Jaws of Darkness

Five

Night in the Strait of Valmiera: a nasty night, with rain and even a little sleet beating down. Wind-whipped waves slapped against theHabakkuk’s port side as she slid north along a ley line toward the Derlavaian mainland. Secure in the bowels of the great, sorcerously enhanced iceberg, Leino hardly noticed the motion.

When the Kuusaman mage remarked on that, Xavega raised a scornful, elegant eyebrow. “Ina proper ley-line ship, we would not feel the waves at all,” she said, using classical Kaunian as he had. “We would glide above the water, and not be subject to it.” She didn’t add, You ignorant Kuusaman oaf, but she might as well have.

Leino sighed and didn’t answer. Why did my fancy fix on someone who despises me and all my people? He wondered. One of his own eyebrows quirked, in wry amusement. Because I’ve been away from Pekka too long, that’s why. And because Xavega packs her bile in such a nicely shaped container.

Ramalho was every bit as Lagoan as Xavega, but he shook his head. “In aproper ley-line ship, those waves might capsize us or push us off the ley line and then sink us,” he said. “Plenty of hulks on the bottom of the sea hereabouts, and not all of them from the days when ships went by sail.”

Xavega glared at him. She didn’t just disagree with Leino; she was ready to take on the whole world. “What do you know about it?” she demanded of Ramalho.

“Before the war, I was a ship’s mage,” he said calmly. “My father spent some time as a ship’s mage, and so did his father before him. I might ask you the same question.”

He might ask it, but Xavega didn’t answer it. She just tossed her head, sending wavy, copper-colored locks flying back from her face, and went over to the tea kettle to pour herself a fresh cup. She slammed the kettle back onto its iron stand almost hard enough to shatter it.

“Rain is a worse nuisance forHabakkuk than for ordinary ships,” Leino said, trying to find something the mages could talk about without quarreling. “We always have to work to keep the sea from melting us, but worrying about the air, too, makes the sorcery twice as complicated.”

“Well, that is true enough,” Ramalho said. Xavega just sniffed and sipped at her tea. She couldn’t very well argue with what Leino had said, but she didn’t care to agree with it, either. Ramalho went on: “If we sailedHabakkuk into Setubal harbor back in the days of the Six Years’ War, all the mages in Lagoas would be going mad trying to figure out how we have done all this.”

“Now, there is a picture,” Leino said, rather liking it. “The same would have been true in Kuusamo a generation ago-or, for that matter, any time before the Derlavaian War started.”

“A picture of nonsense,” Xavega said. “A daft conceit.” Ramalho had offered the conceit, but she sounded as if she blamed Leino for it.

With another sigh Leino said, “I hope the dragonfliers will be able to leave the ship in this weather.” How would Xavega take exception to that?

“The storm will help shield them from the Algarvians,” she said, whichwas disagreement, but of a relatively tepid sort. She continued, “Dowsers start tearing their hair when they have to find moving dragons in the midst of millions of moving raindrops.”

“True,” Leino said.

“Also less true than it would have been in the days of the Six Years’ War, though,” Ramalho said. “Our motion-selectivity spells are much better than they used to be.”

Leino waited for Xavega to start squabbling about that, too. Instead, to his astonishment, she burst into tears. “No one ever lets me say anything without arguing!” she wailed, and fled the chamber in which they’d been sitting.

“What on earth-?” Leino said to Ramalho.

“I was hoping you might explain it to me,” the Lagoan mage answered. “You are the married man, after all. Does that not mean you understand more of women than we bachelors do?”

“I understand my wife fairly well, I think,” Leino said. “Understanding one woman, though, does not mean I understand all women, any more than understanding one man means I understand all men.”

“Too bad,” Ramalho said. “I was hoping it would be simpler than that.” He shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Of course, asking anyone to understand Xavega is probably asking too much.”

“Ah?” Leino said, his voice as neutral as he could make it. “I wondered if it was just me.”

“Oh, no,” Ramalho assured him. “She can be difficult. In fact, there are times when I wonder if she can be anything else. I knew her in Setubal, and she was the same way there.”

“Was she?” Leino asked. Ramalho nodded solemnly. Leino said, “How interesting,” and left the icy chamber.

Interesting, he jeered at himself as he walked down an equally icy corridor. Is that really the word you want to use? The woman is trouble, nothing else but. Even if you got her into bed, she’d be nothing but trouble. She’d be more trouble then, most likely. The only reason you care about her is the way she looks.

And isn’t that reason enough? a different, rather deeper, part of his mind asked in return.

He shook his head, as if he were arguing with someone else and not with himself. No, it isn’t, he insisted. Pekka would laugh at you if she knew you were mooning over a bad-tempered Lagoan, just because she has long, shapely legs and fills out her tunic nicely.

That deeper part of his mind didn’t answer. Maybe that meant he’d convinced it. Somehow, he didn’t think so. Those legs and the way Xavega filled out her tunic stayed with him no matter how bad-tempered she was. Aye, Pekka would laugh at him, but Pekka wasn’t a man.

And a good thing, too, he thought. There, at least, both parts of his mind agreed completely.

He headed toward one of the chambers where the mages worked to keepHabakkuk going-as opposed to the chambers where they gathered when they weren’t working. He wasn’t due back on duty for another couple of hours, but he had the feeling they would welcome him if he came in early. Rain really did put a lot of extra strain onHabakkuk ’s structural integrity, and he’d done a lot of work while the ship was building to find out how best to foil the raindrops.

He’d almost got there when the iceberg-turned-dragon-hauler jerked and shuddered under his feet, as if it had run into a wall. The next thing he knew, he was on his backside in the hallway and all the lights had gone out. Somewhere in the distance, an urgent bell began clanging.

“What in blazes-?” Leino exclaimed as he scrambled to his feet, his spiked shoes biting into the ice. He laughed at himself once upright again. He was a true mage, all right: even then, he’d spoken in classical Kaunian. All around him, though, men and women were crying out in Lagoan and Kuusaman. Pain filled some of those cries. He realized he was liable to be lucky to have come away with nothing worse than a bruised bottom.

He hadn’t thought about why something as immense asHabakkuk might stagger in midocean. That also proved him a mage: a mage, not a sailor. Some of the outcries in the dark had words in them, too. When those words were in Kuusaman, he could follow them. Two he heard most often were, “Egg!” and, “Leviathan!”

“Powers above, Iam an idiot!” he said-still in classical Kaunian. The dragonsHabakkuk carried had done nothing but give Algarve grief ever since the strange craft first went into action when Lagoas and Kuusamo took Sibiu away from KingMezentio and restoredKingBurebistu to the rule over his own island kingdom. Of course the Algarvians would strike at the sorcerously enhanced iceberg if they got the chance-and an Algarvian leviathan-rider evidently had got it.

Now Leino knew he urgently needed to make his way to the chambers where his fellow wizards worked. But how? The darkness in the bowels ofHabakkuk’was absolute. He hadn’t thought about how completely the strange vessel depended on magecraft to sustain it in every way till it was suddenly deprived of that magecraft.

Then, to his vast relief, a light-a hand-held lamp-pierced the gloom. A woman called out in classical Kaunian: “Mages-follow me! Damage-control parties are forming!”

