Through the Darkness

“You are--” Cornelu broke off short. He’d been about to call Brinco a liar, but something in the mage’s voice compelled belief. With hardly a pause, Cornelu went on, “--saying Fernao is involved in work of some considerable importance.”

“I am not saying any such thing,” Brinco replied. Now he sent Cornelu a look as chilly as the one the Sibian leviathan-rider had given him. “Will there be anything more, Commander?”

His clear implication was that there had better not be. And, in fact, Cornelu had done what he’d come to do. Bowing to Brinco, he answered, “No, sir,” and turned and strode away. He was not a mage, so he couldn’t possibly have sensed Brinco’s eyes boring into his back. He couldn’t have, but he would have taken oath that he did.

Outside the Guild building, he paused and considered. He knew, or thought he knew, which ley-line caravan would take him back to the harbor, back to the leviathan pens, back to the barracks where he and his fellow exiles had painfully built a tiny, stuffy re-creation of Sibiu in this foreign land.

But that satisfied him hardly more than Setubal itself did. Unlike some of his countrymen, he recognized how artificial their life inside the barracks was. He wanted the real thing. He wanted to go back to Tirgoviste town and have everything the way it was before the Algarvians invaded his homeland. Wanting that and knowing he couldn’t have it ate at him from the inside out.

Instead of lining up at the caravan stop, he tramped down the street, looking for... he didn’t know what. Something he didn’t have--he knew that much. Would he even recognize it if he saw it? He shrugged, almost as if he were an Algarvian. How could he know?

Plenty of Lagoans seemed to have trouble figuring out what they wanted, too. They paused in front of shop windows to examine the goods on display-- even now, in wartime, goods richer and more various than Cornelu would have found in Tirgoviste town before the fighting started. Cornelu wanted to shout at them. Didn’t they know how much hardship was loose in the world?

Here in Setubal, it showed in only one place: the menus of the eateries. Local custom was to post the bill of fare outside each establishment, so passersby could decide whether they cared to come in and buy. Cornelu approved of the custom. He would have approved of it more had he made easier going of the menus. Lagoan names for domestic animals--cows, sheep, swine--came from Algarvic roots, so he had little trouble with them. But the words for the meats derived from those animals--beef, mutton, pork--were of Kaunian origin, which meant he had to pause and contemplate them before he could figure out what was supposed to be what. Similar traps lurked elsewhere.

These days, though, he had fewer things to contemplate. Almost every eatery’s menu had several items scratched out, generally those involving things imported from the mainland of Derlavai. Beef dishes were also fewer than they had been, and more expensive. Cornelu sighed. That didn’t seem to be enough acknowledgment of the war.

When he saw an eatery offering crab cakes, though, he went inside. For one thing, the Lagoan name was almost identical to its Sibian equivalent, so he had no doubt what he’d be getting. For another, he liked crab cakes, and couldn’t remember the last time they’d served them at the barracks.

Inside, the place looked anything but fancy, but it was clean enough. A cook with red hair going gray cracked crabs behind the counter. Cornelu sat down. A young woman with a family resemblance to the cook came up to him. “What’ll it be?” she asked briskly.

“Crab cakes. Rhubarb pie. Ale.” Cornelu could get along in Lagoan, especially on basics like food.

But the waitress cocked her head to one side. “You’re from Sibiu.” It wasn’t a question. It wasn’t scornful, either, which rather surprised Cornelu: most Lagoans thought well of themselves, not so well of anyone else. At his nod, the woman turned to the cook. “He’s from the old kingdom, Father.”

“It happens,” the cook said in Lagoan. Then he switched to Sibian with a lower-class accent he wouldn’t have learned in school: “My father was a fisherman who found he was making more money in Setubal than back on the five islands, so he settled here. He married a Lagoan lady, but I grew up speaking both languages.”

“Ah. I got out when Mezentio’s men overran Tirgoviste town,” Cornelu said, relishing the chance to use his own tongue. He nodded to the waitress, really noticing her for the first time. “And you--do you speak Sibian, too?”

“I follow it,” she answered in Lagoan. “Speak a little.” That was Sibian, a good deal more Lagoan-flavored than her father’s. She returned to the language with which she was obviously more familiar: “Now let’s get your dinner taken care of. I’ll bring the ale first off.”