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Out of the Darkness

Page 72

by Harry Turtledove


  “We’ll do the best we can,” Pekka said. “That’s all anybody can do.”

  By the time she’d finished the brandy, she did feel better. Her sister had poured her a hefty tot. She also felt sleepy, and let Elimaki put her to bed. She was sure she would be worried again in the morning, but she wasn’t--only frantic, which wasn’t quite the same thing. Frantic seemed to do the job. She approached the caterer with blood in her eye, and not only got a promise of all the smoked salmon she’d ordered, but got it at a reduced rate. “To make up for the problem our error caused you,” the fellow said. To get you out of the shop before you murder someone, was what he probably meant.

  The day of the wedding dawned fair and mild. Pekka let out a long sigh of relief. With summer past and autumn beginning, weather in Kajaani was always a gamble. Aye, a canopy behind Elimaki’s house would have shielded the guests from the worst of it, but she didn’t want everyone to have to come swaddled in furs, and she especially didn’t want to bring the ceremony indoors. Old, old custom said weddings belonged outside, under the sun and the wind and the sky. If caught between old, old custom and an early snowstorm . . .

  I don’t know what I would have done, Pekka thought. I’m glad I don’t have to worry about it. We might almost be Gyongyosians talking about the stars.

  She was just getting into her leggings and elaborately embroidered tunic, a good hour before people were supposed to start arriving, when somebody knocked on the front door. “If that’s Fernao, you can keep him,” she called to Elimaki. “Otherwise, hit him over the head and drag him off to one side.”

  But it wasn’t Fernao, and Elimaki didn’t hit him over the head. “I need to speak to Pekka,” Ilmarinen declared.

  Pekka threw her hands in the air, thinking, I might have known. Fastening the last couple of bone toggles, she went out to the front room. “What is it?” she snapped. “It had better be interesting.”

  “Aren’t I always?” he asked, with one of his raffish smiles.

  She folded her arms across her chest. “What you always are, without fail, is a nuisance. I haven’t got time for you to be a nuisance right now, Master Ilmarinen. Say your say and come back when you’re supposed to, or you’ll make me sorry I invited you.”

  “Here. Let me show you.” He pulled a leaf of closely written calculations from his beltpouch and handed it to her. “It proves what I’ve been saying all along.”

  “I really haven’t got time for this now.” But Pekka took the paper--it was either that or throw him out bodily. She glanced through it... and stopped after a moment. It went from straight sorcerous calculation to purporting to prove by the same kind of calculations that she and Fernao would have a happy marriage. Not a dozen people in the world could have followed all of it--and she could imagine only one who could have written it. She wondered how much labor and thought had gone into it. In spite of herself, she couldn’t stay annoyed. “Thank you very much,” she told him. “I’ll treasure it.”

  “Do better than that,” Ilmarinen said. “Make it come true.” He ducked out of the house. Pekka hoped he’d remember to come back at the right time.

  Fernao did show up a few minutes later, along with the burgomaster of Kajaani, who would recite the marriage vows. The burgomaster, who was a plump little man, only a couple of inches taller than Pekka, looked odd standing beside her tall, lean Lagoan fiancé. “I hope you’ll be very happy,” the man kept saying.

  “Oh, I expect we will,” Pekka answered. “In fact, I have proof.” She passed Fernao the paper Ilmarinen had given her.

  He started looking through it, then did the same sort of double take she had. “Who gave you this?” he said, and held up a hand. “No, don’t tell me. I’m a Zuwayzi if it’s not Ilmarinen.” Pekka nodded. Fernao got down to the bottom and shook his head. “There’s nobody like him.”

  “Nobody even close.” Pekka looked Fernao over. “How splendid you are!”

  “Am I?” He didn’t sound convinced, where any Kuusaman man would have. His tunic, his jacket, his leggings were even fancier than hers. All the embroidery looked done by hand, though it had surely had sorcerous augmentation. “So your Jelgavan exile did a good job?”

  “It’s--magnificent,” Pekka said.

  “Good.” If anything, Fernao sounded amused. “It’s not what I’d wear back at home, but if it makes people here happy, that’s good enough for me.”

