Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  “That would be nice,” Talsu said. “I’ll find out.”

  When he opened the door, there stood the Jelgavan major he’d seen before. The fellow was an inch or two shorter than Talsu, but contrived to looked down his nose at him just the same. “Am I correct in being given to understand that this is a tailor’s establishment?” he asked in haughty tones.

  “That’s right. . sir,” Talsu answered. Regretfully, he added, “Won’t you please come in?”

  “Good morning, sir,” Traku said when the major did stride into the flat. He sounded friendlier than Talsu had; he could hardly have sounded less friendly than his son. “What can we do for you today?”

  “I require a rain cloak,” the officer said. “I require it at once, as I shall soon be going into Algarve.”

  “I’ll be happy to take care of you, sir,” Traku said. “There will be a small extra charge for a rush job-I have some other business I’ll have to put aside to take care of you right away, you understand.”

  “No,” the major said.

  Traku frowned. “I beg your pardon, sir?”

  “No,” the fellow repeated. “I will not pay extra, not a copper’s worth. This is part of my uniform.”

  “Sir, I’m sure you already have a uniform-issue rain cloak, just like every other officer,” Talsu said. “If you want something with a little extra style or quality, you do have to pay for it.” He’d been through the army himself; he knew what the rules were.

  The Jelgavan noble looked at him as if he’d just found him in his peach. “Who are you to tell me what I must do and must not do?” he demanded. “How dare you show such cheek?”

  “Your Excellency, even officers have regulations,” Talsu said.

  “Do you want my business, or do you not?” the major said.

  Talsu’s father spoke reasonably: “Sir, if you want me to put your business in front of everybody else’s, you’re going to have to pay for that, because it’ll mean other people’s clothes won’t get made as fast as they’d like.” It probably wouldn’t mean that. It would mean he and Talsu would have to work extra long hours to get the other orders done on time. Keeping things simple, though, seemed best.

  “Other people?” The noble snorted. He plainly wasn’t used to the idea of worrying about whether what he did bothered anyone else. “Do these ‘other people’ of yours have the high blood in their veins?”

  “Aye, sir, a couple of ‘em do,” Traku said stolidly.

  And that, to Talsu’s amazement, turned the major reasonable in the blink of an eye. “Well, that’s different,” he said, still sounding gruff, but not as if he were about to accuse the two tailors of treason. “If it is a matter of inconveniencing folk of my own class. .” He cared nothing about inconveniencing commoners. Bothering other nobles, though-that mattered to him. “How large a fee did you have in mind?”

  Traku named one twice as high as he’d ever charged an Algarvian for a rush job. The Jelgavan noble accepted it without a blink. He didn’t blink at the price Traku set for the rain cape, either. Maybe he had more money than he knew what to do with. Maybe-and more likely, Talsu judged-he just had no idea of what things were supposed to cost.

  All he said on his departure was, “See that it’s ready on time, my good men.” And then he swept out, as if he’d been the king honoring a couple of peasants with the glory of his presence.

  After the door closed, Traku said something under his breath. “I’m sorry, Father?” Talsu said. “I didn’t catch that.”

  “I said, it’s no wonder some of our own people went off and fought on the Algarvian side after King Donalitu came back. That overbred son of a whore and all the others like him don’t make the redheads look like such a bad bargain.”

  “I’ve had that same thought a time or two-more than a time or two- myself,” Talsu replied. “Aye, he’s one overbred son of a whore. But he’s our over-bred son of a whore, if you know what I mean. He won’t haul us off by the hundreds to kill us for the sake of our life energy.”

  His father sighed. “You’re right. No doubt about it, you’re right. But if that’s the best we can say for him-and it fornicating well is-it’s pretty cold praise, wouldn’t you say?”

  “Of course it is,” Talsu said. “But it’s no surprise, or it shouldn’t be one. Remember, you’ve just had nobles for customers. I’ve had them for commanders. I know what they’re like.” He almost said, I know what’s wrong with them. Even if he didn’t say it, it was what he meant.

  “But the redheads have nobles, too,” Traku said. “These Kuusamans have them. They must. But they don’t act like their shit doesn’t stink the way ours do. Why is that? Why are we stuck with a pack of bastards at the top?”

