Through the Darkness

shattered on the cobbles inches from his face, spraying chips into his eyes. He rubbed at them till his vision cleared. But he hardly needed to see to know he would never sleep in that barracks hall again. He could feel the heat of flames on his back. The building was burning, burning. As the fire grew, he dragged the wounded man farther from the wreckage.

Lagoans ran this way and that, intent on their own concerns: the barracks was far from the only building afire along the waterfront. Some of Cornelu’s comrades who’d learned more Lagoan in exile than he called out to the locals. After a while, the Lagoans deigned to notice them. Parties of stretcher bearers came and took the men with the worst hurts off to the surgeons and mages who might help them. That done, though, the Lagoans left the exiles alone once more.

“If the barracks weren’t burning down, we’d be freezing, and would they care?” a Sibian demanded indignantly. “Not even a little, they wouldn’t. They toss us at the Algarvians like so many eggs, and it doesn’t matter to them if we burst.”

“Oh, it matters a little,” Cornelu said. “It would even matter to King Swemmel. After all, it’s more efficient when we die while we’re killing Algarvians and after we’ve killed some than here, uselessly, in Setubal.”

Then another Lagoan shouted something incomprehensible at them in his own language. “What’s that you say?” somebody shouted back in Sibian.

The fellow took it for Algarvian; Lagoans had a demon of a time telling the two languages apart. But when he answered, also in Algarvian, the Sibian exiles managed to understand him: “Bucket brigade!”

From then till dawn, Cornelu passed buckets back and forth. He stood between one of his countrymen and a Lagoan with whom he had trouble speaking. The work needed no words at all, though. He just sent full buckets one way and empties the other.

Thick clouds spoiled the sunrise. Only very gradually did Cornelu realize he was seeing by more than the light of the flames the bucket brigade battled. Not long after he did so, a hard, cold rain began to fall. The weary men raised a weary cheer: the rain would do more to stifle the fires than anything they could achieve on their own. Before long, a Lagoan officer blew his whistle and shouted a word even Cornelu understood: “Dismissed!”

He didn’t realize how truly worn he was till he stopped working. He turned his face up to the rain and let it wash sweat and soot from his forehead and cheeks. That felt good-powers above, it felt wonderful-for a little while. Then he realized he was shivering. And no wonder: all he had on were the light tunic and kilt he’d worn to bed, and the rain-which was starting to have pea-sized hail mixed in with it-had already got them good and soaked.

The Lagoan who’d labored beside him for so long put a hand on his shoulder and said, “You-come with me. Food.” He rubbed his belly. “Tea.” He mimed bringing a mug up to his face. “Hot. Good. Come.”

Cornelu understood all that. Every single word of it sounded wonderful. “Aye,” he said, in the best Lagoan he had.

His new friend led him to a mess hall. Most of the men in there were dripping, and more than a few of them wore only nightclothes. Roaring fires heated the hall past what would have been comfortable most of the time, but it felt splendid now. Cornelu queued up for big, salty fried herrings; for buttery oatmeal nearly as thick and sticky as wet cement; and for steaming tea so full of honey, the spoon almost stood up without touching the side of the mug.

He ate as intently as he ever had while in the woodcutting gang back on his home island of Tirgoviste. Herring wasn’t reckoned a breakfast food in Sibiu, but he wouldn’t have complained under any circumstances, not as hungry as he was-and he’d been doing so much hard work for so long, the meal scarcely seemed like breakfast anyhow. He went back for seconds.

So did the Lagoan who’d brought him here. The fellow wore a petty officer’s uniform and had the breezy efficiency-the real sort, not the artificial kind Swemmel tried to instill into the Unkerlanters-of a good underofficer in any navy. He spent a lot of time cursing the Algarvians: not so much for being the enemy in general or even for what they’d just done to Setubal as for costing him half a night’s sleep. After rubbing his belly again, this time in real satisfaction, he glanced across the table at Cornelu and remarked, “Your clothes- fftt!”

That last wasn’t a word in any language Cornelu knew, but he understood it. He liked the sound of it, too. “Aye,” he said. “Clothes fftt.”

