Out of the Darkness

Eleven

News-sheet vendors in Eoforwic shouted that Gromheort had fallen. Vanai cared very little about that. The vendors also shouted about the hard fighting Forthweg’s Unkerlanter allies had done. Vanai cared very little about that, either. But she did fear hard fighting in Gromheort would have taken a toll on the civilians there. She hoped Ealstan’s family had come through as well as possible.

News-sheet vendors said never a word about Oyngestun. Vanai would have been astonished if they had. Her home village, a few miles west of Gromheort, wasn’t important enough to talk about unless you lived there. She didn’t worry about her own family; her grandfather was all she’d had left, and Brivibas was dead. Vanai wasn’t particularly sorry, either. Tamulis the apothecary was the only person in the village she cared about even a little. He’d been kind to her after her grandfather took up with Major Spinello, and even after she’d had to take up with Spinello herself. But Tamulis was as much a Kaunian as she was, which meant the odds he’d come through weren’t good.

Saxburh pulled herself upright with the help of the sofa in the flat and cruised from one end to the other, holding on. As soon as she let go, she fell down. She laughed. It hadn’t hurt her a bit. Of course, she didn’t have very far to fall. She looked over at Vanai. “Mama!” she said in an imperious tone that couldn’t mean anything but, Pick me up!

“I’m your mama,” Vanai agreed, and did pick her up. Saxburh called her mama much more often than dada these days. She said a couple of other words, too-hat most often, after a cheap linen cap she loved to jam down onto her head-and a lot of things that sounded as if they ought to be words but weren’t. She was getting close to her first birthday. Vanai found that preposterously unlikely, but knew it was true.

Saxburh tried to eat her nose. That was the baby’s way of giving kisses. Vanai gave her a kiss, too, which made her squeal and giggle-and, a moment later, screw up her face and grunt. Vanai sniffed. Aye: what she thought had happened had happened.

“You’re a stinker,” she said, and set about cleaning up the mess. Saxburh didn’t like that so well. And, being more mobile than before, she kept doing her best to escape. Vanai had to hold her with one hand and wipe her bottom and put a fresh rag on her with the other. Battle won, she kissed Saxburh again and asked, “How would you like to go down to the market square with me?”

It wasn’t really a question, for Saxburh had no choice. Vanai scooped her up and stuffed her in her harness. She also scooped up some silver, grimacing as she did so. The money wouldn’t last a whole lot longer, and she didn’t know what she would do when it looked like running out. Whatever I have to do, she thought, and made another sour face.

Whatever I have to do reminded her of something else. She renewed the spell that let her look like a Forthwegian. She did that whenever she went outside these days. She couldn’t see the effect of the magic on herself, and didn’t want it wearing out where other people could see her. It was again legal to be a Kaunian, but that didn’t mean it was easy.

She chanted a third-person version of the disguising spell over Saxburh, too. With her daughter, she could see it work. Thanks to Ealstan, Saxburh already had dark hair and eyes, but her skin was too fair and her face too long for her to look quite like a full-blooded Forthwegian. A little sorcery, though, mended that for hours at a time.

Vanai clicked her tongue between her teeth as she carried the baby down to the street. “I am going to teach you Kaunian,” she said softly. “If I have to teach you when to speak it and when not to, I’ll do that, too.” Maybe Kaunianity wouldn’t be extinguished in Forthweg. Maybe it would just go into hiding. Considering what the Algarvians had tried to do to her people, that would be something of a triumph.

Little by little, Eoforwic showed signs of coming back to life. A postman nodded to Vanai as she lugged Saxburh toward the market square. “Good morning,” he said, and tipped his hat. She nodded back. No one had sent her or Ealstan anything for a long time, but she’d started checking the brass box in the lobby to her block of flats again. These days, the idea of finding something there wasn’t an absurdity.

Maybe Ealstan will post me a letter, the way he did when I was still living in Oyngestun, she thought. If he had sent her any, they hadn’t got to her. She wondered whether Unkerlanter soldiers were even allowed to write letters. For that matter, she wondered how many Unkerlanters even knew how to write. Her opinion of Forthweg’s western neighbors was no higher than the view Forthwegians had of their more numerous cousins.

Guthfrith’s band thumped and blared away in a corner of the market square. Vanai stayed away from that corner of the square, and hoped Guthfrith- who, when not sorcerously disguised himself, was also the much more famous Ethelhelm-hadn’t noted her arrival.

She bought black olives and raisins and smoked almonds. She fed raisins to Saxburh as they went back to the block of flats. Only when she was halfway there did she realize she’d taken no pains to keep Ethelhelm from seeing which way she went. She shrugged. She didn’t think he’d given her any special notice. She hoped not. He made her nervous.

When she looked back over her shoulder, she saw no one following her. She cocked her head to one side and listened. The band was still playing, which meant Ethelhelm was still where he belonged. Vanai sighed with relief and went on. She let Saxburh walk beside her for a few paces holding her hand. The baby seemed to think she was a very large person indeed after that, and didn’t want to go back into her harness again.

In the lobby of the block of flats, Vanai tried the mailbox. To her astonishment, it held an envelope with an image of King Beornwulf in one corner-a rather smeary image, plainly turned out in a hurry to avoid having to use frankings from Algarve or from King Penda’s day. The envelope was addressed to her as Thelberge and to Saxburh.

“It’s your father!” she exclaimed to Saxburh. Who else would know the baby’s name? But that wasn’t Ealstan’s script, which she knew as well as her own. With her daughter and the food on her hands, opening the envelope was impractical down here. She thrust it into her handbag and raced up the stairs to her flat faster than she’d ever gone before.

She took the baby out of the harness and set her on the floor. As always after going to and from the market square, Saxburh was glad to escape and crawl around. Vanai tore the envelope open, and had to be careful not to tear the letter inside it, too. She unfolded the leaf of paper and began to read.

To her surprise, the letter inside was in accurate classical Kaunian, not Forthwegian. To my daughter-in-law and granddaughter: greetings, Vanai read. I hope that this finds both of you well, and that it reaches you safely. Now that Gromheort and Eoforwic are once more under the same administration, I have some hope that this may be so, and send it in that hope.

She smiled; that was an opening as formal as any in the surviving letters from the glory days of the Kaunian Empire. But the smile fell from her face as she read on: I must tell you that Ealstan was wounded in the leg during the final Unkerlanter attack on Gromheort. He discovered we had come through the siege by one of those coincidences that would embarrass a writer of romances: he was nursed at a station for the wounded by his sister Conberge.

The wound is healing. It threatens neither life nor the limb, though he may have something of a limp even after the healing is complete. I am doing everything I can to have him formally released from Unkerlanter service. Not only has he shed his blood for King Swemmel, but he is unlikely to be on his feet before the war against Algarve ends. If I were dealing with the redheaded barbarians, the matter would be easy. With those from the west, it is less so, but I hope I can manage it.

He sends you his love, as should not surprise you. Writing letters home is actively discouraged among the Unkerlanter soldiery, but I shall do my best to smuggle out a note if he manages to produce one. In the meantime, let me say that I very much look forward to meeting both you and your daughter, and that both of you will be welcome in this house in whatever guise you wear. Your father-in-law, Hestan.