  “I don’t know,” Talsu said. He didn’t know any Jelgavans who did know, either. He grinned wryly. “Because we’re lucky, I guess.”

  His father’s fingers twisted in an evil-averting gesture that went back to the days of the Kaunian Empire. “That’s the kind of luck I could do without. That’s the kind of luck the whole kingdom could do without.”

  “Oh, aye,” Talsu agreed. “But how do we change it?” He answered his own question: “We don’t, not as long as Donalitu’s our king. He’s the worst of the lot.” He sighed. “They don’t have hardly any nobles in Unkerlant, people say.”

  “No, but that’s on account of King Swemmel killed most of ‘em,” Traku said. “What the Unkerlanters have instead is, they have King Swemmel. Is he a better bargain?” Talsu didn’t answer; by everything he’d heard, Swemmel was about as bad a bargain as anybody could make. His father rammed the point home: “Do you want to live in Unkerlant?”

  “Powers above, no!” Talsu used that same ancient gesture. “But it’s getting so I hardly want to live here anymore, either.”

  “Where, then?” his father asked.

  “I don’t know.” Talsu hadn’t been altogether serious. After some thought, though, he said, “Kuusamo, maybe. The slanteyes are … looser than we are, if you know what I mean. I had some dealings with them when I was with the irregulars. They don’t make a big fuss about rank and blood. They just do what needs doing. I liked that.”

  “How would you like a Kuusaman winter?” Traku asked with a sly smile.

  Talsu shivered at the mere idea. “I don’t suppose I would, not very much.” He bent over the tunic he’d been working on when the major came in. If he and his father were going to get the rain cape done along with everything else, they could afford only so much chatter. And what was Kuusamo but moonshine, anyhow?

  This time, the sleigh carrying Fernao and Pekka glided west, not east. Every stride of the harnessed reindeer took Fernao farther not only from the blockhouse but also from the hostel in the Naantali district. The hostel had deliberately been built a long way from a ley line. That made getting to it difficult and leaving inconvenient.

  As if picking the thought-and some of the things behind it-from his mind, Pekka leaned toward him and said, “This feels very strange.”

  Fernao nodded. “For me, too,” he said. “Going to see Kajaani will be … interesting.”

  Her laugh was nervous. “Bringing you there will be … interesting, too.”

  Seeing her home town wasn’t what mattered, though. Meeting her sister, meeting her son-those were what counted. “I wonder what they’ll think of me,” he said.

  He waited for Pekka to say something like, Of course they’ll think you’re wonderful. A Lagoan woman would have. Pekka just answered, “That’s why we’re doing this: to find out, I mean.”

  “I know,” Fernao said. As a moderately resolute bachelor, he hadn’t gone through the ritual of meeting a woman’s family before. And, in his younger days, he hadn’t expected family to include a son.

  Again halfway thinking along with him, Pekka said, “Uto will look up to you, I think.” She smiled. “How can he help it, when you’re so tall?” But the smile slipped. “I don’t know about Elimaki. I’m sorry.”

  “It would be simp
ler if her husband hadn’t run off with somebody else, wouldn’t it?” Fernao said.

  Pekka nodded. “It’s too bad, too. I always liked Olavin,” she said. “But these things do happen.” We ought to know, Fernao thought. He kept that to himself; he didn’t want to remind Pekka that she’d been carrying on with him before her husband got killed. And her thoughts hadn’t gone in that direction, for she added a one-word parenthesis: “Men.” Again, Fernao found it wiser to keep quiet.

  The driver took them right up to the caravan depot at Joensuu, the little town closest to the hostel. As far as Fernao could see, Joensuu had no reason for existing except lying on a ley line. When the ley-line caravan glided into the depot, he was briefly startled to note it was northbound. Then Pekka said, “Remember? I warned you about this. We have to go around three sides of a rectangle to get to Kajaani.”

  He snapped his fingers in annoyance, no happier than any other mage at forgetting something. “Aye, you did tell me that, and it went clean out of my head.” He put his arm around her. “Must be love.”