“Here!” Leino shouted, first in Kuusaman and then in classical Kaunian. He pushed past sailors toward the lamp, using his elbows to force his way through them when nothing else worked. When he saw the sorcerer holding the light was Xavega, he didn’t stop to admire her. He just asked, “What needs doing most?”

“Everything,” she said at once, which was probably true but wasn’t very helpful. Then she got more specific: “You have worked on protecting the ship from rain damage, is it not so?”

“Aye,” Leino answered. “I wrote that spell, as a matter of fact.”

“Good.” Xavega stayed altogether businesslike, for which he was duly grateful. She gestured with her free hand. “Come with me.”

She led him back to one of the work rooms. A Kuusaman mage there used a little of her power and skill to keep another lamp faintly lit. Two more mages sat with her: two Lagoan men, neither of whom Leino knew well. One of them had a cut on his cheek, but hardly seemed to know it. “Rain repair?” Leino asked.

Everyone nodded. Xavega left again, shouting for more mages. The other wizards in the chamber went back to their sorcery. Leino sat down and began to chant. The lamp was so dim, he could hardly see his colleagues. But his mind’s eye reached up to the ice-and-sawdust surface ofHabakkuk, reached up to the little bit of ice every raindrop melted. He was glad to the very core of his being that the iceberg-turned-ship remained on the ley line. He drew energy from it and used that energy to preserve and restoreHabakkuk’s proper structure. He could feel the other mages doing the same thing, resisting the rain, refusing to let it harm the vessel that carried them.

Peripherally, he also sensed other mages doing more things to keepHabakkuk intact. Now that the first moments of surprise and dismay had passed, they found things weren’t so very bad after all. Cheers rang out when the lights went back on all over the ship.

“Knocked a good-sized chunk out of the ice on our bottom,” a sailor reported. “Smashed up some stuff, but nothing we can’t live with.”

“Habakkuk’s not so bad,” another sailor said. “Any regular ship, and we’d be sunk. But ice floats no matter what.”

Unless it melts, of course, Leino thought. The sailor hadn’t worried about that. He took it for granted that such things wouldn’t happen. Leino, who knew better, didn’t. ButHabakkuk did go on, and that was all that mattered.

Garivald threw more wood onto the fire in the hearth. He and Obilot both stood close to the flames, enjoying the warmth. He said, “We got lucky here.”

Obilot shook her head. “This isn’t our good luck. It’s somebody else’s bad luck. How many peasant huts are standing empty in Grelz these days? How many peasant huts are standing empty all over Unkerlant? Powers below eat the stinking Algarvians.”

“Aye.” Garivald would always say aye to that. But he went on, “Plenty of wrecked huts. Plenty of burnt huts. But not so many huts just standing empty like this one, I don’t think. Nobody even plundered it.”

“Powers below eat the Algarvians,” Obilot repeated. But then she added, “And powers below eatKingSwemmel ’s inspectors, too. If it weren’t for them, you could go on with your life again. We could go on with our lives again.”

“Maybe we can, now,” he answered, and set a hand on her shoulder. “Nobody knows we’re here. This place is in the middle of nowhere. After the thaw, we’ll see what kind of planting we can do. Maybe we’ll see if we can scare up some better tools, some livestock. Maybe. And we’ll get used to wearing new names, so nobody’ll find out who we used to be.”

“Who we used to be.” Obilot tasted the words. She nodded. “I’ve been a couple of people by now. I’m ready to turn into somebody else.”

“I never much wanted to be an irregular,” Garivald said. “I just wanted to go ahead and live my life.” He’d had a family. He didn’t any more. He glanced at Obilot. Maybe she’d had one, too. Maybe the two of them would again.

She snorted. “What? Do you think what you want has something to do with what you get? If the war hasn’t taught you what a cursed stupid idea that is, I don’t know what would.”

“Oh, hush,” he said roughly-it wasn’t so much that he thought she was wrong as that he just didn’t want to hear about it. Then he kissed her: that was one way to keep her from telling him things he didn’t want to hear. They ended up making love in front of the fire. Obilot didn’t tell him anything he didn’t want to hear then, either. Afterwards, they fell asleep. If anyone told Garivald anything he didn’t want to hear in his dreams, he didn’t remember it when he woke up.

What woke him was rain beating on the roof-and rain dripping through the roof and splatting down in little muddy puddles on the rammed-earth floor. The hut was amazingly sound for one that had stood abandoned for who could say how long before Garivald and Obilot found it, but that also meant nobody’d tended to the thatching for who-could-say-how-long.

Have to fix it when I get the chance, was Garivald’s first, still sleepy thought. Then he sat up and spoke his second thought aloud: “Rain.”

“Rain,” Obilot echoed. She sounded blurry, too. But her gaze quickly grew sharp. “Rain. Not snow.”

“That’s right,” Garivald said. “It really is spring. Before long, we’re going to be knee-deep in mud. And then we’ll have to try to get some crops in the ground. Either that or we starve, anyhow.”

“We’d have starved already if we weren’t eating the seed grain this fellow brought into his hut before whatever happened to him happened,” Obilot said.

“I know.” Garivald shrugged. “I thought of that, too. I didn’t know what to do about it, though. I still don’t. When you’re hungry now, you worry about later later.”

Obilot nodded. “You have to. Once the snow all melts, maybe we’ll be able to find more grain buried somewhere not far from here. We did that in my village whenever we thought we could get away with it, to try to keep the inspectors from stealing quite so much.”

“Aye. We did the same thing in Zossen,” Garivald said. “I bet there’s not a single village in Unkerlant where they don’t. Of course, if the peasant who had this place hid his grain so the inspectors couldn’t get their thieving hands on it, we won’t have an easy time finding it, either.” He walked over to the jug they were using as a chamber pot. “We’ll have to try, though. You’re right about that. If we don’t find some more, we can’t stay here. And the way things look, the way that cursed Tantris came after me, I’m a lot safer in the middle of nowhere than I am in a village or a town.”

“I know.” Skirting puddles, Obilot got breakfast ready: she poured crushed barley and water into a pot and hung it over the fire for porridge. Sometimes she would make unleavened bread instead. She’d found the jar in which the vanished peasant’s wife had kept her yeast, but the yeast was dead and useless- not that barley bread ever rose much anyhow. Garivald had got sick of tasteless flatbread and equally tasteless porridge, but they kept him going.

“Maybe I can kill a squirrel or two,” he said. “Not as good as pork, but a lot better than nothing. And I’ll start making rabbit traps, too.”

“Birdlime,” Obilot suggested. “Now that it’s really spring, the birds will be coming back from the north.” Neither of them said anything about finding other people and getting chickens or pigs or other livestock from them. Maybe one of these days, Garivald thought once more, but no, he wasn’t ready to try it any time soon.

As Obilot put more wood on the fire to boil up the porridge, another thought struck Garivald. “Maybe we could use sorcery to help us find the buried grain-if there’s any buried grain to find,” he said. “We’ve got grain here, and like calls to like. I’m no mage, but I know that.”

Obilot raised a dark and dubious eyebrow. All she said was, “Remember Sadoc.”

