Through the Darkness

Kugu shook his head. Lamplight reflected from the lenses of his spectacles, making him look for a moment as if he had enormous blank yellow eyes. He said, “They are true. From things I’ve heard, they are only a small part of what is true. Algarve doesn’t aim to kill just our memories. We are in danger ourselves.”

Then why aren‘t we fighting back more? Talsu wanted to shout it. He wanted to, but he didn’t. Aye, these men were here to study classical Kaunian, which argued that they had no use for the redheads. But Talsu didn’t know all of them well. He hardly knew a couple of them at all. Any of them, even Kugu himself, could have been an Algarvian spy. Back before the war, King Donalitu had had plenty of provocateurs serving him--men who said outrageous things to get others to agree with them, whereupon those others vanished into dungeons. A man would have to be insanely foolhardy to think the Algarvians couldn’t match such ploys.

“We’d be better off if the king hadn’t fled,” said someone who might have been thinking along with him, at least in part.

But Kugu shook his head. “I doubt it. King Gainibu’s still on the throne down in Priekule, but how much does that do our Valmieran cousins? They’re probably easier to rule than we are, because they haven’t got a foreigner sitting on the throne.”

By a foreigner, he meant an Algarvian. Several people nodded, taking the point. King Mezentio’s brother wasn’t the man whom Talsu had in mind as a proper King of Jelgava, either, but he just sat there, doing his best to look none too bright. If Kugu was a provocateur, Talsu didn’t intend to let himself be provoked--not visibly, anyhow.

With a sigh, the silversmith said, “It would be fine if the king came back to Jelgava. After a dose of King Mainardo’s rule, plenty of people would flock to Donalitu’s banner.”

Again, Kugu got nods. Again, Talsu wasn’t one of the men who gave them. He knew exactly how the redheads would judge such words: as treason. Hearing them was dangerous. Being seen to agree with them was worse.

Maybe Kugu realized as much, too, for he said, “Shall we go over some sentences that show how the aorist participle is used?” He read a sentence in the sonorous ancient tongue, then pointed to Talsu. “How would you translate that into Jelgavan?”

Talsu leaped to his feet, clasped his hands behind his back, and looked down at the floor between his shoes: memories of his brief days in school. He took a deep, nervous breath and said, “Having gained the upper hand, the Kaunian army advanced into the forest.”

Even if he was wrong, Kugu wouldn’t stripe his back with a switch. He knew that, but sweat trickled from his armpits anyhow. Maybe that too was left over from memories of school, or maybe it just sprang from simple fear of reciting in public.

Either way, he needn’t have worried, for Kugu beamed and nodded. “Even so,” he said. “That is excellent. Let’s try another one.” He read the sentence in classical Kaunian and pointed to the fellow next to Talsu, a red-faced, middle-aged merchant. “How would you translate that?”

The man made a hash of it. When Kugu set him straight, he scowled. “If that’s what they mean, why don’t they come out and say it?”

“They do,” Kugu said patiently. “They just do it differently. They do it more precisely and more concisely than modern Jelgavan can.”

“But it’s confusing,” the merchant complained. Talsu wondered how many more lessons the red-faced man would come to. Rather to his own surprise, he didn’t find classical Kaunian confusing himself. Complex? Aye. Difficult? Certainly. But he kept managing to see how the pieces fit together.

After everyone had had a crack at translating a sentence or two, the lesson broke up. “I’ll see you next week,” Kugu told his scholars. “Powers above keep you safe till then.”

Out into the night the Jelgavans went, scattering as they headed for their homes throughout Skrunda. Stars shone down from the clear sky: more stars than Talsu was used to seeing in his home town. Since the raid on Skrunda, the redheads had required the town to stay dark at night, which brought out the tiny sparkling points of light overhead.

It also made tripping and breaking your neck easier. Talsu stumbled over a cobblestone that stood up from the roadbed and almost fell on his face. He nailed his arms to stay upright, all the while cursing in a tiny voice. Though often ignored and hard to enforce because of the darkness shrouding Skrunda, the redheads’ curfew remained in force. The last thing Talsu wanted was to draw one of their patrols to him.

He picked his way through the quiet streets. The first time he’d come home from Kugu’s, he’d got lost and wandered around for half an hour till he came into the market square quite by accident. Knowing where he was had let him find his home in short order.