Darkness Descending

by Harry Turtledove

  He had to press himself against a stone wall to give them room to pass. That got him wetter. They took no notice--though they would have if he hadn’t gotten out of the way. He glared at them over his shoulder. Fortunately for him, none of them looked back.

  With a sigh of relief at escaping the rain, he flipped back his hood as he ducked into the grocer’s shop. With even more relief, he saw that the fat old fellow who ran the place wasn’t behind the counter, and his daughter was. “Hello, Gailisa,” Talsu said, swiping at his hair with his hand in case the cloak had left it in disarray.

  “Hello,” Gailisa answered. She was a year or two younger than Talsu; they’d known each other since they were both small. But Gailisa hadn’t been so nicely rounded then, and her hair hadn’t shone so golden--or if it had, Talsu hadn’t noticed. He did now: he made a point of noticing. She went on, “I’m glad you’re not an Algarvian.”

  “Powers above, so am I!” Talsu exclaimed.

  She went on as if he hadn’t spoken: “You don’t always keep trying to handle the merchandise.”

  For a moment, he didn’t understand exactly what she meant. When he did, he wanted to kill every lecherous Algarvian soldier in Skrunda. He couldn’t, but he wanted to. “Those miserable . . .” he began, and then had to stop again. He couldn’t say what he thought of the redheads, either. A soldier’s ripe vocabulary was the only one that fit, and Gailisa wouldn’t have cared to listen to it.

  She shrugged. “They’re Algarvians. What can you do?”

  Talsu had already thought of one of the things he’d like to do. He would also have liked to handle the merchandise himself. If he tried, though, he was gloomily certain Gailisa would do her best to knock his head off. He wasn’t a conquering soldier, just a fellow she’d known forever.

  “What can I get you?” she asked. He told her what his mother wanted. She frowned. “How much of each? It makes a difference, you know.”

  “I know that, aye,” he said, flustered. “I don’t know how much, though.”

  “You chowderhead,” she said. She’d called him worse than that when he got orders mixed up. “Well, how much money did you get to buy this stuff?”

  He had to fish the coins his father had given him out of his pocket and look at them before he could tell her, which only made him feel more foolish. “As far as I’m concerned, you can give me mostly olives,” he said. “I like ‘em.”

  “And then tomorrow I can explain to your mother why she couldn’t make the stew she wanted.” Gailisa rolled her eyes. “No, thank you.” She dipped up some salted olives from a jar: enough to fill a waxed-paper carton. Then she beckoned to him and gave him a couple of olives to eat. “Nobody has to know about these.”

  “Thanks.” He popped them into his mouth, worked the soft, tasty pulp off the pits with his teeth, and spat the pits into the palm of his hand. Gailisa pointed to a basket next to the counter. He tossed the pits into it. “More?” he asked hopefully.

  Gailisa gave him another one. “When my father asks why we’re not making any money, I’ll tell him it’s your fault,” she said. She dipped beans and chickpeas out of barrels and into larger cartons. “There you are, Talsu. Now you’ve spent all your silver; I’ll give you three coppers’ change.”

  “Don’t bother,” he said. “Let me have three coppers’ worth of dried apricots instead.”

  “I love those, but right after olives?” Gailisa made a face. She gave him the little handful of dried fruit, though.

  He ate one apricot, just to see her make another face. Then he pushed the rest of them back across the counter. “Here, you take them. You enjoy them more than I do, anyhow.”

  “You don’t need to do that,” she said. “I can reach into the crate any time I please, and I know times are tight for everybody.” Talsu looked out through the doorway at the rainy street, as if he hadn’t heard a word she said. “You’re impossible!” she told him, and he thought she’d got angry. But when he turned around, she was eating an apricot.

  He took the groceries and hurried home through the rain. When he got back, he found his father arguing with an Algarvian military mage. He took the beans and olives and chickpeas up to his mother, then went back down to see if his father needed any help. The mage was gesturing violently. “No, no, no!” he exclaimed in excellent, excitable Jelgavan. “That is not what I said!”

  “That’s what it sounded like to me,” Traku said stubbornly.

  “What’s going on?” Talsu asked. His father seldom got that worked up when talking with an Algarvian. For one thing, Traku didn’t think it was worth the effort most of the time. For another, arguing with redheads was dangerous.