“I’m not likely to forget him,” Garivald said with a shudder. A member of the band of irregulars he’d led, Sadoc was a peasant who’d fancied himself a wizard. And he’d succeeded in casting spells, too. The only thing he hadn’t succeeded in doing was getting them to perform the way he intended. Each one seemed to go wrong more spectacularly than its predecessor.

“Well, then,” Obilot said, as if she needed to say no more.

And perhaps she didn’t. But Garivald said, “Sadoc liked big spells. This would just be a little one. And I can make songs, after all. That’s an important part of casting a spell. It could work.”

“Itcould.” Obilot still didn’t sound convinced. “It could burst like an egg, too, and scatter you all over the landscape the way an egg would.”

“I’d be careful.” Listening to himself, Garivald started to laugh. He sounded like a small boy trying to convince his mother he could do something she thought dangerous. He sounded a lot like his own son Syrivald, in fact. His laughter broke off as if cut by a knife. Syrivald was almost surely dead. So was his mother.

By the time the rain stopped, it had melted a lot of the snow. The sun came out from behind the clouds and went on with the job. The ground couldn’t possibly hold all the water thus released. As it did during every spring thaw, it turned to porridge itself.

That didn’t make Garivald unhappy. He said, “For the next few weeks, nothing is going to happen very fast, not till things dry out.”

“Good,” Obilot answered, and he nodded.

But, day by day, the barley and rye and the little bit of wheat inside the hut dwindled. Before long, it wasn’t a question of having enough left to make a crop. It was a question of how much longer they would have enough to eat. The next time Garivald said, “Maybe I ought to try to make a spell,” Obilot didn’t remind him of Sadoc’s disasters.

What she said instead was, “Well, be careful, by the powers above.”

“I will,” Garivald said, though any magecraft at all was for him a long leap into the unknown. It will be all right, he thought. Why shouldn‘t it? I’m not trying to kill anybody or do anything big, the way Sadoc always did. It’ll work. He had trouble making himself believe it.

But Obilot, he discovered, hadn’t quit trying to talk him out of it: “Have you ever, in all your born days, used magic to try to find things that were hidden under the ground?”

To what was surely her surprise-indeed, to his own, for he’d almost forgotten till she asked-he nodded. “Aye. Two springs ago, it was. Waddo-he was firstman in Zossen-and I had buried the village’s crystal to keep the redheads from getting their hands on it. I dug it up because I was afraid he might betray me on account of it. I gave it to some irregulars operating in the woods not far from there. I hope they got some use out of it.”

“Didyou?” She nodded, too, more than half to herself. “All right, then. Maybe you do havesome idea of what you’re up to.” She still didn’t sound as if she thought he had much idea of what he was doing.

He wasn’t altogether sure he did, either, but he knew he had to make the effort. He put some wheat, some barley, and some rye in a little clay pot, then tied a length of twine to the handles and swung it pendulum-fashion. Then, doing his best not to let Obilot fluster him by watching, he began to chant:

“Like calls to like-so magic’s found.

Let like show like, down under ground.

Show me now the grain that’s hidden.

Do it now, as you are bidden…”

On he went. He knew it wasn’t an outrageously good song-he knew it was likely a long way from a good song-but he hoped it would serve. And it did serve, or he thought it did. The direction in which the pot of grain was swinging suddenly changed, and he’d done nothing to change it. Obilot let out a small, surprised exclamation. Garivald felt like doing the same thing. Instead, he moved from one side of the hut to the other. The arc in which the pot swung changed as he moved, so that it kept indicating the same direction.

Garivald went outside into the rain and chanted again. The swinging pot led him away from the hut and off beyond a low swell of ground a furlong or so away. He nodded to himself. The fellow who’d lived here thought like a peasant, all right. He didn’t want to make things easy forKingSwemmel ’s inspectors.

As soon as Garivald started down the other side of the slope, the pot stopped swinging and pointed straight down. He hadn’t found a spade in the hut. He dug in the mucky ground with the edge of an iron pan. If it hadn’t been soaked and soft, he couldn’t have made much progress. As things were…

As things were, the edge of the pan clanked off fired clay before he’d got down much more than a foot. He set down the pan and softly and wonderingly clapped his hands together. “I did it,” he breathed, and breathed in raindrops. Then he dug as if he were digging himself a hole while the Algarvians tossed eggs at him. Grunting with effort, he pulled out the great jar, which weighed more nearly as much as he did. Pitch sealed the lid. He had to hope the seal had stayed good.

He dragged the jar back to the hut. Inside, he scraped away the pitch with a knife and levered up the stopper. “Ahh!” He and Obilot stared down at the golden wheat. “We won’t go hungry,” she said.

“We’ll have something to plant,” he added, and then, “This isn’t likely to be the only hidden jar, either. Maybe I can find more the same way.”

“Maybe you can,” Obilot agreed. “Why not? Youcan work magic.” She sounded awed.

“By the powers above, so I can.” Garivald sounded awed, too. Awed or not, he hedged that, as any canny peasant would: “A little, anyhow.” But a little had proved enough.

ColonelSpinellowas not a happy man as he rode east toward division headquarters to confer with his fellow brigade commanders. The rain that pelted him and his driver did little to improve his spirits. Neither did the fact that even the local wagon, with its curved, boatlike bottom and high wheels, had trouble negotiating the bottomless river of mud badly miscalled a road.

At last, just outside the northern Unkerlanter town called Waldsolms, cobblestones reappeared. The wagon wasn’t really made to cope with them. It rattled and jounced abominably. Spinello didn’t mind that so very much. “Civilization!” he exclaimed, and then, “Well, of sorts, anyhow. Thisis Unkerlant.”

His driver seemed less impressed. “A few miles of this jerking and we’d both be pissing blood,” he said. “Sir.”

Like most towns in Unkerlant that had gone through the fire of war, Waldsolms had seen better days. Brigadier Tampaste, who commanded the division, made his headquarters in what had probably been a merchant’s house; what had been the local governor’s castle was no longer standing.

Tampaste was young for a brigadier, as Spinello was young for a colonel. No: they would have been young for their ranks before the war. Nowadays, a man could rise quickly… if he lived. Like Spinello’s, Tampaste’s wound badge and ribbon showed he’d been hit twice.

“You’re the first one who’s made it here,” he told Spinello. “I’ve set out smoked fish and black bread and spirits. Don’t be bashful.”

“That’s never been one of my vices, sir,” Spinello answered, and helped himself. The smoked fish was tasty, but full of tiny bones. The spirits packed enough punch to make his hair stand on end. “Good,” he wheezed through a charred throat. “Good, but strong. If we’re truly short on cinnabar, we ought to feed the dragons this stuff, to make them flame farther.”

“By what I hear, peopleare talking about doing something along those lines,” Tampaste said, which took Spinello by surprise. “The drawback, of course, is that drunken dragons are even wilder and stupider than they would be otherwise, if such a thing is possible.” He sipped his own spirits without flinching; Spinello wondered if he’d copper-plated his gullet. “How do you view the situation in front of us, Colonel?”

“Sir, I don’t like it,” Spinello said at once. “Swemmel’s men are up to something, but I don’t know what. I don’t like it whenever they try to get cute with us; it means they’ve got something up their sleeves.”

