Authors: Harry Turtledove
“All right, I’ll do that, then.” Talsu picked up the kilt, which at the moment was only a piece cut out from a bolt of heavy woolen fabric. As he did so, he remarked, “I never thought I’d have to worry about making one of these, not back before the war started I didn’t.”
“Who would have, in a Kaunian kingdom?” Traku said. “We wear trousers, the way decent people are supposed to.” He paused to set thread along a seam he hadn’t sewn. “I do hear that, down in Balvi, there were women wearing kilts even before the war, so they could show off their legs. Trollops, that’s what I call ‘em.”
“Oh, aye, trollops is right,” Talsu said, not without a certain interest. He went on. “You see a few Jelgavan women—even a few Jelgavan men—in Skrunda wearing kilts nowadays. But they just want to lick the Algarvians’ boots.”
“They want to lick ‘em somewhere north of the boots,” Traku said with a coarse laugh.
Talsu laughed, too, deliciously scandalized. Hearing the racket from downstairs, his sister Ausra called, “What’s so funny?”
“Nothing,” Talsu and Traku said in the same breath. The way they echoed each other set them both laughing again, harder than ever.
“What’s so funny?” That wasn’t Talsu’s sister: it was his mother. And she came down into the tailor’s shop to get an answer for her question.
“Nothing, Laitsina,” Traku repeated, this time in more placating tones.
Laitsina looked from her husband to Talsu and back again. “Men,” she said, a distinct sniff in her voice. “You sit around here telling each other filthy stories, and then you expect me to pretend I don’t know you’re doing it. You don’t ask for much, do you?” With another sniff, she went back up the stairs.
“She was right,” Talsu whispered.
“Well, of course she was,” his father answered, also in a whisper. “But so what? Do you think she and Ausra—and now your wife, too, when Gailisa’s up there with ‘em and not working at her father’s grocery—don’t do the exact same thing when they figure we can’t hear ‘em?” Traku shook his head to show Talsu what he ought to think. “Not bloody likely, not when I’ve caught ‘em a time or two.”
“Have you?” Now Talsu was scandalized in a different way.
“Oh, aye,” Traku said. “They can be as foul-mouthed as we ever are, only they don’t want anybody knowing it. It’s their secret, like.”
Some of the things Gailisa had said made Talsu suspect his father had a point. He wasn’t about to admit as much, though. He had far fewer illusions than when he’d gone into King Donalitu’s army. He cherished those he’d managed to keep.
Traku went back to work. Once he’d laid out all the remaining thread on the tunic, he began to mutter to himself and to make quick passes over the garment. He and Talsu hardly thought of what they did as magic; it was just a trick of the tailor’s trade. But magic it was, using the laws of similarity and contagion to make the unsewn thread conform to that which was sewn. The thread writhed and twisted, as if briefly coming to life. When the writhing stopped, the tunic was done.
Traku picked it up, tugged at the sorcerously made seams, and put on a pair of reading glasses so he could examine it closely. When he was done, he set it down and delivered his verdict: “Not bad, if I do say so myself.”
“Of course not, Father,” Talsu said. “You do the best work in town.” He lowered his voice again to add, “Better than the cursed redheads deserve, too.”
“It depends on how you look at things,” Traku said. “I’m not doing this just for the Algarvians, you know. I’m doing it for my own sake, too. I don’t think I could stand doing bad work on purpose, no matter who it’s for.”
“All right. I know what you mean.” Talsu waved, yielding the point. “And it means one more Algarvian who’s never coming back to Skrunda again.”
“That, too,” his father said.
The Algarvian in question, a captain, came into the tailor’s shop that afternoon to pick up the tunic. After trying it on, he nodded. “It being good,” he said in Jelgavan flavored with his kingdom’s trilling accent. “Cloth being nice and thick.” He dabbed at his forehead with a pocket handkerchief. “I sweating here. When I going down to frozen Unkerlant, I not sweating anymore.” He changed back into the thinner tunic he’d worn into the shop, set on the counter the price to which he and Traku had agreed, and carried away the garment he would need while fighting King Swemmel’s men.
“I hope he sweats plenty, down in frozen Unkerlant,” Talsu said after the redhead left.
“Oh, sure,” Traku agreed, as if surprised Talsu would have bothered saying anything like that. “Sooner or later, either the Algarvians or the Unkerlanters will run out of men. Here’s hoping it’s the Algarvians.” He scooped up the silver coins the redhead had left behind and put on his glasses again to examine them. “This Mainardo bugger the redheads call King of Jelgava’s got a pointy nose.”
