Through the Darkness

a night when he was studying classical Kaunian, tlie thief might clean out the downstairs of Traku’s shop and depart with no one the wiser.

To make sure Talsu wasn’t a burglar, his father came partway down the stairs and called softly: “That you, son?”

“Aye,” Talsu answered.

“Well, what did you learn tonight?” Traku asked.

“Having gained the upper hand, the Kaunian army advanced into the forest,” Talsu declaimed, letting the sounds of the classical language fill his mouth in a way modern Jelgavan couldn’t come close to matching.

“Isn’t that posh?” his father said admiringly. “What’s it mean?” After Talsu translated, Traku frowned and asked, “What happened then-after it advanced into the forest, I mean?”

“I don’t know,” Talsu said. “Maybe the Kaunians kept on winning. Maybe the lousy redheads who lived in the forest ambushed them. It’s just a sentence in a grammar book, not a whole story.”

“Too bad,” Traku said. “You’d like to know how these things turn out.”

Talsu yawned. “What I’d like to do is go to bed. I’ll still have to get up and work tomorrow morning. Come to that, so will you, Father.”

“Oh, aye, I know,” Traku answered. “But I like to be sure everything’s all right before I settle down-and if I didn’t, I’d hear about it in the morning from your mother.” He turned and went back up to the top floor. Talsu followed.

His room had seemed cramped ever since he came home from the army after Jelgava’s losing fight against the Algarvians. It still did. He was too tired to care tonight. He took off his tunic and trousers and lay down wearing nothing but his drawers: the night was fine and mild. He fell asleep with participles spinning in his mind.

Instead of advancing into the forest the next morning, he advanced on breakfast: barley bread, garlic-flavored olive oil, and the usual Jelgavan wine tangy with citrus juice. Afterwards, and before his father could chain him to a stool to work on a couple of cloaks that needed finishing, he ducked out and headed over to the grocer’s shop to say hello to Gailisa and to show off the bits of classical Kaunian he was learning. She didn’t understand much of it herself, but it impressed her, not least because she did understand why he was studying it. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised over his shoulder as he left, to keep his father from getting too annoyed at him.

But he broke the promise. During the night, somebody-more likely several somebodies-had painted DEATH TO THE ALGARVIAN TYRANTS! on walls all over Skrunda: not in Jelgavan, but in excellent classical Kaunian. Talsu might not have been able to understand it before he started studying the old language. He could now.

Unfortunately, so could the Algarvians. Their officers, as he’d seen, were familiar with the classical tongue. And their soldiers were on the streets with jars of paint to cover up the offending slogan and with wire brushes to efface it. The redheads didn’t aim to do the work themselves, though. They grabbed Jelgavan passersby, Talsu among them. He spent the whole morning getting rid of graffiti. But the more he worked to get rid of them, the more he agreed with them. And he didn’t think he was the only Jelgavan who felt that way, either.

“New songs?” Ethelhelm shook his head and looked a little sheepish when Ealstan asked the question. “Haven’t got a whole lot. The boys and I have been on the road so much lately, we haven’t had very many chances to sit down and fool around with anything new.”

Ealstan nodded, doing his best to seem properly sympathetic. He didn’t want to say something like, Hard to write nasty songs about the Algarvians now that you’ve started cozying up to them. Even the last few new songs Ethelhelm had written had lost a good deal of their bite. But Ealstan needed the band leader’s business. And Ethelhelm knew he had a Kaunian lady friend. Ealstan didn’t think the musician would betray him to the redheads, but he didn’t want to give Ethelhelm any excuse for doing something like that, either.

“Good to have things quiet in Eoforwic again,” Ethelhelm said. “It got a little livelier than we really wanted for a while there.”

“Aye,” Ealstan said. No wonder Ethelhelm thought that way: the riots had made it into his district for a change. Ealstan started to remark that the Kaunian district had stayed very quiet; he wanted to remind Ethelhelm of the Kaunian blood the band leader was said to have. In the end, he didn’t say that, either: talking about Kaunians with Ethelhelm might also remind him of Vanai. When Ethelhelm looked to be drifting toward the Algarvians, Ealstan didn’t want to chance that.