That should have ended it. That was enough, and more than enough. But Ealstan’s father also wrote, You should know that my brother, Hengist, yet lives, and that he and I are as completely estranged as two men can be. When last I heard, Hengist’s son, Sidroc, survived, too. Since he remains in Plegmund’s Brigade, perhaps this state of affairs will not continue indefinitely.

Vanai looked over at Saxburh, who’d just pulled herself up and fallen down again. Her own tears blurred the little girl in her sight. “Your father is … still alive,” Vanai said. That he was wounded was less than she’d hoped, but ever so much better than it could have been. “He’ll be all right, or pretty much all right. He may even get out of the Unkerlanter army before too long. Powers above, make it so.”

Saxburh paid no attention. When Ealstan came home, his daughter would have to get to know him all over again. Vanai slowly nodded. That was all right. Saxburh would have the chance to do it. Having the chance was all that really mattered.

“He’ll be all right,” Vanai said again. She went through the letter for a second time, then nodded once more. Reading Hestan’s words, she saw, or thought she saw, a good deal about how Ealstan had come to be the way he was. She was always glad to be reminded not all Forthwegians despised the Kaunians who dwelt in their kingdom beside them.

Ealstan is. . going to be all right. Even that much sang within her. She began to think about what things would be like once the war finally ended and Forthweg started pulling itself together. I won’t have to stay in this miserable flat the rest of my life. Saxburh and I could go to Gromheort. I could find out if the Thelberge face I wear really does look like Conberge, the way Ealstan’s been saying it does.

I could meet other people who care whether I live or die. After everything she’d been through, that thought struck her as strange. Then she shook her head. The Algarvians had cared whether she lived or died, too. The trouble was, they’d wanted her dead. Hestan and his wife-Elfryth, that was her name-wouldn’t. Presumably, Conberge wouldn’t, either. The same might even hold true for her husband, whose name Vanai couldn’t have remembered had her life depended on it.

She went over and picked up Saxburh and gave her a big, loud, smacking kiss. Saxburh thought that was the funniest thing in the world. Vanai carried the baby to the window. She needed all the sunshine she could find.

A moment later, she pulled back again. If that wasn’t Guthfrith coming up the street.. But it was, and she didn’t want him seeing her up here. Why aren‘t you playing music? she thought angrily. If he walked into this block of flats, her anger was going to turn to fear.

To her relief, he walked past instead. But under the relief, unease remained. She went looking for a leaf of paper with which to answer Hestan. Before too long, civilian ley-line caravans would again be running between Eoforwic and Gromheort. Maybe she would do well to go east just as soon as she could.

Ahead of Leudast, Trapani burned. He could see the capital of Algarve now, see the tall buildings that marked the heart of the great city. Some of them were plainly shorter than they had been before dragons started dropping eggs on them. If they all fell over, Leudast didn’t care.

He just wanted to be there at the end of the fight, when-if-that finally came. The Unkerlanters had fought their way into the suburbs of Trapani. They’d surrounded the city. But the last couple of rings of defenses still lay ahead. So did whatever nasty magecraft the redheads had left.

A storm of eggs fell on the Algarvian positions in front of Leudast’s men. A couple of behemoths lumbered toward them and flung more eggs at whatever the tossers behind the lines hadn’t flattened. Leudast blew a blast from his officer’s whistle. “Forward!” he yelled.

Not all the Algarvians were dead, however much he wished they would have been. They knew everything there was to know about taking shelter. As soon as the Unkerlanters broke cover to rush toward them, they popped up and started blazing. Men in rock-gray tunics fell, some hit, some diving for cover.

“Hands high!” Leudast shouted in Algarvian. “Sticks down!”

An Algarvian emerged from behind a wall. He did have his hands high. Leudast gestured with the business end of his stick. The redhead hurried away. Leudast doubted he was more than fifteen years old. King Mezentio was scraping the bottom of the barrel.

Of course, so was King Swemmel. Some of the men Leudast led had no more years on them than the new captive. Had the Algarvians been strong enough to keep the war going another couple of years, neither they nor the Unkerlanters would have had any men at all left alive.

Seeing that the first redhead who surrendered didn’t get killed out of hand, more of Mezentio’s men-or rather, Mezentio’s boys-came out of hiding with their hands above their heads. Leudast and his countrymen sent them off to the rear, too. But then beams from closer to the center of Trapani knocked down several of the kilted soldiers who were trying to get out of the fight. Leudast dove for cover again, but the diehards up there seemed more interested in blazing Algarvians who yielded than the Unkerlanters who made them give up.

In Swemmel, such men would have served as behind-the-lines inspectors whose job was to get rid of any man seeking to retreat without orders. Leudast had always despised them-despised them and feared them, too. He wasn’t sorry to see the other side also had them. If nothing else, it proved his kingdom wasn’t the only one where such whoresons grew.

Behemoths tossed eggs at the buildings and piles of rubble from which the diehards were blazing. As the Unkerlanter footsoldiers rushed toward the strong-points, the surviving redheads popped out of their holes and blazed away at them, shouting, “Algarve!” and “Mezentio!”

The fight didn’t last long. Not all that many Algarvians were stubborn enough to fight so fiercely for a cause now hopeless, and Swemmel’s men were there in large numbers. But the Algarvians who did fight refused to take a step back, dying in place instead. And they made the Unkerlanters pay full price- pay more than full price-for digging them out.

More Algarvian soldiers did give up once the knot of diehards was gone: fear of them had kept others fighting. But Mezentio’s soldiers had turned a park and a few nearby houses into a strongpoint. They had some egg-tossers there, and a behemoth mounting a heavy stick that took advantage of the rubble to blaze from cover again and again, knocking over several Unkerlanter beasts.

Might as well be Sulingen, Leudast thought. He’d been through the block-by-block fighting there, perhaps the worst of the whole war. A moment later, he wished the comparison hadn’t occurred to him. He’d been wounded in Sulingen, too. He didn’t want that to happen again. He’d picked up another wound later on, in the Duchy of Grelz. As far as he was concerned, two pale, puckered scars for the sake of his kingdom were quite enough.

Clearing the redheads from their little redoubt took all day. Not till dragons swooped down from above and killed that behemoth did the job get done. Things were easier in that regard here than in Sulingen. The Algarvians had hardly any dragons left now. Back then, Leudast had spent plenty of time cowering in holes in the ground as Algarvian beasts flamed and dropped eggs from above.

Not that holes in the ground were any too pleasant now. Leudast dragged a dead Algarvian out of a good one in the middle of the park and settled down for the night. He’d just gone to sleep when he had to come out of the hole and fight again: using darkness as their cloak, Mezentio’s men made a ferocious counterattack, and almost drove the Unkerlanters from the ground they’d taken. More dragons and behemoths finally threw the redheads back.

“These buggers don’t know how to quit, do they, sir?” asked a young soldier named Noyt. His voice broke in the middle of the question; he didn’t need to scrape a razor across his cheeks to keep them smooth. He’d been a little boy when the war started.

“They’re like snakes,” Leudast agreed. “They’ll fight you till you cut the head off-and if you pick up the head a couple of hours later, it’ll twist around and bite you even though it’s dead.”

He rolled himself in his blanket and fell asleep-and woke again in short order when a mosquito bit him on the end of the nose. The Algarvians might not have many dragons left in the air, but Trapani lay in the middle of a marsh. Plenty of things with wings came forth to attack the Unkerlanters.

