Out of the Darkness

by Harry Turtledove

  “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. U
to 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, a
nd 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.

  Twelve

  All the regular news sheets in Trapani were dead. But the Algarvians still turned out something they called The Armored Wolf. Printed on small leaves of cheap, sour-smelling paper, it kept right on screaming shrill defiance at all of King Mezentio’s enemies and declaring that victory lay just around the corner.

  Crouched behind a barricade only a couple of hundred yards in front of the royal palace, with Unkerlanter eggs bursting all around him, Sidroc was certain the only thing lying around the next corner was a swarm of Unkerlanter footsoldiers and behemoths. He folded his copy of The Armored Wolf and. stuffed it into his belt pouch.

  Ceorl asked, “Why are you wasting time with that horrible rag? Seeing it once is bad enough. Nobody’d want to look at it twice.”

  “I’m not going to look at it twice,” Sidroc said. “I’m almost out of arsewipes, though, and it’ll do well enough for that.”

  “Ah. All right.” Ceorl’s big head bobbed up and down. “You’re not as dumb as I thought you were when you came into the Brigade. If you were, you’d’ve been dead a long time ago.”

  Sidroc shrugged and spat. “Dumb doesn’t matter--you’re still breathing, for instance.” Ceorl’s fingers twisted in an obscene gesture. Laughing, Sidroc gave it back. He went on, “You’re still here, and I’m still here, and Sergeant Werferth, who made a better soldier than both of us put together, what happened to him? He stopped a beam in Yanina, that’s what. Bad futtering luck, nothing else to it.”

  Before Ceorl could answer, smoke on the breeze set him coughing. Whole great stretches of Trapani burned, with no one doing much to try to put out the fires. The Algarvians couldn’t, and the Unkerlanters didn’t care.