Out of the Darkness d-6

by Harry Turtledove

  He knew perfectly well he was right. King Swemmel saw plotters everywhere, and he had plenty of reason to dread Algarve. Even Pinhiero didn’t deny it. All he said was, “You may be right.”

  “What I may be is on the way to winning my bet,” Ilmarinen said, laughing. “Are you doing any of that now?”

  “None of your business,” the grandmaster said.

  “Ha! That means you’re not. I know you,” Ilmarinen said, and Pinhiero didn’t deny that, either. Ilmarinen went on, “The other thing you need to do is, you need to make some false results and put them where a spy who does a little work will come upon them. They can’t be out in the open, or he won’t trust them. But if he digs and digs and then finds them, he’s bound to think they’re real. And he’ll send them back to Swemmel, and the Unkerlanter mages will try to use them, and either they won’t work at all or they’ll be a disaster, depending on how much effort you put into dreaming them up. Either way, the Unkerlanters will stop trusting what their snoops are feeding them. You’re not doing that, either, are you?”

  Grandmaster Pinhiero didn’t answer right away. He shifted his weight so he could get at his beltpouch, then took out five gold coins and passed them to Ilmarinen. “Here,” he said. “If I were wearing a hat, I’d take it off to you. You’re twistier than an eel dancing with an octopus.”

  “Thank you very much,” Ilmarinen said smugly.

  “How in blazes do you come up with these things?” Pinhiero asked. “With a little luck, they’ll tie the Unkerlanters in knots for months, maybe even years.”

  “You’re supposed to think of them for yourself,” Ilmarinen said. “Why are you grandmaster, if not to think of things like that? It can’t be because you’re such a brilliant wizard. We both know you’re not. As far as magecraft goes, Fernao is worth ten of you.”

  “He’s a clever fellow,” Pinhiero admitted. “I thought he would sit in my seat one of these years, and then you Kuusamans went and kidnapped him. Grabbed him by the prong, by the powers above.” He leaned forward and stared suspiciously at Ilmarinen. “Was that your idea, too?”

  Ilmarinen shook his head. “Not a bit of it. I always thought he’d cause Pekka more trouble than he was worth. I hope I’m wrong, but I may be right yet.”

  “A likely story,” Pinhiero said. “I don’t know whether you’re lying or not. You’ll never admit it if you are.”

  “Who, me?” Ilmarinen did his best to look innocent. He hadn’t had much practice at it, and didn’t bring it off well. Pinhiero laughed raucously.

  Ilmarinen muttered something under his breath. Here he’d told the unvarnished truth, and the Lagoan grandmaster hadn’t believed him. As far as he was concerned, that was just like Lagoans. As did their Algarvian cousins, they often thought they knew everything there was to know. They couldn’t get it through their heads that he and a lot of other Kuusamans trusted them no further than the Lagoans trusted folk from the land of the Seven Princes.

  Of course, that cut both ways, as Pinhiero proved when he said, “Do you have any notion how much it galls us to follow your lead?”

  “Some, maybe,” Ilmarinen said. “We’ve been stronger than you for a while now. You just didn’t notice, because most of what we did was out in the Bothnian Ocean and on islands in the Great Northern Sea where you don’t have an interest. And besides, we’re only Kuusamans-we don’t make a big racket about what we do, the way Algarvic folk enjoy so much. We just go on about our business.”

  Grandmaster Pinhiero turned a dull red. He had to know Ilmarinen was right, however little he cared to admit it. He said, “The world is changing.” By the way he said it, he wished the world weren’t.

  “Back in the days when the Kaunian Empire was tottering to a fall, a lot of nobles there would have said the same thing,” Ilmarinen observed. “They would have said it in the same language we’re using, as a matter of fact, so not everything changes.”

  “Easy for you to say such things, Ilmarinen-you’re on the rising side,” Pinhiero replied. “Me, I have to look at my kingdom shrinking.”

  “Not in size. Only in influence,” Ilmarinen said. “Things would have looked a lot worse for you had Mezentio won the war. For that matter, the Algarvians didn’t even manage a full sorcerous attack against Setubal. They did against Yliharma. I was there.”

  “You’re always in the way of trouble,” Pinhiero said.