  “You are . . . most impressive,” said the burgomaster, looking up and up at Fernao. “You will make an imposing addition to our fair city.”

  Someone else knocked on the door: an early arriving guest. There was always bound to be one. “Uto!” Pekka called. When her son appeared, she said, “Take the lady back out to the canopy.”

  “All right,” Uto said, as docile as if he’d never got into trouble in his life. “Come with me, please, ma’am.”

  “Aren’t you sweet?” said the woman, a distant cousin, which only proved how distant she was.

  Before long, Pekka and Fernao walked up a lane through the seated guests and stood before the burgomaster. “As representative of the Seven Princes of Kuusamo, I am pleased to be acting in this capacity today,” the fellow said. “It is far more pleasant than most of the duties I am called upon to fulfill. ...”

  He went on and on. He was a burgomaster; part of his job, pleasant or not, was making speeches. Uto stood beside Pekka and a pace behind her. He soon started to fidget. A gleam came into his eyes. Pekka was keeping an eye on him, and spotted it. Ever so slightly, she shook her head. Her son looked disappointed, but, to her vast relief, nodded.

  And then, at last, the burgomaster got to the part of his duties he couldn’t avoid no matter how much he talked: “Do you, Pekka, take this man, Fernao, to be your husband forevermore?”

  “Aye,” Pekka said.

  In Fernao’s eyes, the burgomaster of Kajaani was a ridiculous little man: not because he was a Kuusaman--by now, Fernao took Kuusamans altogether for granted--but because he was absurdly self-important. But he didn’t seem ridiculous at all as he asked, “Do you, Fernao, take this woman, Pekka, to be your wife forevermore?”

  “Aye.” Fernao did his best to make his voice something more than a husky whisper. His best proved none too good. But the burgomaster nodded, and so did Pekka. They were the people who really counted.

  “By the authority vested in me by the people of Kajaani and by the Seven Princes of Kuusamo, I now declare you man and wife,” the burgomaster said. Forevermore. That word seemed to roll down on Fernao like a boulder. He hadn’t come to Kuusamo intending to find a wife--especially not a woman who was then married to somebody else. He hadn’t even found Kuusaman women particularly attractive. But here he was. And what he’d just done did have certain compensations. Beaming, the burgomaster turned to him. “You may now kiss your bride.”

  When Fernao did, all the Kuusamans among the guests--everyone, in other words, except for a few cousins and an old uncle of his and Grandmaster Pinhiero-- burst into cheers and shouted, “They are married!” Somebody had told him they would do that, but he’d forgotten. It made him jump. In Lagoas, as in most places, passing a ring marked the actual moment of marriage. The Kuusamans did things differently, as they often did.

  “I love you,” he told Pekka.

  “I love you, too,” she answered. “That’s one of the better reasons for doing this, wouldn’t you say?” Her eyes sparkled.

  “Well, now that you mention it. . .” Fernao said. Pekka snorted.

  “If I may take my usual privilege.. .” The burgomaster kissed her, too. From some of the things Fernao had read, in the old days a Kuusaman chieftain’s privilege had gone a good deal further than that. One more reason to be glad we live in the modern age, Fernao thought.

  Where some Kuusaman customs were very different, the receiving line was just the same. He and Pekka stood side by side, shaking hands with people and accepting congratulations. “A pretty ceremony, my boy,” said his uncle, a bony man named Sampaio. “
I didn’t understand a word of it, mind you, but very pretty.”

  “I’m glad you could come,” Fernao answered. Speaking Lagoan felt distinctly odd; he didn’t do it much these days. But his uncle, a successful builder, knew no Kuusaman and had long since forgotten whatever classical Kaunian he’d learned.

  Sampaio stuck an elbow in his ribs and chuckled. “And that’s one blaze of a suit you’ve got on, too,” he said.

  Fernao also thought he was on the gaudy side of splendid. But he shrugged and forced a grin. “It’s what they wear here. What can I do about it?”

  “Powers below eat me if I know.” Sampaio gave Fernao a hug. “I hope you’re happy with her, boy. She seems nice, even if we can’t talk to each other.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t marry her if I didn’t like her,” Fernao said, which made his uncle laugh. He suspected Pekka spoke a little more Lagoan than she let on. No point telling that to his uncle, though; he didn’t think Sampaio would be coming down to Kajaani again anytime soon.

