It was. A ley-line caravan glided up. A couple of nondescript men, men who looked amazingly like the fellows who’d arrested him, got down from a caravan car. One of them jerked a thumb at Talsu. “This the bastard?” he asked.
“It’s him, all right,” a guard agreed. The fellows from the caravan car and the guards signed some papers. Then the guards gave Talsu a shove. He climbed up into the caravan car. So did his new keepers. The ley-line caravan slid off toward the southeast.
“Where are we going?” Talsu asked.
“Balvi,” one of the men said. “Shut up,” the other one added. He would have had no trouble working in a dungeon.
“Balvi!” Talsu exclaimed. He’d never been to the capital of Jelgava. Before his days in the army, he’d never been far from Skrunda. The mountains he’d seen and fought in then hadn’t endeared him to the idea of travel. Neither had his couple of trips to King Donalitu’s dungeons. “Why Balvi?”
“Shut up.” This time, both keepers spoke together. In casual, conversational tones more frightening than fierce menace would have been, one of them went on, “You’d be amazed how much we can make you hurt without leaving a mark on you.”
“That’s true,” the other one agreed. Talsu was willing to believe them. He sat quietly in the compartment- save for one brief trip to ease himself, during which both keepers went with him-till the ley-line caravan glided into the depot at Balvi late that afternoon. A carriage waited for them there. Talsu craned his neck for glimpses of the capital’s famous buildings. Even the royal palace was worth seeing, no matter what he thought of King Donalitu.
Once inside the carriage, Talsu risked a question: “Where are we going?”
“Kuusaman ministry,” answered one of the men with him.
“You’re their worry now,” the other one said, “and good riddance to you.”
“What do you mean?” Talsu said. “You sound like you’re throwing me out of the kingdom.”
“That’s just what we’re doing,” a keeper said. “If the slanteyes want you so bad, they’re welcome to you, as far as Jelgava is concerned.”
Talsu was still chewing on that when the carriage stopped in front of a larger, more impressive building than any Skrunda boasted. The Kuusaman banner, sky blue and sea green, flew in front of it and atop it. “Out,” the other keeper said. Talsu got out. So did his shepherds.
A couple of Kuusamans took charge of them just inside the ministry. They spoke classical Kaunian-spoke it better than Talsu or his keepers, though it was the grandfather of Jelgavan but unrelated to the islanders’ tongue. That left Talsu obscurely embarrassed. The keepers signed several leaves of paper. Talsu began to feel as if he were no more than a sack of lentils passed from one dealer to another.
With a last glower, King Donalitu’s men left the ministry. One of the Kuusamans told Talsu, “Come with me. I shall take you to Minister Tukiainen.”
“I thank you,” Talsu said in his halting classical Kaunian. “But may I not wash myself first?”
After putting their heads together and talking in their own language, the Kuusamans both nodded. “Let it be as you say,” one of them replied. “But you would do well-please believe me when I say this-to bathe quickly.”
A quick bath didn’t get rid of all the grime clinging to Talsu, but did leave him smelling less like something just off the midden. The Kuusamans escorted him to Minister Tukiainen’s office. He almost didn’t notice the minister, though, for Gailisa was sitting in the office. They flew into each other’s arms. “What are you doing here?” he asked her.
“It is her doing that you are both here.” Minister Tukiainen spoke good Jelgavan. By speaking, he reminded Talsu of his existence. He went on, “She wrote a letter that brought your plight to the notice of the Seven Princes. We requested your release. . and so, here you are.”
“Thank you, sir.” Reluctantly untangling himself from Gailisa, Talsu bowed. He asked, “Uh, sir, why am I
“Because your government has decided you and your wife are both troublemakers,” Tukiainen answered. “You are not welcome in Jelgava anymore. King Donalitu has said that, since Kuusamo is interested in you, you should be Kuusamo’s responsibility. And so”-he smiled-”we shall take care of that. As soon as may be, we shall send you to Yliharma and help you set up in business there. You are a tailor, your wife tells me. A skilled tailor should do well in Kuusamo.”
Things were moving too fast for Talsu. That morning, he’d been in the dungeon, with no particular hope of ever getting out again. Now he was not only out of the dungeon but also, evidently, on his way out of his own kingdom. He tried to make himself sorry or angry or anything of the sort. He couldn’t. All he felt was joy. “Thank you, sir,” he said, and bowed again. “I feel like-like I’m escaping.”
“And so you are,” Master Tukiainen said. “To us, this whole kingdom is like a dungeon. In my opinion, you are well out of it.”
“I’ll have to learn Kuusaman,” Talsu said. That, at the moment, was the least of his worries.
Thirteen
Leudast marveled that he could walk through the streets of Trapani without being ready to dive into a hole at any moment. The Algarvians’ formal surrender in the city hadn’t quite ended the fighting. Diehards and soldiers who hadn’t got the word kept blazing at the Unkerlanters for several days more. Even King Mainardo’s announcement of a general Algarvian surrender hadn’t quite done the job. By now, though, all the redheads had either laid down their sticks or were lying down themselves-lying down and not about to get up again.
A skinny Algarvian woman came out of a battered house. “Sleeping with me?” she called in bad Unkerlanter, and twitched her hips in case Leudast hadn’t been able to understand her.
He shook his head and walked on. He hadn’t turned the corner before she called the same invitation to another Unkerlanter soldier. Leudast got propositioned a couple of times a day. Some of his countrymen said it proved all Algarvian women were whores. Leudast didn’t know whether it proved they were whores or just that they were hungry.
Everybody-everybody Algarvian, anyhow-in Trapani was hungry these days. Leudast couldn’t see that the Unkerlanter authorities were working very hard to keep the redheads fed. He lost no sleep over it. When Mezentio’s men held big stretches of Unkerlant, they hadn’t done much to keep the peasants and townsfolk there fed, either.
He had to stop then. A column of captives came shambling by: glum, hollow-cheeked men in filthy, tattered Algarvian uniforms, the stubble on their faces almost but not quite grown out into beards. Most of them were redheads, but he spotted a knot of men who looked like Unkerlanters, though they wore tan tunics and kilts like the Algarvians. Their dark beards were thick and full.
“Who are those whoresons?” he called to a guard. “Traitors from the Duchy of Grelz?” He was a lieutenant nowadays because he’d captured the Algarvian calling himself King of Grelz. Some of the men from the duchy in the southeast of Unkerlant kept fighting against King Swemmel even after that.
But the guard shook his head. “No, sir,” he answered. “These bastards are Forthwegians: the outfit that called itself Plegmund’s Brigade. And see? They’ve got a couple of Valmieran swine with ‘em. The Algarvians picked up garbage all over the place.” He laughed at his own wit.
“Plegmund’s Brigade, eh?” Leudast nodded. “Aye, I ran up against them a time or two.” He hadn’t cared for the experience; the Forthwegians had been tough and nasty.
One of them, a fellow who looked as if he’d been a robber before joining Plegmund’s Brigade, must have understood him, for he spoke in his own language: “Too futtering bad we didn’t get you, too.”
Having come from northeastern Unkerlant, not far from the Forthwegian border, Leudast followed Forthwegian better than most of his countrymen would have. He also heard another captive say, “Powers below eat you, shut up, Ceorl! You want to make it worse than it is already?”