“Do you think we can throw in another spoiling attack and disrupt them?” Tampaste asked.

Spinello shook his head. “Not my brigade, anyway. We’re in no shape for it, not after the attack on Pewsum failed.”

“You handled your men well there, Colonel,” Tampaste said. “No blame to you that the try didn’t succeed. Just… too many Unkerlanters in the neighborhood. We’ve sung that song before.”

“If we sing it again too often, we’ll have too bloody many Unkerlanters in Algarve, sir,” Spinello said.

Tampaste grimaced. “You shouldn’t say such things.”

“Why?” Spinello asked. “Because they’re not true? Or because nobody wants to think about them even if they are true?”

The division commander plainly didn’t want to answer that. At last, he said, “Because saying them makes them more likely to come true. A mage would tell you the same thing.” Spinello thought that held an element of truth, but only an element. Too many things got said all over the world for any one of them to have much chance of swinging things one way or another. Before he could say as much, Tampaste changed the subject, asking, “Where in blazes are the rest of my brigade commanders?”

“Stuck in the mud, unless I miss my guess,” Spinello replied. “Whatever the Unkerlanters are doing, they won’t do it right away.” He took another pull at his spirits, which made it easier for him to sneer at anything and everything Unkerlanter. “It’s not as if they bothered paving their roads so they could move on them all year long.”

Tampaste said, “Captives claim one of the reasons Swemmel didn’t pave more of the roads was for fear we could move on them.”

“I hadn’t heard that,” Spinello admitted. “If it’s true, we must have taught them quite a lesson during the Six Years’ War.”

“Maybe now they’re teaching us some things we’d rather not learn,” the brigadier said, and then, before Spinello could call him on it. “And now who’s speaking words of ill omen?” The gesture Tampaste used to turn aside the omen dated back to the days when the Algarvians skulked through the woods in the far south and the Kaunian Empire bestrode most of eastern Derlavai. Spinello had seen it reproduced on classical Kaunian monuments, and on pottery in the museum at Trapani.

Two of his fellow brigade leaders did eventually show up. The meeting that followed wasn’t worth having, not as far as Spinello was concerned. Both other colonels, like him, had seen more going on among the Unkerlanters opposite them than they would have liked. But both of them, also like him, claimed to lack the force to do anything about it. “Can you get us more men, sir?” one of them asked Tampaste.

The division commander unhappily shook his head. “I’ve got everything I can do to hold what strength I have,” he answered. “The bigwigs keep trying to rob me and send men south. That’s all they can think of. That’s where the worst of the fighting has been, so they think it always will be.”

“They’re a pack of fools, in that case,” Spinello burst out.

“As may be,” Tampaste said dryly. “But they’re a pack of fools with fancier rank badges than yours, Colonel, and fancier badges than mine, too. Any other comments?” After his depressing remarks, nobody said a thing. He nodded as if he didn’t seem surprised. “Very well, gentlemen. Dismissed.”

Spinello headed back toward his brigade, east of Pewsum, thinking dark thoughts. His mood did not improve when an Unkerlanter dragon dove at his wagon. He and the driver both leaped off into the mud. Had the enemy dragonflier timed his beast’s burst of flame as well as he might have, that would have done them no good. As things were, the Unkerlanter waited too long, and the flame kicked up steam east of the wagon. He didn’t come back for a second attack, but flew on, looking for another target.

Dripping and cold and filthy, Spinello scrambled back up into the wagon. “He didn’t think we were important enough to bother finishing off,” he said. “He went off to find something bigger and juicier.”

His driver was every bit as wet and cold and dirty as he was. “Are you complaining, sir?” the fellow asked.

“Not complaining, exactly,” Spinello admitted. “But my self-importance is tweaked. I want the Unkerlanters to think I’mworth killing, if you know what I mean.”

“Aye, sir.” The driver nodded. An Algarvian who didn’t think himself the center of the world was hardly an Algarvian at all.

By the time Spinello got back to the tumbledown hut in the village of Gleina that he was using for his own headquarters, he was shivering and his teeth were chattering. The soldiers in the village made sympathetic noises. So did Jadwigai, the brigade’s pretty little Kaunian mascot. “What can we do to make you feel better, Colonel?” she asked.

Come to bed with me. That’d do a proper job of warming me up. He thought it-he thought it very loudly-but he didn’t say it. What I do -or don’t do-for my men. The really annoying thing was, he didn’t think he would have to force her to slip between the sheets with him. If he broached the idea, he thought she’d lie down beside him gladly enough. Vanai would never have opened her legs for him if he hadn’t set her grandfather to building roads, but Jadwigai genuinely seemed to like him.

But the brigade came first. If finding out he’d bedded their pet would upset the men, he couldn’t do it. Powers below eat the brigade, he thought, not for the first time. What came out through his clicking teeth, though, was, “Tell them to heat up the steam room for me, would you, sweetheart?”

“Of course.” Jadwigai hurried away. She came back in a few minutes and took Spinello by the arm. “You get a fresh uniform and come along with me, Colonel. You’ll be better for it.”

“I’d follow you anywhere, darling,” he said, but he made sure he kept his tone light. Jadwigai laughed. So did Spinello, though it wasn’t easy.

Just as well for him that he did: his driver waited outside the steam room, too. They scurried in together, and shut the door behind them. “Ahh!” Spinello said, stripping off sodden tunic and kilt. The driver did the same.

Few Unkerlanters had their own bathing tubs. They didn’t go in for public bathhouses, either, the way their Forthwegian cousins did. Instead, they sat around roaring fires and sweated themselves clean. A circle of benches surrounded the central fire in the hut that did duty for a steam room in Gleina. Spinello and his driver sat down side by side and baked.

“Ahh!” This time, the driver said it, though Spinello would have. Warmth flowed into him, banishing the chilly damp. Then he began dripping again, this time with sweat. That felt better still. He picked up a bucket and poured water onto the hot stones around the fire. A great cloud of steam rose. He sweated more than ever.

During the wintertime, the Unkerlanters would go out and roll in the snow after baking long enough. In warmer weather, they made do with a bucket of cold water. Spinello had always considered either of those more nearly death-defying than anything else. When he got warm, he wanted tostay warm. Here, though, he couldn’t, or at least not indefinitely. He had to put on his uniform and hurry back to his own hut once he couldn’t bear the steam heat any more. Running through the rain wasn’t all that much different from getting splashed with a bucket of water. Spinello failed to see how it improved things.

But when Jadwigai asked him, “Isn’t that better, Colonel?” he found himself nodding.

“So it is, my dear,” he replied. “Of course, anything would be an improvement on the drowned puppy I was when I got back here.”

She nodded. She herself was a puppy saved from drowning. Unlike a puppy, she had to know it. She gave no sign, though. Maybe she didn’t want to think about it, for which Spinello could hardly blame her. Or maybe she never mentioned it for fear of giving ideas to the Algarvians who’d made a pet of her instead of flinging her into the river. Spinello could hardly blame her for that, either.

“What did Brigadier Tampaste say?” she asked, as if she were one of Spinello’s regimental commanders.

He answered her as if she were one of his regimental commanders, too: “He said that, whatever the bloody Unkerlanters are up to, we’ve got to stop them with what we’ve got-no hope for reinforcements.”