  Bowing, the Algarvian military mage turned to Talsu. “Perhaps you, sir, can explain to your . . . father, is it? ... that I am not saying he ought to do anything that would in any way violate his conscience. I only suggested--”

  “Suggested?” Traku broke in. “Powers above, this fellow says I don’t know how to run my own business, when I’ve been at it as long as he’s been alive.” That was an exaggeration, but not by much; the mage was somewhere in his thirties, about halfway between Traku and Talsu.

  “I was seeking to buy a new tunic,” the Algarvian told Talsu with dignity, “and I discovered the handwork your father proposed to put into it, and I was appalled--appalled!” He made as if to tear his hair to show how appalled he was.

  Stiffly, Traku said, “That’s what makes fine tailoring, by the powers above: handwork. You want ready-to-wear, you can get that, too, and it’s just as ready to fall apart before very long. No, thank you. Not for me.”

  “Handwork, aye,” the mage said. “But needless handwork? No, no, and no! I know you are a Kaunian, but must you work as folk did in the days of the Kaunian Empire? I will show you this is not needful.”

  Traku stuck out his chin and looked stubborn. “How?”

  “Have you got a tunic--of any style--cut out and ready to be sewn and spelled together?” the Algarvian asked. “If I ruin it, two gold pieces to you.” He took them out of his belt pouch and dropped them on the counter. They rang sweetly.

  Talsu’s eyes widened. He’d seen Algarvian arrogance before, but this went further than most. “Take him up on it, Father,” he said. “You’ve got a couple of tunics under the counter.”

  “So I do,” Traku said grimly. He took out the pieces for one and glared at the mage. “Now what?”

  “Sew me a thumb’s width of your finest seam, anywhere on the garment,” the redhead told him. “Then lay out thread along all the seams, as you would before you use your own spells.”

  “That’s not near enough handwork,” Traku warned, but he did it.

  The Algarvian praised his work, which made him no happier. Then the mage murmured his own spell. It had rhythms not far removed from those Jelgavan tailoring sorcery used, but quicker and more urgent. The thread writhed as if alive--and the tunic was done. “Examine it,” the mage said. “Test it. Do as you will with it. Is it not as fine as any other?”

  Traku did examine it. Talsu crowded up beside him to do the same. He held the seams close to his face to look at the work. He tugged at them. The mage was scribbling something on a scrap of paper. Reluctandy, Talsu turned to his father. “I don’t quite know how it’ll wear, but that’s awfully good-looking work.”

  “Aye.” The word came out of Traku’s mouth with even greater reluctance. His eyes were on those gold pieces, the ones he couldn’t claim.

  Even as he eyed them, the mage scooped them up again. He set down the paper instead. “Here is the spell, sir. It is in common use in Algarve. If that is not so here, you will have more profit from it than these two coins, far more. A pleasant day to you--and to you, young sir.” He bowed to Talsu, then swept out of the shop.

  Traku snatched up the spell and stared at it. Then he stared out the door, though the Algarvian was long gone. “No wonder they won the war,” he muttered.

  “Oh, they’re always coming up with something new,”
Talsu said. “But they’re still Algarvians, so a lot of the new is nasty, too. It’ll bite ‘em in the end, you wait and see.”

  “I hope so,” his father said. “It’s already bitten us.”

  After so long away, after so long at the leading edge of the war, where its teeth bit down on land previously peaceful, Sabrino found Trapani curiously unreal, almost as if it were a mage’s illusion. Seeing people going about their business without a care in the world felt strange, unnatural. His eyes kept going to the cloudy sky, watching out for Unkerlanter dragons that would not come.

  Oh, the war hadn’t disappeared. It remained the biggest story in the news sheets. Commentators spoke learnedly on the crystal. Soldiers and occasional sailors showed off far more uniforms than would have been on the streets in peacetime. But you could ignore all that. Over in Unkerlant, the war was not to be ignored.

  Sabrino didn’t want to ignore it even though he’d got leave. He’d come to the capital to enjoy himself, aye, but he’d fought too hard to forget the fighting just because he wasn’t at the front. “Big announcement expected!” a news-sheet vendor shouted. “Big news coming!” He waved his sheets so vigorously, the colonel of dragonfliers couldn’t make out the headlines.