  From a Lagoan, that was an ordinary sort of compliment. As Fernao had seen, though, Kuusamans were more restrained in how they praised one another. Pekka still seemed flustered as they climbed up into the caravan car.

  They had to switch caravans twice, once to a westbound line and then to the southbound one that would finally take them to Kajaani. Fernao hoped his baggage made the switches, too. Pekka was going home. She would have more clothes there. If his things didn’t arrive, he’d wear what he had on his back till he could buy more-and he wasn’t sure Kuusaman shops would have many garments for a man of his inches.

  What with the delays in changing caravans, they traveled all through the night. Their seats reclined, as was true in most caravan cars, but still made only poor substitutes for real beds. Fernao dozed and woke, dozed and woke, the whole night long. When he was awake, he peered out the window at the snow-covered countryside. The night was moonless, but the southern lights glowed in shifting, curtainlike patterns of green and yellow. He’d seen them brighter on the austral continent, but the display here was far more impressive than it ever got up in Setubal.

  The sun was just coming up over the horizon when the ley-line caravan topped the last forested rise north of Kajaani and glided down toward the port city. Even with the bright sun of early spring on it, the sea ahead looked cold. Maybe that was Fernao’s imagination working overtime, and maybe it wasn’t. That sea led southwest to the land of the Ice People.

  Pekka yawned and stretched. She’d had a better night than Fernao. Seeing familiar landscape and then familiar buildings slide past the window, she smiled. “Oh, good! We’re here.”

  “So we are.” What Fernao saw didn’t impress him. Kajaani, to him, looked like a Kuusaman provincial town, and nothing more. He knew he was spoiled; to him, any city save Setubal was likely to seem just a provincial town. He asked, “Can we see Kajaani City College from here?”

  Shaking her head, Pekka pointed across the car, to the right. “It’s on the western edge of town. If we get a chance, I’ll take you over there. Having an illustrious Lagoan theoretical sorcerer along with me will make Professor Heikki unhappy, and I do what I can to keep her that way.”

  “Aye, you’ve told me about some of your squabbles,” Fernao said. “What’s your chairman’s specialty? Veterinary magic? Is that what you said?”

  “That’s right,” Pekka said. “And she’s nobody of any consequence there. She’d make a splendid clerk, though. That’s why she’s been chairman so long,

  I suppose. But she inflicts herself on people who do real work, so nobody in the department can stand her.”

  “Kajaani!” the conductor called as the caravan, nearing the depot, slowed. “Everybody out for Kajaani, on account of this is the end of the line.”

  End of the world, Fernao thought. The ley-line caravan eased to a halt. The conductor opened the door at the front of the car. Pekka got to her feet. So did Fernao, leaning on his cane to help himself up. His leg and shoulder both complained. He’d known they would. I’m lucky to have both legs, he thought, and then, if this is luck.

  Pekka got down ahead of him. She watched anxiously as he came down the little portable stairway. She was, he saw, ready to catch him if he stumbled. Being somewhere close to twice her size, he made sure he didn’t, and reached the ground safely.

  Someone-a woman on the platform-called Pekka’s name. She turned. “Elimaki!” she exclaimed. A moment later, she added, “Uto!”

  “Mother!” The boy swarmed toward her. He was, Fernao saw, nine or ten, with a good deal of Pekka in his face. When he sprang into her arms for a hug, the top of his head came past her shoulder. The woman who followed him also looked a good deal like Pekka. Of course she does, you idiot, Fernao thought. She’s her sister, by the powers above. Elimaki was a couple of years younger, and a little stockier. She too hugged Pekka, but even as she did it she was eyeing Fernao with curiosity both undisguised and, he thought, more than a little hostile.

  “I’m so glad to see both of you again,” Pekka said, kissing first Uto and then Elimaki. She took a deep breath. “And I want you both to meet my. . friend, Fernao of Lagoas.”

  Uto held out his hand. “Hello, sir,” he said gravely. Sure enough, he added, “I didn’t think you would be so tall.” He was curiously studying Fernao, too.

  Not a lot of Lagoans or other Algarvic folk got down here, Fernao suspected. He clasped Uto’s hand, not his wrist, as he would have with one of his own countrymen. “I’m very pleased to meet you,” he said. “I’ve heard a lot about you from your mother.”