When morning came, Leudast woke again, this time with the feeling something was badly wrong somewhere, even though he couldn’t put his finger on what. He was an officer these days, and entitled to sniff around and try to find out (he’d done the same thing as a sergeant, and as a common soldier, too, but fewer people could squelch him now). He walked up to Captain Dagaric and asked, “What’s going on, sir? Something is, sure as sure, and I don’t think it’s anything good.”

“You think so, too, eh?” the regimental commander answered. “I hadn’t noticed anything myself, but I saw a couple of mages putting their heads together and muttering a few minutes ago.”

“That doesn’t sound good,” Leudast said. “What are the fornicating Algarvians going to throw at us now?”

“Who knows?” Dagaric said with weary cynicism. “We’ll have to find out the hard way, I expect. That’s what we’re for, after all.”

“Huh,” Leudast said. “I’ve had to find out too cursed many things the hard way. Once in a while, I’d like to know ahead of time.”

He went off in search of the mages his superior had seen, and found them under an oak whose trunk was badly scarred with beams. As Dagaric had said, they were talking in low voices, and both looked worried. Leudast stood around waiting for them to notice him. He waited more ostentatiously with each passing minute. At last, one of the sorcerers said, “You want something, Lieutenant?”

“I want to know what the redheads are brewing up,” Leudast answered. “They’ve got something ready to pop, sure as blazes.” Both wizards wore captain’s rank badges, but he didn’t waste much military courtesy on them. They were only mages, after all, not real officers.

They looked at each other. One of them asked, “Have you wizardly talent?”

“Not that I know of,” Leudast said. “Just a bad feeling in the air.”

“Very bad,” the mage agreed. “Something is coming, and we don’t know what. All we can do is wait and see.”

“Can we send dragons to drop eggs on the heads of the whoresons cooking up whatever it is?” Leudast asked. “If they’re trying not to get smashed into strawberry jam, they can’t very well cast spells.”

The wizards brightened. “Do you know, Lieutenant, that isn’t the worst idea anyone has ever had,” said the one who did the talking.

“You boys are the ones to take care of it,” Leudast said, hiding a smile. “You’re the ones who deal with crystals and such.” The mages might outrank him, but he could see what needed doing. They sometimes put him in mind of bright children: they could come up with all sorts of clever schemes, but a good many of those had nothing to do with the real world.

Whistles shrilled again. Leudast trotted away from the mages without a backwards glance. If the attack was heating up again, he needed to be with his men as they pushed on toward the heart of Trapani. But, as he moved forward, he suddenly discovered that he wasn’t going forward at all: his feet were moving up and down, but each new step left him in the same place as had the one before it.

Cries of alarm said he wasn’t the only Unkerlanter soldier thus afflicted. He didn’t know how the Algarvian mages were doing this, but they plainly were. A glance told him the behemoths were similarly frozen in place. Unkerlanter soldiers started falling as hidden redheads blazed them.

They could still run away from the heart of Trapani. Some of them did. Leudast discovered he could move sideways and, more important, that he could duck. “Get down!” he called to the men closest to danger. “Get into cover! You can do it.” Some people wouldn’t have figured it out for themselves, but would manage to do it once told they could.

Scuttling behind a boulder, Leudast wondered if the entire Unkerlanter assault on Trapani, all the way around the Algarvian capital, had been frozen in its tracks. He wouldn’t have been surprised. Algarvian mages didn’t think small. They never had, not since they started killing Kaunians-and, very likely, not before then, either. Algarvians were flamboyant folk.

Eggs kept on bursting deeper inside Trapani. “They can’t stop everything!” Leudast exclaimed. He’d had the right of it while talking with his own wizards. It was up to the fellows who served the egg-tossers now. If they killed or wounded or at least distracted the sorcerers who made the spell work, the attack could resume again. If not. .

Leudast looked up. A couple of dragons painted Unkerlanter rock-gray hovered like oversized kestrels, unable to go forward no matter how powerfully they beat their great wings. Even as he watched, a beam from an Algarvian heavy stick tumbled one of them from the sky.

He waited, every now and then blazing from behind that boulder. Maybe the eggs the Unkerlanters hurtled into Trapani finally did what they were supposed to. Maybe Mezentio’s mages could hold their spell for only so long. Maybe-though he wouldn’t have bet much on it-their Unkerlanter counterparts at last beat down their wizardry. Whatever the reason, shouts of, “Urra!” rang out when Swemmel’s soldiers discovered they could go forward again.

Why are we cheering? Leudast wondered as he ran towards a house from which a couple of diehards were blazing. Now we’ve got another chance to get killed.

One of the diehards showed himself at a window-only for a moment, but long enough for Leudast’s beam to cut him down. “Urra!” Leudast yelled. “King Swemmel! Revenge!” Maybe that one word said everything that needed saying.

Aye, we might get killed, but we’ll do a lot of killing first. Before long, Trapani was going to fall. He intended to be one of those who helped bring it down. “Urra!” he cried again, and ran on.

Not a lot of mail came to the hostel in the Naantali district. As far as most of the world was concerned, that hostel didn’t exist. Pekka and the other mages who labored there might as well have dropped off the face of the earth. Even relatives who knew the sorcerers were working somewhere didn’t usually know where, and relied on the post office to get letters where they needed to go.

One envelope that got to Pekka did not, at first, look as if it had come to the right place. The printed design on the corner that showed postage fees had been paid was not Kuusaman. After a bit of puzzling, she figured out the letter was from Jelgava. I don’t know anyone in Jelgava, she thought. I certainly don’t know anyone in Jelgava who knows I’m here.

Even the script challenged her. Printed Jelgavan used the same characters as Kuusaman, but the two kingdoms’ handwritings were quite different. Her name wasn’t on the envelope. A chill ran through her when she realized Leino’s was.

She turned the envelope over. There on the back, in red, was a stamp in her own language: military post-deceased, forward to next of kin.

Pekka’s lips skinned back from her teeth. That explained how she’d got the letter-explained it in more detail than she’d wanted. She opened the envelope. The letter inside was in Jelgavan, too. She had only a few words of the language, and could make out next to nothing of what it said.

She found Fernao in the refectory at suppertime. He was demolishing a plate of corned venison and red cabbage. “Do you read Jelgavan?” she asked, sitting down beside him. Pointing to his supper, she added, “That looks good.”

“It is,” he said, and then asked, “Why do you need me to read Jelgavan? I can probably make sense of it-it’s as close to Valmieran as Sibian is to Algarvian, maybe closer, and I don’t have much trouble with Valmieran.”

“Here. I got this today.” Pekka gave him the letter. “I knew you were good with languages. Can you tell me what it says?” A serving girl came up. Pekka ordered the venison and cabbage for herself, too.

“Let me see.” Fernao started to read, then looked up sharply. “This is to your husband.”

“I know.” Pekka had destroyed the envelope with that hateful rubber stamp. “It got sent to me. What does it say?” She wondered, not for the first time, if Leino had had a Jelgavan lover. She could hardly be angry at him now if he had; it would go some way toward salving her own conscience.

Even so, she started when Fernao said, “It’s from a woman.” He continued, “She’s writing about her husband.”

Was the fellow angry at Leino? Pekka didn’t care to come right out and ask that. Instead, she said, “What does she say about him?”

“Says he helped your husband when he was with the irregulars, but now he’s disappeared, and she’s afraid he’s been thrown into a dungeon,” Fernao replied. “She asks if Leino can do anything to get him out.”