“Oh.” Jadwigai considered that very much as an officer would have. “Can we?”

No. Spinello didn’t care to admit that to her, or even to himself, so he leered and struck a pose. “My sweet, when an Algarvian sets himself between a beautiful girl and war’s desolation, he can do anything,” he said grandly.

Jadwigai blushed bright pink. Well, well, Spinello thought. Isn’t that interesting?

When Talsu’s mother came downstairs into the tailor’s shop where he worked with his father, she caught him not working: he was eating almonds dusted with sugar crystals and washing them down with citrus-flavored wine. Since Traku was doing the same thing, Talsu hardly felt guilty.

Laitsina wagged her forefinger at both of them. Sadly, she said, “My husband and my son-just a couple of lazy bums.”

“I am not.” Talsu would have sounded more indignant if he hadn’t tried talking with his mouth full.

“No?” his mother said. “Well, I’ll give you the chance to prove it. I was going to walk over to the grocer’s shop for some olive oil and some capers, but you can go if you’re not too lazy to get there.”

Talsu hopped down off his stool. “Sure,” he said, and started for the door at something close to a run.

Traku chuckled. “I just know his heart’s breaking, when you gave him an excuse to go see his wife before she gets back from work. He looks heartbroken, doesn’t he?”

“Like in a stage melodrama,” Laitsina answered. Talsu was already out on the street when she called after him: “Have you got any money?”

“Oh.” He stopped, feeling foolish, and went through his pockets. Then, feeling more foolish still, he went back inside and took some silver from the cash box. He went on his way again, jingling the coins to prove he had them.

Spring was in the air in Skrunda. Jelgava was a northerly kingdom, and not cursed with harsh winters; but the bright sun, the brilliant blue sky, and the dry heat all looked ahead toward summer, not back at the rain and clouds that did duty hereabouts for blizzards. Birds trilled in the bushes and from rooftops. New leaves were on the trees.

And new graffiti were on the walls, donalitu lives! cried the hastily painted scrawls, the true king will return!

KingDonalituhad lived in Lagoan exile the past three and a half years. Back in the days when he’d ruled Jelgava, Talsu had taken him as much for granted as the weather, and feared his storms a good deal more. The Algarvians hadn’t needed to introduce dungeons to Jelgava after he fled; they’d just taken over the very respectable ones he already had running.

No, Talsu hadn’t thought that much of Donalitu while he reigned. But when the choice was between oppression from one’s own countryman or from foreign occupiers, the exiled king didn’t look so bad. A choice without oppression in it somewhere hardly seemed real to Talsu.

The grocer’s shop was only a couple of blocks away. He must have seen six or eight scrawls in the little stretch. Whoever’d been putting up Donalitu’s name had been diligent about it. Good, he thought.

He was grinning when he opened the door to the shop. Gailisa’s father owned it, as his family had for three or four generations. Predictably, he was nowhere in sight, leaving her to do the work. She was putting jars on a shelf behind the counter when the bell over the door chimed to announced a customer. “Hello,” she said without turning around. “What can I do for you today?”

“Well, you could give me a kiss,” Talsu answered.

That made his wife whirl. Indignation vanished when she saw him. She hurried out from in back of the counter and gave him what he’d asked for. “There you are, sir-your order, personally delivered,” she said, mischief in her gray-blue eyes. “Can I give you anything else?”

“Sure.” Talsu squeezed her and let his hands wander a little. “But people would talk if they came in while you were doing that.”

“I suppose so.” Gailisa sounded disappointed, which in turn disappointed Talsu. Now he’d be counting the minutes till she got home, till they could go back into the bedchamber that had once been his alone, that was so much more cramped these days but so much happier, too. Gailisa went on: “Did you come in here with anything else on your mind?”

“Aye,” he said virtuously. “Olive oil and capers.”

“I can do that,” she said.

While she was doing it, he asked, “Did you see the new scribbles on the walls when you were coming over here?” When she nodded, he went on. “For some reason, people don’t much like the redheads. I wonder why.” He looked down to the floor planks. The stain of his own blood there had been scrubbed at and had faded, but he could still make it out. An Algarvian soldier had stabbed him after he objected to the fellow’s remarks to Gailisa. Nothing had happened to the redhead, of course. In Jelgava, the occupiers could do no wrong.

“Here you are,” Gailisa said brightly, as if he were just another customer. He made a face at her. They both laughed. He set silver on the counter. She shoved the coins back at him, whispering, “What my father doesn’t know won’t hurt him.” Sometimes she would do that. Sometimes she wouldn’t. Talsu had never figured out how she made up her mind.

He kissed her again, then spoke regretfully: “I’d better get back to work.” After one more kiss, out he went, large jar of olive oil in one hand, small jar of capers in the other. He nodded every time he passed one of the graffiti proclaimingKingDonalitu ’s return. After Algarvian rule, he would indeed welcome the rightful king with open arms.

He’d just delivered the groceries to his mother and gone back downstairs to return to work when two Algarvians came into the shop. One of them pointed to him and asked, “You being Talsu son of Traku?”

“Aye, that’s who I am.” Talsu fought the impulse to mimic the way the redhead spoke Jelgavan.

Keeping a civil tongue in his head probably proved a good idea. He didn’t think so at the time, for both Algarvians whipped short sticks from their belts and pointed them at him. “You coming with us,” said the one who’d spoken before.

“What in blazes is this here all about?” Traku demanded.

The other Algarvian swung his stick toward Talsu’s father, who had something of the look of a bruiser to him. “We are investigating treason againstKingMainardo.” He spoke Jelgavan almost perfectly. “If your son is innocent, he will be released.”

Talsu had arranged the untimely demise of Kugu the silversmith, the man who’d betrayed him toKingMezentio ’s men. If the Algarvians knew about that, he was in a lot of trouble. If they didn’t-and they’d never shown any sign of it-he thought he could hope to come home again. In any case, a needle was no argument against a stick. He set it down and slid off the stool. “I’ll go with you,” he said.

“Of course you coming with we,” the first Algarvian said. All the redheads Talsu had ever met were arrogant whoresons. But then, he’d met only occupiers, a role bound to breed arrogance.

As he’d expected, Mezentio’s men took him to Skrunda’s constabulary station. Most of the people working there were the Jelgavans who’d patrolled the town before Algarve overran their kingdom. They kept doing the same job, but for new masters and with new purposes. Talsu wondered how they slept at night. By the look of them, they had no trouble. One, in fact, was all but dozing at his desk now.

But the redheads didn’t turn Talsu over to his own countrymen, as they had the last time they captured him. Instead, they took him into a small, win-dowless chamber and closed the door behind them. He braced himself for a beating. He’d had several in the dungeon, all from fellow Jelgavans.

“What do you know about these new foul scrawls on the streets of Skrunda?” asked the Algarvian who spoke Jelgavan well.

“Nothing,” Talsu answered. “I’ve seen them”-he couldn’t very well deny that-”but that’s all.”

“Liar!” shouted the Algarvian who wasn’t so fluent. He brought out that word with ease; he’d doubtless had practice.

Talsu shook his head. “No, sir. That’s the truth.” And so it was. He hoped its being the truth would do him some good.

