Through the Darkness

“That was the game, sure was,” the sailor agreed. “Cost us some, it did, but Setubal won’t come crashing down around our ears, it won’t.”

“No, it won’t.” Cornelu raised a finger to the busy fellow behind the bar and bought the Lagoan sailor another mug of ale--and one for himself as well. The sailor gulped his. Cornelu sipped more thoughtfully.

How many more times would the Lagoans have to strike across the Strait of Valmiera to keep the Algarvians from using massacre to power magic against their capital? That had an obvious answer--as many as they have to. Cornelu nodded. Seen only as a raid, the strike against Dukstas had been expensive. Seen as protection for Setubal, it was cheap indeed. He had trouble imagining Lagoas staying in the fight with its greatest city ruined. And Lagoas has to stay in the fight, he thought. If she doesn’t, Algarve likely wins. However much he disliked that, he saw no way around it.

Most of the time, Talsu was convinced, the Algarvians would have been far happier had Skrunda had no news sheets at all. Every once in a while, though, the redheads found them useful. When enemy dragons dropped eggs on the town, the news sheets had screamed and brayed about it for days. Now they were screaming and braying again.

“Lagoan pirates try to invade mainland of Derlavai!” a hawker shouted, waving a sheet. “Enemy beaten back with heavy loss! Generals say they’re welcome to try again! Read it here! Read it here!”

Talsu gave him a copper, as much to make him shut up as for any other reason. The news sheet didn’t tell him much more than the hawker had. It just said the same things over and over, each time shriller than the last. When he’d finished that story and the ones about the great Algarvian victories in southern Unkerlant, he crumpled up the sheet and tossed it into the gutter. Then he wiped the ink from the cheap printing job off the palms of his hands and onto his trousers. His mother would complain when she saw the dark smudges there, but that would be later. For now, he wanted to get his hands somewhere close to clean.

More hawkers with stacks of news sheets cried out the headlines as Talsu strode through the market square. As far as he could tell, they used the same words as had the ragged fellow from whom he’d bought a sheet. He wondered if hawkers all over Jelgava were selling the exact same stories with the exact same words. He wouldn’t have been a bit surprised.

When he walked past the grocery store Gailisa’s father ran, he looked in the window hoping to get a glimpse of her. No such luck: her father ambled out from behind the counter to put jars of candied figs on the shelves. Talsu was heartily glad Gailisa favored her mother; had she been plump and doughy and hairy, he wouldn’t have wanted anything to do with her.

Her father saw him through the window and waved. Talsu waved back, more from duty than from affection. He looked forward to marrying Gailisa-- he certainly looked forward to some of the concomitants of marrying Gailisa-- but he didn’t particularly look forward to being yoked to the rest of her family as well.

He got round a corner before her father could come out and start yattering at him. Hurrying like that, though, gave him a painful stitch in the side. It wouldn’t have before the Algarvian soldier stabbed him; he knew as much only too well. But he couldn’t make that not have happened.

His own father had a copy of the news sheet open on the counter behind which he worked. Traku was cutting and sewing a tunic while he read. His hands knew what to do, so well that he had to glance at his work only every now and then. He looked up from the news sheet when Talsu came in. “Oh, it’s you,” he said.

“Were you expecting somebody else?” Talsu asked. “King Donalitu, maybe?”

He wouldn’t have made such jokes before Donalitu fled the Algarvians, not unless he felt like spending some time in one of the king’s dungeons. The redheads encouraged jokes about the king. For jokes about themselves, though, they had dungeons of their own. Talsu’s father, knowing that, lowered his voice as he answered, “No, I thought you’d be one of Mezentio’s officers, ready to gloat about this.” He tapped the news sheet with a forefinger.

“I’ve seen it,” Talsu said. “Even if I hadn’t seen it, I’d have heard about it. The whole town’s heard about it by now, the way the hawkers keep bellowing like so many branded steers.”

Traku chuckled. “They do go on.”

“And on, and on,” Talsu agreed. “They’ll be putting up copies for broadsheets any minute now. If there’s one thing the Algarvians are good at, it’s bragging about themselves.” They were also good, all too good, at war, or they wouldn’t have occupied Skrunda and the rest of Jelgava. Talsu didn’t like thinking about that, and so he didn’t.