  “What’s the news?” Sabrino demanded.

  “It’s three coppers, that’s what it is,” the vendor answered cheekily. He checked himself. “No, two to you, sir, on account of you’re in the king’s service.”

  “Here you are.” Sabrino paid him. He walked down the boulevard reading the news sheet. It was coy about giving details, but he gathered that King Mezentio was about to announce the fall of Cottbus. Sabrino let out a long sigh of relief. If die Unkerlanter capital fell, the Derlavaian War was a long step closer to being over. He could think of nothing he wanted more.

  A small boy looked up at him, reading the badges on his uniform tunic. “Are you really a dragonflier, sir?” he asked.

  “Aye,” Sabrino admitted.

  “Ohhh.” The boy’s hazel eyes grew enormous. “I want to do that when I grow up. I want to have a dragon for a friend, too.”

  “You’ve been listening to too many foolish stories,” Sabrino said severely. “Nobody has a dragon for a friend. Dragons are too stupid and too mean to make friends witli anybody. If you didn’t teach them to be afraid, they’d eat you. They’re even dumber--a lot dumber--than behemoths. If you want to serve the kingdom and ride animals you can make friends with, pick leviathans instead.”

  “Why do you ride dragons, then?” the kid asked him.

  It was a good question. He’d asked it of himself a fair number of times, most often after emptying a bottle of wine. “I do it well,” he said at last, “and Algarve needs dragonfliers.” But that wasn’t the whole answer, and he knew it. He went on, “And maybe I’m about as mean as the dragons are.”

  He watched the boy think that over. “Huh,” he said at last, and went on his way. Sabrino never did find out what the effect of his telling the truth was.

  He went into a jewelers. “Ah, my lord Count,” said the proprietor, a scrawny old man named Dosso. He started to bow, then cursed and straightened, one hand going to the small of his back. “Forgive me, sir, I pray you--my lumbago is very bad today. How may I serve you?”

  “I have here a ring with a stone that has come loose from the setting.” Sabrino took from his belt pouch a gold band and a good-sized emerald. “I wonder if you would be kind enough to restore it while I wait. And can you also size the ring so that it will fit on Fronesia’s finger?”

  “Let me see; let me see.” Dosso took a loupe from a drawer under the counter and clipped it onto his spectacles. Sabrino gave him the ring and the emerald. The jeweler examined them. Without looking up, he said, “Unkerlanter work.”

  “Aye,” Sabrino admitted, faintly embarrassed. “One way or another, I happened to get my hands on it.”

  “Good for you,” Dosso said. “I’ve got a son and two grandsons out in the west. My boy is a second-rank mage, you know; he’s repairing the ley lines when Swemmel’s forces wreck them. His son rides a behemoth, and my daughter’s boy is a footsoldier.”

  “Powers above keep them safe,” Sabrino said.

  “All hale so far,” Dosso answered. He pointed to the ring. “You’ve got one good prong here--”

  “I should hope I do, my dear fellow,” Sabrino exclaimed.

  He won a snort from the jeweler. Dosso continued, “That will help, for I can use the law of similarity to shape the others. Magecraft--my son would laugh to hear me call it that; he’d reckon it just a trick of the trade--is faster than handwork, and will serve just as well here. And your lady ... let me see, she’s a size six and a half, eh? Aye, I can do that. I’ll size the ring first, and use the gold I take out to make up what’s missing from the broken prongs. That way, I won’t have to charge you for it, as I would if I used gold of my own.”

  “That’s kind of you, very kind indeed.” Sabrinos back didn’t pain him; he bowed himself almost double. He’d been coming to Dosso for many years, not least because the jeweler thought of things like that.

  “Have a seat, if you like,” Dosso said. “Or you can go round the corner and drink a glass of wine, if you’d rather do that. Don’t drink two, or I’ll be done before you finish the second unless you really pour it down.”

  “I’ll stay, by your leave,” Sabrino answered. “The company is apt to be better here than any I’d find in that tavern.” He perched on one of the wooden stools in front of the counter, almost as if he were at a bar.

  Dosso snipped gold from the ring opposite the prongs that held the stone, then reshaped it in Fronesia’s size, using a blowtorch to heat the ends and weld them together. After he’d finished shaping the metal and it had cooled, he held up the ring. “I defy you to tell me where the join is, my lord Count.”

