Part 34 (1/2)

”Do you know what will be if Unkerlant beats Algarve?” Balastro demanded. ”Do you know what will become of Zuwayza if that happens?”

There he had the perfect club with which to pound Hajjaj over the head. He knew it, too, and used it without compunction. With a sigh, Hajjaj said, ”What you do not understand is that Zuwayza also fears what may happen if Algarve should beat Unkerlant.”

”That would not be as bad for you,” Balastro told him.

Hajjaj didn't know whether to admire the honesty of the little qualifying phrase at the end of the sentence or to let it appall him. He wanted to call for Qutuz to bring more wine. But who could guess what he might say if he got drunk? As things were, he contented himself with a narrow, rigidly correct question: ”What do you seek from us?”

”Real cooperation,” Balastro answered at once. ”Most notably, cooperation in finally pinching off and capturing the port of Glogau. That would be a heavy blow to King Swemmel's cause.”

”Why not just loose your magics against the place?” Hajjaj said, and then, because Balastro had well and truly nettled him, he could not resist adding, ”I am sure they would serve you as well as they did down in the land of the Ice People.”

Algarvian news sheets, Algarvian crystal reports had said not a word about the disaster that had befallen the expeditionary force on the austral continent. They admitted the foe was advancing where he had been retreating, but they never said why. Lagoas, on the other hand, trumpeted the botched ma.s.sacre-- or rather, the botched magecraft, for the ma.s.sacre had succeeded--to the skies.

Balastro glared and flushed. ”Things are not so bad there as the islanders make them out to be,” he said, but he didn't sound as if he believed his own words.

”How bad are they, then?” Hajjaj asked.

The Algarvian minister didn't answer, not directly. Instead, he said, ”Here on Derlavai, magecraft would not turn against us as it did in the land of the Ice People.”

”Again, this is easier to say than to prove,” Hajjaj remarked. Even if it did prove true, slaughtering Kaunians still repelled him. He took a deep breath. ”We have done what we have done, and we are doing what we are doing. If that does not fully satisfy King Mezentio, he is welcome to take whatever steps he finds fitting.”

Marquis Balastro got to his feet. ”If you think we shall forget this insult, I must tell you you are mistaken.

”I meant no insult,” Hajjaj said. ”I do not wish you ill, as King Swemmel does. But I do not wish quite so much ill upon Unkerlant as Algarve does, either. If only one great kingdom thrives, as you say, what room is there for the small kingdoms of the world, for the Zuwayzas and Forthwegs and Yaninas?”

”In the days of the Kaunian Empire, the blonds had no room for us Algarvians,” Balastro answered. ”We made room for ourselves.”

Somehow, in the person of a plump, naked envoy, Hajjaj saw a fierce, kilted barbarian warrior. Maybe that was good acting from Balastro--or maybe the barbarian warrior never lay far below the surface in any Algarvian. Hajjaj said, ”And now you condemn Zuwayza for trying to make a little room for ourselves? Where is the justice in that?”

”Simple,” Balastro said. ”We were strong enough to do it.”

”Good day, sir,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said, and Balastro departed. But, watching his broad retreating back, Hajjaj nodded and smiled a little. For all Balastro's bl.u.s.ter, Hajjaj didn't think the Algarvians would abandon Zuwayza. They couldn't afford to.

But then Hajjaj sighed. Zuwayza couldn't abandon Algarve, either. Hajjaj would have been willing to make the break, provided he could have got decent terms from Swemmel. But Swemmel didn't care to give decent terms. Hajjaj sighed again. ”And so the cursed war goes on,” he said.

Twelve.

A stack of small silver coins and another of big bra.s.s ones, almost as s.h.i.+ny as gold, stood in front of Talsu. Similar stacks of coins, some larger, some smaller, stood in front of the other Jelgavans sitting at the table in a silversmith's parlor. A pair of dice lay on the table. If Algarvian constables burst into the parlor, all they would see was gambling. They might keep the money for themselves--being redheads, they probably would--but they'd have nothing to get very excited about.

So hoped Talsu and all the other men, some young, some far from it, at the table. The silversmith, whose name was Kugu, nodded to his comrades. He peered at the world through thick spectacles, no doubt because he did so much close work. ”Now, my friends,” he said, ”let's go over the endings of the declension of the aorist participle.”

Along with the others, Talsu recited the declensions--nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative--of the participle for singular, dual, and plural; masculine, feminine, and neuter. He got through all the forms without a hitch, and felt a certain modest pride at managing it. Despite getting through them, he wondered how his ancient ancestors had managed to speak cla.s.sical Kaunian without pausing every other word to figure out the proper form of adjective, noun, or verb.

Jelgavan, now, Jelgavan was a proper language: no neuter gender, no dual number, no fancy declensions, a vastly simplified verb. He hadn't realized how sensible Jelgavan was till he decided to study its grandfather.

Kugu reached out and picked up the dice on the table. He rolled them, and got a six and a three: not a good throw, not a bad one. Then he said, ”We are gambling here, you know, and for more than money. The Algarvians want us to forget who we are and who our forefathers were. If they know we're working to remember . .. They knocked down the imperial arch. They won't be shy about knocking over a few men.”

