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.”
“That’s so,” Traku agreed. “Can’t do it with your own children. You’re stuck with them.” He looked from Talsu to Ausra and back again. Then he looked at his own glass, and seemed surprised to discover it empty. The jar of brandy stood close by on the counter. He remedied the misfortune he’d found.
The whole family was getting merry when the front door to the tailor’s shop opened. They all looked up in surprise, as if they’d been caught doing something shameful. The Algarvian officer standing in the doorway twiddled with one spike of his waxed mustachios. “Seeing happy people is good,” he said in fair Jelgavan. “Why am I seeing happy people?”
“A coming betrothal,” Traku answered. He didn’t offer the redhead any brandy.
Affecting not to notice that, the Algarvian said, “It is good. I hope there is being much joy from it.”
“Thanks,” Talsu said grudgingly. If that Algarvian trooper hadn’t stabbed him, his chances with Gailisa might not have been so good. Even that, though, didn’t endear any of King Mezentio’s men to him. More grudgingly still, he went on, “What do you want?”
“Here.” The redhead displayed a tunic. “I am wanting a warm lining sewn into this. I am going from here to another place to fight. I will be needing a warm lining. I will be needing all the warm I can be getting.”
“For Unkerlant, you’ll need more than a warm lining,” Talsu said, and the Algarvian winced, as if he hadn’t wanted to hear his destination named. Too bad, Talsu thought. That’s where you’re going, and with any luck you won’t come back.
“I can do it,” Traku said, “but my son’s right: you’ll need more than that. I saw as much last winter.” That made the Algarvian look unhappier yet. Traku added, “Would you be interested in a nice, thick cloak, now?”
“A cloak?” The Algarvian sighed. “Aye, I had better be having a cloak, is it not so?”
“It certainly is so,” Traku said. “And I have just the thing you’ll want.” To a redhead going off to Unkerlant, he would show sample after sample. Like Talsu, he surely hoped the Algarvian would meet his end there. And profit- profit counted, too.
Skarnu wished he had more connections, better connections. He’d managed to keep the fight against Algarve alive in his little part of Valmiera, and he knew others were doing the same across the kingdom. But he didn’t know how well they were doing, how much annoyance they were causing the occupiers.
“Not enough,” Merkela said when he raised the subject over supper one evening. “Not even close to enough.”
She would have said the same thing if the Valmierans had been on the point of driving King Mezentio’s men from the kingdom, tails between their legs. Had she known how to do it, she would gladly have gone to Algarve herself, to bring the war home to the redheads. She would have tried to kill Mezentio in his palace and wouldn’t have cared at all if she died, so long as she brought him down. Skarnu was sure of that.
Raunu set down a rib bone from which he’d gnawed all the meat; they’d killed a pig the day before. He said, “The more we tie them up here, the less they have to throw at the Unkerlanters. And if they don’t beat the Unkerlanters, they don’t win the war.”
He’d been only a sergeant, but no general could have summed things up better. So Skarnu thought, at any rate. Merkela tossed her head; to her, Unkerlant was too far away, too foreign, to seem either real or important.
But Vatsyunas and Pernavai both nodded. Having come from Forthweg, the escaped Kaunians knew in their bellies the importance and reality of Unkerlant. “He speaketh sooth,” Vatsyunas said, still sounding antiquated as he learned Valmieran after a lifetime of classical Kaunian.
“Aye,” the former dentist’s wife said softly. That was one word that had changed little down through the centuries.
“How much more could we be doing, though?” Skarnu persisted.
“How badly do you want to get yourself killed, and everybody who’s in this with you?” Raunu asked. “If you try and get greedy, that’s what’ll happen.” Merkela glared at the veteran sergeant. He ignored her, which wasn’t easy. Skamu feared he was right. Whenever the Algarvians grew provoked enough to go after irregulars, they could muster enough force to put them down.
Vatsyunas said, “An you tell me what the game requireth, so shall I right gladly undertake it, though I lay down my life in the doing. For I have seen horrors, and long to requite them.”
“Aye,” Pernavai said again.
Neither of them sounded as fierce as Merkela, but she eyed them with nothing but respect. Her hatred for the redheads was personal. So was theirs, but they’d also seen Kaunianity in Forthweg wrecked. They never talked about going home. As best Skarnu could tell, they didn’t think they would have any home to which to return.
Vatsyunas said, “Is’t true, the tale borne hither from Pavilosta, that Lagoas did smite the Algarvians exceedingly down by the shore of the salt sea?”
Skarnu shrugged. “There was a fight. That’s all I know. The Lagoans couldn’t have done all that well, or they’d have kept a grip on the mainland.” He still wanted to look down his nose at the islanders. If they’d done more earlier in the war, maybe Valmiera wouldn’t have fallen. And their kingdom still held out, where his had given up two years before. He resented them for being able to shelter behind the Strait of Valmiera. How would they have done against swarms of Algarvian behemoths? None too bloody well, or he missed his guess.