Rulers of the Darkness d-4

by Harry Turtledove

  But lovemaking never resolved things; it only put them off for a while. After they'd gasped their way to completion, Pekka knew Leino wouldn't be trying yet another round any time soon. That meant his thought would turn elsewhere. And sure enough, he said, "You must be working on something truly big, if the Algarvians used that spell against you."

  "Something, aye." Pekka still didn't want to talk about it.

  Leino said, "They tried to use that same spell to drive us off the austral continent, you know." Pekka nodded; she'd heard something about that. Her husband continued, "It went wrong. It went horribly wrong, and came down on their heads instead of ours and the Lagoans'. Magecraft that works fine here or on the mainland of Derlavai has a way of going wrong down in the land of the Ice People."

  "That's what they say." Pekka nodded again, then laughed. "Whoever they are." Because she found worrying about her husband's problems easier than worrying about her own, she quickly found another question to ask: "Will that cause trouble for Habakkuk?"

  "It shouldn't." Leino used an extravagant gesture. "Habakkuk is… something else." He chuckled ruefully. "I can't talk about it, any more than you can say much about whatever it is you're working on."

  "I know. I understand." Pekka wanted to tell him everything. Just for a moment, she wished Fernao were there so she could talk shop. Then she shook her hair, and had to brush hair out of her eyes. He was part of what she'd come here, come away from the project, to escape.

  "I love you," Leino said, and Pekka reminded herself he'd come a long way to escape hard, dangerous work, too. She clung to him as he clung to her. They didn't make love again; Leino wasn't so young that he could do it whenever he wanted. But the feel of him pressed against her was about as good as the real thing for Pekka, especially when they'd been apart so long. She hoped holding her was as good for him, but had her doubts. Men were different that way.

  The next morning, Uto woke both of them at an improbably early hour. With Kajaani so far south, spring days lengthened quickly: the sun rose early and set late. Even so, Pekka's sleep-gummed eyelids told just how beastly early it was. "You don't treat Aunt Elimaki this way, do you?" she asked, wishing either for tea, which she could get, or another couple of hours' sleep, which she wouldn't.

  "Of course not," her son said virtuously.

  That, as Pekka knew, might mean anything or nothing. "You'd better not," she warned. "Aunt Elimaki is going to have a baby of her own, and she needs all the sleep she can get."

  "She won't get it later, that's for sure." Leino sounded as sandbagged as Pekka.

  "All right, Mother. All right, Father." Uto, by contrast, might have been the soul of virtue. He patted Pekka on the arm. "Are you going to have another baby, too, Mother?"

  "I don't think so," Pekka answered. She and Leino smiled at each other; if she wasn't, it was in spite of last night's exertions. She yawned and sat up in bed, somewhat resigned to being awake. "What would the two of you like for breakfast?"

  "Anything," Leino said before his son could speak. "Almost anything at all. Down in the land of the Ice People, I counted for a good cook, if you can believe it."

  "I'm so sorry for you," Pekka exclaimed. The horror of that idea was plenty to rout her out of bed and into the kitchen. She got the teakettle going, then folded fat, fresh shrimp into an omelette. Along with fried mashed turnips and bread and butter (olive oil was an imported luxury in Kuusamo, not a staple), it made a fine breakfast.

  Uto inhaled everything. He wasn't picky in what he ate; he chose other ways to make himself difficult. Leino ate hugely, too, and put down cup after cup of tea. "That's so much better," he said.

  "Will you be able to sleep at all tonight?" Pekka asked him.

  He nodded and opened his eyes very wide, which made Uto laugh. "Oh, aye," he said. "I won't have any trouble. I may have to eat seal every now and again down in the land of the Ice People, but there's plenty of tea. The Lagoans drink even more of it than we do. They say it lubricates the brain, and I can't argue with them."

  "Seal?" Uto sounded horrified, but looked interested. "What does it taste like?"

  "Greasy. Fishy," his father answered. "We eat camel, too, sometimes. That's better, at least for a while. It sort of tastes like beef, but it's fatter meat. The Ice People live on camel and reindeer almost all the time."

  "Are they as ugly as everybody says?" Uto asked.

  "No," Leino said, which obviously disappointed his son. Then he added, "They're uglier," and everything was right with the world as far as Uto was concerned.

  "Hurry up and get ready for school," Pekka told him. He greeted that with moans and groans. Now that his parents were back in Kajaani, he wanted to spend as much time as he could with them. Pekka was inflexible. "You'll be back this afternoon, and you need to learn things. Besides, you're the one who got us up early." That produced as many more groans as she'd thought it would, but Uto, wearing a martyred expression, eventually went out the door and headed for school.

  "Privacy," Leino said when he was gone. "I'd almost forgotten what it means. There in the little sorcerers' colony east of Mizpah, everybody lives in everybody else's belt pouch all the time."

  "It's not quite so bad over in the Naantali district." Pekka started to laugh. "And now we've both said more than we should have."