  Sabrino looked at the gold circlet. He ran his finger around it, touch often being more sensitive than sight in such matters. “I’d like to catch you out, but I can’t do it.”

  “Now for the prongs.” Dosso held out his hand. Sabrino gave him back the ring. Dosso set it down so that it lay on top of the gold he’d snipped. He used a thin gold wire to touch first the good prong, then the extra gold, and last one of the two damaged prongs. As he did that, he muttered to himself.

  The little chant didn’t sound like Algarvian. After a moment, Sabrino realized it wasn’t: it was classical Kaunian, with some of the words turned into nonsense syllables from who could say how many generations of rote repetition. A chill ran through the dragonflier.

  But those endless repetitions had made the charm extremely effective, even if some of the words were ground into meaninglessness. As Sabrino watched, the damaged prong reshaped itself. Dosso slid the emerald into place between what were now two good prongs. As he repeated his ritual, the third one grew out and embraced the stone. With a grunt of satisfaction, Dosso handed Sabrino the restored ring. “I hope it pleases your lady.”

  “I’m sure it will. She’s fond of baubles.” Sabrino paid the jeweler and went off well pleased with himself.

  When he let himself in, Fronesia greeted him with a hug and a kiss that told without words how long it had been since they’d seen each other. Then she asked the question he’d known she would: “And what have you brought me?”

  “Oh, a little something,” he said, his voice light, and slipped the ring onto her finger.

  Fronesia stared at him. The emerald was of an even deeper green than her eyes. Part of that stare was simple admiration; part of it was a calculated assessment of how much the piece was worth. “It’s lovely. It’s splendid,” she whispered, both sides of her character evidently satisfied.

  “You’re lovely,” he said. “You’re splendid.” He meant it. Her hair glinted in the lamplight like molten copper. Her nose had a little bend in it, just enough to make it interesting; her mouth was wide and generous. Her short tunic displayed perfectly turned legs. She was within a couple of years either way of t
hirty. That gave him more than a twenty-year head start on her, a truth he would sooner have forgotten. “I hoped you’d like it.”

  “I do, very much.” One of her carefully plucked eyebrows rose. “And what did you bring your wife?”

  “Oh, this and that,” he said casually. The countess knew about Fronesia, of course, but hadn’t asked Sabrino what he’d got her. Maybe that was the restraint of noble blood. On the other hand, maybe she just didn’t want to know.

  “Have you seen her yet?” Fronesia asked.

  That took it further and faster than she usually went. “Aye, I have,” he replied. “It is good form, you know.” Algarvian nobles ran on form hardly less than their Valmieran or Jelgavan counterparts.

  Fronesia sighed. Form was harder on mistresses than it was on wives. Sabrino found that fair: mistresses were supposed to be having more fun than wives. Nobles married for money or for family alliances far more often than for love. If they wanted love--or, sometimes, even a physical approximation of it--they looked elsewhere.

  Sabrino asked, “And what have you been doing while I’ve been . . . away?” Trying not to get myself killed didn’t sound right, even if it was what he meant.

  “Oh, this and that,” Fronesia answered--casually. She wasn’t a pretty fool. Sabrino wouldn’t have been interested in her had she been. Well, I wouldn’t have been interested in her for long, he thought. He wasn’t blind to a pretty face or a pleasing figure: far from it. But gaining his interest was one thing. Holding it was another.

  “And with whom have you been doing it?” he asked. Her letters hadn’t said much about her friends. Did that mean she didn’t get out much, or that she knew when and what to keep quiet?

  “Some of my set,” she answered, her voice light and amused. “I don’t think there’s anyone you know.” Sabrino had more practice than she might have thought at reading between the lines. That couldn’t mean anything but, Everyone else I know is younger than you.

  Was she doing more than going to feasts and parties with her set? Was she being unfaithful to him? If he found out she was, if she made him notice she was, he’d have to turn her out of this fancy flat or at least make her find someone else to pay for it. He was glad he hadn’t had to pay anything for the emerald ring but the cost of repair. The Unkerlanter noble from whose house he’d taken it wouldn’t worry about rings--or anything else--ever again.