He was my friend, Ealstan thought. And he was more than that-he was our voice, the only voice Forthwegians really had after the redheads overran us. And now he’s not any more. What went wrong?

Looking around the flat again, Ealstan saw what he’d seen before. Nothing had gone wrong for Ethelhelm. No, too many things had gone right instead. The drummer and songwriter had everything he wanted. He liked having everything he wanted, too. If the price of keeping it was going easy on the Algarvians, he would.

Had some redheaded officer come up to Ethelhelm and told him straight out that he’d better go easy or he’d end up in trouble? Ealstan didn’t know, and could hardly ask. He had his doubts, though. The Algarvians were smoother than that-unless they were dealing with Kaunians, in which case they didn’t bother.

Oblivious to his bookkeeper’s thoughts, Ethelhelm leaned forward and tapped the ledgers Ealstan had opened on the table in front of him. “Everything here looks very good,” he said-no small compliment, not when he’d been casting his own accounts before hiring Ealstan. He knew his way around money almost as well as he knew his way around drums and lyrics.

“You haven’t got all the silver in the world,” Ealstan told him, “but you surely do have a good chunk of it.”

“I never thought I’d end up with so much,” Ethelhelm said. “It’s nice, isn’t it?”

Ealstan managed to nod. He’d been comfortable-looking back on things, he’d been more than comfortable-in his father’s house in Gromheort. It certainly was nicer than the humbler circumstances in which he lived now. He’d saved a good deal of money here in Eoforwic, but what could he spend it on? Not much. And Ethelhelm didn’t seem to have a hint about the sort of life Ealstan lived these days. He didn’t act interested in learning, either.

But then the band leader flipped the ledgers closed, one after another. And he took a goldpiece from his belt pouch and set it atop one of them. “There you go, Ealstan,” he said. “Aye, a job well done, no doubt about it, especially considering the state of the receipts I gave you. Bloody leather sack!”

Ealstan picked up the coin and hefted it. It was, he saw, an Algarvian gold-piece, not a Forthwegian minting. It was almost worth more than twice what his fee would have been. “Here, I can make change,” he said, and reached for his own belt pouch.

“Don’t bother,” Ethelhelm told him. “You can use it, and I can afford it. Always good to know I can rely on the people close to me.”

By the powers above! Ealstan thought. He’s buying me, the same way he buys off the Algarvians. He wanted to throw the coin in Ethelhelm’s face. If it hadn’t been for Vanai, he would have. Of course, if it hadn’t been for Vanai, he’d still be living back in Gromheort. He put the goldpiece in his pouch and contented himself with saying, “Bookkeepers don’t blab. They wouldn’t keep any customers if they did.”

“I understand that,” Ethelhelm said. “You’ve certainly shown it to me.” He could still be gracious. He could, in fact, still be very much what he had been, except when it came to the Algarvians. Somehow, that was particularly distressing to Ealstan. Ethelhelm went on, “There, you’ve taken it even so. Good.”

“Aye, and thanks,” Ealstan said. He got to his feet and tucked the ledgers under his arm. “I’ll see you in a couple of weeks, then, and odds are you’ll be richer.”

“There are worse problems to have,” Ethelhelm said complacently, and Ealstan could hardly disagree with him.

Since the latest round of riots, the doorman at Ethelhelm’s block of flats had taken to staying inside, in the lobby. He didn’t position himself out where people could see him, as he had before-maybe he’d had a narrow escape. One more question Ealstan didn’t feel like asking. The doorman got up and held the door open for him. “See you again,” he said.

“Oh, that you will,” Ealstan said. The prospect should have made him glad, especially if it meant he’d see more goldpieces. And it did-to a degree. But it saddened him, too, because Ethelhelm inarguably wasn’t what he had been.