“Aye, so he does,” Talsu said. “From what I remember of the Algarvian coins I got before things fell apart, Mezentio’s got a pointy nose, too.” He shrugged. “They’re brothers. No reason they shouldn’t look alike.”
“No reason at all,” his father said. “No reason they shouldn’t both be trouble, either. And they cursed well are, powers below eat ‘em.” He paused, got up off his stool, straightened, stretched, and twisted this way and that. Something in his back went
pop-pop-pop,
as if he’d cracked his knuckles. He sighed. “Ahh, that’s better. I couldn’t get the crick out of there no matter how hard I tried.” He glanced over to Talsu. “How’s that kilt coming?”
“I’ve done a couple of pleats by hand, and I’ve got the thread laid out,” Talsu replied. “Now I’m going to put on the finishing touches.” The charm he wanted, part Jelgavan, part the classical Kaunian that was Jelgavan’s ancestor, part nonsense words was almost but not quite identical to the one his father had used with the tunic. Again, most of the kilt’s stitchery shaped itself.
Traku examined the finished garment and patted his son on the back. “Nice job. I still think kilts are ugly as all get-out myself, but the redhead who ordered this one’ll get what he paid for—and a free trip to Unkerlant besides.” Talsu’s answering grin was every bit as nasty as his father’s.
Out in the field, Marshal Rathar most often wore a common soldier’s rock-gray tunic with the large stars of his rank on the collar tabs. That wouldn’t do for a formal court function. At the orders of King Swemmel’s protocol officer—who plainly outranked even a marshal in such matters—he put on his most gorgeous dress uniform before repairing to the throne room.
“You look splendid, lord Marshal,” Major Merovec said loyally.
Rathar eyed his adjutant. “I doubt it, if you want to know the truth. What I look like is a gaudy popinjay.” Unkerlanter military fancy dress, like that of the other kingdoms of Derlavai, was based on the regular uniforms of a bygone age, when officers needed to be recognizable at a distance and when cold-hearted snipers hadn’t been able to put a beam through their heads from half a mile away. Rathar’s uniform was scarlet and black, with ribbons and medals gleaming on his chest.
“Splendid,” Merovec repeated. “His Majesty commanded it, so how could you look less than splendid?”
“Hmm.” The marshal nodded. “When you put it that way, you’ve got a point.”
Having satisfied both his adjutant and the fussy protocol officer, Rathar made his way through a maze of palace corridors to the throne room at the heart of King Swemmel’s residence. However magnificent the dress uniform he wore, though, he had to surrender his ceremonial sword to the guardsmen in the antechamber outside the throne room. He thought being without a blade detracted from the effect he was supposed to create, but his was not the opinion that counted. Swemmel’s, as always, prevailed.
Inside the throne room, the king dominated. That had always been true in Unkerlant, and would probably stay true till the end of time. The great throne raised Swemmel—as it had raised his predecessors and would raise his successors—high above his subjects and drew all eyes to him. Set against the king’s jewel- and pearl-encrusted robe and massy golden crown, Marshal Rathar’s uniform might as well have been simple rock-gray. Nothing competed with Swemmel here.
Lesser courtiers nodded to the marshal as he walked past them up the aisle leading to the splendid throne. To them, he was a person of consequence. To Swemmel, Rathar was what the other courtiers were: an ornament, a decoration, a reflection of his own magnificence and glory.
The marshal prostrated himself before Swemmel, knocking his head against the carpet and crying out the king’s praises as loudly as he could with his mouth an inch off that rug. “We suffer you to rise,” King Swemmel said in his thin voice. “Take your place beside us. We are soon to receive the ministers from Kuusamo and Lagoas, as we have spoken of before, and would have you beside us that we might speak to them with greater efficiency.”
“That is my pleasure, your Majesty, and my duty,” Rathar replied, and stood to the right of the throne where Swemmel could easily seek his opinion. Whether Swemmel would want advice, or whether he would take it once he got it, were questions of a different sort.
A herald cried, “His Excellency, Count Gusmao, minister to Unkerlant from King Vitor of Lagoas! His Excellency, Lord Moisio, minister to Unkerlant from the Seven Princes of Kuusamo!”
