whenever they felt like it. He plucked Ausra’s bowl off the table and carried it into the kitchen, where the rest crate lay beside the door to the pantry.
The sorcery that made the crate work was based on a charm from the days of the Kaunian Empire: a paralysis spell the imperial armies had used against their foes with great success till those foes found counterspells that rendered it useless. Then, for more than a thousand years, it had been only a curiosity . . . till, with the advent of systematic magecraft, wizards discovered it worked by drastically slowing the rate at which life went on. That made variations on it handy not only in keeping food fresh but also in medicine.
As soon as Talsu undid the latch and took the lid off the rest crate, he put the spell out of action. The food his mother had stored inside began to age at its normal rate once more. He set the half full bowl of barley mush on top of a coil of sausage links, then returned the lid to its proper place, reactivating the crate. He was just snapping the latch again when Laitsina called, “Make sure you put the cover on good and tight.”
“Aye, Mother,” Talsu said patiently. She might make noises about his having grown up, but she didn’t believe it, not down deep inside. She probably never would.
Afterwards, he played robbers with his father till they were both yawning. He won three games, Traku two. As the tailor put away the board, the men, and the dice, he said, “You’re better at the game than you were before you went into King Donalitu’s service.”
“I don’t know why,” Talsu answered. “I don’t think I played it more than a couple of times. Mostly, we just rolled dice when we felt like swapping money around.”
The next morning, after Talsu finished cutting the pieces for an Algarvian’s summer-weight linen tunic, his mother came downstairs and pressed some coins into his hand. “Go over to the grocer’s and bring me back half a dozen apples,” she said. “I want to make tarts tonight.”
“All right, Mother,” Talsu said, and set down the shears with alacrity.
Laitsina smiled. “And don’t take too long passing the time of day with Gailisa, either.”
“Who, me?” Talsu said. His mother laughed at him. In some ways, she was ready to believe him grown up after all.
Whistling, he hurried over to the grocer’s shop. Sure enough, Gailisa was taking care of the place: she was artistically arranging onions in a crate when he walked inside. “Hello, Talsu,” she said. “What do you want today?”
“You don’t sell that,” he said with a grin, and she made a face at him. “But my mother sent me over here for some apples.”
“Well, we’ve got some,” Gailisa answered, pointing to a basket on the counter. “If they’re for eating, though, I’ve got to tell you they’re on the mushy side. The winter was just too mild for them to get as firm as they might.”
“No, she wants them for tarts,” Talsu said.
“They’ll be fine for that.” Gailisa went over to the basket. Talsu watched her hips work inside her trousers. “How many does she want?”
“About half a dozen, she said.”
“All right.” Gailisa bent over the basket and started picking them up one by one. “I’ll give you the best ones we’ve got.”
She was still going through them when a couple of Algarvian troopers in kilts strode into the shop. One of them pointed at her and said something in his own language. Laughing, the other one nodded and rocked his hips forward and back. Talsu didn’t understand a word of what they said, but that didn’t stop him from getting angry.
He turned toward them, not saying anything himself but not trying to hide what he thought of them, either. He wasn’t afraid of Algarvians because they were Algarvians, not when he’d faced them over the sights of a stick. True, his army had lost to theirs, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t hurt and bleed just like Jelgavans.
They noticed his expression, too, noticed it and didn’t like it. One of them jerked a thumb back toward the door through which they’d come and spoke in bad Jelgavan: “You--going out. Getting lost.”
“No,” Talsu answered evenly. “I’m waiting for the lady to choose some apples for me.”
“Futtering apples,” the Algarvian said. “Going out now. Going out now and--uh, or--being sorry.”
“No,” Talsu repeated.
“Talsu, maybe you’d better . . .” Gailisa began.
