Out of the Darkness

side of the river any more. Getting escorted to things he was supposed to see didn’t strike him as much fun.

“Is so?” Andelot persisted.

“Aye, it’s so,” Ilmarinen said with a sigh.

“You are spy?” the young lieutenant asked-a very Unkerlanter question.

“I’m an ally,” Ilmarinen answered. “Spies are enemies. How can I possibly be a spy?”

“How can you be spy?” Andelot echoed. “Easy.” The other mage, who didn’t speak Algarvian, had a good deal to say in Unkerlanter. Andelot didn’t sound very happy about hearing any of it. When Swemmel’s sorcerer finished, the lieutenant said, “You go back to your side of river now. You stay on your side of river now. You not welcome on this side of river now.”

“And is that how one ally treats another?” Ilmarinen demanded, doing his best to show more indignation than he felt.

“Do you show us all your secrets?” Andelot returned. Because Unkerlanters had to keep so many secrets so inspectors and impressers wouldn’t drag them away and do something dreadful to them, they were convinced everyone had secrets and guarded them and tried to spy out other people’s.

“Plenty of your officers on our bank of the Albi, too,” Ilmarinen said. And, odds are, they’re spies, or some of them are, he thought.

“That is that bank of river. This is this bank of river,” Andelot said, as if that made all the difference in the world. Maybe, to him, it did. He pointed east, toward the riverbank. “You have to go now.”

Ilmarinen went, protesting all the while. To go quietly would have been out of character for him. Andelot and the mage walked with him. He wondered what the Unkerlanters didn’t want him to see. He wondered if there really was something he shouldn’t see. Curse Swemmel’s whoresons, he thought. When you start dealing with them, you have to start thinking like them.

Lieutenant and wizard stood watching till he boarded the ferry, till it began to move, till it reached the other side of the river. What don’t they want me to see? Is anything at all there? Can I find out? He was planning ways and means when he realized he’d given himself a new challenge.

Spring in Skrunda was an enjoyable time most years: warm without being too hot, with just enough rain to keep things green and growing. Talsu enjoyed this spring even more than the past few. Not only were the Algarvian occupiers gone from Jelgava, but the news sheets shouted of the triumphs of allied armies deep inside Algarve itself. A few Jelgavan regiments were in the fight, too. By the way the news sheets trumpeted what they did, they might have been whipping King Mezentio’s men all by themselves.

Some people-people who hadn’t seen action themselves-doubtless believed the news sheets. Talsu knew better. He knew what sorts of armies the Kuusamans and Lagoans had. He had a pretty fair notion of what sort of army the Unkerlanters had. In amongst all those fighters, a few regiments of Jelgavans would have been like a fingernail: nice to have, but hardly essential to the body as a whole.

When he remarked on that to his father, Traku said, “Well, we’ve got to start somewhere, I expect.”

“I suppose so,” Talsu admitted, “but do we have to cackle so much about it?”

He made a noise that might have come from a chicken after it laid an egg.

Traku laughed and then tossed him a pair of linen trousers. “Here-these are ready to go to Mindaugu for summer wear. He’s got himself too much silver to sweat in wool.”

“I’ll take them,” Talsu said. “I’ll be glad to, in fact-his house is near the grocery where Gailisa’s working.”

“Don’t dawdle away the whole day there,” his father said. “I would like to get a little more work out of you.”

“Foosh,” Talsu said. His father laughed. Talsu grabbed the trousers and headed across town with them. When he got to Mindaugu’s, the wealthy wine merchant took them, ducked away to try them on, and came out beaming. He gave Talsu his silver. Talsu looked the coins over, as he’d got into the habit of doing. “Wait a bit. This one’s got Mainardo’s ugly mug on it.”

Mindaugu made a sour face. “I thought I’d made a clean sweep of those.” He suddenly looked hopeful. “The silver’s still good, you know.” Talsu just clicked his tongue between his teeth. He had right on his side, and he knew it. Muttering, Mindaugu replaced Mainardo’s coin with one that had King Donalitu’s image. Talsu stuck it and the others in his pocket and headed off to the grocery store.

I won’t spend too much time there, he thought, but a fellow is entitled to see his wife every once in a while, isn’t he? He’d been married for more than a year, but still felt like a man on his honeymoon.

As he left the wine merchant’s, a couple of utterly ordinary middle-aged men in clothes even more ordinary (a tailor’s son, he noticed such things) who’d been leaning against a wall stepped out into the middle of the sidewalk- and into his path. “You Talsu son of Traku?” one of them asked, his voice mildly friendly.

“That’s right,” Talsu answered; only afterwards did he wonder what would have happened had he lied. As things were, he just said, “Do I know you?”

“You know us well enough,” replied the man who hadn’t asked his name. He reached into a trouser pocket and pulled out a short stick such as a constable might use. “You know us well enough to come along quietly, don’t you?”

Ice ran through Talsu. When he first saw the stick, he thought the men were a couple of robbers. He would have given up the silver he’d just got-it wasn’t worth his life. But they knew his name. And they wanted him, not his money. That could only make them King Donalitu’s men. As he bleated, “But I haven’t done anything!” he thought he would rather have dealt with robbers.

“Quietly, I said.” That was the fellow with the stick.

“Charge is treason against the Kingdom of Jelgava,” added the other one, the one who’d asked his name.

“Come along,” they said again, this time together. The one who didn’t have his stick out took Talsu’s arm. The other one fell in behind them so he could blaze Talsu at the first sign of anything untoward.

Numbly, Talsu went where they took him. If he’d done anything else, something dreadful would have happened to him. He was sure of that. Donalitu’s men had no reputation for restraint. They didn’t lead him in the direction of the constabulary station, which surprised him enough to make him ask, “Where are we going?” He added, “I really haven’t done anything,” not that he thought it would do him any good.

And it didn’t. “Shut up,” one of them said.

“You’ll find out where,” the other told him.

He did, too, when they marched him into the ley-line caravan depot. He wondered how they would keep things quiet and discreet in an ordinary caravan car. But, being servitors of the king, they didn’t have to worry about ordinary cars. They had a special laid on just for them-and him. He would gladly have done without the honor.

“What about my family?” he howled as the car-which had bars across the windows and sorcerous locks on the door-rolled out of Skrunda, heading southeast.

“Can’t pin anything on ‘em yet,” one of the men who’d seized him said. That wasn’t what Talsu meant, nor anything close to it, but he didn’t try to make himself any clearer. He’d caught the unmistakable regret in the fellow’s voice.

The other man said, “You want to confess now and make it easy on everybody?”

Everybody but me, Talsu thought. Of course, they didn’t care about him. He said, “How can I confess when I haven’t done anything?”

“Happens all the time,” the fellow answered.

Talsu believed that. He’d spent time in a dungeon before. “How can you arrest me for treason when the cursed redheads arrested me for treason?” he demanded.

“Happens all the time,” Donalitu’s bully boy said again. “Some people have treason in their blood.” While Talsu was still spluttering over that, he went on, “Turn out your pockets. Everything that’s in ‘em. You leave anything at all behind, you’ll be sorry-you can bet your arse on that.” He shoved a tray at Talsu.

Having no choice, Talsu obeyed. King Donalitu’s men examined everything with great care, especially the coins he set on the tray. Talsu let out a silent sigh of relief that he’d got Mindaugu to take back the silverpiece with Mainardo’s Algarvian visage on it. These whoresons could have made a treason case from it without any other evidence. What difference does it make, though? he thought bitterly. They can make a treason case from no evidence at all.