Darkness Descending (28 page)

Before Talsu could start the argument up again, Dustbunny trotted into the tailor’s shop, tail held high and proud. The small gray cat, who had thus far managed not to become roof rabbit at the butcher’s shop, carried in her mouth a large brown rat. She dropped it at Talsu’s feet, then looked up at him with glowing green eyes, waiting for the praise she knew she deserved.

Talsu bent down and scratched her ears and told her what a brave puss she was. She purred, believing every word of it. Then she pushed the dead rat with her nose so it half covered one of his shoes. Traku laughed. “I think she expects it to go into the stew pot tonight.”

“Maybe she does.” Mischief kindled in Talsu’s eyes. He called up the stairs to the living quarters over the shop: “Hey, Ausra, come down here a minute.”

“What is it?” his sister called back.

“Present for you,” Talsu answered. He winked at his father, and held a finger to his lips to keep Traku from giving him the lie. Traku rolled his eyes but kept quiet.

“A present? For me?” Ausra hurried down the stairs. “What is it? Who gave it to me? Where did he go?”

“So you think you have boys leaving you presents all the time, do you?” Talsu said, relishing his joke more than ever. “Well, I have to tell you, you’re not quite right. A little lady delivered this one, and it’s all yours.” He brought his foot forward, shying the rat in Ausra’s direction.

She disappointed him. Instead of screaming or running off, she picked up the rat by the tail, called Dustbunny, and told her what a fine kitty she was. Then she tossed the deceased rodent back to Talsu. “Here. If you liked it well enough to get it for me, you can be the one who gets rid of it, too.”

Now Traku laughed loud and long. Talsu gave his father a dirty look, but could hardly deny Ausra had outdone him this time. He picked up the rat rather more gingerly than she had, carried it outside, and dropped it in the gutter. When he came back into the tailor’s shop, he was wiping his hands on his trouser legs.

Dustbunny spoke up in feline reproach. Maybe she really had thought the rat would make the main course at supper that night. “Go catch me another one,” Talsu told her. “We’ll serve it up with onions and peas, or maybe with olives. I like olives a lot.” The cat cocked its head to one side, as if contemplating the possible recipes. Then she meowed in approval and departed with purposeful stride.

“If you want rat with peas and onions, you can cook it yourself,” Ausra told Talsu. She waved a finger at him. “And if you try doing this to Mother, she’ll make you cook it and she’ll make you eat it, too.”

Since Talsu thought his sister was right, he didn’t answer. He hoped Dustbunny wouldn’t come back with another rat too soon. If she did, Ausra was liable to have some unfortunate ideas about what to do with it.

Before he could take that worrisome thought any further, someone came through the door. He started to put on the automatic smile of greeting he gave any customer. So did Traku. So did Ausra. The shop did not have so many customers as to let them omit any courtesy, no matter how small.

Even so, the smile froze half formed on Talsu’s face. His father and sister also looked as much stunned as welcoming. The man standing before them wore tunic and kilt, not tunic and trousers. His coppery hair streamed out from under his hat. His mustache was waxed out to needle-sharp spikes; a little vertical strip of hair—not really a beard—ran up the center of his chin. He was, in short, an Algarvian.

“Hello. A good day to you all,” he said in accented but understandable Jelgavan. He swept off that hat, bowed to Traku, bowed to Talsu, and bowed more deeply to Ausra.

Slower than he should have, Traku answered, “Good day.” Talsu was content—more than content: relieved—to let his father do the talking.

“This is the shop of a tailor, is it not so?” the redhead said. He was, Talsu saw by his rank badges, a captain. That no doubt meant he was a noble. Coming out and telling him to take his business elsewhere was bound to cause trouble.

Traku must have reached the same unhappy conclusion. “Aye, it is,” he admitted.

“Excellent!” The Algarvian sounded as delighted as if Talsu’s father had told him he was about to win his weight in gold. His eyes, green as Dustbunny’s, sparkled with glee.
Algarvians,
Talsu thought,
were funny people.
The fellow went on, “For I require the services of a tailor. I would not come here for a cabinetmaker, is it not so?” He thought he was the funniest fellow around.

“You want me ... to make clothes... for you?” Traku sounded as if he didn’t believe it or, even, more as if he didn’t want to believe it.