“A Jelgavan dungeon.” Pekka winced. Jelgavan dungeons had an evil reputation. Leino, she remembered, had met King Donalitu aboard the Habakkuk, met him and despised him. Helping anyone who’d fallen foul of his men seemed worth doing. She asked, “Who is this fellow?”

“His name is Talsu. He’s from a town called Skrunda-whereabouts in Jelgava that is, powers above only know. I know I don’t, not without a book of maps,” Fernao said. “His wife’s called Gailisa.”

That name meant nothing to Pekka. Talsu, on the other hand.. “Aye, Leino said something about him in a letter. He helped our men slip through the Algarvian lines in front of this Skrunda place.”

“You probably ought to see what you can do for him, then,” Fernao said. Pekka smiled and nodded, glad he was thinking along with her. Leino had done a lot of that; if Fernao could, too-and if she could with him-that struck her as promising. Fernao’s next question was thoroughly practical: “Do you think you can do anything?”

“By myself? No. Why should any Jelgavan want to listen to me? But I’ve got connections, and what good are they if I don’t use them?” Listening to herself, Pekka had to laugh. She sounded very much like a woman of the world, not a theoretical sorcerer from a town that looked southwest toward the land of the Ice People. She’d seen Fernao smile a couple of amused and tolerant smiles in Kajaani, though he’d done his best to hide them.

He nodded vigorously now. “Good for you. At least half the time, knowing people counts for more than knowing things does.”

Pekka’s supper arrived then. She ate quickly, for she wanted to get to the crystallomancers’ chamber as soon as she could. When she walked in, she said, “Put me through to Prince Juhainen, if he’s not too busy to talk.”

“Aye, Mistress Pekka,” said a crystallomancer: the same woman who’d summoned her to this chamber to hear Juhainen tell her Leino was dead. Pekka tried not to think of that now. The crystallomancer went about her business with unhurried precision. After a couple of minutes, she looked up from the crystal, in which the prince’s image had appeared. “Go ahead.”

“Hello, your Highness,” Pekka said. “I have a favor to ask of you, if you’d be so kind.”

“That depends, Mistress Pekka,” Juhainen answered. “One of the things I’ve learned the past couple of years is not to make promises till I know what I’m promising.”

“I’m sure that’s wise,” Pekka said, and went on to explain what Talsu’s wife had asked of her.

“A Jelgavan dungeon, eh?” Prince Juhainen’s mouth twisted, as if he’d just smelled something nasty. “I don’t believe I would wish my worst enemy into a Jelgavan dungeon. And you say this Talsu fellow actually helped our men?”

“That’s right, your Highness.” Pekka nodded.

“And they’ve flung him into one of these miserable places anyhow?” Juhainen said. Pekka nodded again. The prince scowled. “That is not good,” he declared, which, from a Kuusaman, carried more weight than screamed curses from an excitable Algarvian. He continued, “Thank you for bringing it to my notice. I shall see what I can do.”

“Will the Jelgavans heed you, sir?” Pekka asked.

“If gratitude means anything, they will,” Juhainen answered. But his smile was wry. “As often as not, gratitude means nothing at all between kingdoms. Truth to tell, Mistress Pekka, I don’t know what will happen. I don’t know whether anything will happen. But I do mean to find out.” He turned and nodded to someone: to his own crystallomancer, for the sphere in front of Pekka flared and then, to the eye, became once more nothing but glass.

The crystallomancer on duty at the hostel said not a word. Of course she’d heard everything that passed between Pekka and Juhainen, but the secrecy inherent in her craft kept her silent, as it should have done.

When Pekka went upstairs, she went to Fernao’s room, not to her own. “Well?” the Lagoan mage asked.

“Pretty well,” Pekka told him. “Prince Juhainen says he’ll see what he can do.”

“Good,” Fernao said. “If Donalitu and his flunkies will listen to anybody, they’ll listen to one of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo.” His smile, though, had the same wry edge as Juhainen’s had. “Of course, they’re Jelgavans. There’s no guarantee they will listen to anybody.”

“Ordinary Jelgavans aren’t bad. They’re just-people,” Pekka said. “I was up on the beaches of the north there once, on … on holiday.” The holiday had been her honeymoon with Leino. She felt an odd constraint-or maybe it wasn’t so odd-about talking too much with Fernao about her life with her husband.

“Their nobles, though …” Fernao’s chuckle held little mirth. “Most hidebound people in the world, bar none. They make Valmieran nobles look like levelers, and that’s not easy.”

“I hope Prince Juhainen can do something for that poor fellow,” Pekka said. “How terrible, to help his kingdom and end up in a dungeon anyhow.”

“Donalitu and his bully boys root out treason wherever they think they see it,” Fernao replied. “My guess is, they root it out whether it’s really there or not. Sooner or later, they’ll end up breeding real treason that way, whether it would have sprung up without them or not.”

“That makes more sense than what Donalitu’s doing,” Pekka said. “Leino wrote that some Jelgavans were fighting on King Mezentio’s side in spite of what Mezentio’s men were doing to Kaunians. Now that I hear what happened to this Talsu, that makes a little more sense to me.”

“Donalitu is a bad bargain, and nobody could possibly make him better,” Fernao said. “The only thing I would give him is that he’s better than Mezentio.” He sighed. “I’m not altogether sure I’d give King Swemmel even that much. He’s a son of a whore, no doubt about it-but he’s a son of a whore who’s on our side.”

“Any war that puts us on the same side as the Unkerlanters. .” Pekka shook her head. “But the Algarvians really have done worse.”

“So they have.” Fernao didn’t sound any happier about it than Pekka had. “Worse than the Unkerlanters-if that’s not bad, I don’t know what is.” He changed the subject: “Are we going to go ahead with the demonstration out in the Bothnian Ocean?”

“We certainly are,” Pekka said, also relieved to talk about something else. “That needs doing, wouldn’t you say?”

“If it works, certainly. If it doesn’t. .” Fernao shrugged. “Well, it’s certainly worth trying, the same as getting this what’s-his-name-”

“Talsu,” Pekka said.

“Talsu,” the Lagoan mage echoed. “Getting him out of the dungeon. The demonstration’s a little more important, though.”

“I should hope so,” Pekka exclaimed. “If the demonstration does what we want it to, it might even end this war.” The very words tasted strange to her. The Derlavaian War had gone on for almost six years (though Kuusamo had been in the fight for only a little more than half that time): long enough for death and devastation and disaster to seem normal, and everything else an aberration. It had cost Pekka as much as she’d feared in her worst nightmares, and, a couple of times, all but cost her life.

“When the war is over. .” Fernao didn’t sound as if he really believed in the possibility, either. “May it be soon, that’s all-and may we never have another one.”

“Powers above, make that so!” Pekka said. “Another war, starting from the beginning with everything we’ve learned during this one? With whatever else we learn afterwards, too? I don’t think there’d be anything left of the world once we got through.”

“You’re probably right,” Fernao said. “And do you know what else? If we’re stupid enough to fight another war after everything we’ve seen these past few years, we don’t deserve to live: the whole human race, I mean.”

“I don’t know that I’d go quite so far.” But then Pekka thought about it for a little while. Deliberately inflict these horrors again, with the example of the Derlavaian War still green in memory? She sighed. “On the other hand, I don’t know that I wouldn’t, either.”

