Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  “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 go
ing 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 ourselves. 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.”

  “Don’t thank me. Thank Pekka and the Seven Princes,” Ilmarinen told him. “If I’d had my way, you’d still be out on the street corner begging for coppers. I wouldn’t even have told you my name, let alone anything else.”

  He waited for Pinhiero to fly into a temper. Instead, the Lagoan mage said, “Well, maybe that’s not so foolish as you usually are. Did you hear what I was telling Fernao at the wedding last night?”

  “Can’t say that I did,” Ilmarinen answered. Pinhiero spoke of the Algarvian in Swemmel’s pay whom the Lagoan Guild of Mages had unmasked. Ilmarinen scowled. “Oh, that’s just what we need, isn’t it? Might have known the Unkerlanters would try to steal what we’ve done. It’s a lot faster and a lot cheaper than sitting down and doing the work themselves.”

  “I expected they would try to spy,” Pinhiero said. “I didn’t expect them to be so good at it. Who knows if this one whoreson is the only mage they planted on us? We’ll have to do some more digging, but this bastard’s credentials were good, and he speaks Lagoan as well as I do.”

  “That’s not saying much,” Ilmarinen remarked.

  Pinhiero glared at him. “To the crows with you, my friend,” he said, trotting out the curse as if he were a Kaunian from imperial days.

  “Thank you so much.” Ilmarinen gave the grandmaster a little half bow, which made Pinhiero no happier.

  “If you’re so confounded smart, what would you do about these fornicating Algarvians in Swemmel’s pay?” the Lagoan demanded.

  “Oh, I can think of a couple of things,” Ilmarinen said lightly.

  Pinhiero wagged a ringer at him. “And those are? Talk is cheap, Ilmarinen, especially when you don’t have to back it up.”

  Ilmarinen bristled. “Why should I tell you anything, you old fraud? All you do is insult me. A
s far as I can see, you deserve spies.”

  “Fine,” Pinhiero said. “My first guess is, you haven’t got any answers. My second guess is, you’d be happy to see Swemmel able to match our spells.”

  Those both struck home. Nettled, Ilmarinen snapped, “It’d be just like you Lagoan bunglers to let him have the secrets to them.”

  Before the grandmaster could answer, the ley-line caravan came into the depot from the north. Passengers got off. Along with the others waiting on the platform, Ilmarinen and Pinhiero got on. They went into an empty four-person compartment and glared so fiercely at the other people who stuck in their noses that they still had it to themselves when the caravan started back towards Yliharma. As soon as it began to move, they began to argue again.

  “I’m tired of your hot air, Ilmarinen,” Pinhiero said.

  “If you weren’t such a stupid clot, you’d be able to see these things for yourself,” Ilmarinen retorted.

  “See what things?” the Lagoan mage said. “All I see is a fraud who talks fancy and doesn’t back it up. You say you have these magical answers”-he used the word with malice aforethought-”and then you don’t say what they are. And the reason you don’t say is that you haven’t really got them.”

  “Five goldpieces say I do, and better than anything you’ve come up with,” Ilmarinen said.

  Grandmaster Pinhiero thrust out his hand. “You’re on, by the powers above.” Ilmarinen clasped Pinhiero’s hand and then took his wrist in an Algarvic-style grip. Pinhiero gave him a seated bow. “All right, your Magnificence. We’ve made the bet. Now talk.”

  “I will,” Ilmarinen said. “The first thing you need to do is, you need to get Swemmel thinking the Algarvians he’s hired to do his dirty work for him are going to pass whatever they find out to their own mages and not to him. If anything will give Swemmel nightmares, it’s the idea of Algarve getting strong again. Am I right or am I wrong?”