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.
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.
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.
“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.” His 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.”