Hajjaj stepped into the crystallomancers’ chamber down the hall from the foreign ministry offices in the royal palace. The crystallomancer on duty sprang to his feet and bowed. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said.

“Good day, Kawar,” Hajjaj replied. The crystallomancer beamed. Hajjaj had long since learned how important knowing and recalling the names of underlings could be. He went on, “What is the latest word from the south?”

“That depends on whose emanations you’re listening to, your Excellency,” Kawar said.

“I wouldn’t have expected anything else,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister said. “Give me both sides, if you’d be so kind, and I expect I’ll be able to sort them out for myself.”

Bowing, Kawar said, “Just as you require, sir, so shall it be. By what the Unkerlanters say, Trapani is surrounded, cut off from the outside world, and sure to fall in the next few days. Fighting in the rest of Algarve is dying down as the redheads realize resistance is suicide, and useless suicide at that.”

“And the Algarvian response to this is?”

“Your Excellency, by what the Algarvians put out over the ether, they still think they’ve got the war as good as won-although none of their reports comes from inside Trapani anymore,” Kawar answered. “They say their capital will stay Algarvian. They say Gromheort and the Marquisate of Rivaroli will be Algarvian again, and they say their secret sorceries will smash Swemmel’s savages. That’s what they say, sir.”

By that, Kawar no doubt meant he didn’t believe a word of it. Hajjaj understood such skepticism. He didn’t believe a word of it, either. The Algarvians’ claims reminded him of the last ravings of a man about to die of fever. They had no connection to reality that he could find. He sighed. Mezentio’s men had been Zuwayza’s cobelligerents against Unkerlant-though the redheads, with some reason, would have taken that the other way round.

None of those reflections was anything a crystallomancer needed to hear. Hajjaj said, “Thank you, Kawar. It sounds as though things will be over there before too long.”

Kawar nodded. With another word of thanks, Hajjaj left the crystallomancers’ chamber. What might happen after the fighting finally stopped worried him a good deal. King Swemmel had given Zuwayza relatively lenient terms for getting out of the Derlavaian War-he’d been shrewd enough not to provoke Hajjaj’s kingdom to desperate resistance while the bigger battle with Algarve still blazed. But would he keep the terms of the peace he’d made after he didn’t have to worry about Algarve anymore? Swemmel was not notorious for keeping promises.

That raised the next interesting question: if Swemmel tried to take a firmer grip on Zuwayza, what should-what could-the Zuwayzin do about it? Not much was the answer that immediately occurred to Hajjaj. He didn’t think King Shazli would like it. He didn’t like it himself. But liking it and being able to do anything about it were liable to be two different things.

When he walked back to his own offices, his secretary greeted him with, “And the latest is?”

“About what you’d expect, Qutuz,” Hajjaj replied. “The death throes of Algarve, except the Algarvians refuse to admit they’re any such thing.”

Qutuz grunted. “What will it take, do you suppose? The very last of them dead, and their last house knocked flat?”

“It may take something not far from that,” Hajjaj said sourly. “No one would ever claim the Algarvians are not a stubborn folk.”

“No one would ever claim they’re not a stupid folk, for fighting on when all it does is get more of them killed,” Qutuz said.

“There’s some truth in that, I shouldn’t wonder,” the Zuwayzi foreign minister admitted. “But I think rather more of it comes from a bad conscience. They know what they’ve done in this war. They know what all their neighbors, and especially the Unkerlanters, might to do them once they surrender. Compared to that, dying in battle may not look so bad.”

“Hmm.” Qutuz bowed. “I daresay you’re right, your Excellency. If Swemmel wanted to stick his hooks in me, I might think hard about taking a long walk off the roof of a tall building.”

“Even so,” Hajjaj said. “Aye, even so.”

He sat down on the carpet behind his low desk and got to work. Reestablishing ties to kingdoms that had been Algarve’s foes-and to kingdoms the Algarvians had occupied for years-produced a flood of paperwork. King Beornwulf of Forthweg had just formally accepted the envoy King Shazli had sent to him, and had named a certain Earl Trumwine as Forthwegian minister to Zuwayza. Hajjaj had never heard of Trumwine, and didn’t know anyone who had. What would he be like? The Zuwayzi foreign minister shrugged, thinking, He can’t be worse than Ansovald. King Swemmel’s minister to Zuwayzi set a standard for irksomeness by which all envoys from other kingdoms were judged.

After writing a brief letter of welcome for Trumwine-I’ll see soon enough how big a hypocrite I am-Hajjaj tended to a couple of other matters even more trivial. He was just sanding a memorandum dry when Qutuz came in from his outer office and said, “Excuse me, your Excellency, but an officer from the army high command is here. He’d like to speak with you for a moment.”

“From the army high command?” Hajjaj said in surprise. Since Zuwayza yielded to the Unkerlanters, the army high command hadn’t had a great deal to do. Hajjaj nodded. “Send him in, by all means.”

The officer was a generation younger than Hajjaj. He had a colonel’s emblem on his hat, and also painted on the bare skin of his upper arms. “Good day, your Excellency,” he said. “My name is Mundhir.”

“Pleased to make your acquaintance, Colonel,” Hajjaj said. “Would you care for tea and wine and cakes?”

“If you’re generous enough to give me the choice, sir, I’ll decline,” Mundhir said with a slightly sardonic smile. Hajjaj smiled, too. The ritual of tea and wine and cakes could easily chew up half an hour or an hour with small talk. Mundhir wanted to get straight to business. He continued, “If you’d be so kind as to accompany me back to headquarters, General Ikhshid would be most grateful.”

“Would he?” Hajjaj murmured, and Colonel Mundhir nodded. Hajjaj clicked his tongue between his teeth. “I know what that means: Ikhshid’s got something he doesn’t want to talk about on a crystal. Do you know what it is?”

Mundhir shook his head. “No, your Excellency. I’m sorry, but General Ikhshid didn’t tell me.”

“I’ll come, then.” Hajjaj’s joints clicked and crackled as he got to his feet. Mundhir looked capable and reliable. If Ikhshid didn’t want to tell such a man what was going on, it had to be important.

Colonel Mundhir escorted Hajjaj through the palace to army headquarters. The foreign minister could have found his way without help, but didn’t begrudge it. The sentries outside the headquarters stiffened to attention as he came up. Not having any military rank, he nodded back at them.

Ikhshid was a round, white-haired fellow-a man of nearly Hajjaj’s age. Normally good-natured, he greeted Hajjaj with the rise of a snowy eyebrow (before going off to study in colder, more southerly, lands, Hajjaj would have thought of it as a salty eyebrow) and said, “Good to see you, your Excellency. We have a bit of a problem, and we’d like your views on it before we try to straighten it out.”

“We as in Zuwayza, we as in the army, or have you assumed the royal we like King Swemmel?” Hajjaj asked.

“We as in Zuwayza,” Ikhshid answered, ignoring the raillery. That was unlike him; Hajjaj decided the problem had to be more serious than he’d first thought. Ikhshid gestured toward the doorway to his own office. “We can talk in there, if you like.” Hajjaj didn’t say no. Once they’d gone inside, Ikhshid shut the door behind them and barred it.

“Melodramatic,” Hajjaj remarked. Again, Ikhshid didn’t rise to the bait. He hadn’t so much as offered tea and wine and cakes, either. The Zuwayzi foreign minister took that as another sign something important had happened. He said, “You’d better tell me.”

