Out of the Darkness

more likely sailing-north for the winter.” Off he went down the hallway. Pekka wondered why she’d even tried to change his mind. He was no more inclined to listen to her than she was to pay attention to the advice she got from a clerk at a grocer’s shop. He did what he wanted, and reveled in it.

If he wants to tell Leino, I’ll kill him, she thought. But that worried her less than it had when he first asked his sardonic question. Had Ilmarinen really intended to blab to her husband if he saw him, he wouldn’t have teased her about it first. She was sure-well, she was pretty sure-of that.

Still shaking her head in astonishment, she went back to the paperwork. A few minutes later, another knock on the door interrupted her. This time, it was Fernao: tall and redheaded and, but for his eyes, most un-Kuusaman looking. Even the neat ponytail in which he wore his hair shouted that he was a Lagoan.

But, over the past couple of years, he’d got pretty fluent in Kuusaman. “You’ll never guess what,” he said now. He even had something of a Kajaani accent, which only showed he’d done a lot of talking and listening to Pekka.

“About Ilmarinen disappearing?” she said, and watched his jaw drop. “He came to me first,” she told him. “How did you find out about it?”

“He’s in the refectory, pouring down ale and boasting about the wires he pulled to get away,” Fernao answered.

“That sounds like him,” Pekka said sourly.

“He’s really off to Jelgava?” Fernao asked.

“That’s what he says,” Pekka replied. “He has connections with the Seven Princes that go back longer than either one of us has been alive, so I suppose he is. I haven’t seen the paperwork, but he wouldn’t carry on like that without it.”

“No, he wouldn’t.” Fernao didn’t sound particularly happy. After a moment, he showed Pekka why: “If he goes to Jelgava, if he sees your husband there, will he talk? You Kuusamans are such a straitlaced folk, I fear he might.”

“We’re no such thing!” Pekka exclaimed. Then, a little sheepishly, she asked, “Is that how Lagoans see us?”

“A lot of the time, aye,” he said. “You. . often take such things too seriously.”

“Do we?” Pekka suddenly remembered fleeing his bedchamber in tears after the first time they’d made love. “Well, maybe we do. But I don’t think Ilmarinen will talk too much to Leino. He’s not an ordinary Kuusaman, you know.”

“Really?” Fernao’s voice was dry. “I never would have noticed. What did you do, tell him you’d put a lifetime itching spell on his drawers if he ever opened his mouth?”

Pekka giggled. “It’s a pretty good idea, but no. If I’d threatened him, he would blab to Leino if he ever saw him. He may not see him, of course. He probably won’t, in fact-Jelgava is a good-sized kingdom. But when he teased me about it, I told him to do whatever he wanted, so he won’t feel he has to run off at the mouth.”

“Good thinking.” Fernao quirked up an eyebrow. “And what do you want to do?”

“It’s more fun than paperwork,” Pekka said. Realizing a heartbeat too late how imperfect that was as praise, she did her best to show him-and herself- exactly how much more fun than paperwork it really was.

A new broadsheet went up all over the Jelgavan town of Skrunda. Talsu read a copy pasted to the front wall of the crowded block of flats where he and his family had moved, exchange of currency, the headline read. Below it, in almost equally large characters, it declared, All coins bearing the impress of the false king, usurper, and vicious tyrant, Mainardo the cursed Algarvian, must be exchanged for those minted under the auspices of his glorious Jelgavan Majesty, Donalitu III, by-the date named was less than two weeks away. The broadsheet continued, Any attempt to pass the monies of the false king and vicious tyrant after the date aforesaid shall be punished with the greatest possible severity. By order of his glorious Jelgavan Majesty, long may he reign.

Talsu, his wife Gailisa, his younger sister, and his mother and father shared one room, none too large, and a tiny, cramped, kitchen. Bathroom and toilet were at the end of the hall. That was, Talsu supposed, better than sharing a tent, as they’d done after a Lagoan or Kuusaman dragon raid burned down Traku’s tailor’s shop and the rooms above it where the family had lived. Still, it did produce its share of friction.

When Talsu climbed the stairs to the flat, he found his father doing some hand stitching on a pair of trousers before using a spell to extend the stitchery down along the entire length of the hem. Traku set the work down when Talsu came in.

“Hello, son,” he said in his gravelly voice: he looked-and sounded-more like a bruiser than a tailor. “What’s new in the outside world? I don’t get to see it much.”

“A new broadsheet went up,” Talsu answered, and explained what was on it.

From the kitchen, his mother called, “That’s good. That’s very good, by the powers above. If I never see Mainardo’s cursed pointy nose on another piece of silver, I’ll stand up and cheer. The faster we forget the redheads ever conquered us, the happier I’ll be.”

“I don’t know, Laitsina,” Traku said. “Did you hear what Talsu said they’ll do to you if you make a mistake? We’ll have to sift through all our silver. I don’t want to spend a stretch in the dungeons just because I was careless.”

“King Donalitu is still King Donalitu,” Talsu said, and he didn’t mean it as praise. “If the redheads had picked one of our nobles instead of Mezentio’s brother, they would have had an easier time getting people to put up with them.”

“They didn’t care a fart whether we put up with ‘em or not,” Traku said. “They thought they had the world by the short hairs, and that what we thought didn’t matter. What were we? Just a pack of Kaunians. That’s why the arch on the far side of the square isn’t standing any more, even though it had been there since the days of the Kaunian Empire.”

“That’s right,” Talsu said. “I was taking some clothes across town when the redheads wrecked the old arch. They said it insulted them, because it talked about how the Kaunians of long ago beat the old-time Algarvians.”

“They did things like that all over Jelgava-all over Valmiera, too.” Traku lowered his voice. “And they did a lot worse to the Kaunians of Forthweg, by what everybody says.”

Talsu’s sister Ausra came out of the kitchen wearing an apron over her tunic and trousers and said, “What do you want to bet they find some way to cheat us when we turn in the money the Algarvians issued?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Talsu said.

“Neither would I,” Traku agreed. “I’m glad we don’t have King Mainardo and the redheads running things any more, but I’d be almost gladder if we didn’t have Donalitu back.”

That was treason. If anybody besides his family heard it, Traku might end up in a dungeon regardless of whether he exchanged Mainardo’s coins for Donalitu’s. Back before the Algarvians ran Donalitu out of Jelgava, his dungeons had had an evil reputation all over Derlavai. He wasn’t a madman or the next thing to it, as Swemmel of Unkerlant was said to be, but no one loved him.

Wistfully, Talsu said, “The Kuusamans have seven princes. Maybe they could spare one for us? The Kuusaman soldiers I dealt with when I was with the irregulars were all good people. They didn’t act like they were afraid of their officers, either.”

“Neither did the redheads, come to that,” Ausra said.

“No, they didn’t,” Talsu admitted unhappily. “But they had other things wrong with them-starting with thinking everybody who had yellow hair was fair game. Donalitu’s bad. They were worse.”

Neither his sister nor his father argued with him. Traku said, “They aren’t gone yet, either, the whoresons. They’re still hanging on in the western part of the kingdom. The sooner we’re rid of them forever, the better.”

“But if they leave, they know the Lagoans and Kuusamans will follow them right into Algarve,” Talsu said.

Traku grunted. “Good. I wish we’d gone deeper into Algarve, back before we got beat. Then maybe all this never would have happened to us.”

For a long time, Talsu’s father had blamed him almost personally for Jelgava’s lost war against Algarve.