'We were just visiting,' the man quavered in Algarvian, 'and your shout frightened us, so-'
'Shut up!' Oraste said, and hit him in the head with his bludgeon. The woman screamed. He hit her, too. 'For one thing, I know you're lying. For another thing, I don't give a fart. Orders are to grab everybody, and I don't care what you look like. Get moving, or else I'll wallop you again.'
As the unhappy couple stumbled toward the door, blood ran down their faces and dripped on the shabby carpeting. Desperation in his voice, the man said, 'I'll give you anything you want to pretend you never saw us.'
'Forget it,' Oraste said. Bembo couldn't do anything but nod. Oraste continued. 'Go on, curse you. It's not like anybody'll miss you once you're gone.'
The man said something in classical Kaunian. Oraste didn't know a word of the language. Bembo knew just enough to recognize a curse when he heard one. He hit the man again, on the off chance that the fellow was mage enough to make the curse stick if he got to finish it. 'None of that,' he snapped. 'We're warded against wizardry anyhow.' He hoped the wards worked well.
He and Oraste led the couple they'd captured back to the constables in charge of holding Kaunians once caught. Other constables were leading more Kaunians and presumed Kaunians out of the cramped district. 'Powers above, a lot of these buggers look like Forthwegians and wear tunics,' Oraste said.
Bembo could only nod. Close to half the captives looked swarthy and dressed like their Forthwegian countrymen. Genuine blonds wearing genuine trousers had become scarce even in the Kaunian quarter. 'I do wonder how many have slipped away to someplace where nobody knows what in blazes they are,' Bembo said.
'Too cursed many, I'll tell you that,' Oraste said.
The captain in charge of the operation plainly agreed with him. 'You'll have to do better than this,' he shouted to his men. 'Algarve's going to need bodies for the fight ahead. You've got to go in there and get 'em.'
'There aren't that many bodies to get, not anymore,' Bembo said. 'We've already nabbed a good many, and likely even more have slipped through our fingers with their sorcerous disguises.' Again, he hoped Doldasai had. He wouldn't have wanted to put his neck on the block like that for nothing.
'Too right they have,' Oraste agreed. 'But the ones that are left, we've bloody well got to dig out. Come on.' Back into the Kaunian quarter he went, intent on doing all he could. Bembo couldn't come close to matching such zeal, and didn't much want to, but he followed nonetheless. What choice have I got? he wondered. He knew the answer all too well: none whatever.
Smooth as velvet, the ley-line caravan glided to a stop at the depot. 'Skrunda!' the conductor yelled, going from car to car. 'All out for Skrunda!'
'Your pardon,' Talsu said as he got to his feet. The man sitting next to him swung his legs into the aisle so Talsu, who'd been by the window, could get past and walk to the doorway that would let him return to his own town.
He had to snatch at his trousers as he went up the aisle. They'd fit fine when the Algarvians first captured him. After months in prison, though, they threatened to fall down with every stride he took. He was willing to hang on to them. When he got home, he or his father could alter his clothes so they'd fit his present scrawny state. And he could start eating properly again, to start making himself fit the clothes.
'Watch your step, sir,' the conductor said as Talsu got down from the caravan car by way of the little set of stairs that led to the platform. His voice was an emotionless drone. How many thousands of times, how many tens of thousands of times, had he said exactly the same thing? Enough to drive a man easily bored mad, surely. But he said, 'Watch your step, sir,' to the man behind Talsu, too, in just the same way.
Talsu had no baggage to reclaim. He counted himself lucky that his captors had given him back the clothes he was wearing when they'd seized him. He hurried out of the depot and onto the streets of the town where he'd lived all his life till conscripted into King Donalitu's army. That hadn't turned out well, not for him and not for Jelgava, either. Next to months in a dungeon, though…
He went through the market square at close to a trot. Part of him said the bread and onions and olives and almonds and olive oil on display there were shadows of what had been for sale before the war. The rest, the part that had thought hard about eating cockroaches, wanted to stop right there and stuff himself till he couldn't walk anymore.
He did stop when someone called his name. 'Talsu!' his friend repeated, coming up to pump his hand. 'I thought you were… you know.'
'Hello, Stikliu,' Talsu said. 'I was, as a matter of fact. But they finally let me go.'
'Did they?' Something in Stikliu's face changed. It wasn't a pleasant sort of change, either. 'How… lucky for you. I'll see you later. I have some other things to do. So long.' He left as fast as he'd come forward.
What was that all about? Talsu wondered. But he didn't need to wonder for long. Stikliu thought he'd sold his soul to the Algarvians. Talsu scowled. A lot of people were liable to think that. For what other reason would he have come out of the dungeon? What would he have thought if someone imprisoned were suddenly freed? Nothing good. Stikliu hadn't thought anything good, either.
A couple of other people who knew Talsu saw him on the way to the tailor's shop and the dwelling over it. They didn't come rushing over to find out how he was. They did their best to pretend they'd never set eyes on him. His scowl got deeper. Maybe the gaolers hadn't done him such an enormous favor by turning him loose.
He walked into the tailor's shop. There behind the counter sat his father, doing the necessary hand stitching on an Algarvian kilt before chanting the spell that would use the laws of similarity and contagion to bind the whole garment together. Traku looked up from his work. 'Good morn-' he began, and then threw down the kilt and ran out to take Talsu in his arms. 'Talsu!' he said, and his voice broke. He rumpled his son's hair, as he had when Talsu was a little boy. 'Powers above be praised, you've come home!' He didn't care how that might have happened; he just rejoiced that it had.
'Aye, Father.' Tears ran down Talsu's face, too. 'I'm home.'
Traku all but squeezed the breath out of Talsu. Then Talsu's father hurried to the stairway and called, 'Laitsina! Ausra! Come quick!'
'What on earth?' Talsu's mother said. But she and his sister Ausra both hurried downstairs. They both squealed- shrieked, actually- when they saw Talsu standing there, and then smothered him in hugs and kisses. After a couple of minutes, coherent speech and coherent thought returned. Laitsina asked, 'Does Gailisa know you're free?'
'No, Mother.' Talsu shook his head. 'I came here first.'
'All right.' Laitsina took charge, as she had a way of doing. 'Ausra, go to the grocer's and bring her back. Don't name any names, not out loud.' She rounded on her husband. 'Don't just stand there, Traku. Run upstairs and bring down the wine.'
'Aye.' Ausra and Traku said the same thing at the same time, as if to their commander. Ausra dashed out the door. Traku dashed up the stairs. In his army days, Talsu had had only one officer who'd got that instant obedience from his men. Poor Colonel Adomu hadn't lasted long; the Algarvians had killed him.
Traku came down with the wine. He poured cups for himself, his wife, and Talsu, and set the jar on the counter to wait for Ausra and Gailisa. Then he raised his own cup high. 'To freedom!' he said, and drank.
'To freedom!' Talsu echoed. But when he sipped, the red wine- made tangy in the usual Jelgavan style with the juices of limes and oranges and lemons- put him in mind of the prison and of the Jelgavan constabulary captain who'd given him all the wine he wanted to get him to denounce his friends and neighbors.
'What finally made them let you go, son?' Traku asked.
'You must know how they took Gailisa away,' Talsu said, and his father and mother both nodded. He went on, 'They brought her to my prison and made her write out a list of names. Then they told me she'd done it, and that my names had better match hers. I knew she'd never denounce anyone who really hated Algarvians, so I wrote down people who liked them but weren't real showy about it- you know the kind I mean. And I must have been thinking along with her, because they turned me loose.'
'Clever lad!' Traku burst out, and hit him in the shoulder. 'You can say a lot of things about my line, but we
