Darkness Descending

already started playing king of the mountain on top of it.

Their game did not last long. The Algarvian officer who spoke Jelgavan shouted, “Get off!” He followed that with some choice colloquialisms that set the children giggling as they scampered down. Then, to Talsu’s dismay, the officer and his soldiers (none of whom seemed to be missing) started pulling men off the street to get rid of the hill debris. One of the troopers nabbed him before he could make himself scarce.

He called, “Is this a paying job?” to the officer.

After a moment, the Algarvian nodded. “Aye, we’ll make it so.”

For the rest of the day, Talsu carried baskets of broken marble under the broiling summer sun. He dumped them into freight cars on the ley-line caravan that could get nearest the arch. That meant going halfway across town; people hadn’t known about ley lines in the days of the Kaunian Empire, and so hadn’t set their big buildings near them. The Algarvians didn’t stop him when he went into a tavern to buy a mug of ale, but one came in after him to make sure he didn’t linger or slip out the back door. He muttered curses under his breath; he’d had something like that in mind.

As evening twilight fell, he lined up to get his pay. He was worn and battered. Bruises covered his legs; he walked with a limp because a stone had done its best to smash his right foot. He had a couple of mashed fingernails, too, and half a dozen cuts and scrapes on his hands. “By the powers above, we earned whatever they give us,” he said.

When he got to the head of the line and held out an abused hand, the Algarvian officer slapped a couple of shiny new coppers into it. They bore the sharp-nosed image of King Mainardo, King Mezentio’s brother and now, by grace of Algarve, lord of Jelgava. Talsu looked from them to the redhead. “Go on,” the officer snapped. “Go on, and count yourself lucky you’re getting anything.”

Talsu stared at the coppers. They might have paid for an hour’s labor. Most of a day’s? He shoved them back at the officer. “Keep ‘em, pal,” he said. “Looks like you need ‘em worse than I do.”

“Do you know what I could do to you?” the Algarvian demanded.

“It might last longer than what you just did, but it couldn’t hurt much more,” Talsu answered with a shrug. “You had a chance to make people like you--like you better than our own nobles, anyway. This isn’t how you go about it.”

“Like us? What difference does that make?” the redheaded officer asked in surprise. “All that matters isthat you obey us.” He offered Talsu the coins once more. “Take them. You earned them.”

“I earned six times that much,” Talsu said, and walked away. He waited for the Algarvian to order him seized. It didn’t happen. He scurried around the first corner he came to, trembling from fatigue and reaction both. He’d been a fool to talk back to the occupiers. He’d got away with it, but that made him no less a fool.

“Where have you been?” Laitsina, his mother, cried when he came into the shop above which the family lived and slept. Then she got a good look at him and cried out again, this time in horror: “And what were you doing while you were there? Have the Algarvians beaten you with sticks?”

“No. They just caught me in the street and set me hauling broken rock--one of their sorcerers wrecked the old arch past the market square.” Talsu scowled. “Hard work, and then they cheated me at the end of it. About what you’d expect from the cursed redheads. I didn’t even bother taking their lousy coppers.” He didn’t bother telling his mother how he’d rejected the coins, either.

His father slammed a pair of shears down on the counter beside which he was working. “They wrecked the imperial arch?” Traku said. At Talsu’s nod, the older man muttered something pungent under his breath.

“That must have been the crash we heard this morning,” Laitsina said. “I wondered what it was. If business were better, somebody who knew about it would have come in before this and told us.”

“If the Algarvians weren’t here, business would be better,” Traku said. By the look he sent his son, he still blamed Talsu for the collapse of the Jelgavan armies. “And if the Algarvians weren’t here, they wouldn’t have been able to knock down the arch, either. Curse them, it’s stood since imperial times. They’ve got no business wrecking things that have stood for so long.”

“They won the war,” Talsu said. At the moment, he regretted that more than he had at any time since he’d marched off to oppose the redheads. “That lets them do as they please. And they’re turning out to be a worse bargain than our own nobles. Who would have thought anyone could be?”

Laitsina and Traku both glanced around nervously, though they were the only ones who could have heard what Talsu said. His sister chose that moment to come downstairs. “Who would have thought anyone could be worse than what?” Ausra asked.