“You were released from imprisonment on condition that you cooperate with us,” the fluent Algarvian said. “But we have not seen much cooperation from you. Do you wonder that we do not trust you?”

“I can’t tell you what I don’t know,” Talsu said. “All I do is mind my own business.”By the powers above, I wish you’d do the same, he thought.

“Liar!” the other Algarvian shouted again. “We fixing you, you and your lyings.”

The door to the chamber opened. Another Algarvian came in: not a torturer, as Talsu first feared, but a mage. That might be even worse. The redhead who spoke good Jelgavan said, “Because we do not trust you, we shall have to interrogate you with a sorcerer present.”

“You lying, you paying,” the second Algarvian added, slashing his thumb across his throat.

“I’m not lying,” Talsu said, and then, to the first redhead, “Go on and ask your questions. I can’t very well stop you.”No matter how much I wish I could.

“What do you know of the new graffiti that falsely claim the fledKingDonalitu will come back to Jelgava?” the Algarvian asked.

“Nothing except that I’ve seen them,” Talsu repeated.

“Do you know who painted them?”

“No, sir,” Talsu said.

“Can you guess who might have painted them?”

“No, sir. I have no idea.”

His interrogator glanced over at the mage, who’d been muttering to himself during the questions and answers. The wizard spoke in Algarvian, punctuating his words with a fanciful shrug. The other redhead, the one who spoke Jelgavan badly, cried out in obvious disbelief. The mage shrugged again. Talsu’s interrogator tried a different tack: “Are you shielded against magecraft?”

“No, sir,” Talsu said.

“Have you ever had a shielding spell laid on you?”

“Not since I went into the army,” Talsu answered. “I know they tried to protect soldiers as best they could.”

The Algarvian waved that aside with an impatient gesture. “Do you know of anyone in Skrunda with reason to dislike Algarve?”

“Of course I do,” Talsu exclaimed. “I don’t much like your kingdom myself. Why should I, after your soldier stuck a knife in me and then walked free?”

More back-and-forth between the interrogator and the mage. Talsu knew he’d told nothing but the truth. Of course, the Algarvian hadn’t asked the right questions. The interrogator said, “Think what you will, but we are not unjust. You may go. Your answers set you free.”

“Thanks,” Talsu said, and found himself meaning it. This had indeed been easier than he’d expected. As he left the constabulary station, he couldn’t help wondering how the mage’s truth spell would have judged the Algarvian’s claim of justice. He didn’t know, but he had his own opinion.

Back in the days when Leudast was a common soldier or a sergeant, nobody in the villages the Unkerlanter army recaptured from the Algarvians ever paid any particular attention to him. Now that he was a lieutenant, he was discovering things were rather different. When the spring thaw started, his company was billeted in and around a village east of Herborn called Leiferde. He knew they would be billeted there for a while, too; hip-deep mud glued Unkerlanters and Algarvians alike in place for weeks each spring.

As company commander, he’d chosen a house in the village as his own temporary home. He would have done-he had done-exactly the same thing when commanding the company while still a sergeant. But when he’d done so while still a sergeant, the peasants on whom he’d been billeted had treated him like one of themselves.

That hadn’t bothered him. Hewas a peasant, from a long line of peasants. The only difference between him and these Grelzer farmers was his accent, which announced he came from the northeast of Unkerlant, up near the border with Forthweg.

Having those little brass stars on his collar tabs, though, put things in a new light. The peasants in Leiferde bowed and scraped before him. As often as not, they called himyour Excellency.

His own men figured out what was going on before he did. With a grin, SergeantKiun said, “Do you know what it is, sir?” When Leudast shook his head, Kiun’s grin got wider than ever. “I’ll tell you what it is. What it is is, they think you’re a nobleman.”

“A nobleman?” Leudast stared at his comrade. That idea had never entered his mind, not even for a moment. “You’re bloody daft, is what you are.”

“By the powers above, I’m not,” Kiun retorted.

“Lookat me,” Leudast said. “Do I look like a nobleman to you? I need a shave. My tunic’s filthy. There’s dirt under my fingernails. There’s dirt ground into my knuckles, too, so deep no steambath’ll ever sweat it out. You think nobles have dirty hands?”

“Thereis a war on, in case you haven’t noticed.” Kiun shrugged. “You can let ‘em know you’re just a nobody, if that’s what you want to do. I’ll tell you something, though: you’ve got a lot better chance of getting the girl in that hut where you’re staying to put out for you if she thinks she might have a baron’s bastard than if you’re just hoping she decides you’re a handsome whoreson… sir.”

Leudast raised an eyebrow. Now Kiun had his attention. “You think so?” he said. “Alize isn’t bad, is she?”

“Well, I wouldn’t throw her out of bed,” Kiun said, “not that she’s likely to end up in mine. But I haven’t done too bad for myself. I may not be an officer, but I know what I want and I know how to get it. If you want, sir, everybody in the company’ll talk you up for a blueblood. You’ve taken care of us. We can take care of you.”

“You don’t need to go that far.” Leudast paused and scratched the side of his jaw. “But I don’t suppose you have to go out of your way to tell people I know how to muck out a barn at least as well as they do, either.” Kiun laughed, nodded, winked, and went on his way.

A nobleman? Me? Leudast still found the idea absurd. It was, in fact, absurd for several reasons, not least that Unkerlanter nobility wasn’t what it had been back in the days before the Six Years’ War. A lot of nobles had fallen fighting Algarve then. A lot more had sided with Kyot, Swemmel’s brother, in the madness of the Twinkings War afterwards. Few who’d made that mistake remained among the living. AndKingSwemmel had gone right on getting rid of noblemen who met his displeasure all through his reign. The Algarvians had killed many more in this war. One reason the Unkerlanter army had so many officers without breeding was that there weren’t nearly enough nobles to fill the required slots.

Then Leudast stopped thinking of absurdities and started thinking of Alize. She was a few years younger than he, which put her somewhere around twenty. She had bright eyes and very white teeth and a shape even the long, baggy tunics Unkerlanter women wore couldn’t disguise. She’d given him plenty of pleasant smiles. If she wanted to give him more than smiles, he wouldn’t mind at all.

For the time being, all he could do was think about it. He squelched through Leiferde and the surrounding fields, making sure his men were ready to fight in case the Algarvians attacked in spite of the mud-and making sure they were ready to go forward in case his own superiors gave the word. He hoped his own superiors would have the good sense to do no such thing, but years as a common soldier and a sergeant had taught him not to rely on his superiors’ good sense.

When he got back to the house where he was billeted, he was all over mud. Alize’s mother, a brisk, handsome woman called Bertrude, gave him a bucket of hot water from the kettle over the stove and a rag. “Here you are, your Excellency,” she said. “This may not be so fine as you’re used to, sir, but it should do the job.”

She sounded more deferential than she had before. Had Kiun been telling tales? Leudast could hardly ask her. All he said was, “It will do fine,” and cleaned himself off as best he could.

Bertude’s husband, whose name was Akerin, rarely stirred from the bench where he was sitting. He had a jar of spirits beside him. Leudast had never seen him without a jar of spirits beside him. A lot of Unkerlanter peasants passed their winters that way. He’d done it himself.

