only too well. But he couldn’t make that not have happened.
His own father had a copy of the news sheet open on the counter behind which he worked. Traku was cutting and sewing a tunic while he read. His hands knew what to do, so well that he had to glance at his work only every now and then. He looked up from the news sheet when Talsu came in. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.
“Were you expecting somebody else?” Talsu asked. “King Donalitu, maybe?”
He wouldn’t have made such jokes before Donalitu fled the Algarvians, not unless he felt like spending some time in one of the king’s dungeons. The redheads encouraged jokes about the king. For jokes about themselves, though, they had dungeons of their own. Talsu’s father, knowing that, lowered his voice as he answered, “No, I thought you’d be one of Mezentio’s officers, ready to gloat about this.” He tapped the news sheet with a forefinger.
“I’ve seen it,” Talsu said. “Even if I hadn’t seen it, I’d have heard about it. The whole town’s heard about it by now, the way the hawkers keep bellowing like so many branded steers.”
Traku chuckled. “They do go on.”
“And on, and on,” Talsu agreed. “They’ll be putting up copies for broadsheets any minute now. If there’s one thing the Algarvians are good at, it’s bragging about themselves.” They were also good, all too good, at war, or they wouldn’t have occupied Skrunda and the rest of Jelgava. Talsu didn’t like thinking about that, and so he didn’t.
His father said, “You know what they’re telling us here, don’t you?” He tapped the news sheet again. “They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’ll just have to save ourselves.”
Talsu shook his head. “That’s not what they mean. They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’d bloody well get used to King Mainardo.” He still wasn’t talking very loud, but he spoke with great vehemence: “Get used to going hungry, get used to short-weight coins, get used to Algarvians lording it over us forever.”
“That’s what’ll happen if we don’t do something about it, all right.” Traku glanced down at the news sheet. “I think we’re saying the same thing with different words.”
“Maybe.” Talsu rubbed his side. How long would the livid scar there go on paining him? For the rest of his days? He didn’t like to think about that, either. “But I never dreamt, when the redheads came in, they’d make me wish we had our own king and nobles back again.”
“Who did? Who could have?” his father said. “But you have to be careful where you say that. If you aren’t, you’ll disappear and you won’t have the chance to say it anymore.”
“I know.” Talsu pointed to the tunic his father was working on. “Are you going to use the Algarvian sorcery to finish that one?”
“Aye.” Traku grimaced. He couldn’t get in trouble for praising the redheads, not with things as they were in Skrunda-in all Jelgava-these days, but that didn’t mean he was happy about doing it. “It’s better than the magecraft I had before, no two ways about it. The magic is good. The Algarvians …” He grimaced again, grimaced and shook his head.
Thinking about the Algarvians always made Talsu think about the one who’d stabbed him. Thinking about that redhead made him think about Gailisa, which was much more enjoyable. And from Gailisa his thoughts didn’t have to go far to reach her father. He said, “Maybe it’s time you talked with the grocer.”
Changing the subject didn’t bother his father. “Think so, do you?” Traku said. “If I had to guess, I’d say Gailisa has thought so for quite a while. What do I do when her old man asks me what took you so bloody long?”
Ears burning, Talsu answered, “Tell him anything you want. Do you think it’ll matter?”
Traku laughed, though Talsu didn’t think it was very funny. “No, I don’t suppose the stalling will queer this match, the way it would some I could think of. Not much likelihood Gailisa will turn you down, is there?”
“I hope not,” Talsu said, blushing some more.
“If she did, it’d be a scandal worse than any we’ve seen in Skrunda since I was younger than you are now,” Traku said. “I guess you may have heard the story of the fellow who got married to three different girls on the same day.”
“A time or two,” Talsu said, which was somewhere around a hundredth of the truth. He grinned at his father. “Must have been one tired bridegroom by the time he got done that night.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Traku said with a grin of his own. “Of course, they do say he was a young man, a very young man, so he had some chance of bringing it off.” Before Talsu could answer that with another lewd sally, his father went up the stairs. He returned a moment later with a jar of apricot brandy and a couple of glasses. After filling them both, he gave Talsu one and raised the other. “Here’s to grandchildren.”
“To grandchildren,” Talsu echoed, and drank. The brandy glided down his throat and burst in his stomach like an egg. He hadn’t thought much about having children of his own, though he certainly had thought about the process by which children came into the world.
Traku hadn’t brought the brandy down unnoticed. Ausra came halfway down the stairs and asked, “Does that mean what I think it means?”
“That my sister is a snoop?” Talsu returned. “Aye, what else could it mean?” Ausra stuck out her tongue at him. He went on, “We haven’t done any talking yet. But we’re going to do some talking.”
“It’s about time,” Ausra said, echoing Traku. “I’ve wanted Gailisa for a sister-in-law for a long time now. I figure getting her is the only good I’ll ever have from you as a brother.” Without giving him a chance to answer, she hurried back upstairs again.
But she didn’t stay there for very long. After a moment, she and her mother came down, both of them carrying glasses. Traku poured brandy for them, half a glass for Ausra, a whole one for Laitsina.
Talsu’s mother kissed him. “Do you know what the best thing about having grandchildren is?”
“I certainly am, and I ought to box your ears for impudence.” But Laitsina, who’d gone through a lot of the brandy in a hurry, was smiling and a little red-faced. “The best thing about grandchildren,” she declared with oracular wisdom, “is that you can give them back to their mother and father when they get to be a nuisance.”
“That’s so,” Traku agreed. “Can’t do it with your own children. You’re stuck with them.” He looked from Talsu to Ausra and back again. Then he looked at his own glass, and seemed surprised to discover it empty. The jar of brandy stood close by on the counter. He remedied the misfortune he’d found.
The whole family was getting merry when the front door to the tailor’s shop opened. They all looked up in surprise, as if they’d been caught doing something shameful. The Algarvian officer standing in the doorway twiddled with one spike of his waxed mustachios. “Seeing happy people is good,” he said in fair Jelgavan. “Why am I seeing happy people?”
“A coming betrothal,” Traku answered. He didn’t offer the redhead any brandy.
Affecting not to notice that, the Algarvian said, “It is good. I hope there is being much joy from it.”
“Thanks,” Talsu said grudgingly. If that Algarvian trooper hadn’t stabbed him, his chances with Gailisa might not have been so good. Even that, though, didn’t endear any of King Mezentio’s men to him. More grudgingly still, he went on, “What do you want?”
“Here.” The redhead displayed a tunic. “I am wanting a warm lining sewn into this. I am going from here to another place to fight. I will be needing a warm lining. I will be needing all the warm I can be getting.”
“For Unkerlant, you’ll need more than a warm lining,” Talsu said, and the Algarvian winced, as if he hadn’t wanted to hear his destination named.
“I can do it,” Traku said, “but my son’s right: you’ll need more than that. I saw as much last winter.” That made the Algarvian look unhappier yet. Traku added, “Would you be interested in a nice, thick cloak, now?”
“A cloak?” The Algarvian sighed. “Aye, I had better be having a cloak, is it not so?”
“It certainly is so,” Traku said. “And I have just the thing you’ll want.” To a redhead going off to Unkerlant, he would show sample after sample. Like Talsu, he surely hoped the Algarvian would meet his end there. And profit- profit counted, too.
Skarnu wished he had more connections, better connections. He’d managed to keep the fight against Algarve alive in his little part of Valmiera, and he knew others were doing the same across the kingdom. But he didn’t know how well they were doing, how much annoyance they were causing the occupiers.