Without preamble, Ikhshid did: “We had a sailboat come ashore not too far from Najran, but far enough so the Unkerlanters at the port don’t know anything about it-I hope. Because it’s a sailboat, mages wouldn’t have spotted it when it crossed a ley line or three. Marquis Balastro is aboard the fornicating thing, and so are a dozen or so other Algarvians with fancy ranks, and their wives-or maybe girlfriends-and brats. They’re all screaming for asylum at the top of their lungs. What do we do about ‘em?”

“Oh, dear,” Hajjaj said, in lieu of something stronger and more pungent.

“Do we get rid of ‘em on the sly?” Ikhshid asked. “Do we hand ‘em over to Swemmel’s men to show what good boys we are? Or do we let ‘em stay?”

“The first thing you’d better do is get them away from Najran,” Hajjaj replied. “If the Kaunians settled there find out they’ve landed, we won’t have to worry about this set of exiles for long.”

“Mm, you’re right about that,” General Ikhshid agreed. “But you still haven’t answered my question. What do we do with ‘em, or to ‘em?”

“I don’t know,” Hajjaj said distractedly. “By the powers above, I really don’t. If Ansovald finds out they’re in the kingdom, he’ll spit rivets, and so will King Swemmel. From their point of view, it would be hard to blame them.”

“I understand,” Ikhshid said. “That’s why I called you here.” He suddenly looked worried. “Or should I have gone straight to the king instead?”

“I’ll talk things over with him,” Hajjaj promised. “We won’t do anything final till he approves it.”

“I should hope not,” Ikhshid said. “But what do you think we ought to do?”

“I don’t like handing over fugitives. It goes against every clan tradition. I don’t like killing them, either,” Hajjaj said.

“Neither do I, but I also don’t like getting caught with them here,” Ikhshid said. “And we’re liable to. You know it as well as I do. They don’t speak our language, they aren’t brown, they are circumcised, they’ve got red hair, and they wrap themselves in cloth all the time.”

“Details, details,” Hajjaj said dryly, and startled a laugh out of the army commander. The Zuwayzi foreign minister went on, “My recommendation is to take them to some inland village-Harran, say-and do our best to keep word of them from blowing back here to Bishah. If we can stash them off to one side for a while, things may calm down before they’re discovered.”

“If.” Ikhshid freighted the little word with a great weight of meaning.

“General, if you have a better idea, I should be delighted to hear it,” Hajjaj said.

“I don’t,” Ikhshid replied at once. “I just wondered if you had the nerve to try and get away with that. We’ll be in a ton of trouble if the Unkerlanters find out about it.”

He wasn’t joking. If anything, he was understating what might happen. Even so, Hajjaj answered, “We’re still a free kingdom-after a fashion. Let me take this to the king. As I said, he’ll have the final decision.” Shazli seldom overruled him. This once, he might.

“Good luck,” Ikhshid said.

“Thanks. I fear I’ll need it.” Hajjaj hoped he could talk Shazli around. No matter what the circumstances, he had trouble with the idea of giving anyone over to the Unkerlanters.

Krasta adjusted the wig on her head. As far as she was concerned, the hair in the wig wasn’t nearly so fine or so golden as her own. The miserable thing was also cursedly hot. But she wore it from the moment she got up in the morning till she went to bed. It hid the shame of the shearing Merkela had given her, and let her go out into Priekule without reminding the world she’d bedded an Algarvian during the occupation. Being able to hold her head up counted for more than comfort.

Her son-her sandy-haired son, her bastard son, the proof of exactly what she’d been doing-started yowling in the room next to her bedchamber. She’d hired a wet nurse and a governess to look after the little brat, whom she’d named Gainibu in the hope that the King of Valmiera would hear of it and understand it as an apology of sorts. As a matter of fact, thus far she’d hired two governesses and three wet nurses. For some reason, they had trouble getting along with her.

After a little while, the racket stopped. Krasta didn’t go in to check on the baby. She supposed the wet nurse was giving him her breast. But she was doing her best to pretend, even to herself, that she’d never had him. His wails didn’t make that easy, but she’d always been good at deceiving herself.

She had money in her pockets. She had a new driver, one who didn’t drink. She could escape the mansion, escape the baby she didn’t want to acknowledge, go into Priekule, and come back with things. What they were hardly mattered. While she was buying them, she didn’t have to think about anything else.

But, just as she left the bedchamber and headed for the stairs, the butler- the new butler-came up them toward her. (She was offended that so many of her servants had chosen to go south with Skarnu and his peasant slut of a new wife, but she’d never dwelt on why they might have decided to leave her service.)

“Milady, Viscount Valnu is here to see you,” the new butler said.

“I certainly am,” Valnu himself agreed from the hallway below. “Come down here, sweetheart, so I can see you.”

Krasta hurried past the butler. Valnu seemed to be the only person in all of Priekule who didn’t blame her for the way she’d lived during the occupation. Of course, he’d slept with a lot more Algarvian officers than she had; she was sure of that. But he’d done it in the line of duty, so to speak. And he didn’t run the risk of proving it to the world nine months after the fact.

He swept her into his arms and gave her a kiss. “How have you been?” he asked.

“Tired,” Krasta answered. Up in his bedroom, little Gainibu started to cry again. Krasta could hardly ignore him then, however much she wanted to. She jerked a thumb at the stairway down which the noise was wafting. “That’s why.”

“Ah, too bad,” Valnu said with sympathy that at least sounded sincere. “Have you got anything to drink, darling? I’m dry as the Zuwayzi desert.”

It was early in the day, but that worried Krasta no more than it did Valnu. “Come along with me,” she purred. “We’ll find something that suits you-and me, too.”

Something turned out to be apricot brandy. Valnu knocked back a shot of it. So did Krasta. The sweet warmth in her mouth, and in her belly, felt good. Valnu poured his glass full again, then raised a questioning eyebrow at her. She nodded eagerly. He poured for her, too. “What shall we drink to?” he asked. “That first time, we were just drinking to drinking.”

“That’s good enough for me,” Krasta said. She let more brandy slide down her throat. This time, she gave herself a refill, and, a moment later, Valnu as well. “Curse me if I know why I don’t stay drunk all the time. Then I wouldn’t have to think about. things.”

“Cheer up, my dear,” Valnu told her. “However bad it looks, it could be worse.”

“How?” Krasta demanded. As far as she could see, nothing could be worse than her being unhappy.

But Valnu answered, “Well, you could be an Algarvian, for instance: say, somebody inside Trapani. The fighting there can’t last much longer, or so the news sheets say. And the Unkerlanters don’t like redheads at all.”

That, no doubt, was true. But it was also far away. Krasta’s concerns were much more immediate. She glared at him. “Powers below eat you, why couldn’t you have had stronger seed?” she snarled. “Then I’d have a proper blond baby, and people wouldn’t want to spit at me all the time.” Her hand started to go to the wig, but she pulled it down. She didn’t want to draw that to anyone’s notice.

“I could ask you something like, why didn’t you give me more chances?” Valnu answered. “Dear Lurcanio had a lot more than I did.”

“You weren’t living here,” Krasta said. “And you couldn’t send me off and do horrible things to me if I didn’t do what you wanted.” She didn’t mention that, at the time, she’d enjoyed quite a few of the things Lurcanio had done and had had her do. That was only one more inconvenient fact to be forgotten.

