Darkness Descending

to learn much of the old language, and modern Jelgavan had drifted too far from it to let him understand the phrase. He had to ask, “What was that?”

“The stinking rose,” Gailisa translated. “I don’t know why they called it that back in the days of the Empire--it doesn’t look anything like a rose--but they did.”

“It doesn’t stink, either,” Talsu said. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like garlic. Powers above, even the redheads eat it.”

“They eat everything,” Gailisa said with a fine curl of the lip. “They’re eating my father out of food, and they only pay half what it’s worth. If he complained, they wouldn’t pay anything at all--they’d just take. They’re the occupiers, so they can do as they please.”

“They’ve always paid my father--so far, anyhow,” Talsu said. “I don’t know what he’d do if one of them didn’t; he gets a lot of his business from them these days.”

“They’re thieves.” Gailisa’s voice was flat. “They’re worse thieves than our own nobles, and they give us back less. I never thought I’d say that about anybody, but it’s true.”

“Aye.” Talsu nodded. “They could have made a lot of people like them if they’d put down the nobles and walked small themselves, but they haven’t bothered. King Mainardo! As if an Algarvian has any business being king here!”

“We lost the war. That means they can do whatever they want, like I said,” Gailisa answered. “They beat us, and now they’re beating us.”

Talsu paid her for the garlic and the oil and left the grocers shop in a hurry. Gailisa sounded almost like his father, blaming him for losing the fight. Maybe she didn’t mean it that way, but that was how it sounded. If I’d been in charge of things.. . , Talsu thought, and then laughed at himself. If he’d been in charge of things, the Jelgavan army would still have lost. He didn’t know how to run an army or a war. But the nobles who’d run the army were supposed to.

He stopped in a tavern and bought a glass of red wine flavored with orange and lime juice. The wine was rough and raw and cheap, but better than the thin, sour beer army rations had served up with breakfast every morning. Somebody’d probably promised better, then pocketed half of what he should have spent. That was how things had gone during the war.

As Talsu was leaving the tavern, a couple of Algarvian soldiers strode in. If he hadn’t stepped back in a hurry, they would have walked right over him. He wanted to smash them for their arrogance, but didn’t dare. Two against one was bad odds, and all the occupiers in Skrunda would come after him even if he won.

Hating the Algarvians, hating himself, he went home. His father, having sewn one half of the Algarvian officer’s tunic, was muttering the charm that would finish the stitching. It wasn’t quite a straight application of the law of similarity, because the left half was a mirror image of the right. Talsu wouldn’t have wanted to try it himself; he knew he didn’t have the skill. But his father was the best tailor in Skrunda and for several towns around, not only for his handwork but also for the craft spells that meant he didn’t have to do everything by hand.

As soon as Traku spoke the final word of command, the thread he’d laid on the left side of the tunic writhed as if alive, then stitched itself through the fabric, duplicating his careful sewing on the right side. He watched anxiously, trusting even long-familiar magic less than his needlework. But everything turned out as it should have.

“That’s a nice piece of work, Father,” Talsu said, setting the oil and the garlic on the counter by the newly finished tunic.

“Aye, it is, if I say so myself,” Traku agreed. “Cursed pity I’m wasting it on the redheads.” Talsu grimaced and had to nod.

Eoforwic was like no place Vanai had ever known. Of course, she hadn’t known many places in her young life: only Oyngestun and a few visits to Gromheort. She’d thought Gromheort a great city. Next to Oyngestun, it surely was. But measured against the capital of Forthweg--the former capital of former Forthweg, she thought--Gromheort sank down to what it was: a provincial town like two dozen others in the kingdom.

Gromheort had at its heart the local count’s palace. Eoforwic had at its heart the royal palace. The palace was badly battered. Forthwegian soldiers had defended it against invading Unkerlanters, and then, less than two years later, the Unkerlanters had defended it against invading Algarvians. Even battered, though, it was far larger, far grander, and far more elegant than the count of Gromheort’s residence. And the rest of Eoforwic was in proportion to its heart.

“Aye, it’s a big place,” Ealstan said one morning, doing his resolute best not to show how impressed he was. “More chances for us not to get noticed.” His wave took in the cramped little flat they were sharing. “Like this, for instance.”

Vanai nodded. “Aye. Like this.” After the comfortable house in which she’d lived with her grandfather, the flat, in a