side-to-side motion than it would have with him atop her. And, when Gailisa shuddered with pleasure a few minutes later, she put her face against the pillow so only a tiny sound escaped. Talsu tried to stay as quiet as he could, too. The joy that filled him, though, made him have trouble noticing how little or how much noise he made.
Ausra didn’t stir in the other bed. Either he’d been quiet enough or she was more than polite enough. At the moment, Talsu didn’t much care which. He leaned up on an elbow and kissed Gailisa, who twisted back toward him so their lips could meet. They both set their clothes to rights. Talsu happily fell asleep a few minutes later. Thoughts of Jelgavan soldiers and Jelgavan officers never entered his mind.
He wished he could have gone on not thinking about them, too. But, two days later, a sharp knock on the door to the flat made both him and his father look up from their work. “Sounds like business,” Traku said hopefully.
“That would be nice,” Talsu said. “I’ll find out.”
When he opened the door, there stood the Jelgavan major he’d seen before. The fellow was an inch or two shorter than Talsu, but contrived to looked down his nose at him just the same. “Am I correct in being given to understand that this is a tailor’s establishment?” he asked in haughty tones.
“That’s right. . sir,” Talsu answered. Regretfully, he added, “Won’t you please come in?”
“Good morning, sir,” Traku said when the major did stride into the flat. He sounded friendlier than Talsu had; he could hardly have sounded less friendly than his son. “What can we do for you today?”
“I require a rain cloak,” the officer said. “I require it at once, as I shall soon be going into Algarve.”
“I’ll be happy to take care of you, sir,” Traku said. “There will be a small extra charge for a rush job-I have some other business I’ll have to put aside to take care of you right away, you understand.”
“No,” the major said.
Traku frowned. “I beg your pardon, sir?”
“No,” the fellow repeated. “I will not pay extra, not a copper’s worth. This is part of my uniform.”
“Sir, I’m sure you already have a uniform-issue rain cloak, just like every other officer,” Talsu said. “If you want something with a little extra style or quality, you do have to pay for it.” He’d been through the army himself; he knew what the rules were.
The Jelgavan noble looked at him as if he’d just found him in his peach. “Who are you to tell me what I must do and must not do?” he demanded. “How dare you show such cheek?”
“Your Excellency, even officers have regulations,” Talsu said.
“Do you want my business, or do you not?” the major said.
Talsu’s father spoke reasonably: “Sir, if you want me to put your business in front of everybody else’s, you’re going to have to pay for that, because it’ll mean other people’s clothes won’t get made as fast as they’d like.” It probably wouldn’t mean that. It would mean he and Talsu would have to work extra long hours to get the other orders done on time. Keeping things simple, though, seemed best.
“Other people?” The noble snorted. He plainly wasn’t used to the idea of worrying about whether what he did bothered anyone else. “Do these ‘other people’ of yours have the high blood in their veins?”
“Aye, sir, a couple of ‘em do,” Traku said stolidly.
And that, to Talsu’s amazement, turned the major reasonable in the blink of an eye. “Well, that’s different,” he said, still sounding gruff, but not as if he were about to accuse the two tailors of treason. “If it is a matter of inconveniencing folk of my own class. .” He cared nothing about inconveniencing commoners. Bothering other nobles, though-that mattered to him. “How large a fee did you have in mind?”
Traku named one twice as high as he’d ever charged an Algarvian for a rush job. The Jelgavan noble accepted it without a blink. He didn’t blink at the price Traku set for the rain cape, either. Maybe he had more money than he knew what to do with. Maybe-and more likely, Talsu judged-he just had no idea of what things were supposed to cost.
All he said on his departure was, “See that it’s ready on time, my good men.” And then he swept out, as if he’d been the king honoring a couple of peasants with the glory of his presence.
After the door closed, Traku said something under his breath. “I’m sorry, Father?” Talsu said. “I didn’t catch that.”
“I said, it’s no wonder some of our own people went off and fought on the Algarvian side after King Donalitu came back. That overbred son of a whore and all the others like him don’t make the redheads look like such a bad bargain.”
“I’ve had that same thought a time or two-more than a time or two- myself,” Talsu replied. “Aye, he’s one overbred son of a whore. But he’s
His father sighed. “You’re right. No doubt about it, you’re right. But if that’s the best we can say for him-and it fornicating well is-it’s pretty cold praise, wouldn’t you say?”
“Of course it is,” Talsu said. “But it’s no surprise, or it shouldn’t be one. Remember, you’ve just had nobles for customers. I’ve had them for commanders. I know what they’re like.” He almost said,
“But the redheads have nobles, too,” Traku said. “These Kuusamans have them. They must. But they don’t act like their shit doesn’t stink the way ours do. Why is that? Why are we stuck with a pack of bastards at the top?”
“I don’t know,” Talsu said. He didn’t know any Jelgavans who did know, either. He grinned wryly. “Because we’re lucky, I guess.”
His father’s fingers twisted in an evil-averting gesture that went back to the days of the Kaunian Empire. “That’s the kind of luck I could do without. That’s the kind of luck the whole kingdom could do without.”
“Oh, aye,” Talsu agreed. “But how do we change it?” He answered his own question: “We don’t, not as long as Donalitu’s our king. He’s the worst of the lot.” He sighed. “They don’t have hardly any nobles in Unkerlant, people say.”
“No, but that’s on account of King Swemmel killed most of ‘em,” Traku said. “What the Unkerlanters have instead is, they have King Swemmel. Is he a better bargain?” Talsu didn’t answer; by everything he’d heard, Swemmel was about as bad a bargain as anybody could make. His father rammed the point home: “Do you want to live in Unkerlant?”
“Powers above, no!” Talsu used that same ancient gesture. “But it’s getting so I hardly want to live here anymore, either.”
“Where, then?” his father asked.
“I don’t know.” Talsu hadn’t been altogether serious. After some thought, though, he said, “Kuusamo, maybe. The slanteyes are … looser than we are, if you know what I mean. I had some dealings with them when I was with the irregulars. They don’t make a big fuss about rank and blood. They just do what needs doing. I liked that.”
“How would you like a Kuusaman winter?” Traku asked with a sly smile.
Talsu shivered at the mere idea. “I don’t suppose I would, not very much.” He bent over the tunic he’d been working on when the major came in. If he and his father were going to get the rain cape done along with everything else, they could afford only so much chatter. And what was Kuusamo but moonshine, anyhow?
This time, the sleigh carrying Fernao and Pekka glided west, not east. Every stride of the harnessed reindeer took Fernao farther not only from the blockhouse but also from the hostel in the Naantali district. The hostel had deliberately been built a long way from a ley line. That made getting to it difficult and leaving inconvenient.
As if picking the thought-and some of the things behind it-from his mind, Pekka leaned toward him and said, “This feels very strange.”
Fernao nodded. “For me, too,” he said. “Going to see Kajaani will be … interesting.”
Her laugh was nervous. “Bringing you there will be … interesting, too.”
Seeing her home town wasn’t what mattered, though. Meeting her sister, meeting her son-those were what counted. “I wonder what they’ll think of me,” he said.
He waited for Pekka to say something like,
“I know,” Fernao said. As a moderately resolute bachelor, he hadn’t gone through the ritual of meeting a woman’s family before. And, in his younger days, he hadn’t expected