“You shouldn’t complain too much, my love.” Valnu patted her hand. “After all, you didn’t have the unfortunate accident you could have.” Now he pointed up toward the nursery. “You had a different sort of unfortunate accident.”

“Unfortunate? I should say so.” Krasta drank her third brandy as quickly as the first two. “That miserable little bastard ruins everything-everything, I tell you. And the servants you can get nowadays! It’s scandalous!” Few of the newcomers were as deferential as the ones who’d been at the mansion for a long time. Like those in charge of Gainibu, a couple had quit already, but their replacements seemed no better.

“I am sorry,” Valnu said. “I’m afraid I don’t know what I can do about any of that.”

“At least you’ve tried to do something,” Krasta said. “And when you come to visit, I know you’re not coming to laugh at me or to curse me.”

“I wouldn’t do that.” Valnu sounded unusually serious-maybe it was the brandy talking. “You could have betrayed me to the Algarvians whenever you chose, except you didn’t choose.”

“No. Of course not.” Krasta shook her head. “How could I do that to someone I know socially?”

Valnu laughed, sprang to his feet, and bowed. “You are a true noblewoman, milady.” Krasta would have taken that as a pretty compliment, but he went on, “And you show you’re every bit as useless as most of the members of our class- myself included, whenever I get the chance to be useless, anyhow.”

“I’m not either useless. Don’t you dare say I am,” Krasta snapped. “You’re as mean to me as that horrible bitch my brother married.” Tears stung her eyes. She still cried much more easily than she had before getting pregnant.

“I didn’t say you were anything I’m not,” Valnu answered. “Every kingdom needs a few truly useless people, to show the rest how to enjoy life. Look at the Unkerlanters. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency, every bloody minute of the day and night. Would you want to live like that?”

“I should hope not.” The idea of doing anything as the Unkerlanters did it was deeply repugnant to Krasta.

“Well, there you are.” Valnu sounded as if everything made perfect sense. He raised his glass. “Here’s to uselessness!” He drank.

So did Krasta, though she’d bristled when he called her useless only moments before. She eyed him, then said, “I can never be sure when you’re making fun of me and when you’re not.”

“Good,” Valnu told her. “I don’t want to be too obvious. If I were, I would lose my precious air of mystery.” The pose he struck looked more absurd than mysterious.

Krasta laughed. She couldn’t help herself. She could feel the apricot brandy, too. It helped build a wall between her and the unpleasant world all around. She giggled and said, “If it were any other time, I’d seduce you right now. But.. ” She shook her head. The baby had come out through there, and she didn’t want anything else going in for a while yet.

“If you were really bound and determined to, there are plenty of things we might try that haven’t got anything to do with that,” Valnu remarked. “Just speaking theoretically, of course.”

“Of course,” Krasta echoed. “You’d know all about those, wouldn’t you?”

That such words might wound never occurred to her. If they did, Valnu didn’t show it. Instead, he bared his teeth in a grin of sorts. “How many times have I told you, my dear? — variety is the life of spice.”

Krasta sent him an owlish stare and poured herself more brandy. “You came over here to have your way with me, didn’t you?”

“I came over to say hello.” Valnu gave her one of his bright, bony smiles and waved. “ ‘Hello!’“ The smile got wider. “Anything else would be a bonus. You know, I didn’t intend to go to bed with you back ten months ago now, either.”

“We didn’t go to bed.” Krasta giggled again. “I ought to know. The rug rubbed my backside raw.”

“Now I was speaking metaphorically,” Valnu said in lofty tones.

“How is that different from theoretically?” Krasta asked.

“It’s different, that’s how.” Valnu’s words slurred, ever so slightly. The brandy was working in him, too.

When Krasta got to her feet, the room swirled around her. “Come on,” she told Valnu, as loftily as if she were ordering one of her servants about.

Valnu didn’t get up right away. Had Krasta had a little less to drink, or drunk it a little more slowly, she would have realized he was thinking it over, and she would have got angry. As things were, she just stood there, swaying a little, waiting for him to do as she said. And he did, too. All he said when he rose was, “Well, why not?”

The butler blinked when Krasta and Valnu went past him on the stairway. He didn’t know Krasta very well. None of the new servants did. She thought that was funny, too.

Valnu proved to know some very pleasant alternatives. After Krasta bucked against his tongue, after her breathing and her pulse slowed toward normal, she ran her hands through his hair and said, “You didn’t learn that from any Algarvian officers.”

“My sweet, doing anything over and over without change, no matter how enjoyable, grows boring in the end,” Valnu said.

She wasn’t in the mood to argue. “Here, lie on your side,” she said, and slid down. Just before she started, she made as if to push him out of bed.

He looked surprised for a moment, then laughed, no doubt remembering the carriage ride on the dark streets of Priekule, as she did. “You’d better not do that now,” he said, mock-fierce.

“What should I do, then?” Krasta asked. Before Valnu could answer, she did it. He seemed at least as appreciative as she had when their positions were more or less reversed.

She gulped and choked a little at the end. She almost asked him how she compared to some of those Algarvian officers, but kept quiet instead. It wasn’t that she lacked the brass: much more that she worried he might tell her the unvarnished truth.

“Well,” Valnu said brightly, “maybe I ought to come over and say hello more often.”

“If you’re sure you wouldn’t be bored,” Krasta said.

“Oh, not for a while, anyhow,” he replied. She glared. Valnu laughed and said, “You deserved that.” Krasta shook her head. As far as she was concerned, she never deserved anything but the very best.

“Will we be ready for the demonstration?” Fernao asked Pekka. “After all, it’s only a week away.”

“Everything went fine the last time we tried it,” she answered. “The only difference is, this time a few more people will be watching. Why are you so worried about it?”

“I always want everything to go as well as it can,” the Lagoan mage said. “You know that’s true.” Pekka nodded. If she hadn’t, he would have been highly affronted. He went on, “Besides, the war is almost over. The faster we can make all the pieces end, the better for everybody.”

“I’m not so sure about that,” Pekka said grimly. “If we could use Trapani for the demonstration, I wouldn’t mind a bit. And you know that’s true.”

Fernao nodded. He knew it very well. But he said, “The Unkerlanters seem to be doing a pretty fair job of taking care of Trapani all by themselves. They’re already in the city, fighting their way toward the palace.”

“I know. But I wish I had the revenge myself, not at second hand,” Pekka said.

“You sound more like a Lagoan than a Kuusaman,” Fernao remarked. His people, like other Algarvic folk, took vengeance seriously. Kuusamans usually didn’t. They claimed they were too civilized for such things. But I can see how getting your husband killed would make you change your mind. Fernao didn’t say that. The less he said about Leino, he was convinced, the better off things between Pekka and him would be.

“Do I?” Pekka said. “Well, by the powers above, I’ve earned the right.” Her thoughts must have been going down the same ley line as his.

“I know,” he said. When she brought her past out into the open, he couldn’t very well ignore it. And that past had helped shape what she was now. Had it been different, she would have been different, too, perhaps so different that he wouldn’t have loved her. That thought by itself was plenty to make him nervous.

She turned the subject, at least to some degree, saying, “Uto likes you.”

“I’m glad.” Fernao meant it, which surprised him more than a little. He went on, “I like him, too,” which was also true. “He’ll be quite something when he grows up.”

