“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.
A cricket chirped. Off in the distance, a cat yowled. Those sounds didn’t worry Talsu. He listened for boots thudding on cobbles. The Algarvians knew a lot of things, but they didn’t seem to know how to patrol stealthily.
When he got to his house, he let himself in, then barred the door. If an enterprising burglar chose to strike on a night when he was studying classical Kaunian, tlie thief might clean out the downstairs of Traku’s shop and depart with no one the wiser.
To make sure Talsu wasn’t a burglar, his father came partway down the stairs and called softly: “That you, son?”
“Aye,” Talsu answered.
“Well, what did you learn tonight?” Traku asked.
“Having gained the upper hand, the Kaunian army advanced into the forest,” Talsu declaimed, letting the sounds of the classical language fill his mouth in a way modern Jelgavan couldn’t come close to matching.
“Isn’t that posh?” his father said admiringly. “What’s it mean?” After Talsu translated, Traku frowned and asked, “What happened then-after it advanced into the forest, I mean?”
“I don’t know,” Talsu said. “Maybe the Kaunians kept on winning. Maybe the lousy redheads who lived in the forest ambushed them. It’s just a sentence in a grammar book, not a whole story.”
“Too bad,” Traku said. “You’d like to know how these things turn out.”
Talsu yawned. “What I’d like to do is go to bed. I’ll still have to get up and work tomorrow morning. Come to that, so will you, Father.”
“Oh, aye, I know,” Traku answered. “But I like to be sure everything’s all right before I settle down-and if I didn’t, I’d hear about it in the morning from your mother.” He turned and went back up to the top floor. Talsu followed.
His room had seemed cramped ever since he came home from the army after Jelgava’s losing fight against the Algarvians. It still did. He was too tired to care tonight. He took off his tunic and trousers and lay down wearing nothing but his drawers: the night was fine and mild. He fell asleep with participles spinning in his mind.
Instead of advancing into the forest the next morning, he advanced on breakfast: barley bread, garlic-flavored olive oil, and the usual Jelgavan wine tangy with citrus juice. Afterwards, and before his father could chain him to a stool to work on a couple of cloaks that needed finishing, he ducked out and headed over to the grocer’s shop to say hello to Gailisa and to show off the bits of classical Kaunian he was learning. She didn’t understand much of it herself, but it impressed her, not least because she did understand why he was studying it. “I’ll be back soon,” he promised over his shoulder as he left, to keep his father from getting too annoyed at him.
But he broke the promise. During the night, somebody-more likely several somebodies-had painted DEATH TO THE ALGARVIAN TYRANTS! on walls all over Skrunda: not in Jelgavan, but in excellent classical Kaunian. Talsu might not have been able to understand it before he started studying the old language. He could now.
Unfortunately, so could the Algarvians. Their officers, as he’d seen, were familiar with the classical tongue. And their soldiers were on the streets with jars of paint to cover up the offending slogan and with wire brushes to efface it. The redheads didn’t aim to do the work themselves, though. They grabbed Jelgavan passersby, Talsu among them. He spent the whole morning getting rid of graffiti. But the more he worked to get rid of them, the more he agreed with them. And he didn’t think he was the only Jelgavan who felt that way, either.
“New songs?” Ethelhelm shook his head and looked a little sheepish when Ealstan asked the question. “Haven’t got a whole lot. The boys and I have been on the road so much lately, we haven’t had very many chances to sit down and fool around with anything new.”