Darkness 03 Through the Darkness by Harry Turtledove

Author:Harry Turtledove [Turtledove, Harry]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Darkness
Published: 2010-04-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twelve

A

stack of small silver coins and another of big brass ones, almost as shiny as gold, stood in front of Talsu. Similar stacks of coins, some larger, some smaller, stood in front of the other Jelgavans sitting at the table in a silversmith’s parlor. A pair of dice lay on the table. If Algarvian constables burst into the parlor, all they would see was gambling. They might keep the money for themselves—being redheads, they probably would—but they’d have nothing to get very excited about.

So hoped Talsu and all the other men, some young, some far from it, at the table. The silversmith, whose name was Kugu, nodded to his comrades. He peered at the world through thick spectacles, no doubt because he did so much close work. “Now, my friends,” he said, “let’s go over the endings of the declension of the aorist participle.”

Along with the others, Talsu recited the declensions—nominative, genitive, dative, accusative, vocative—of the participle for singular, dual, and plural; masculine, feminine, and neuter. He got through all the forms without a hitch, and felt a certain modest pride at managing it. Despite getting through them, he wondered how his ancient ancestors had managed to speak classical Kaunian without pausing every other word to figure out the proper form of adjective, noun, or verb.

Jelgavan, now, Jelgavan was a proper language: no neuter gender, no dual number, no fancy declensions, a vastly simplified verb. He hadn’t realized how sensible Jelgavan was till he decided to study its grandfather.

Kugu reached out and picked up the dice on the table. He rolled them, and got a six and a three: not a good throw, not a bad one. Then he said, “We are gambling here, you know, and for more than money. The Algarvians want us to forget who we are and who our forefathers were. If they know we’re working to remember . . . They knocked down the imperial arch. They won’t be shy about knocking over a few men.”

“Curse ’em, the redheads have never been shy about knocking over a few men, or more than a few,” Talsu said.

Somebody else said, “They can’t kill all of us.”

“If what we hear coming out of Forthweg is true, they’re doing their best,” Talsu said.

Everyone stirred uncomfortably. Thinking of what had happened to Kaunians in Forthweg led to thoughts of what might happen to the Kaunian folk of Jelgava. Somebody said, “I think those stories are a pack of lies.”

Kugu shook his head. Lamplight reflected from the lenses of his spectacles, making him look for a moment as if he had enormous blank yellow eyes. He said, “They are true. From things I’ve heard, they are only a small part of what is true. Algarve doesn’t aim to kill just our memories. We are in danger ourselves.”

Then why aren’t we fighting back more? Talsu wanted to shout it. He wanted to, but he didn’t. Aye, these men were here to study classical Kaunian, which argued that they had no use for the redheads.

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