Bertrude bustled over and poured Leudast a mug of spirits. “This will help warm you up, too, sir,” she said.

“Well, so it will.” Leudast drank. The spirits were potent, but no more so than he’d had back home. He pointed to a pot bubbling beside the hot-water kettle. “The stew smells good.”

“I’m glad it suits you, your Excellency,” Bertrude said, and dropped him a curtsy, as if she were a duchess herself. Aye, Kiun ‘s been running off at the mouth, Leudast thought. The peasant woman went on, “Alize there put it together. She’s a fine cook, Alize is, a fine cook-better than I was at the same age, I’m sure.”

Alize was mending a tunic. Hearing her name, she looked up and smiled at Leudast. As an experiment, he bowed to her. Though her skin was as swarthy as his own, he saw her blush. “Why don’t you let me have some?” he said.

Blushing still, she hurried to get a bowl and serve him. “I hope you like it, your Excellency,” she said, her voice so soft Leudast had to bend toward her to hear.

She stood waiting nervously while he began to eat. He wondered what an Algarvian officer who didn’t care for the stew might have done. Nothing good-he was sure of that. She had to fear his doing something just as dreadful. He smiled at her and said, “Very tasty.”

Her own smile was the sun coming out from behind thick clouds. Her lips shaped silent words. Powers above be praised. She probably would have said the same thing after an Algarvian officer approved-or after one ofKingSwemmel ’s inspectors did. That thought shamed Leudast. Bedding Alize when she hardly dared say no struck him as unsporting.

Bertrude made a clucking noise and beckoned imperiously. Her husband came over to her. She spoke too quietly for Leudast to make out what she was saying. Whatever it was, though, she plainly intended to brook no disagreement. When Akerin started to say something, she poked him in the chest with her forefinger and talked through him. Only when he started nodding did she look satisfied. A lot of the time, Unkerlanter men slapped their women around. Not in this hut, though.

After a little while, Bertrude fell silent. Her husband cleared his throat a couple of times, and then spoke to Alize: “Your mother and I, we’re going to go next door for a bit, see if we can get back that pot the neighbors borrowed from us. Likely we’ll chat some, too.”

“All right, Father,” Alize said.

“You’ll be all right by yourself with the lieutenant here,” Bertrude added. “He can protect you better than we could, if you get right down to it. Come along, Akerin.” She all but dragged her husband out of the hut.

Alize blushed again. Up till now, her mother and father had made a point of not leaving her alone with Leudast. Now they were making a point of going off. Leudast doubted Alize needed protecting. He thought Bertrude and Akerin were angling for a husband for her.

Of course, being an officer and being liable to get called away to fight as soon as the spring thaw ended, he could enjoy himself with her without worrying about details like weddings. She had to know the game her parents were playing. She probably knew he could do what he wanted without concern for consequences, too. More roughly than he’d intended, he said, “You don’t have to do anything you don’t want to do, Alize.” Sure enough, his sense of shame was still working.

“Oh. That,” she said. “I don’t mind. I don’t mind at all. If you want to know the truth, you’re the first one who ever bothered saying anything like that.” She made a wry face. “Mother would slap me silly if she heard me telling you such things. She’d want me to make you think I was still a maiden-and how likely isthat, after everything that’s happened the past few years?”

“I don’t know,” Leudast answered, though he had a pretty good idea.

“Well, then,” Alize said, and pulled the tunic off over her head.

When Leudast saw her deep-breasted, sweetly curved form, his shame melted like the snow outside, only far faster and far more thoroughly. He reached for her. Her flesh was soft and warm under his hands. Her breath sighed out when he tilted her face up for a kiss.

He soon shed his own uniform tunic. Clinging to each other, he and Alize went over to the padded benches along the wall that made up most of the furniture of an Unkerlanter peasant house. When they lay down together, Leudast discovered that Alize would have had a hard time convincing him she was a maiden. She knew too much of men and what pleased them.

Because she did, he enjoyed himself more than he might have otherwise. He thought she did, too; if she didn’t, she was artful about hiding it. After they finished, he took his weight on his elbows and knees, which made her nod in measured approval. Looking up at him, she said, “You’ll be going away before long, won’t you?”

“Probably,” he answered. “I didn’t come to Leiferde for this. It’s more fun than fighting Algarvians, but it’s not why the king gives me silver-when he bothers to give me silver, I mean.”

That made Alize laugh. She nodded again, and then flipped back a lock of dark hair that had fallen in front of her face. She said, “Powers above keep you safe. Afterwards-if there is an afterwards-if you want to come back here and talk about things, that’s all right. And if you don’t…” Her shrug was delightful to behold.

Leudast caught her to him. They began again. He had no idea whether he’d want to come back to Leiferde if the war ever ended. He had no idea if it would ever end. Powers above, he thought, Ihave no idea if her mother and father are going to walk in on us. She wrapped her legs around him. For the moment, he didn’t care about any of that, either.

PrinceJuhainensteepled his fingers as he studied Pekka. “How soon will this sorcery be ready to use against the Algarvians?” he asked. His eyes flicked around her room in the hostel. He didn’t seem much impressed. The Seven Princes of Kuusamo were neither so rich nor so ostentatious as the kings on the mainland of Derlavai, but such bare little chambers had to be alien to them.

She answered, “Your Highness, we’ve already used this sorcery against the Algarvians, when they tried to use their murderous magic against us.”

“That isn’t what I meant,” Juhainen said. He was younger than Pekka; maybe that was why she had trouble taking him seriously. Or maybe it was just that she didn’t reckon him a man to match his uncle, PrinceJoroinen, whom he’d succeeded when the Algarvians’ sorcerous attack on Yliharma slew Joroinen.

With some effort, Pekka kept her temper. “What did you mean, then, your Highness?” she asked.

“How soon will ordinary mages be able to use the spells your group of sorcerers has developed?” Juhainen did his best to make himself clear.

And that was a good question, a question worth asking. “As soon as we make the spells as strong and as safe as we can, we’ll turn them over to the practical mages,” Pekka promised.

“But when will that be?” Juhainen persisted. “How long will it take? Will it happen by the summertime? Will it be a year from now? Will it be five years from now? You will understand, I have an interest in knowing.”

“Of course, your Highness,” Pekka said. “But you will understand-or I hope you will understand-the question isn’t easy to answer. The more we learn, the more we find we can learn. The more we do, the more we find we can do. I can’t guess when that will stop, or if it ever will.”

“Whether it does or not, you will understand that out beyond the Naantali district we are fighting a war,”PrinceJuhainen said. “We need the weapons you are readying here. If they aren’t quite perfect… we need them anyhow, the sooner the better.”

“We’ll do what we can, your Highness,” Pekka said.

“Please do. Time is shorter than you might think.” Without waiting for an answer, the prince rose and strode out of Pekka’s chamber. The door clicked shut behind him.

Well, well. How intriguing, she thought. Up till now, the Seven Princes had paid little direct attention to her project. Every now and then, they would ask questions. Every now and then, too, they would grumble about how much things cost. Other than that, they’d left her alone. Not anymore. And what did that mean?

