Darkness Descending

The grocer’s lay in the direction of the market square. As always, Talsu looked toward the square on the off chance he might spy something interesting. He didn’t but gave a small double take anyhow. That was foolish; the Algarvians had wrecked the triumphal arch from the days of the Kaunian Empire months before. But he still wasn’t used to its being gone.

One reason Talsu didn’t mind going to the grocer’s was his pretty daughter, Gailisa. She was behind the counter when he walked in, and smiled to see him. “Hello, Talsu,” she said. “What can I get you today?”

“A pint of the middle-grade olive oil and some fresh garlic,” he answered.

Gailisa said, “There’s plenty of garlic, but we’re out of the middle-grade oil. Do you want the cheap stuff or the extra-virgin?” Before he could answer, she held up a warning hand. “If you make jokes about that the way the miserable Algarvians do, I’ll clout you with the jar, do you hear me?”

“Did I say anything?” Talsu asked, as innocently as if such thoughts had never entered his mind. The grocer’s daughter snorted; she knew better. Talsu went on, “Let me have the good oil, if you please.”

“All right--since you asked for it so pretty.” Gailisa reached behind her, pulled an earthenware jar off the shelf, and set it on the counter. “Do you want to choose your own garlic, or shall I grab one for you?”

“Go ahead,” Talsu told her. “You’d do a better job than I would.”

“I knew that,” Gailisa said. “I wondered if you did.” She pulled a good-sized head off a string and handed it to him, then said something in classical Kaunian.

Talsu hadn’t spent enough time in school to learn much of the old language, and modern Jelgavan had drifted too far from it to let him understand the phrase. He had to ask, “What was that?”

“The stinking rose,” Gailisa translated. “I don’t know why they called it that back in the days of the Empire--it doesn’t look anything like a rose--but they did.”

“It doesn’t stink, either,” Talsu said. “I don’t know anybody who doesn’t like garlic. Powers above, even the redheads eat it.”

“They eat everything,” Gailisa said with a fine curl of the lip. “They’re eating my father out of food, and they only pay half what it’s worth. If he complained, they wouldn’t pay anything at all--they’d just take. They’re the occupiers, so they can do as they please.”

“They’ve always paid my father--so far, anyhow,” Talsu said. “I don’t know what he’d do if one of them didn’t; he gets a lot of his business from them these days.”

“They’re thieves.” Gailisa’s voice was flat. “They’re worse thieves than our own nobles, and they give us back less. I never thought I’d say that about anybody, but it’s true.”

“Aye.” Talsu nodded. “They could have made a lot of people like them if they’d put down the nobles and walked small themselves, but they haven’t bothered. King Mainardo! As if an Algarvian has any business being king here!”

“We lost the war. That means they can do whatever they want, like I said,” Gailisa answered. “They beat us, and now they’re beating us.”

Talsu paid her for the garlic and the oil and left the grocers shop in a hurry. Gailisa sounded almost like his father, blaming him for losing the fight. Maybe she didn’t mean it that way, but that was how it sounded. If I’d been in charge of things.. . , Talsu thought, and then laughed at himself. If he’d been in charge of things, the Jelgavan army would still have lost. He didn’t know how to run an army or a war. But the nobles who’d run the army were supposed to.

He stopped in a tavern and bought a glass of red wine flavored with orange and lime juice. The wine was rough and raw and cheap, but better than the thin, sour beer army rations had served up with breakfast every morning. Somebody’d probably promised better, then pocketed half of what he should have spent. That was how things had gone during the war.

As Talsu was leaving the tavern, a couple of Algarvian soldiers strode in. If he hadn’t stepped back in a hurry, they would have walked right over him. He wanted to smash them for their arrogance, but didn’t dare. Two against one was bad odds, and all the occupiers in Skrunda would come after him even if he won.

Hating the Algarvians, hating himself, he went home. His father, having sewn one half of the Algarvian officer’s tunic, was muttering the charm that would finish the stitching. It wasn’t quite a straight application of the law of similarity, because the left half was a mirror image of the right. Talsu wouldn’t have wanted to try it himself; he knew he didn’t have the skill. But his father was the best tailor in Skrunda and for several towns around, not only for his handwork but also for the craft spells that meant he didn’t have to do everything by hand.