  The grandmaster subsided into gloomy silence as the ley-line caravan went through over the Vaattojarvi Hills. The weather was milder and the land fairer on the north side of the hills, but Pinhiero seemed no happier. At last, not too long before the caravan got into Yliharma, he burst out, “Is this what we fought so hard for? Is this why we spent so many men and so much treasure? To hand leadership in the world over to you?”

  “Well, if you hadn’t fought, you’d have handed it over to Algarve,” Ilmarinen answered. “And you may not have handed it to us. You may have handed it to Unkerlant instead.”

  “You do so relieve my mind,” the Lagoan grandmaster said, and Ilmarinen threw back his head and laughed. Pinhiero glared at him. “If the world does turn out to be Unkerlant’s, you’ll laugh out of the other side of your mouth, by the powers above.”

  “No doubt,” Ilmarinen said. “No doubt at all. But I, at least, won’t be wearing that foolish expression on my face, for it’ll come as no surprise. And, I assure you, Kuusamo will work as hard against the rise of Unkerlant as we did against Algarve, and for most of the same reasons. Can you Lagoans say as much, when you can’t even keep spies out of your guild of mages?”

  “You cannot hold me responsible for the fact that Algarvians and Lagoans look much alike,” Grandmaster Pinhiero ground out.

  “No, but I can hold you responsible for forgetting that that fact has consequences,” Ilmarinen said. “This is why, during the war, we were so reluctant to train Lagoans in the new sorcery. We weren’t sure they would all be Lagoans, if you take my meaning.”

  Pinhiero’s glower grew darker than ever. Before he could say anything more, a conductor came through the caravan cars, calling, “Yliharma! Everybody out for Yliharma!” Ilmarinen laughed and clapped his hands. He’d managed to annoy the Lagoan grandmaster all the way up from Kajaani, and he’d got the last word. As the ley-line caravan slowed to a stop, he grabbed his carpetbag and hurried for the door.

  The fields around Skarnu’s castle were golden with ripening grain. Some of the leaves on the trees were going golden, too, with others fiery orange, still others red as blood. From the battlements, he could see a long way. A mild breeze stirred his hair. Turning to Merkela, he said, “It’s beautiful.”

  His wife nodded. “Aye, it is.” Her nails clicked as she drummed her fingers on the gray stone. “It’s harvest time. I ought to be working, not standing around here like somebody who doesn’t know a sickle from a scythe.”

  “When I walked onto your farm five years ago, I didn’t know a sickle from a scythe,” Skarnu reminded her.

  “No, but you learned, and you worked,” Merkela said. “I’m not working now, and I wish I were.”

  “You’d make a lot of farmers nervous if you did,” Skarnu said.

  “I know,” Merkela said unhappily. “I’ve seen that. All the fairy tales talk about how wonderful it is for the peasant girl to marry the prince and turn into a noblewoman. And most of it is, but not all of it, because I can’t do what I’ve been doing all my life, and I miss it.”

  Skarnu had never worked so hard in his life as when bringing in the harvest. He didn’t miss it at all. Saying that would only annoy Merkela, so he kept quiet. She probably knew him well enough to understand it was in his thoughts. Valmiru came up on the battlements just then. Skarnu turned to the butler with something like relief. “Aye? What is it?”

  “A woman with a petition to present to you, your Excellency,” Valmiru replied.

  “A petition? Really? A written one?” Skarnu asked, and Valmiru nodded. Skarnu scratched his head. “Isn’t that interes
ting? Most of the time, people here just tell me what they’ve got in mind. They don’t go to the trouble of writing it out.” If nothing else had, that by itself would have told him he was in the country.

  He went down the spiral staircase. The woman, plainly a peasant, waited nervously. She dropped him an awkward curtsy. “Good day, your Excellency,” she said, and thrust a leaf of paper at him.

  She would have retreated then, but he held up a hand to stop her. “Wait,” he added. Wait she did, fright and weariness warring on her sun-roughened face. He read through the petition, which was written in a semiliterate scrawl and phrased as a peasant imagined a solicitor would put things: full of fancy curlicues that added nothing to the meaning and sometimes took away. “Let’s see if I have this straight,” he said when he was done. “You’re the widow named Latsisa?”

  She nodded. “That’s me, your Excellency.” She bit her lip, looking as if she regretted ever coming to him.