  Elimaki came up to him and gave him a fierce hug. “You take good care of my sister,” she said. “You take good care of her, or you answer to me.”

  “I will. I intend to,” Fernao said.

  “You’d better.” Elimaki made it sound like a threat. Remembering how her marriage had collapsed not so long before, Fernao supposed he understood why she sounded that way, which didn’t make it any less unnerving.

  Ilmarinen had a different take on things, as he usually did. Sidling up to Fernao, he said, “I hope it’s still as much fun now that you’ve gone and made it official.”

  “Thank you so much for your good wishes,” Fernao exclaimed.

  “Always a pleasure, always a pleasure.” Ilmarinen wagged a finger at him. “See what you get for saving me from myself? That’s not the best recipe for getting a man to love you forever, you know.”

  “Don’t be silly,” Fernao said. “You didn’t love me even before then.”

  Ilmarinen chuckled nastily. “Maybe we understand each other after all. Now I’m going to raid the feast. You have to stand here gabbing with the rest of these bores till half the good stuff’s gone.” And off he went, cackling like a broody hen.

  Before Fernao could figure out what to say to that--not that it gave him much room for a comeback--he found himself clasping wrists with Grandmaster Pinhiero. The head of the Lagoan Guild of Mages said, “I didn’t remember meeting her before. Now I’ve got at least some notion of why you were willing to move to the back of beyond. I wish you were still in Setubal, but I hope you’ll be happy.”

  “Thank you, sir.” Fernao hadn’t been sure the grandmaster would be even that gracious.

  But Pinhiero, he discovered, had other things on his mind besides this wedding. He asked, “Do you know a third-rank mage named Botelho, from down in Ruivaes?”

  “I know the town--miserable little place,” Fernao answered. “I’ve never heard of the man.”

  “Neither has anyone else,” Pinhiero said grimly. “His documents are all perfect, he passed every obvious sorcerous test with ease--but he turned out to be an Algarvian on masquerade.”

  “Powers below eat him!” Fernao said. “Spying for King Mainardo?”

  “Worse,” Pinhiero replied. While Fernao was still wondering what could be worse, the grandmaster told him: “Spying for King Swemmel.”

  Fernao wished he hadn’t cursed before. He really wanted to do it now. He contented himself with saying, “Swemmel really wants to know things, doesn’t he?”

  “Just a bit.” Pinhiero’s voice was dry. “The other interesting question is, how many other Guild members aren’t what they’re supposed to be?”

  “You’d do well to find out,” Fernao said. “Me, I’m just as well pleased to be down here, thank you very much.”

  “Aye, have a good time while the world’s going down the commode around you,” Pinhiero jeered.

  Fernao gave him a bright, cheerful, meaningless smile. “If you think you can make me feel guilty on my wedding day, you’d better think again.”

  “Tomorrow won’t be your wedding day, and you’ll still be down here,” the grandmaster said sourly. “You ought to come back to a place where things happen once in a while.”

  “If things didn’t happen here, I never would have started working with the Kuusamans in the first place,” Fernao pointed out. Grandmaster Pinhiero scowled at him. I don’t have to take his orders any more, or even listen to his complaints, Fernao thought. He turned away from Pinhiero just in time to see Pekka drop to one knee before a Kuusaman younger than she was. But her folk only do that for. . . Fernao needed no more than half the thought before leaning on his cane to bow very low himself. “Your Highness,” he murmured.

  “As you were, both of you,” Prince Juhainen said. Pekka rose; Fernao straightened. The prince went on, “Powers above grant that you spend many happy years together.”

  “Thank you very much, your Highness,” Fernao and Pekka said together. They smiled at each other. Juhainen smiled, too, and moved on toward the reception inside Elimaki’s house. In a low voice, Fernao said, “Well, sweetheart, if you have any kin who haven’t been giving you enough respect, one of the Seven Princes at your wedding ought to do the job.”

  “I don’t know,” Pekka said. “People like that would complain because I didn’t have two or three of the Seven down here.”

  Eventually, the last cousins, friends, and colleagues went inside, which meant Fernao and Pekka could, too. The caterer came up to Pekka with something like panic on his face. “The smoked salmon--” he began.

