Out of the Darkness

Even Conberge inhaled. Vanai wondered if she’d gone too far. Using her birthspeech wasn’t illegal any more, either, but when had anyone last done it in public here? Would the mushroom-seller try to shame her by denying that he understood? Or would he prove to be one of those Forthwegians who’d either never learned or who’d forgotten his classical Kaunian?

Neither, as it happened. Not only did he understand the language she’d used, he even replied in it: “Of course. You’ll find some good things here.” He pushed baskets toward her.

“Thank you,” she said, a beat slower than she should have--hearing her own tongue took her by surprise. Around her, the market square came back to life. If the dealer took her for granted, other folk would do the same. Now I have to buy something from him, she thought. No matter how much he charges, I have to buy. I owe it to him.

But the fellow’s prices turned out to be better than the ones Vanai and Conberge had got from the man on the other side of the square. He wrapped up the mushrooms she bought in paper torn from an old news sheet and tied it with a bit of string. “Enjoy them,” he told her.

“Thank you very much,” she said again, not just for the mushrooms.

“You’re welcome,” he answered, and then leaned toward her and lowered his voice: “I’m glad to see you safe, Vanai.”

Her jaw dropped. Suddenly, she too spoke in a whisper: “You’re someone from Oyngestun, aren’t you? One of us, I mean. Who?”

“Tamulis,” he said.

“Oh, powers above be praised!” she exclaimed. The apothecary had always been kind to her. She asked, “Is anyone else from the village left?”

“I don’t know,” he replied. “You’re the first one I’ve seen with nerve enough to show your true face. More than I’ve got, believe you me.”

It hadn’t been nerve. It had been a mistake. But I got by with it,

Vanai thought. If I want to, lean do it again. Maybe lean do it again, anyway. Somehow, that maybe felt like victory.

Garivald had thought he would forever hate all Algarvians and the men who’d fought for the redheads. Now he found himself swinging a pick beside one of Mezentio’s men while a former soldier from Plegmund’s Brigade shoveled the cinnabar ore they’d loosened into a car another Unkerlanter had charge of. “Being careful,” the Algarvian said in bad Unkerlanter. “Almost dropping pick on my toes.”

“Sorry,” Garivald answered, and found himself meaning it. He’d worked beside this particular redhead before, and didn’t think he was a bad fellow. Here in the mines in the Mamming Hills, the captives, whatever they looked like, weren’t one another’s worst foes. That honor, without question, went to the guards.

All the captives--Unkerlanters, Forthwegians, Gyongyosians, Algarvians, black Zuwayzin--hated the guards with a passion far surpassing anything else they felt. They worked alongside their fellows in misery well enough. The guards were the men who made life a misery.

“Come on, you lazy whoresons!” one of them shouted now. “You don’t work harder, we’ll just knock you over the head and get somebody who will. Don’t think we can’t do it, on account of we cursed well can.”

Maybe some of the foreigners in the mine were naive enough to believe the guards wouldn’t kill any man they felt like killing. Garivald wasn’t. He doubted whether any Unkerlanter was. Inspectors and impressers had always meant that life in Unkerlant was lived watchfully. Anyone who spoke his mind to someone he didn’t know quite well enough would pay for it.

The work went on. Here in the summertime, it would still be light when the men in the mines came up after their shift ended, as it had been light when they came down to their places at the ends of the tunnels. Come winter, it would be dark and freezing--worse than freezing--above ground at each end of the shift. Down here in the mine, winter and summer, day and night, didn’t matter. To a farmer like Garivald, a man who’d lived his life by the rhythm of the seasons, that felt strange.

Of course, his being here at all felt strange. No one thought he was Garivald, the fellow who’d been a leader in the underground and come up with patriotic songs. As Garivald, he was a fugitive. Anyone who’d presumed to resist the Algarvians without getting orders from King Swemmel’s soldiers was automatically an object of suspicion. After all, he might resist Unkerlant next. Plenty of Grelzers had. Some of them were in the mines, too.