Before too long, some of the new fish started coming down into the mine. They would have needed a while to get processed, to have their names recorded and to get assigned to a barracks and a work gang. That was efficiency, too, at least as the Unkerlanters understood it. To Ceorl, it often seemed like wheels spinning uselessly on an ice-slick road. But Swemmel’s men had won the war, and didn’t have to worry about what he thought.
One of the new men spoke with such a strong Grelzer accent, Ceorl could hardly understand him. “Powers below eat you,” the ruffian said, doing his best to make his Forthwegian sound like Unkerlanter. “I spent a good part of the war hunting whoresons like you.”
The Unkerlanter followed him. “I was in the woods west of Herborn,” he answered. “A lot of the bastards who hunted me didn’t go home again.”
“Is that so?” Ceorl threw back his head and laughed. “I hunted through those woods, and you stinking irregulars paid for it when I did.”
“Murderer,” the Unkerlanter said.
“Bushwhacker,” Ceorl retorted. He laughed some more. “Fat fornicating lot of good our fight back then did either one of us, eh? We’re both buggered now.” He had to repeat himself to get the Unkerlanter to understand that. When the fellow finally did, he nodded. “Fair enough. We both lost this war, no matter what happened to our kingdoms.” He stuck out his hand. “I’m Fariulf.”
“Well, futter you, Fariulf.” Ceorl clasped it. “I’m Ceorl.”
“Futter you, too, Ceorl,” Fariulf said, squeezing. Ceorl squeezed back. The trial of strength proved as near a draw as made no difference.
“Work!” a guard shouted. Sure enough, no matter which of them was the stronger, they’d both lost the war.
Everything in Yliharma was different from anything Talsu had ever known. The air itself tasted wrong: cool and damp and salty. Even on the brightest days, the blue of the sky had a misty feel to it. And, even in summer, fog and rain could come without warning and stay for a couple of days. That would have been unimaginable in Skrunda.
The Kuusamans themselves seemed at least as strange to him as their weather did. Even Gailisa was taller than most of their men. Children eyed both Talsu and his wife in the streets, not being used to fair blue-eyed blonds. Adults did the same thing, but less blatantly. To Talsu, little swarthy slant-eyed folk with coarse black hair were the strange ones, but this was their kingdom, not his.
It wasn’t even a kingdom, or not exactly-somehow, the Seven Princes held it together. The Kuusamans drank ale, not wine. They cooked with butter, not olive oil, and even put it on their bread. They wore all sorts of odd clothes, which, to a tailor, seemed even more peculiar. Their language sounded funny in his ears. Its grammar, which he and Gailisa tried to learn in thrice-weekly lessons, struck him as stranger yet. And its vocabulary, except for a few words plainly borrowed from classical Kaunian, was nothing like that of Jelgavan.
But none of that marked the biggest difference between his homeland and this place to which he and Gailisa had been exiled. He needed a while to realize what that big difference was. It came to him one afternoon as he was walking back to the flat the Kuusamans had given Gailisa and him: a bigger, finer flat than the one his whole family had used back in his home town.
“I know!” he said after giving his wife a kiss. “I’ve got it!”
“That’s nice,” Gailisa said agreeably. “What have you got?”
“Now I know why, up in Balvi, the Kuusaman minister told us living in Jelgava was like living in a dungeon,” Talsu answered. “Everybody always went around watching what he said all the time.”
She nodded. “Well, of course. Something bad would happen to you if you didn’t, or sometimes even if you did.” Her mouth twisted. “We know all about that, don’t we?”
“Aye, we do,” Talsu agreed. “And
“Some do,” Gailisa answered. “Otherwise, why would the dungeons be so full?”
“That’s not funny,” Talsu said.
“I didn’t mean it for a joke,” she told him. “How could I, after everything that happened to you?”
Having had no ready comeback for that, he changed the subject: “What smells good?”
“A reindeer roast,” Gailisa replied. Talsu chuckled. She rolled her eyes. There might have been a few reindeer in Jelgavan zoological parks, but surely nowhere else in the kingdom. She went on, “All the butcher shops here have as much reindeer meat as beef or mutton. It’s cheaper, too.”
“I’m not complaining,” Talsu said. “You’ve picked it up before, and it tastes fine.” He kissed her again to show her he meant it-and he did. He went on, “I wish the language were easier. I can’t get started in business till I can talk to my customers at least a little.”
“I know,” Gailisa said. “When I buy things, I either read what I want off the signs-and I know I make a mess of that, too, because some of the characters don’t sound the same here as they do in Jelgavan-or else I just point. It makes me feel stupid, but what else can I do?”
“Nothing else I can think of,” Talsu said. “I do the same thing.”
The next day, though, Talsu and Gailisa found a parcel in front of their door when they came back from their language lesson. Unwrapping it, he pulled out a Jelgavan-Kuusaman phrasebook. It looked to have been made for Kuusaman travelers in Jelgava, but it would help the other way round, too. Gailisa unfolded a note stuck in the little book. “Oh,” she said. “It’s in classical Kaunian.” She knew next to none of the old language, so she handed Talsu the note.
His own classical Kaunian was far from perfect, too, but he did his best. “ ‘I hope this book will help you,’“ he read. “ ‘It helped me when I visited your kingdom. I am Pekka, wife to Leino, whom you helped, Talsu. I am glad I could help you leave your kingdom. My husband was killed in the fighting. I was pleased to do anything I could for his friends.’ “
“He’s the one I wrote to,” Gailisa said.
“I know,” Talsu answered. “I didn’t know he’d got killed, though. She must have been the one who helped me get out of the dungeon, too, then.” He blinked. “It’s something-that they paid attention to a woman, I mean.”
“Maybe she’s important in her own right,” Gailisa said. “She must be, in fact. The Kuusamans seem to let their women do just about anything their men can. I like that, if you want to know the truth.”
“I’m not sure it’s natural,” Talsu said.
“Why not?” his wife demanded. “It’s what you were talking about before, isn’t it? It’s freedom.”
“That’s different,” Talsu said.
“How?” Gailisa asked.
In his own mind, Talsu knew how. The kind of freedom he had in mind was no more than the freedom to say what you wanted without fear of ending up in a dungeon because the wrong person heard you. Surely that was different from the freedom to do what you wanted regardless of whether you were a man or a woman. Surely it was. . and yet, for the life of him, he found no way to put the difference into words.
“It just is,” he said at last. Gailisa made a face at him. He tickled her. She squealed. They weren’t equal there: she was ticklish, and he wasn’t. He took unfair advantage of it.
After the next language lesson a couple of days later, the instructor-a woman named Ryti, whose standing went some distance toward proving Gailisa’s point-asked Talsu and his wife to stay while the other students were leaving. In slow, careful Jelgavan, she said, “We have found a tailor who is looking for an assistant and who speaks classical Kaunian. Would you like to work for him?”
“I’d like to work for anyone,” Talsu answered in his own tongue. “I’d like to work for myself most, but I know I don’t speak enough Kuusaman yet. I couldn’t understand the people who’d be my customers.”
“How much will this fellow pay?” Gailisa asked the practical question.
When Ryti answered, she did so, of course, in terms of Kuusaman money. That still didn’t feel quite real to Talsu. “What would it be in Jelgavan coins?” he asked. Ryti thought for a moment, then told him. He blinked. “You must be wrong,” he said. “That’s much too much.”
After a little more thought, the language instructor shook her head. “No, I do not believe so. One of ours is about three and a half of yours, is it not so?”
It was so. To Talsu, Kuusaman silver coins were big and heavy, but not impossibly big and heavy. Things cost