Only one answer occurred to her. Before very long, we’re going to need that sorcery, and need it badly. As far as she could see, that could mean only one thing, too: before long, Kuusaman and Lagoan soldiers would be fighting on the Derlavaian mainland.

It wasn’t anything that came as any great shock. Ships and leviathans and dragons weren’t going to be enough to drive the Algarvians out of Valmiera and Jelgava, not without soldiers on the ground to go in and take those lands away from them. She sighed. There was so much left to learn about the relationship between the laws of similarity and contagion, and about the inverted unity lying at their heart.

After that sigh, though, came a smile. Ilmarinen was ready to experiment endlessly, to pursue his own theories about twisted time. Nothing likely to annoy him struck Pekka as altogether distressing.

By the time she got down to the refectory, PrinceJuhainen had already left the hostel. He could escape whenever he chose. He didn’t have to come here unless he wanted to. Pekka envied him. Oh, how she envied him!

As things were, she had to go on herding cats-at least that was what dealing with her fellow theoretical sorcerers often felt like. Raahe and Alkio sat in the refectory, drinking tea. They weren’t so bad. Pekka waved to a serving girl and asked for some tea herself. Then she went over and sat down beside the married couple. As theorectical sorcerers went, they were pretty well civilized. Their being husband and wife probably had a good deal to do with that.

“What did his Highness want?” Raahe asked, setting down her cup. Juhainen had told Pekka nobody in the outside world knew where he was, but keeping secrets inside the hostel was impossible.

Pekka didn’t try. “He wanted us to hurry toward turning our spells into something final.”

“Ah.” That was Alkio. More often than not, he let his wife do the talking. Now, though, he said, “They’re wondering how soon they can put men on the mainland, unless I miss my guess.”

“I thought the same thing,” Pekka answered.

“What did you tell him?” Raahe asked.

“That we weren’t quite ready yet, that we were still finding ways to make the spells stronger and safer,” Pekka said. “I don’t know if practical mages who used them could stand against the murderous magic the Algarvians hurl around.”

“Wedid,” Raahe said. “We didn’t just stand against Mezentio’s magic, either. We beat the Algarvians back, by the powers above.”

“Aye, we did.” Every word of that was true. But could practical mages match it if menaced by Mezentio’s magecraft? Could my husband defeat Algarvian wizards who were killing Kaunians to try to kill him? Pekka didn’t want to put it that way, even if that thought was uppermost in her mind. What she did say was, “We’re not ordinary mages.”

“I should hope not.” Raahe glanced around to make sure nobody at the other tables was listening. She lowered her voice to a whisper. “If Ilmarinen were ordinary…” She rolled her eyes.

Before Pekka could get out more than the beginnings of a giggle, Alkio said, “The mages who attacked us probably weren’t ordinary, either. The Algarvians knew we were doing something important. They’d have thrown their best at us.”

“And we beat them,” Raahe repeated.

That was also true. “I hadn’t thought of it in those terms,” Pekka admitted. But Alkio was likely to be right. Kuusaman and Lagoan mages fighting on the mainland might well not face magecraft of the same vicious intensity as that which had surmounted the Strait of Valmiera and struck at the Naantali district.

“Hadn’t thought of what in which terms?” Ilmarinen demanded, hurrying toward the table where Pekka sat. “You’ve got to think of everything- either that, or you’ve got to have someone who will do it for you.” By the way he preened as he sat down, he had someone in mind. Raahe rolled her eyes again.

Since Ilmarinen did commonly think in terms that occurred to no one else under the sun, Pekka couldn’t even get annoyed at him-not for that, anyhow, though she knew he was bound to give her some other reason before long. She explained what the conversation had been about.

“Ah,” Ilmarinen said when she was through. He nodded to Alkio. “Aye, that makes sense-which doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true. Their magic gets a large energy release any which way: killing is good for that, if you’ve got the stomach for it. Ours is different. Ours has to be done just right. If it isn’t, you might as well not bother.” His gaze swung toward Pekka. “And I hope you toldPrinceJuhainen as much.”

“Not in those words, no, but I did say we weren’t ready,” Pekka replied.

“Good,” Ilmarinen said. “Practical mages are a pack of thumb-fingered fools.”

“They say the same thing about us,” Pekka observed.

“Of course they do. So what?” Ilmarinen let out a wheezy chuckle. “Everything they say about us is a filthy lie, while everything we say about them is true.”

Raahe nodded. Ilmarinen chuckled again. Pekka felt sorry for Raahe, who’d just proved she couldn’t recognize irony if it walked up and bit her in the backside. Pekka said, “We do have to get ready pretty soon, to turn out magic even those thumb-fingered fools can use.”

She waited. Would Ilmarinen understand she’d noticed his irony and respond in kind? Or would he singe her as he’d just singed Raahe, or perhaps roast her as he’d roasted so many others over the years? He dipped his head and answered, “You’re right. The Algarvians have already arranged things so thattheir thumb-fingered fools can make the most of their magic.”

“Powers below eat the Algarvians,” Alkio said. “Do we want to imitate everything they do? Do we want to imitate anything they do?”

“We want to imitate everything they do that makes them likelier to win the war,” Pekka said, and then, before the other mages could tear her limb from rhetorical limb, “Everything we can imitate with a clean conscience. The kind of magecraft they use is one thing. The way they organize their mages is something else again. It’s morally neutral, not wicked the way the wizardry is.”

Alkio pondered that and nodded. Even the quarrelsome Ilmarinen failed to find fault with it. Fernao came into the refectory just then. He carried his stick-he would always carry it-but he didn’t put much weight on it. He’d made a lot of progress getting around since first arriving in Kuusamo. “What’s wrong here?” he said in pretty good Kuusaman-he’d made a lot of progress with the language, too. “I see everybody nodding together, so something must be.”

No one seemed quite sure how to take that, either. Pekka said, “Nothing too serious: only a visit fromPrinceJuhainen.”

“Ah.” Fernao nodded. “Let me guess. Is he trying to make us hurry?”

Ilmarinen gave him a suspicious look. “How do you know that?”

“It’s what princes do,” Fernao answered. He frowned in thought, but evidently couldn’t come up with the words he needed in Kuusaman, for he switched to classical Kaunian to continue, “Princes do not bother to come when everything is fine. They come only to try to make changes. That is what they are for.”

“That is what Juhainen did, sure enough.” Pekka kept on speaking her own language. “I think it means we will invade the mainland soon.”

Ilmarinen raised an eyebrow. “Invade the mainland, eh?” He glanced over at Fernao. “Is that what they’re calling it these days?”

For a moment, Pekka had no idea what he was talking about, even though he’d spoken Kuusaman, too. Then she also turned toward Fernao, and watched him turn red-with his fair Lagoan skin, the flush was easy to trace. Raahe and Alkio must also have figured out what Ilmarinen meant, for they were busy looking at the ceiling or out the window or anywhere but at her and Fernao.

Her own ears felt hot. “That will be quite enough of that,” she told Ilmarinen in her frostiest tones. He laughed at her. She glared at him, which only made him laugh harder. Then she looked at Fernao again, and caught him looking at her. Their eyes jerked away at the contact, as if they’d been caught at something. We haven’t, Pekka insisted to herself. We really haven’t.