“So he will, unless somebody strangles him sometime between now and then,” Pekka said. “I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been tempted a couple of times myself. Uto will be … how should I put it? A long time learning discipline, that’s what he’ll be.”

Fernao could hardly disagree. But, since the talk had swung to Pekka’s family, he asked, “What about your sister? She didn’t say more than a few words to me while we were in Kajaani.”

“You know why Elimaki was wary of you, too. She wouldn’t have been, or not so much”-Fernao could have done without that little bit of honesty from Pekka, however characteristic of her it was-”if Olavin hadn’t started cavorting with his secretary or clerk or whoever she is. If we hadn’t done anything till after Leino got killed, Elimaki would have been easier in her mind. But I think it will turn out all right in the end.”

“Do you?” Fernao wasn’t so sure.

But Pekka nodded. “I really do. She didn’t like the idea of what we’d been up to, but she liked you better than she thought she would. She told me so when we were down there, and she hasn’t said anything different in her letters since. And Elimaki has always been one to speak her mind.”

I’m not surprised, not when she’s your sister, Fernao thought. He didn’t say that, not when he wasn’t quite sure how Pekka would take it. What he did say was, “What are we going to do when the war is done?”

“I want to go back to Kajaani City College,” Pekka said. “If I can keep dear Professor Heikki out of my hair, it’s a good place to do research.” She cocked her head to one side and studied him. “And I thought you might be interested in coming down to Kajaani, too.”

“Oh, I am,” he said hastily-and truthfully. He didn’t want her getting the wrong idea about that. But he went on, “Not what I meant, not exactly. We’ve spent so much time working on this new sorcery. We’ll be out of our kingdoms’ service and ahead of everybody else in the world. Put those together and they likely add up to a good-sized pile of silver.”

“Ah.” Now Pekka nodded. “I see. Some might be nice, I suppose. But I think I’d sooner do what I want to do than do what someone else wants me to, no matter how much money I might make.”

“Theoretical sorcerers can use money just as much as anybody else can,” Fernao said.

“I know,” she answered. “The questions are, how much do I need? and, how much do I care to change to get it?”

By the way she spoke, the answers to those questions were not very much and not very much, respectively. To some degree, Fernao felt the same way-but only to some degree. He said, “If I can do work I’d enjoy anyhow, I wouldn’t mind being paid well for it.”

“Neither would I,” Pekka admitted. “If. If somebody wants to push me in directions I’d sooner not go, though, that’s a different story. And when you start trying to turn magecraft into money, that sort of thing happens a lot of the time.” She sent him a challenging glance. “Or will you tell me I’m wrong?”

If he tried to tell her she was wrong, she would have some sharp things to tell him. He could see that. And he didn’t think she was wrong. It was a question of … Of degree, he thought. “We would have to be careful-no doubt about that,” he said, “But sorcery and business do mix, or they can. Otherwise, the world wouldn’t have changed the way it has the past hundred and fifty years. A lot of the people who were in the right place at the right time were mages. And if you want to know what I think, when there’s a choice between having money and not having it, having it is better.”

“With everything else equal, aye,” Pekka agreed. “But things aren’t always equal, not when it comes to money. And you don’t always have money. Sometimes money ends up having you. I don’t want that to happen to me.”

Fernao knew more than a few people who would do anything for money. He didn’t care to go down that ley line, either. He said, “You of all people wouldn’t have to worry, I don’t think.”

“For which I thank you,” Pekka said seriously. “Some of the things we’ve done here shouldn’t be turned into charms anyone could buy, if you want to know what I think.”

“Which ones do you have in mind?” Fernao asked.

“For starters, the ones that could let old people borrow years from their young descendants-or maybe, once the techniques are improved, from anybody young,” Pekka answered. “Can you imagine the chaos? Can you imagine the crimes?”

Fernao hadn’t tried to imagine such things. Now he did, and cringed. “That could be very bad,” he said. “I can’t argue with you. You’ve got a twistier mind than I do, to come up with such an idea.”

“I didn’t,” Pekka said. “Ilmarinen did, after one of our early experiments. That was before you joined us. He saw just how things might work.”

“Why am I not surprised?” Fernao said. “But nobody’s talked much about that kind of possibility since I’ve been here.”

“I don’t think anybody wants to talk about it,” Pekka said. “The more people who know about it, the more people who think about it, the likelier it is to happen, and to happen soon.”

“Soon.” Fernao tasted the word, and found he didn’t care for its flavor. “We aren’t ready to do anything like that.”

“No, and we won’t be, not for years and years-if we ever are,” Pekka said. “But whether we’re ready for it and whether it happens are two different questions, don’t you see? And that’s probably the biggest reason why I’m not very interested in getting rich quick.”

Fernao’s laugh was at least half rueful. He said, “Well, one thing: you make it easier for me to support you in the style to which you’ve been accustomed.”

“You don’t need to worry about supporting me-not with silver, anyhow,” Pekka said. “I’ve always been able to do that. It’s the other things we need to worry about: getting along with each other, bringing up Uto the best we can.”

“Seeing about a child or two of our own, too,” Fernao added.

“Aye, and that, too,” Pekka agreed. Fernao fought down bemusement. For his whole life, his interest in children had been theoretical at best. At worst. . He’d had one lady friend who’d thought he made her pregnant. He hadn’t; an illness had thrown her monthly courses out of kilter. What he’d felt then was alarm bordering on panic. Now. . Now he smiled as Pekka went on, “I’ve spent some time wondering what our children would look like. Haven’t you?”

“Now that you mention it, aye,” Fernao answered, adding, “If we have a little girl, I hope she’s lucky enough to look like you.”

That flustered Pekka. He’d seen that a lot of his compliments did. Partly, he supposed, it was because she was so stubbornly independent. The rest came from a fundamental difference between his folk and hers. Among Lagoans, as with Algarvians, flowery compliments were part of the small change of conversation. Nobody took them too seriously. Kuusamans were more literal-minded. They rarely said things unless they meant them-and they assumed everyone else behaved the same way. His pleasantries gained a weight, a force, here that they wouldn’t have had back in Setubal.

“You’re sweet,” Pekka said at last, and Fernao was confident she meant it. He was also very glad she meant it.

“What I am,” he said, “is happy. I love you, you know.”

“I do know that,” she agreed. “I love you, too. And. .” She sighed and let it rest there. When Fernao didn’t ask her to go on, she looked relieved.

He didn’t ask her because he already had a good notion of what she wasn’t saying: something like, And now it’s all right. With Leino still living, she’d been torn. Fernao knew that; he could hardly help knowing it.

If Leino had lived, she would have chosen him, he thought. He was familiar. He was a Kuusaman. And he was the father of her son, and that counted for a lot with her.

Pekka looked at him and turned his thoughts away from such reflections, which was just as well. Otherwise, he would have come back to remembering that he owed his happiness to another man’s death, and to the despised Algarvians. He hated himself whenever such ideas scurried over the ley lines of his mind, but he could hardly drive them away once for all. They held too much truth, and so kept coming back.

“We’ll do the best we can,” she said. “I don’t know what else we can do. If we work hard, it should be good enough.”

“I hope so,” Fernao said. “I think so, too.” He knew little more about getting along with one special person for years and years than he did about raising a child. But Pekka knew both those things well. As long as I’ve got a good teacher, Fernao thought, I can learn anything.