Out of the Darkness

“A reindeer roast,” Gailisa replied. Talsu chuckled. She rolled her eyes. There might have been a few reindeer in Jelgavan zoological parks, but surely nowhere else in the kingdom. She went on, “All the butcher shops here have as much reindeer meat as beef or mutton. It’s cheaper, too.”

“I’m not complaining,” Talsu said. “You’ve picked it up before, and it tastes fine.” He kissed her again to show her he meant it-and he did. He went on, “I wish the language were easier. I can’t get started in business till I can talk to my customers at least a little.”

“I know,” Gailisa said. “When I buy things, I either read what I want off the signs-and I know I make a mess of that, too, because some of the characters don’t sound the same here as they do in Jelgavan-or else I just point. It makes me feel stupid, but what else can I do?”

“Nothing else I can think of,” Talsu said. “I do the same thing.”

The next day, though, Talsu and Gailisa found a parcel in front of their door when they came back from their language lesson. Unwrapping it, he pulled out a Jelgavan-Kuusaman phrasebook. It looked to have been made for Kuusaman travelers in Jelgava, but it would help the other way round, too. Gailisa unfolded a note stuck in the little book. “Oh,” she said. “It’s in classical Kaunian.” She knew next to none of the old language, so she handed Talsu the note.

His own classical Kaunian was far from perfect, too, but he did his best. “ ‘I hope this book will help you,’“ he read. “ ‘It helped me when I visited your kingdom. I am Pekka, wife to Leino, whom you helped, Talsu. I am glad I could help you leave your kingdom. My husband was killed in the fighting. I was pleased to do anything I could for his friends.’ “

“He’s the one I wrote to,” Gailisa said.

“I know,” Talsu answered. “I didn’t know he’d got killed, though. She must have been the one who helped me get out of the dungeon, too, then.” He blinked. “It’s something-that they paid attention to a woman, I mean.”

“Maybe she’s important in her own right,” Gailisa said. “She must be, in fact. The Kuusamans seem to let their women do just about anything their men can. I like that, if you want to know the truth.”

“I’m not sure it’s natural,” Talsu said.

“Why not?” his wife demanded. “It’s what you were talking about before, isn’t it? It’s freedom.”

“That’s different,” Talsu said.

“How?” Gailisa asked.

In his own mind, Talsu knew how. The kind of freedom he had in mind was no more than the freedom to say what you wanted without fear of ending up in a dungeon because the wrong person heard you. Surely that was different from the freedom to do what you wanted regardless of whether you were a man or a woman. Surely it was. . and yet, for the life of him, he found no way to put the difference into words.

“It just is,” he said at last. Gailisa made a face at him. He tickled her. She squealed. They weren’t equal there: she was ticklish, and he wasn’t. He took unfair advantage of it.

After the next language lesson a couple of days later, the instructor-a woman named Ryti, whose standing went some distance toward proving Gailisa’s point-asked Talsu and his wife to stay while the other students were leaving. In slow, careful Jelgavan, she said, “We have found a tailor who is looking for an assistant and who speaks classical Kaunian. Would you like to work for him?”

“I’d like to work for anyone,” Talsu answered in his own tongue. “I’d like to work for myself most, but I know I don’t speak enough Kuusaman yet. I couldn’t understand the people who’d be my customers.”

“How much will this fellow pay?” Gailisa asked the practical question.

When Ryti answered, she did so, of course, in terms of Kuusaman money. That still didn’t feel quite real to Talsu. “What would it be in Jelgavan coins?” he asked. Ryti thought for a moment, then told him. He blinked. “You must be wrong,” he said. “That’s much too much.”

After a little more thought, the language instructor shook her head. “No, I do not believe so. One of ours is about three and a half of yours, is it not so?”

It was so. To Talsu, Kuusaman silver coins were big and heavy, but not impossibly big and heavy. Things cost more in Yliharma than they had back in Skrunda, but not a great deal more. The money this fellow offered a tailor’s assistant would have made an independent Jelgavan tailor prosperous. “How much does this man make for himself?” Talsu asked.

“I cannot answer that,” Ryti answered. “But he does make enough to be able to pay you what he says he will. We have looked into that. We do not want people going into bad situations.”

“Tell me his name. Tell me where his shop is,” Talsu said. “Tell me when I need to be there, and I’ll be there at that time tomorrow.”