As usual, Gusmao and Moisio walked up the aisle toward the throne together: a pair of oddly mismatched twins. Coming from the island their kingdoms had shared for so long gave them a similarity that transcended their complete lack of physical resemblance. Moisio was little and swarthy and flat-faced, with a few wisps of gray hair on his chin to do duty for a beard. But for Gusmao’s neat ponytail and a few differences in the cut of his tunic and kilt, he could have been an Algarvian: he was tall and fair, with red hair and cat-green eyes.
Lagoans are of Algarvic stock, too,
Rathar reminded himself.
They’re allies, not Algarvians.
Seeing Gusmao still made him nervous.
Both ministers bowed low to King Swemmel. Being their own sovereigns’ direct representatives in Unkerlant, they didn’t have to prostrate themselves. Swemmel nodded to each of them. “Through you, we greet your rulers,” he said.
“Thank you, your Majesty.” That was Lord Moisio—a Kuusaman title of annoying ambiguity. He spoke Unkerlanter understandably, but with the most peculiar accent Rathar had ever heard. “I appreciate your courtesy, as always.” Was that sarcasm? With Moisio, you could never be sure.
Count Gusmao said, “King Vitor congratulates you, your Majesty, on the victories your brave soldiers have won against our common foe.” His accent was different from Moisio’s. It was also different from the way Algarvians spoke Unkerlanter, which helped Rathar feel easier around the redheaded Lagoan minister.
“We thank you,” Swemmel said. That restraint astonished Rathar: restraint wasn’t usually one of Swemmel’s outstanding character traits. Then the king leaned forward on the throne and pointed a long, skinny finger at Count Gusmao. “We would thank you more were your soldiers fighting on the mainland of Derlavai, as ours are.”
“Taking Sibiu back ought to count for a little something.” Moisio spoke before Gusmao could. The Kuusaman minister courted lèse majesty every time he opened his mouth. Swemmel had never executed a minister from another kingdom, not even the Algarvian minister after Mezentio beat him to the punch. There was always a first time, though.
Before the king could start roaring at Lord Moisio, Gusmao added, “And from Sibiu our dragons pound Valmiera and Algarve itself.”
King Swemmel snapped his fingers, as he had with Rathar in discussing the islanders. “Sibiu is nothing but rocks and mud dropped into the sea. If it fell in Unkerlant, no one would notice.
We
fight the Algarvian murderers from the Narrow Sea in the frozen south to the Garelian Ocean in the steaming north. Have your overlords the courage to cross to Derlavai and close with the foe?”
He’d asked that question of the ministers from the two island kingdoms a year before. They’d talked about how many other wonderful things they were doing in the fight against Algarve. Rathar knew there was a good deal of truth in what they said. That didn’t keep him, like a lot of Unkerlanters, from resenting them for the easy time they’d had of the war.
“We do close with the Algarvians,” Gusmao said. “We close with them on the sea, we close with them on the air, we have driven them from Sibiu—”
“You do everything except the thing that truly matters,” Swemmel said, and snapped his fingers again. “We know why you hang back, too: you hope to see the Algarvians maim us while we maim them, then come in and sweep up the leavings for yourselves. Is it not so, Marshal?” He nodded to Rathar.
Rathar wished he hadn’t. He suspected Swemmel had a point. Whether the king had a point or not, though, he shouldn’t have raised it with his allies. Rathar said, “His Majesty means we’ve carried the burden on the mainland of Derlavai by ourselves for a long time now. Help would be welcome.”
“We mean what we said,” Swemmel broke in, ruining Rathar’s try for diplomacy.
“Shall we stop fighting the Gyongyosians out among the islands of the Bothnian Ocean, then?” Moisio asked. “That would let the Gongs concentrate on you, of course, but if it’s what you want… .” He shrugged.
“Gyongyos is an ague,” King Swemmel said. “Algarve is a plague. Do you understand the difference? Do you understand anything at all?”
The foreign minister will probably cut his throat,
Rathar thought. But then, the king had always had even less use for the foreign minister’s advice than he had for that from his chief soldier.
Count Gusmao said, “When we hit the Algarvians, you may be sure we shall hit them hard.”
Swemmel yawned. “When you have something new to say, come before us again and let us hear it. Until then …” He made a gesture of dismissal.
“If you will not listen, your Majesty, how can you expect to hear anything new?” Lord Moisio asked.
Gasps rose from the Unkerlanter courtiers. One of those gasps rose from Marshal Rathar. He sometimes dared tell the king things others would have hidden from him. Never, not even in the days of the Twinkings War, had he dared be rude to Swemmel. The King of Unkerlant was conscious of his kingship, first, last, and always.