Out of the Darkness

As the dragon went past, Talsu started to laugh. “Will you look at that?” he said, pointing. “Will you just look at that?” Behind the team of muscular unicorns dragging the dragon came a single donkey dragging the dead Algarvian dragonflier. People rushed forward to abuse his corpse, too. It already looked much the worse for wear.

Talsu’s father said something incendiary about Algarvians in general and the dragonflier in particular. From the kitchen, Talsu’s mother spoke in reproving tones: “That’s no way to talk, dear.”

“I’m sorry, Laitsina,” Traku said at once. He turned to Talsu and went on more quietly: “I’m sorry it didn’t happen to all the fornicating buggers, not just this one. They bloody well deserve it.”

He wasn’t quite quiet enough. “Traku!” Laitsina said.

“Aye. Aye. Aye.” Talsu’s father made a sour face and turned away from the window. “I may as well get back to work. Doesn’t seem like I’m going to be allowed to do anything else around here.”

“I heard that, too,” Laitsina said indignantly. “If you can’t say something without making the air around you smell like a latrine, you really should find a better way to express yourself.”

“Express myself!” Traku’s eyebrows pretty plainly said what he thought of his wife’s opinion, but he didn’t go against it, not out loud he didn’t.

Instead, he sat down in front of a pair of trousers he’d been working on. All the pieces were cut out. He’d set thread along all the seams and done some small part of the sewing by hand. Now he muttered a charm taking advantage of the law of similarity. The thread he’d set out writhed as if it had suddenly come to life, becoming similar to the identical thread he’d already sewn by hand. In the wink of an eye, all the stitching on the trousers was done.

Traku held them up and inspected them. Talsu nodded approval. “That’s very nice work, Father.”

“Not bad, not bad.” Traku looked pleased with himself. He was never sorry to hear himself praised.

And then, perhaps rashly, Talsu asked, “Wasn’t the spell you used the one you got from that Algarvian officer? It’s a lot easier on handwork than the ones we had before.”

“As a matter of fact, it was.” Traku paused, another expressive expression on his face. “All right, curse it. The redheads are smart bastards. I never said they weren’t. It doesn’t mean they’re any less bastards, though.”

“No, it doesn’t,” Talsu agreed.

Traku went on with his methodical, painstaking examination of the trousers. At last, he grudgingly nodded his satisfaction. “I suppose those will do.” Having supposed, he tossed the trousers at Talsu. “They go to Krogzmu the olive-oil dealer, on the south side of town. He paid twenty down, and he still owes us twenty more. Don’t let him keep the goods before you get the silver-in coins of King Donalitu, mind you.”

“I wasn’t born yesterday, or even day before yesterday.” Talsu neatly folded the trousers his father had thrown at him. “You don’t have to treat me like I was three years old.”

“No, eh?” Traku chuckled. “Since when?”

Talsu didn’t dignify that with an answer. After he’d done such a nice job of folding them, he stuck the trousers under his arm, careless of the wrinkles he might cause-though they were wool, which didn’t wrinkle easily. He strode- almost stormed-out of the flat. His father chuckled again just before he shut- almost slammed-the door. Had that chuckle come a beat sooner, he would have slammed it. As things were, he went downstairs and out onto the street with his nose in the air.

He went away from the dead dragon and dragonflier, not after them. He wouldn’t have minded taking a kick at the Algarvian’s corpse, but he was set on getting the trousers to Krogzmu, getting the money, and getting back to the flat as fast as he could. I’ll show him I know what I’m doing, he thought. That something like that might have been what Traku had in mind never occurred to him, which was probably just as well.

Good intentions got sidetracked, as good intentions have a way of doing. A column of Kuusamans was tramping west through Skrunda. Till they passed, Talsu, like everybody else, had to wait. People took waiting no better than they usually did. Someone behind him in the crowd complained, “We might as well still be occupied by the Algarvians.”

“Nonsense,” somebody else said. Talsu thought he would tell the first speaker what a fool he was, but he didn’t. Instead, he went on, “The Algarvians never wasted our time with this nonsense.”

“That’s right,” a woman said, nothing but indignation in her voice. “My cat is getting hungrier every minute, and here I am, stuck in the road because of all these foreigners going by.”

Talsu rolled his eyes. Powers above! he thought. We don’t deserve to be our own masters any more. We really don’t.