  “And you have a bastard boy you want me to declare legitimate?” Skarnu went on.

  “That’s right,” Latsisa said, looking down at her scuffed shoes and flushing.

  “How old is this boy?” Skarnu asked. “You don’t say here.”

  Latsisa stared down at her shoes once more. In a low voice, she answered, “He’s almost three, your Excellency.”

  “Is he?” Skarnu said, and the peasant woman nodded miserably. Skarnu sighed. Sometimes being a marquis wasn’t much fun. He asked the question he had to ask: “And does he have hair that’s as much red as it is blond?” Latsisa nodded again, her face a mask of pain. As gently as he could, Skarnu said, “Then why do you think I would be willing to make him legitimate?”

  “Because he’s all I have,” Latsisa blurted. She seemed to take courage from that, for she continued, “It’s not his fault what color his hair is, is it? He didn’t do anything wrong. And I didn’t do anything against the law, either. All right-I slept with an Algarvian. He was nicer to me than any Valmieran man ever was. I’m not even sorry, except that he had to go. But it wasn’t against the law, not then. And it’s not like I was the only one, either-is it, your Excellency?”

  She knows about Krasta, Skarnu thought, and had to work to hold his face steady. But her other arguments weren’t to be despised, either. He asked, “Didn’t you care that you were sleeping with an enemy, an invader?”

  Latsisa shook her head. “All I cared about was that we loved each other.” Her chin came up in defiance. “We did, by the powers above. And if he ever came back here, I’d marry him in a minute. So that’s why I want the boy made legitimate, your Excellency. He’s what I’ve got.”

  “Even if he were made legitimate, he won’t have an easy time growing up, not looking the way he does,” Skarnu said.

  “I know that,” Latsisa answered. “But he’ll have a harder time yet if he’s a bastard. And you still haven’t told me why it’d be against the law to make him all proper just on account of his father had red hair.” Skarnu knew why he didn’t want to do it. But the peasant woman was right; that was different from finding a reason in law why an Algarvian’s bastard should be treated differently from any other. No sooner had that thought crossed his mind than Latsisa said, “Besides, the war’s supposed to be over and done with now, isn’t it?”

  She was doing her best not to make things easy. Skarnu tried another tack: “What would your neighbors think?”

  “One of my neighbors is Count Enkuru’s bastard,” Latsisa replied. “The count forced his mother, too, powers below eat him. He looks just like Enkuru, my neighbor does, but the count never gave his mother a copper for what he’d done. He was a noble, and his shit didn’t stink-begging your pardon, your Excellency.”

  “That’s all right,” Skarnu said abstractedly. Aye, there were times when this job wasn’t easy at all.

  Latsisa went on, “So my neighbors don’t get so up in arms about bastards as a lot of people would, maybe. Sometimes they happen, that’s all, and a person who’s a bastard doesn’t usually act any different than anybody else.”

  Finding that ley line blocked, Skarnu went down another. He hardened his voice and said, “You do know that I was a Valmieran officer, don’t you? And that my wife and I were both in the underground after the kingdom surrendered?”

  “Aye, I know that. Everybody knows that-and what happened to your wife’s first husband,” Latsisa said. “But I thought I’d come and ask you anyways, on account of you’d got a name for judging fair.” Her mouth twisted. “Maybe I heard that last wrong. Sure seems like I did.”

  Skarnu’s cheeks and ears heated. “If you’re going to ask me to set aside the whole war, you’re asking a lot.”

  “War shouldn’t have anything to do with it,” Latsisa said. “I just want to make my little boy legitimate. Wouldn’t have any trouble doing that if he was a blond like me, would I?”

  I tried to get Merkela not to hate little Gainibu. I didn‘t have any luck, even though he’s my nephew-maybe especially because he’s my nephew, Skarnu thought. Now here’s a half-Algarvian bastard I’ve never even seen, and I’m ready to hate him, or at least to treat him differently from the way I would if he were all Valmieran.

  How many bastards had Valmieran women borne to Algarvian soldiers during the occupation? Thousands, surely-tens of thousands. Right now, he supposed, Algarvian women were lying down with occupying soldiers; they’d raise up another crop of bastards before long.

