Harry Turtledove - Through the Darkness

Exile. In essence, Skarnu had been in exile from his own way of life ever since he joined King Gainibu’s army when the war against Algarve was young and fresh and still held the possibility of glory. After he found out what that possibility was worth, he’d made another life for himself, one in most ways more satisfying than that which he’d left behind. And now he’d had that one yanked out from under him, too.

Curse you, Krasta, he thought, staring up at the badly plastered ceiling of the cheap flat the irregulars in Ventspils had found for him. If not for his sister, how would that cursed Lurcanio have known to come hunting for him? He hoped Merkela was all right, Merkela and the child she was carrying. Hope was all he could do. He didn’t dare to post her even the most innocuous letter, lest some Algarvian mage use it to track him down.

Here in Ventspils, he felt suspended betwixt and between. Back in Priekule, he’d been a person of the capital, a man of the big city, who’d enjoyed everything it had to offer. On the farm, even in Pavilosta, he’d learned to find simpler contentments: a good crop of beans in the garden, a laying hen the envy of all his neighbors, a mug of ale after a hard day’s work. And he’d learned the difference between pleasure and love, a distinction he’d never bother drawing in Priekule.

He had no work in Ventspils, not yet. He had no friends here, only a handful of acquaintances among the irregulars who’d installed him in the flat. And Ventspils, off to the east of Priekule, had to be the most boring town in Valmiera. If it wasn’t, he pitied the place that was.

After a while, staring at the ceiling threatened to drive him mad. He got up and put on the coat the irregulars had given him to replace the sheepskin jacket he’d brought from the farm. With its wide lapels, the coat would have been years out of fashion in Priekule, but he’d seen plenty of people here wearing and even showing off equally unstylish garments. He also put on a broad-brimmed felt hat, and wished for one with earflaps like those the Unkerlanters wore.

Not many people were on the streets. The freezing rain had stopped a couple of hours before, but glare ice was everywhere, shining and treacherous. City workers should have been spreading salt to help melt it and to give better footing, but where were they? Nowhere Skarnu could see. He slipped and had to grab a lamp post to keep from falling.

A couple of Algarvian soldiers in hobnailed boots laughed at him. They had no trouble keeping their feet. “I hope you get sent to Unkerlant,” he muttered. “I hope your toes freeze and turn black and fall off.” He made sure the redheads didn’t hear him, though. They might have spoken Valmieran. He took no needless chances.

A news-sheet vendor shouted his wares, and no doubt shouted all the more lustily to help keep his teeth from chattering. “Another Algarvian victory north of Sulingen!” he bellowed, his breath steaming at every word. “King Swemmel’s barbarous hordes hurled back in dismay!”

Skarnu’s laughter sent smoke steaming from his mouth and nose, too. Mezentio’s men were good liars, but not good enough. They had supposedly won all the battles north of Sulingen long ago. Why were they fighting there again if they weren’t in trouble?

But how many people would notice that? How many people would care if they did notice? The Algarvians had to be winning the war, didn’t they? Of course they did. They’d beaten Valmiera. That meant they had to beat everyone else. If they didn’t beat everyone else, how could a Valmieran sleep easy after lying down on his back to expose his throat to the conquerors … or lying down on her back to expose something else?

Krasta. Sometimes Skarnu wanted to kill his sister. Sometimes he wanted to slap some sense into her silly head. He sighed. Somebody should have tried that years before. Too late now, more likely than not. Sometimes he just wanted to sit down beside her and ask her why.

Because I felt like it. He could hear her voice in his mind. She wouldn’t think past that. He knew her too well. She wouldn’t think much about betraying him to the Algarvian colonel to whom she gave herself, either. Skarnu would have guessed that beneath her, but evidently he was wrong.

He walked past the news-sheet vendor, brusquely shaking his head when the fellow waved a sheet at him to try to tempt him to buy. The man couldn’t even curse him, for he might lay out a couple of coppers another time. The vendor could only shake his head and go on calling out the news in the hope that someone else would want to read it.

Half a block farther on, a beggar stood out in front of a jeweler’s. Even though he couldn’t have been more than twelve years old, the place was as much his as the shop full of trinkets belonged to the jeweler. He’d already driven off a couple of grown men, one after the other, to keep it. The placard by his little tin cup read, MY FATHER NEVER CAME HOME FROM THE WAR. PLEASE HELP.

Skarnu tossed him a coin. “Powers above bless you, sir!” the beggar boy cried as it rattled into the cup. Skarnu kept walking. He didn’t know whether the boy was telling the truth or not, but didn’t care to take the chance he was lying, either.

He turned and went into a tavern that called itself the Lion and the Mouse these days. Its signboard was newer than most of those on the frowzy street. Before the war, before the Valmieran collapse, it had been known as the Imperial Lion. Valmierans had been proud to remember the days of the Kaunian Empire. The Algarvian occupiers, though, wanted them to forget.

Thanks to a coal fire, the tavern was warm inside. Skarnu sighed with pleasure and shrugged off the jacket with the wide lapels. A couple of men stood at the bar. One of them was trying to chat up a raddled-looking woman. He wasn’t having much luck, not least because he looked poor. Three more men sat at a table, two of them drinking ale, one nursing a glass of spirits.

The fellow with the spirits nodded to Skarnu and waved for him to join them. He did, setting his backside on a stool that creaked. The raddled-looking woman turned out to be a barmaid. Moving no faster than she had to, she ambled over and asked him, “What’ll it be?” By the way she leaned toward him, and by the number of toggles undone on her tunic, he could have had her as long as he had the price, too.

“Ale,” he answered. “Just ale.” She gave him a sour look, then went off to fetch him a mug.

“Hello, Pavilosta,” said the man with the glass of spirits. Names were in short supply among the irregulars. They called him by that of the village from whose neighborhood he’d had to flee. Considering how urgent his departure had been, even that came too close to identifying him to leave him quite comfortable with it.

“Hello yourself, Painter,” he said. No one could make much out of a nickname taken from a fellow’s job. He nodded to the other men. “Butcher. Cordwainer.”

They raised their mugs in greeting and salute. The barmaid came back with Skarnu’s ale. She pointedly stood by the table till he paid her. Then, her face still pinched with disapproval, she a walked back to the bar.

In a low voice, the fellow who made boots said, “You’re smart not to want any of her. She’s so cold, you’d freeze your joint off once you got it in there.” He sipped from his own mug, then added, “I ought to know.”

“You bragging or complaining?” asked the man who painted houses. Skarnu tried his ale. It wasn’t bad. He sat and waited. Ventspils wasn’t his town, not even by adoption. He couldn’t make plans here, as he had back near Pavilosta. He had to be part of other people’s plans. He didn’t care for that, but he didn’t know what to do about it, either.