But the Algarvian nodded. “You understand!” he cried, and bowed again. “You are, you must be, a man of great understanding. You will make for me a set of clothes, I will pay you, and all will be well.”

Talsu doubted that last. So, evidently, did his father, who said, “What kind of clothes... sir? How much will you pay me ... sir? When will you want them ... sir?

“You do not trust me?” The Algarvian sounded as if that had never crossed his mind. After a shrug suggesting the world was a crueler place than he’d imagined, he went on, “I want a good wool tunic and kilt, in civilian style, to wear for the coming winter. I will pay you silver, the price we agree by dickering, in the coin of either King Donalitu or King Mainardo—both circulate at par.”

“They shouldn’t,” Traku said. “Mainardo’s coins are lighter.”

“By law, they are at par,” the captain said. Talsu’s father kept quiet. He was a formidable man in a haggle, as Talsu knew. Talsu also knew his father had never made a kilt in his life. Traku didn’t let on about that, either. He just waited. At last, the Algarvian threw his hands in the air. “All right! All right! I will pay in Donalitu’s coin, or in silver by weight to match the price in Donalitu’s coin. There! Are you happy now?”

“Happy? No, sir. I haven’t got a lot to be happy about.” Traku shook his head. “But fair’s fair. Now then, if we come to a price—and you’ll pay me half beforehand and half when you get the clothes—when will you need this outfit?”

“Ten days,” the Algarvian said, and Traku nodded. That much, at least, proved easy. The redhead went on, “Price will depend on the cloth, is it not so?”

Traku nodded again. “Wool, you said? I can show you some samples, if you care to take a look. You’ll have to tell me how long you’ll want the kilt, and how full, and how many pleats and how deep. That will let me know how much material I’ll need.”

“Aye. I understand.” The Algarvian waggled a finger at Traku. “You are not to change for cheaper goods afterwards, mind.”

Traku’s father glared at him. “If you think I’d do that, you’d better find yourself another tailor. I’m not the only one in Skrunda.” Talsu knew how much Traku needed the business, but Traku said not a word about what he needed. Talsu was proud of him.

“Let me see your samples,” the Algarvian captain said. Presently, he pointed to one. “This weight and grade, in a forest green. Can you get it?”

“I think so,” Traku answered. “If I can’t, you get your half-payment back, of course.” He turned to Talsu. “Measure him, son. Then we’ll talk about the kilt”—he muttered something that might have been
barbarous garment
under his breath—”and then we’ll talk price.”

The Algarvian inclined his head. Talsu grabbed the tape measure. The redhead stood very still while he measured and took notes. Only after he’d finished did the fellow raise an eyebrow and remark, “I think you would sooner be measuring me for a coffin, is it not so?”

“I didn’t say that, sir,” Talsu answered, and gave the notes to his father.

Traku and the redhead talked about the kilt: its length, its drape, its pleating. Traku looked up at the ceiling and mumbled to himself. When he got done calculating, he named a price. The Algarvian screamed as if he’d been scalded—Talsu and Ausra both jumped, while the fur on Dustbunny’s tail puffed up in alarm. Then the Algarvian named a price, too, one less than half as high.

“Nice talking with you,” Traku said. “Close the door after you go out.”

They haggled for the best part of an hour. Traku ended up getting what struck Talsu as a good price; despite noisy histrionics, the Algarvian yielded ground more readily than the tailor. The redhead was muttering to himself when he did leave.

“Forest green,” Traku said. “I think I can get that. I ought to short him on the goods, though, just on account of that crack.”

He did get the cloth in the right color and the proper weight, then set to work. The tunic was straightforward: it had a higher, tighter collar than Jelgavan fashion favored, but presented no new problems. For the kilt, Traku worked much more carefully. After he’d made the waistband and hemmed the garment, he sewed two pleats by hand. Then, sweating with concentration, he set thread along the kilt where the other pleats would go and used a tailoring spell based on the law of similarity. Talsu watched in fascination as the rest of the pleats formed, duplicating the first two in spacing and stitchery.

Traku held up the finished kilt with a somber sort of pride. “Ready-to-wear can’t come close to a good tailor’s work,” he said. “The big makers use cheap originals and they stretch the spells too thin, so the clothes they make aren’t even properly similar to the originals.” He sighed. “But they’re cheap, so what can you do?”

