Through the Darkness

His father said, “You know what they’re telling us here, don’t you?” He tapped the news sheet again. “They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’ll just have to save ourselves.”

Talsu shook his head. “That’s not what they mean. They’re telling us nobody is going to save us, so we’d bloody well get used to King Mainardo.” He still wasn’t talking very loud, but he spoke with great vehemence: “Get used to going hungry, get used to short-weight coins, get used to Algarvians lording it over us forever.”

“That’s what’ll happen if we don’t do something about it, all right.” Traku glanced down at the news sheet. “I think we’re saying the same thing with different words.”

“Maybe.” Talsu rubbed his side. How long would the livid scar there go on paining him? For the rest of his days? He didn’t like to think about that, either. “But I never dreamt, when the redheads came in, they’d make me wish we had our own king and nobles back again.”

“Who did? Who could have?” his father said. “But you have to be careful where you say that. If you aren’t, you’ll disappear and you won’t have the chance to say it anymore.”

“I know.” Talsu pointed to the tunic his father was working on. “Are you going to use the Algarvian sorcery to finish that one?”

“Aye.” Traku grimaced. He couldn’t get in trouble for praising the redheads, not with things as they were in Skrunda--in all Jelgava--these days, but that didn’t mean he was happy about doing it. “It’s better than the magecraft I had before, no two ways about it. The magic is good. The Algarvians ...” He grimaced again, grimaced and shook his head.

Thinking about the Algarvians always made Talsu think about the one who’d stabbed him. Thinking about that redhead made him think about Gailisa, which was much more enjoyable. And from Gailisa his thoughts didn’t have to go far to reach her father. He said, “Maybe it’s time you talked with the grocer.”

Changing the subject didn’t bother his father. “Think so, do you?” Traku said. “If I had to guess, I’d say Gailisa has thought so for quite a while. What do I do when her old man asks me what took you so bloody long?”

Ears burning, Talsu answered, “Tell him anything you want. Do you think it’ll matter?”

Traku laughed, though Talsu didn’t think it was very funny. “No, I don’t suppose the stalling will queer this match, the way it would some I could think of. Not much likelihood Gailisa will turn you down, is there?”

“I hope not,” Talsu said, blushing some more.

“If she did, it’d be a scandal worse than any we’ve seen in Skrunda since I was younger than you are now,” Traku said. “I guess you may have heard the story of the fellow who got married to three different girls on the same day.”

“A time or two,” Talsu said, which was somewhere around a hundredth of the truth. He grinned at his father. “Must have been one tired bridegroom by the time he got done that night.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it,” Traku said with a grin of his own. “Of course, they do say he was a young man, a very young man, so he had some chance of bringing it off.” Before Talsu could answer that with another lewd sally, his father went up the stairs. He returned a moment later with a jar of apricot brandy and a couple of glasses. After filling them both, he gave Talsu one and raised the other. “Here’s to grandchildren.”

“To grandchildren,” Talsu echoed, and drank. The brandy glided down his throat and burst in his stomach like an egg. He hadn’t thought much about having children of his own, though he certainly had thought about the process by which children came into the world.

Traku hadn’t brought the brandy down unnoticed. Ausra came halfway down the stairs and asked, “Does that mean what I think it means?”

“That my sister is a snoop?” Talsu returned. “Aye, what else could it mean?” Ausra stuck out her tongue at him. He went on, “We haven’t done any talking yet. But we’re going to do some talking.”

“It’s about time,” Ausra said, echoing Traku. “I’ve wanted Gailisa for a sister-in-law for a long time now. I figure getting her is the only good I’ll ever have from you as a brother.” Without giving him a chance to answer, she hurried back upstairs again.

But she didn’t stay there for very long. After a moment, she and her mother came down, both of them carrying glasses. Traku poured brandy for them, half a glass for Ausra, a whole one for Laitsina.

Talsu’s mother kissed him. “Do you know what the best thing about having grandchildren is?”

Begetting them, Talsu thought, but that surely wasn’t what Laitsina had in mind. He shrugged and said, “Tell me. You’re going to anyhow.”

“I certainly am, and I ought to box your ears for impudence.” But Laitsina, who’d gone through a lot of the brandy in a hurry, was smiling and a little red-faced. “The best thing about grandchildren,” she declared with oracular wisdom, “is that you can give them back to their mother and father when they get to be a nuisance.”