Talsu tried to remember if he'd ever heard his father apologize for anything before. He didn't think so. He didn't quite know how to respond, either. He finally said, "Don't worry about it. I never have."
That was true, though perhaps not in a way Traku would have cared to know. Talsu discounted everything his father had to say about the war precisely because Traku hadn't seen it for himself. What soldier ever born took seriously a civilian's opinions about fighting?
They went back to work in companionable silence. After a while, Ausra appeared on the stairs again, Laitsina behind her. When the two women didn't see the Algarvian, they came all the way down. "Is everything all right?" they asked together.
"Everything is fine," Traku said gruffly. "Sometimes it's a little harder to make people see sense than it is other times, that's all."
"You made… an Algarvian see sense?" Laitsina sounded as if she couldn't believe her ears.
"He sure did." Talsu thumped his father on the shoulder. Traku, to his astonishment, blushed like a girl. Ausra came over and kissed her husband on the cheek. That made Traku blush more than ever.
Ausra and Laitsina went upstairs again. Talsu and Traku looked at each other before they started work again. Maybe the Algarvian captain had seen sense, aye. But maybe he'd just gone for reinforcements- more redheads, or perhaps some Jelgavan constables. Or maybe his superiors would overrule him. Having been in the army, Talsu knew how easily that could happen.
But the Algarvian didn't come back, with or without reinforcements. As the day wore on toward evening, Talsu began to believe he wouldn't. When Gailisa came back from the grocer's shop, Talsu told her how brave Traku had been. She clapped her hands together and kissed Traku on the cheek, too. That made Talsu's father turn even redder than the kiss from his own wife had.
Supper was barley porridge enlivened with garlic, olives, cheese, raisins, and wine: food for hard times. Talsu remembered that huge piece of mutton he'd eaten with Kugu. Then he shrugged. The company was better here. When he went off to his cramped little bedchamber with Gailisa, that thought occurred to him again, rather more forcefully. He kissed her.
"What was that for?" she asked, smiling.
"Just because," Talsu answered. Because you're not Kugu struck him as the wrong thing to say. He did add, "I like kissing you."
"Do you?" Gailisa gave him a sidelong look. "What else would you like?"
They found something they both liked. As a result, they were sleeping soundly when eggs started falling on Skrunda. The first bursts made Talsu sit bolt upright, instantly wide awake. After his time in the army, he would never mistake that sound, and never fail to respond to it, either.
"Downstairs!" he exclaimed, springing out of bed. "We've got to get downstairs! Powers above, I wish we had a cellar to hide in." He heard his parents and sister calling out in their bedrooms. "Downstairs!" he cried again, this time at the top of his lungs. "We'll hide behind the counter. It's good and thick- better than nothing."
Only later did he stop to think that going downstairs in pitch blackness was liable to be more dangerous than having an egg burst close by. But the whole family got down safe. They huddled behind the counter, chilly and frightened and crowded and uncomfortable. "The news sheets will be screaming about air pirates tomorrow," Traku predicted.
"Not if one of these eggs bursts on their office, they won't," Laitsina said.
"I hope some of them burst on the Algarvians here in town," Talsu said. "Otherwise, the Lagoans or Kuusamans up there on those dragons are just wasting their eggs."
"Why are they bothering us?" his mother wailed as an egg came down close by and made the building shake. "We haven't done anything to them."
Talsu did his best to think like a general, and a foreign general at that. "If they strike at Jelgava," he said, "that makes it harder for the Algarvians to pull men out of our kingdom and send them to Unkerlant." He paused. "That means Father and I won't sell the redheads so many cloaks."
"Curse the foreigners, in that case!" Traku exclaimed. Maybe he meant it. Maybe he was joking. Maybe he was doing both at once. Any which way, Talsu laughed in spite of the death raining down on his home town. May it strike the Algarvians indeed, just as my sister said, he thought, and hoped the powers above were listening.
Colonel Spinello's ley-line caravan glided to a stop in a battered city in eastern Forthweg- not that there were any cities in Forthweg, eastern or western, that weren't battered. The corporal doing conductor duty bawled, "This here is Gromheort. Two-hour layover- we're picking up some men and some horses here. Two-hour layover."
"Gromheort," Spinello murmured. He'd been through this place before, when he was posted in Oyngestun back in the days when the war was easy. When he thought of Oyngestun, he thought of the Kaunian girl he'd enjoyed there. He'd whiled away a lot of bitter hours in Unkerlant telling stories about Vanai.
Gromheort was the biggest Forthwegian town near the Algarvian border. Almost without a doubt, the Kaunians from Oyngestun would have been brought here, to make it easier for the Algarvians to ship them west for sacrifice. If Vanai was here, if he could find her and bring her back… She won't be sacrificed, and I won't have to sleep with some dumpy Unkerlanter peasant wench, Spinello thought. It'll work out fine for both of us.
He got up and limped to the door of the caravan car. His leg still wasn't everything it might have been. But he could use it. And Algarve, these days, needed every man even remotely able to fight to throw into the battle against King Swemmel.
Outside the depot, a news-sheet vendor was waving a copy of his wares and shouting in Forthwegian. Spinello had only a smattering of Forthwegian, but he got the gist: Algarvian dragons striking hard at Sibiu. His mouth twisted. Some of the more ignorant or more forgetful Forthwegians might take that as an Algarvian victory. But if Lagoas and Kuusamo hadn't swooped down on the island kingdom, Algarvian dragons would have had no need to set upon it.
He saw no obvious Kaunians on the street. But what did that prove? He'd heard about the sorcery that let them look like Forthwegians, and about the trouble it had caused the occupying authorities. When he spotted a plump, redheaded constable in tunic and kilt, he waved to the man. "You, there!"
For a moment, he thought the fat constable would pretend he hadn't heard, but the fellow didn't quite dare. "Aye, Colonel?" he said, coming up. "What do you want?"
"Do you by any chance know for a fact whether the Kaunians from a no-account village called Oyngestun were brought here for safekeeping?" Spinello asked.
"I do know that." The constable's chest swelled with self-importance, till it stuck out almost as far as his belly. "Helped bring those blonds in myself."
"Did you?" That was better than Spinello had hoped for. "Good! Do you chance to recall a girl named Vanai, then? She'd be worth recalling."
And sure enough, the constable nodded. "She live with an old foof named Brivibas, didn't she? Cute little piece."
"That's right," Spinello agreed. "His granddaughter. I'm bound for Unkerlant, and I want to get her out of the Kaunian quarter here and take her along to keep my bed warm."
"Don't blame you a bit," the constable said, "but I don't think you can do it."
"Don't tell me she's been shipped west!" Spinello exclaimed. "That would be a horrible waste."
"I can't prove it one way or the other," the constable replied. "I'll tell you this, though: that Brivibas whoreson is dead as shoe leather. I caught him myself- me, Bembo. Bastard put on his sorcerous disguise- you know the blonds do?" He waited for Spinello to nod, then, looking smug, went on, "That disguise doesn't do anything for a voice, and I recognized his. He hanged himself in his gaol cell, and nobody misses him a bit, not so far as I can see."