”Curse aem, the redheads have never been shy about knocking over a few men, or more than a few,” Talsu said.

Somebody else said, ”They can't kill all of us.”

”If what we hear coming out of Forthweg is true, they're doing their best,” Talsu said.

Everyone stirred uncomfortably. Thinking of what had happened to Kaunians in Forthweg led to thoughts of what might happen to the Kaunian folk of Jelgava. Somebody said, ”I think those stories are a pack of lies.”

Kugu shook his head. Lamplight reflected from the lenses of his spectacles, making him look for a moment as if he had enormous blank yellow eyes. He said, ”They are true. From things I've heard, they are only a small part of what is true. Algarve doesn't aim to kill just our memories. We are in danger ourselves.”

Then why arenat we fighting back more? Talsu wanted to shout it. He wanted to, but he didn't. Aye, these men were here to study cla.s.sical Kaunian, which argued that they had no use for the redheads. But Talsu didn't know all of them well. He hardly knew a couple of them at all. Any of them, even Kugu himself, could have been an Algarvian spy. Back before the war, King Donalitu had had plenty of provocateurs serving him--men who said outrageous things to get others to agree with them, whereupon those others vanished into dungeons. A man would have to be insanely foolhardy to think the Algarvians couldn't match such ploys.

”We'd be better off if the king hadn't fled,” said someone who might have been thinking along with him, at least in part.

But Kugu shook his head. ”I doubt it. King Gainibu's still on the throne down in Priekule, but how much does that do our Valmieran cousins? They're probably easier to rule than we are, because they haven't got a foreigner sitting on the throne.”

By a foreigner, he meant an Algarvian. Several people nodded, taking the point. King Mezentio's brother wasn't the man whom Talsu had in mind as a proper King of Jelgava, either, but he just sat there, doing his best to look none too bright. If Kugu was a provocateur, Talsu didn't intend to let himself be provoked--not visibly, anyhow.

With a sigh, the silversmith said, ”It would be fine if the king came back to Jelgava. After a dose of King Mainardo's rule, plenty of people would flock to Donalitu's banner.”

Again, Kugu got nods. Again, Talsu wasn't one of the men who gave them. He knew exactly how the redheads would judge such words: as treason. Hearing them was dangerous. Being seen to agree with them was worse.

Maybe Kugu realized as much, too, for he said, ”Shall we go over some sentences that show how the aorist participle is used?” He read a sentence in the sonorous ancient tongue, then pointed to Talsu. ”How would you translate that into Jelgavan?”

Talsu leaped to his feet, clasped his hands behind his back, and looked down at the floor between his shoes: memories of his brief days in school. He took a deep, nervous breath and said, ”Having gained the upper hand, the Kaunian army advanced into the forest.”

Even if he was wrong, Kugu wouldn't stripe his back with a switch. He knew that, but sweat trickled from his armpits anyhow. Maybe that too was left over from memories of school, or maybe it just sprang from simple fear of reciting in public.

Either way, he needn't have worried, for Kugu beamed and nodded. ”Even so,” he said. ”That is excellent. Let's try another one.” He read the sentence in cla.s.sical Kaunian and pointed to the fellow next to Talsu, a red-faced, middle-aged merchant. ”How would you translate that?”

The man made a hash of it. When Kugu set him straight, he scowled. ”If that's what they mean, why don't they come out and say it?”

”They do,” Kugu said patiently. ”They just do it differently. They do it more precisely and more concisely than modern Jelgavan can.”

”But it's confusing,” the merchant complained. Talsu wondered how many more lessons the red-faced man would come to. Rather to his own surprise, he didn't find cla.s.sical Kaunian confusing himself. Complex? Aye. Difficult? Certainly. But he kept managing to see how the pieces fit together.

After everyone had had a crack at translating a sentence or two, the lesson broke up. ”I'll see you next week,” Kugu told his scholars. ”Powers above keep you safe till then.”

Out into the night the Jelgavans went, scattering as they headed for their homes throughout Skrunda. Stars shone down from the clear sky: more stars than Talsu was used to seeing in his home town. Since the raid on Skrunda, the redheads had required the town to stay dark at night, which brought out the tiny sparkling points of light overhead.

It also made tripping and breaking your neck easier. Talsu stumbled over a cobblestone that stood up from the roadbed and almost fell on his face. He nailed his arms to stay upright, all the while cursing in a tiny voice. Though often ignored and hard to enforce because of the darkness shrouding Skrunda, the redheads' curfew remained in force. The last thing Talsu wanted was to draw one of their patrols to him.

He picked his way through the quiet streets. The first time he'd come home from Kugu's, he'd got lost and wandered around for half an hour till he came into the market square quite by accident. Knowing where he was had let him find his home in short order.

A cricket chirped. Off in the distance, a cat yowled. Those sounds didn't worry Talsu. He listened for boots thudding on cobbles. The Algarvians knew a lot of things, but they didn't seem to know how to patrol stealthily.

When he got to his house, he let himself in, then barred the door. If an enterprising burglar chose to strike on a night when he was studying cla.s.sical Kaunian, tlie thief might clean out the downstairs of Traku's shop and depart with no one the wiser.

To make sure Talsu wasn't a burglar, his father came partway down the stairs and called softly: ”That you, son?”