The Lagoan got to his feet. “Come with me,” he said again, in the tones of a man giving an order. He couldn’t have known Cornelu was a commander-- clothes went a long way toward making a man, or, in the case of sodden night-clothes, toward unmaking him. On the other hand, he might not have cared had he known; some petty officers got so used to bullying sailors around that they bullied their superiors, too.

Inside of another half hour, he had Cornelu outfitted in a Lagoan sailor’s uniform, complete with a heavy coat and a broad-brimmed hat to shed the rain. “I thank you,” Cornelu said in Sibian; the phrased remained similar in all the Algarvic languages.

“It’s nothing,” the petty officer answered, catching his drift. Then he said something Cornelu couldn’t precisely follow, but it included Mezentio’s name and several obscenities and vulgarities. Having taken care of Cornelu, the Lagoan went on his way.

Cornelu walked back to the crumpled Sibian barracks. The sour smell of wet smoke still hung in the air despite the rain. But Cornelu’s uniform, all his effects, the whole building, were indeed fftt. A Sibian lieutenant still wearing nothing but soaked nightclothes gave him a look full of lacerating jealousy and said, “You seem to have landed on your feet better than anyone, sir. As far as I can see, we’re on our own till the Lagoans get around to providing for us.”

“All right.” That was what Cornelu had hoped to hear. “I’m going into town, then. I want to make sure some friends are all right.” Janira mattered to him. Balio, her father, mattered to him because he mattered to her.

After only a few strides toward the closest ley-line caravan stop, Cornelu paused and cursed himself for a fool. How could he get aboard without money? But when he jammed his hands into the pockets of his new navy coat, he found coins in one of them-plenty of silver, he discovered, for the fare and for a good meal afterwards. Who’d put it there? The petty officer? The quarter-master who’d given him the coat? He had no way of knowing. He did know he’d have a harder time looking down his nose at Lagoans from now on.

He got out of the caravan car at the stop near the Grand Hall of the Lagoan Guild of Mages. He’d passed several new stretches of wreckage on the way there; the Algarvians had hit Setubal hard. But Cornelu knew it could have been worse-Mezentio’s men could have massacred Kaunians instead of coming over and risking themselves.

People were standing around in the street near Balio’s cafe. Cornelu didn’t think that a good sign. He pushed his way through the crowd. A couple of men sent him resentful looks, but gave way when they saw him in Lagoan naval uniform. He grimaced when he got to see the cafe. It was a burnt-out ruin. An egg had burst a few doors down, burst and started a fire.

And there stood Balio, staring at the ruins of his business. “I’m glad to see you well,” Cornelu told him, and then asked the really important question: “Is Janira all right?”

“Aye.” Balio nodded vaguely. “She’s around somewhere. Powers above only know how we’ll make a living now, though.” He cursed the Algarvians in Lagoan and Sibian both. Cornelu joined him. He’d been cursing the Algarvians for years. He expected to go on doing it for years more. And now he had a brand new reason.

News sheets in Eoforwic had stopped talking about the battle for Sulingen. From that, Vanai concluded it was going badly for the Algarvians. The quieter they got, she assumed, the more they had to hide. And the more they had to hide, the better she liked it. “May they all fall,” she said savagely at breakfast one morning.

“Aye, and take all their puppets down with them,” Ealstan agreed. “Powers below eat King Mezentio, powers below eat all his soldiers, and powers below eat Plegmund’s Brigade, starting with my accursed cousin.”

“If the Algarvians are ruined, everyone who follows them will be ruined, too,” Vanai said. She understood why Ealstan hated Plegmund’s Brigade as he did. But one thing her grandfather had taught her that still seemed good was to search for root causes first. The Algarvians had caused Forthweg’s misery. Plegmund’s Brigade was only a symptom of it.

Ealstan thought about arguing with her: she could see it on his face. Instead, he took a last bite of bread and gulped down the rough red wine in his mug. Pausing only to give her a kiss that landed half on her mouth, half on her cheek, he headed for the door, saying, “It’s not worth the quarrel, and I haven’t got time for one anyhow. I’m off to see if I can help some men pay the redheads a little less.”