  She cut him off. “If anything’s gone wrong with that delivery--especially after all your promises--I won’t just take it out of your fee. I’ll blacken your name all over town. But don’t bother me about it now, not on my wedding day.” His face a mask of misery, the caterer fled.

  “How much will it matter if you blacken his name?” Fernao asked.

  His new bride looked surprised. “Quite a bit,” she answered, and then must have realized why he’d asked the question, for she went on, “This isn’t Setubal. There won’t be thousands and thousands of people here who’ve never heard of him. When folks here find out about a fiasco, it’ll hurt his business. And it should.”

  It’s a small town, Fernao thought. That would take getting used to. As far as he could see, the caterer had set out a very respectable spread. Everything he ate was good, from prawns to slices of raw reindeer meat dipped in a fiery sauce. He didn’t particularly miss the smoked salmon. But if it was supposed to be on the menu and wasn’t there, the caterer deserved at least some of the trouble in which he’d landed.

  A Valmieran wine washed down the delicacies. Fernao would have expected one from Jelgava, tangy with lemon and orange juice. Then he remembered that Pekka and Leino had gone on holiday to Jelgava. If Pekka didn’t want to remind herself of days gone forever, he understood that.

  Someone not far away let out a startled squawk. Someone else exclaimed, “How in blazes did a hedgehog get loose here?” People shooed the little animal out the door.

  Voice even grimmer than when she’d dealt with the caterer, Pekka said, “Where’s Uto?” Her son, once found, loudly protested his innocence--too loudly to convince Fernao. Pekka didn’t look convinced, either, but a wedding reception was no place for a thorough interrogation. Uto escaped with a warning just this side of a threat.

  And then the carriage that would take Fernao and Pekka to a hostel for their wedding night pulled up in front of Elimaki’s house. Guests pelted them with little acorns and dried berries--symbols of fertility. “Careful,” Pekka warned Fernao as they went down the walk to the carriage. “Don’t slip.”

  With his bad leg, that was advice to take seriously. “I won’t,” he said. Pekka protectively took his arm to make sure he didn’t.

  At the hostel, another bottle of wine waited in a bed of snow. Pekka poured some for each of them. She raised hers in salute. “We’re married. We’re here. We’re by oursel
ves. It’s all right, or as all right as it can be.”

  “I love you,” Fernao said. They both drank to that. He added, “What I’d bet you really feel like doing about now is collapsing.”

  “That’s one of the things I feel like doing, aye,” Pekka nodded. “But there’s something else to attend to, too.”

  “Is there?” Fernao said, as if he had no idea what she was talking about.

  Before long, they were attending to it. It was nothing they hadn’t attended to a good many times before, but no less enjoyable on account of that—more enjoyable, if anything, because they knew each other better now, and each knew what the other enjoyed. And the first time after the ceremony made things official, as it were.

  “I love you,” Fernao said again, lazy in the afterglow.

  “A good thing, too, after we just got married,” Pekka replied.

  “A good thing?” He stroked her. “You’re right. It is.”

  A carpetbag by his feet, Ilmarinen stood on the platform at the ley-line caravan depot in Kajaani, waiting for the caravan that would take him back up to Yliharma. He was not very surprised when a tall Lagoan, his once-red hair now gray, walked up onto the same platform. “Hello, Pinhiero, you shifty old son of a whore,” he said in fluent classical Kaunian. “Come on over here and keep me company.”

  “I don’t know that I ought to,” the Grandmaster of the Lagoan Guild of Mages replied in the same tongue. “You’d probably try to slit my beltpouch.”

  “That’s what you deserve for wearing such a silly thing,” Ilmarinen said.

  Unperturbed, Pinhiero set his carpetbag down next to Ilmarinen’s. “Besides, whom are you calling old? You were cheating people before I was even a gleam in my papa’s eye.”

  “Don’t worry--you’ve made up for it since,” Ilmarinen said. “And you’re the one who needs to steal from me more than I need to steal from you.”

  “A year ago, I would have,” the grandmaster said. “Not now. Now I have what I need. You boys did play fair on that one, and I thank you for it.”

 

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