hadn’t, Merkela might have.
A greengrocer’s was quiet, while the rest of the shops on the street bustled. Painted across the window were half a dozen words: REVENGE FOR SIMANU--NIGHT AND FOG. Skarnu’s shiver had nothing to do with the weather. Whoever met night and fog vanished off the face of the earth. He’d found that out when he visited a comrade’s farm. Dauktu was gone, and all his family with him.
Skarnu didn’t want to think about that. As he and Merkela neared the square, he remarked, “Do you know what I miss from Priekule?” She shook her head. Her straight blond hair, even fairer than his, flew back and forth. Skarnu said, “I miss news sheets.”
Merkela shrugged. “Pavilosta never had one of its own. It isn’t big enough for that, I suppose. Sometimes they bring them in from other towns. These days, a news sheet would be full of Algarvian lies, anyhow.”
“Aye, so it would,” Skarnu agreed. “The biggest news is, the redheads have to keep on fighting in Unkerlant. If they’d taken Cottbus, we’d all be singing a sorry tune right now.”
“Good they didn’t,” Merkela said fiercely. “The only thing wrong is, the Unkerlanters won’t give Mezentio’s men everything I would.” Skarnu wasn’t so sure of that; the soldiers who followed King Swemmel were anything but gentle. Then Skarnu glanced over to Merkela. On second thought, she was probably right. Whatever Swemmel’s men did to the Algarvians, it wouldn’t match what she’d do if only she could.
He didn’t remark on that. Whatever he said, Merkela would come back with something like,
Instead of a daily or a weekly news sheet, Pavilosta had the market square. People gathered to gossip as much as they did to buy and sell. Algarvian soldiers walked through the square, but not so many as had walked it before fall turned into winter. That wasn’t the cold keeping them indoors so much as it was the war in the distant west pulling them out of Valmiera. Skarnu wished it would pull them all out of his kingdom.
Merkela went off to buy pins and needles, which she couldn’t make for herself on the farm. Skarnu cared nothing about pins and needles. He wandered over to the table from which an enterprising Pavilosta taverner sold ale. The taverner nodded to him as he came up. He would never be a proper local, not if he stayed on the farm near town till his hair went from gold to silver. But he’d been here long enough--and kept his mouth shut well enough--to win a little respect. He laid coins on the table. The taverner poured him ale from a big stoneware jug.
He sipped, then nodded. “Good,” he said. His accent still announced that he came from the capital, not the provinces. Imitating the local dialect only made him sound like a bad actor. Imitating peasant taciturnity worked better.
“Aye, it is, though the weather’s too cold for the proper tang to come through,” the taverner answered. He was no peasant, and the hinges of his jaws worked fine. He looked around for the closest Algarvians. Not seeing any kilted soldiers within earshot, he leaned forward across the table and asked, “Have you heard the latest?”
“Don’t think so.” Skarnu leaned forward, too, till their heads almost touched. “Tell me, why don’t you?”
“I’ll do that. I will indeed.” Had the taverner brought his mouth any closer, he could have given Skarnu a kiss. “They say--I can’t prove it’s true, but they do say it, and nobody says anything different, not that I’ve heard--they say the redheads are going to knock over the Column of Victory down in Priekule.”
“What?” Skarnu jerked as if stung by a wasp. “They can’t do that!” His memories of the column went back to earliest childhood, back to the days before his parents had died in a ley-line caravan collision, orphaning him and Krasta.
“They can,” the taverner said. “Pretty rotten piece of business, anybody wants to know what I think . . . which isn’t too likely, especially if you listen to my wife go on.”
Skarnu was only half listening. He picked up the mug of ale, gulped it down, and shoved it and coins across the table for a refill. He took a long pull at that, too, trying to imagine the capital’s skyline without that pale stone needle thrusting up from the middle of the park. He couldn’t do it; he had an easier time visualizing the royal palace gone. “Powers above,” he said at last. “They wouldn’t just knock down a monument. They’re trying to make us forget who we are.”
Now the taverner gave him a blank look. The fellow might be shrewd in business, but how much education did he have? Not much, probably. That wasn’t so for Skarnu, who’d always been a better student than his sister. Valmiera’s roots, like those of Jelgava to the north, were anchored in the soil of the long-ago Kaunian Empire. Monuments survived all over both kingdoms; the Column of Victory was just one of the more spectacular. If the Algarvians were trying to destroy them . . .
“They’re trying to kill our Kaunianity,”
