Through the Darkness

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 massacre-- or rather, the botched magecraft, for the massacre 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 bluster, 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 brass ones, almost as shiny 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 classical 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 ‘em, 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.”