  Pekka rolled her eyes. Even Elimaki had trouble holding her face straight. Uto looked more innocent than he had any hope of being. “I don’t do that so much anymore,” he said, leaving that carefully unspecified.

  “You do too, you scamp,” Elimaki said. She nodded to Fernao. “And I have heard a lot about you.”

  “I probably don’t do that so much anymore, either,” he answered, deadpan.

  Pekka’s sister gave him a sharp look, then smiled. “You’ll have a carpetbag, won’t you?” she said, looking back toward the caravan’s baggage car.

  “I do hope so,” Fernao said. “I’d better find out.”

  “Why do you have that cane?” Uto asked as he limped toward the baggage car.

  “Because I got hurt in the war, down in the land of the Ice People,” he said.

  “The Algarvians?” Uto asked, and Fernao nodded. The boy’s face worked. “They killed my father, too, those-” He called the Algarvians a name nastier than any Fernao had known at the same age. Then he burst into tears.

  While Pekka comforted him, Fernao reclaimed his carpetbag. It was there, which made him think kindly thoughts about the people who ran the Kuusaman ley-line caravans. He carried it back to Pekka and her son and her sister. Elimaki said to him, “I was thinking. . The two of you might want to stay at my house tonight, not next door at Pekka’s.”

  “I don’t know.” Fernao looked to Pekka. “What do you want to do? Either way is all right with me.”

  “Aye, let’s do that,” Pekka said at once, and shot her sister a grateful glance. “I don’t want to go into my old house right now. It would tear me to pieces.” Once she said it, it made good sense-indeed, perfect sense-to Fernao. With all those memories of past times with her dead husband there, he would seem nothing but an interloper.

  “Let’s go, then,” Elimaki said. They caught a local caravan going east through the city, then walked up a hill past pines and firs to the street where Elimaki’s house and Pekka’s stood side by side. Seeing Fernao labor on the way up the hill, Pekka whispered to Uto. He took Fernao’s carpetbag from him and carried it with pride.

  Elimaki’s house struck Fernao as enormous. In Setubal, the biggest city in the world, people were crowded too close together to let anyone but the very wealthy enjoy so much space. An advantage to provincial towns I hadn’t thought of. “You’ll want somethin
g to eat,” Elimaki said, and disappeared into the kitchen. Pekka followed her. That left Fernao alone with Uto.

  He didn’t know what to say. He’d never had much to do with children. If I want to stay with Pekka, though, I’ll have to learn. While he searched for words, Uto found some: “Aunt Eli says you’re Mother’s friend, her special friend.”

  As gravely as Uto had on meeting him, Fernao nodded. “That’s true.”

  “Does that mean you’re my special friend, too?”

  “I don’t know,” Fernao said. “It’s not just up to me, you know. It’s up to you, too.”

  Pekka’s son pondered that with the care his mother gave a new spell. At last, he nodded. “You’re right. I guess I have to think about it some more.” After another pause, he said, “I know I’m not supposed to ask you much about what you’re doing, but you’re helping Mother find magic to beat the Algarvians, aren’t you?”

  Fernao nodded again. “I can’t tell you much about what I’m doing, either, but I can tell you that much. That’s just what I’m doing.”

  A fierce light kindled in Uto’s eyes. “In that case, I do want you to be my special friend. I’m still too little to pay them back for Father myself.” However fierce he sounded, he started to cry again. Fernao held out his arms. He didn’t know whether the boy would come to him, but Uto did. Awkwardly, he comforted him.

  “Breakfast’s ready,” Elimaki called from the kitchen. Uto bounded away. He still had tears on his cheeks, but he was smiling again. Fernao followed more slowly. As he came into the kitchen, Elimaki saw Uto’s tears. “Are you all right?” she asked.

  “I’m fine,” he answered carelessly, and turned to his mother, who was serving up plates of smoked salmon scrambled with eggs and cream. “I like your friend.”

  “Do you?” Pekka said, and Uto gave an emphatic nod. She tousled his hair. “I’m glad.” Pekka looked toward her sister, as if to say, I told you so. Fernao pretended not to notice.