  But that had nothing to do with the questions at hand. Would Latsisa have had any trouble legitimating a blond bastard boy? Skarnu knew she wouldn’t; it would be a routine procedure, unless she had legitimate children who raised a fuss. Should her son’s case be any different in law just because he had sandy hair? Try as he would, Skarnu could see no legal justification for denying the petition.

  He ground his teeth; there was nothing he more wanted to see. But he couldn’t find it. The peasant woman had argued him down. And why not? he gibed at himself. Merkela does it all the time. Thinking about Merkela made him wonder how he would explain himself to her. He didn’t care to contemplate that right now. He took the petition, scrawled I approve on it, and signed his name. Then he thrust it at Latsisa. “Here.”

  Her jaw fell. Her eyes widened. “Thank you, your Excellency,” she whispered. “I didn’t think you would.”

  Skarnu hadn’t thought he would, either. “I didn’t do it for you,” he said harshly. “I did it for honesty’s sake. Take that, do whatever you need to do to register it with the clerks, and get out of my sight.”

  “Aye, your Excellency.” The peasant woman didn’t take offense. She dropped Skarnu another unpracticed curtsy. “What they say is true-you are a just man.”

  “I hope so,” Skarnu said. “I do try.” He gestured brusquely toward the door to the audience chamber. Latsisa, quite sensibly, left in a hurry. Skarnu sat where he was for a while, wondering if he’d done the right thing. At last, he decided he had, however little he liked it. That fortified him. He had the feeling he’d need fortifying.

  Later that afternoon, Merkela asked, “What did the woman want?”

  He tensed. “She had a bastard she wanted me to declare legitimate.”

  “A bastard?” Merkela was quick on the uptake. “An Algarvian’s bastard?” Skarnu nodded. She said, “I hope you sent her away with a flea in her ear, the miserable, stinking whore.”

  “No,” Skarnu said, and braced himself for trouble. “It’s not the little boy’s fault who his father was. If his father were Valmieran, there wouldn’t be any question about making him legitimate. And so I did.”

  Merkek gave him a poisonous glare. “That’s terrible,” she said. “It’s not just the boy. You might as well have told the woman it was all right for her to play the slut during the occupation.”

  “Even a whore can make a child legitimate,” Skarnu said. “I know that for a fact. It hasn’t got anything to do with whether she’s good or not, only with whether the child is hers and whether anyone else in the
family makes a stink. Here, there isn’t anyone else in the family but her and the boy-she was a widow before she took up with the Algarvian.”

  “Did the redheads blaze her husband before she spread her legs for this one?” Merkela asked.

  “I don’t know the answer to that,” Skarnu said. “I don’t think so.”

  “Disgraceful,” Merkela said.

  “Is it? I don’t think so,” Skarnu said. “There are thousands of these bastards all over Valmiera. There’s one in this castle-Bauska’s little girl, remember? What are we going to do? Hate all of them for as long as they live? That’s asking for trouble. The war is over. We can start to show a little pity.”

  “You can, maybe.” No, Merkela had no yield in her.

  With a sigh, Skarnu said, “I have to do things here as I think right. I would have caused more trouble by telling her no than I did by saying aye.”

  “I still think you made a mistake,” Merkela told him. That was milder than most of the things she might have said. And she pushed it no further. Maybe, a tiny bit at a time, she was mellowing. If she was, she would never admit it. And Skarnu knew better than to say anything about it, which would only put her back up. Over these past five years, he’d learned to get along with his hot-tempered, stubborn wife. And if that doesn’t suit me for running a marquisate, powers below eat me if I know what would. He gave Merkela a kiss, and wouldn’t answer when she asked him why.

  When Ealstan came out of the shop where he and his father had been casting accounts, he looked around in surprise. “School was right over there,” he said, pointing down the street. “I didn’t even notice when we got here this morning- my wits must be wandering.”

  Hestan looked over to the ruins of the academy-the Algarvians had used it for a strongpoint. “Not much left there, so I’m not surprised you didn’t notice. And your wits were working fine. If they weren’t, how did you catch that depreciation allowance I missed?”

  “Oh. That.” Ealstan shrugged. “I did plenty of those, casting accounts for Pybba-he was a born thief, and he had me run them all the time, whether he deserved them or not.” He shook his head in memory half fond, half furious. The pottery magnate turned underground leader had never done things by halves.