When the Algarvian captain came in to try on his outfit, he kissed his fingertips, he blew a kiss at Ausra, and for a horrid moment Talsu thought he and Traku were going to get kissed, too. But the redhead restrained himself, at least from that. He paid the second half of the price and left the shop a happy man.

“Good thing he liked it,” Traku said after he’d gone. “If he didn’t, what in blazes would I do with a cursed kilt?”

“Sell it to another Algarvian,” Talsu said at once.

His father blinked; maybe that hadn’t occurred to him. “Aye, I suppose so,” he said. “I wouldn’t get as much for it, though.”

Talsu rang coins on the counter. The music was sweet. “You don’t need to worry. We don’t need to worry.” He checked himself. “We don’t need to worry for a little while, anyhow.”

Vanai was glad to be out of the house she shared with her grandfather and even gladder to be out of Oyngestun. With so many Kaunians shipped off to the west to labor for the redheads in the war against Unkerlant, the village felt as if it had a hole in it, like a jaw with a newly pulled tooth. She and Brivibas might have been among those taken for labor. Remembering what a few days of work on the roads had done to her grandfather, Vanai knew she was lucky to escape.

She also remembered, all too well, the price she’d paid to get Brivibas back from the labor gang. She had no great love for the Unkerlanters—they struck her as being even more barbarous than their Forthwegian cousins—but she hoped with all her heart that they gave Major Spinello a thin time of it.

Meanwhile, she had mushrooms to find. With rain coming a little early this year, she thought the crop would be fine. And, at last, she’d persuaded her grandfather to let her search by herself. That had proved easier than she’d thought it would. He didn’t cling to her as he had before she gave Spinello what he wanted.

And so, while Brivibas went south, Vanai headed east, in the direction of Gromheort. When they separated, her grandfather coughed a couple of times, as if to say he knew why she was going in that direction. She almost walloped him with the mushroom basket she was carrying. Before she swung it, though, she noticed it was the one that belonged to Ealstan, the Forthwegian from Gromheort. Brivibas would surely have noticed, too, and would have taken a certain satisfaction in being proved right in his suspicions.

“But he’s not right,” Vanai said—most emphatically, as if someone were about to contradict her. “He doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He never knows what he’s talking about.”

A troop of Algarvians on unicorns came trotting up the road from Gromheort toward Oyngestun. The redheaded riders leered at Vanai. They whooped as they passed her and called out lewd suggestions, some of which she understood because of Spinello. She breathed a silent sigh of relief when they kept on riding. Had they decided to ravish her one after another and then cut her throat, who could have stopped them? She knew the answer to that: no one. They were the occupiers, the conquerors. They did as they pleased.

Along with sighing in relief, Vanai cut across fields instead of staying close by the road. The going was harder that way, and her shoes soon got wet and muddy. She didn’t care. The next Algarvians who came along the highway—three crews mounted on their behemoths—could have seen her as nothing more than a blond-headed speck in the distance. Not one of them waved or called out to her. That suited her fine.

She came across a nice patch of meadow mushrooms, and put some in her basket—Ealstan’s basket, actually—to make sure she wouldn’t go back to Oyngestun empty-handed. A little later, she clapped her hands in glee when she found some chanterelles, yellow and vermilion growing together. She like the yellow ones better—vermilion chanterelles tasted acrid to her—but gathered some of each.

And then, at the edge of an almond grove, she almost stepped on some bright orange imperial mushrooms. They were still small, but unmistakable because of their color. As she plucked them from the ground, she recited a snatch of ancient poetry: they’d been favorites back in the days of the Kaunian Empire.

But her pleasure at picking them evaporated a moment later. The mushrooms remained, but the Kaunian Empire was only rubble. Even the Kaunian kingdoms of the east had fallen into the Algarvians’ hands these days, and as for Forthweg .. . The Forthwegian majority despised the Kaunians still living among them, and the Algarvians delighted in showing the Forthwegians the Kaunians were even worse off than they.

After Vanai discovered the imperial mushrooms, she had no luck for quite a while. She saw three or four Forthwegian men down on their hands and knees in the middle of a field, but did not go over to them. They were unlikely to be willing to share whatever they’d found, and not so unlikely to try to make sport with her as the Algarvians might have done. She put some bushes between herself and them and went on her way.