still leave her tired all the time.

  Before she left the flat, she renewed the spell that kept her looking like a Forthwegian. She wished she'd done that while Ealstan was still there. Aye, the spell had become second nature to her, but she liked to be reassured that she'd done it right. If she ever did make a mistake, she wouldn't know till too late.

  Silver clinked sweetly as Vanai put coins in her handbag. She nodded to herself. She'd told Ealstan the truth; money wasn't a worry yet, and wouldn't be for a while. She still found the handbag a minor annoyance. Trouser pockets were more convenient for carrying things. But Forthwegian women didn't wear trousers. If she wanted to look like a Forthwegian, she had to dress like one, too.

  She'd just lifted the bar from the door when someone knocked on it. She jerked back in surprise and alarm. She hadn't expected visitors. She never expected visitors. Visitors meant trouble. "Who is it?" she asked, hating the quaver in her voice but unable to hold it out.

  "Mistress Thelberge?" A man's voice, deep and gruff. Unquestionably Forthwegian- no Algarvian trill.

  "Aye?" Cautiously, Vanai opened the door. The fellow standing in the hallway was a vigorous fifty, with shoulders like a bull's. She'd never seen him before. "Who are you? What do you want?"

  He drew himself up straight. "Pybba's the name," he rumbled. "Now where in blazes is your husband?" He spoke as if Vanai might have had Ealstan in her handbag.

  "He's not here," she said coldly. "He's out looking for work. Thanks to you, he'll probably have a hard time finding any. What more do you want to do to him?"

  "I want to talk to him, that's what," the pottery magnate answered.

  Vanai set a hand on the door, as if to slam it in his face. "Why should he want to talk to you?"

  Pybba reached into his belt pouch. He pulled out a coin and tossed it to her. "Here. This'll give him a reason," he said as she caught it. She stared at the coin in her hand. It was gold.

  Vanai couldn't remember the last time she'd seen a goldpiece, let along held one. Silver circulated far more freely in Forthweg than gold, and Brivibas, back in Oyngestun, had not been the sort of man who attracted any of the few goldpieces the kingdom did mint. "I don't understand," Vanai said. "You just sacked Ealstan. Why- this?" She held up the gold coin. It lay heavier in h
er hand than silver would have.

  "Because I've learned some things I didn't know when I gave him the boot, that's why," Pybba replied. "For instance, he's got- he had- a brother named Leofsig. Isn't that so?" Vanai stood mute. She didn't know where the pottery magnate was going with his questions or why he was asking them. Pybba seemed to take her silence for agreement, for he went on, "And some son of a whore from Plegmund's Brigade killed his brother. Isn't that right?"

  He didn't know everything; he didn't know that the fellow from Plegmund's Brigade who'd killed Leofsig was Ealstan's- and poor Leofsig's- first cousin. But he knew enough. Vanai asked, "What's this to you?"

  "It's worth gold to me to see him, that's what it is. You tell him so," Pybba said. "Aye, tell him just that. And keep the money whether he decides he wants to see me or not. He'll be stubborn. I know cursed well he will. Some ways, he reminds me of the way I was back in my puppy days." He laughed. "Don't tell him that. It'll just put his back up. So long, sweetheart. I've got work to do." Without another word, he hurried toward the stairs. Vanai got the idea he always hurried.

  She went through the rest of the day in a daze. She didn't want to take the goldpiece with her when she went down to the market square to buy oil, but she didn't want to leave it back in the flat, either. She knew that was foolish; aye, it was worth sixteen times its weight in silver, but the flat already held a good deal more than sixteen times as much silver as there was gold in that one coin. The nervousness persisted even so.

  When she got back with the olive oil, the first thing she did was make sure the gold coin was where she'd left it. Then she had to wait for Ealstan to come home. The sun seemed to crawl across the sky. It was sinking down behind the block of flats across the street when he finally used the familiar coded knock.