  Leino nodded. He took keeping secrets seriously. His voice was thoughtful, musing, as he said, "The Naantali district, eh? Nothing but empty space in those parts- I can't think of anybody who'd want to go there or need to go there- which probably makes it perfect for whatever you're doing." He held up a hand. "I'm not asking any questions. And even if I did, I know you couldn't give me any answers."

  "That's right." Pekka sent him a challenging stare. "Well, now that we've got this privacy, what shall we do with it?"

  "Oh, maybe we'll think of something." Leino pulled his tunic off over his head.

  Pekka didn't know if either of them had been so ardent even on their honeymoon. They'd spent that at a small hostel in Priekule, and had alternated making love and sightseeing. Now they just had each other, and they were intent on making the most of it before they both had to return to the war.

  "I'm not quite so young as I used to be," Leino said at some point that morning when, after several days of horizontal exercises, he failed to rise to the occasion.

  "Don't worry about it," Pekka said. "You've done fine, believe me." Her body felt all aglow, so that it seemed they would hardly need the bedchamber lamp that evening.

  "I wasn't worried," Leino said. "The people who worry about things like that are the ones who think there's only one way to get from hither to yon. Mages know better- or if they don't, they ought to." With fingers and tongue, he showed her what he meant. He was right, too- that road worked as well as the other one.

  When Pekka's breathing and heartbeat had slowed to something close to normal, she said, "They talk about women wearing men out. This is the other way round." She ran a hand down his smooth chest- Kuusamans weren't a very hairy people. "Not that I'm complaining, mind you."

  "I hope not," Leino said. "This is like putting money in Olavin's bank." Elimaki's husband, these days, was keeping the finances of the Kuusaman army and navy straight, but Pekka understood what her own husband meant. He went on, "We don't get many chances now, so we have to make the most of them, put them away in our memory bank. They may not earn interest, but they're interesting."

  "That's one word," Pekka remarked. Leino's hands had started wandering again, too. But when one of them found its way between her legs, she said, "Wait a bit. I really have done everything I can right now. Let's see what I can do for you."

  She crouched beside him, her head bobbing up and down. Rather sooner than she'd expected, she pulled away, taking a couple of deep breaths and choking a little. "Well, well," Leino said. "I didn't think I had it in me."

  "You certainly did." Pekka went over to the sink and washed off her chin.

  "You'll have to excuse me now," her husban
d said, curling up on the bed. "I'm going to sleep for about a week." He offered a theatrical snore.

  It made Pekka smile, but it didn't convince her. "A likely story," she said. "You'll be feeling me up again before Uto gets home."

  "Who was just doing what to whom?" Leino asked, and Pekka had no good answer. He stretched out again, then said, "I love you, you know."

  "I love you, too," she said. "That's probably why we've been doing all this."

  "Can you think of a better reason?" Leino said. "This is a lot more fun than being lonely and jumping on the first halfway decent-looking person you find."

  "Aye," Pekka said, and wished Fernao hadn't chosen that moment to cross her mind again.

  ***

  Vanai poured out wine and listened to Ealstan pour out excitement. "He is! Pybba is, by the powers above," her husband said. "Sure as I'm sitting here, he's funneling money into things that hurt the Algarvians."

  "Good for him," Vanai said. "Do you want some sausage? It's the first time in a while the butcher had some that looked even halfway decent."

  "Sausage? Oh, aye." Ealstan's voice was far away; he'd heard what she said, but he hadn't paid much attention to it. His mind was on Pybba's accounts: "If he's fighting the Algarvians, maybe I'll finally get the chance to fight them, too. I mean, really fight them."

  "And maybe you'll get in trouble, too," Vanai said. "For all you know, his accounts are like a spiderweb, set up to catch somebody who's not quite as smart as he thinks he is." She put a length of sausage on Ealstan's plate and then set a hand on her own belly. "Please be careful."

  "Of course I'll be careful." But Ealstan didn't sound as if that were the first thing on his mind, or even the fourth or fifth. He sounded annoyed at Vanai for reminding him he might need to have a care.

  You're a man, sure enough, Vanai thought. You'll do whatever you please and then blame me if it doesn't work out the way you want. She sighed. "How is the sausage?" she asked.

  Ealstan suddenly seemed to notice what he'd been devouring for supper. "Oh! It's very good," he said. Vanai sighed again. As soon as Ealstan finished eating, he started going on about Pybba some more. Short of clouting him in the head with a rock, Vanai didn't know how to make him shut up. But when he declared, "It's practically my patriotic duty to see what's going on," she lost patience with him.

  "You are going to do this thing," she said. "I can tell you're going to do it, and you won't listen to me no matter what I say. But I am going to say this: don't go charging straight ahead, as if you had four legs and two big horns and no brains at all. If you do that, I have the bad feeling you'll disappear one day, and I'll never see you again."

  "Don't be silly," he answered, which really made her want to clout him in the head with a rock. But he went on, "I'm my father's son, after all. I don't go blindly charging into things."

  That held enough truth to give her pause, but not enough fully to reassure her. Ealstan was his father's son, but he was also a red-blooded Forthwegian. Vanai knew that without fully understanding it; Forthweg was her homeland, but she didn't love it the way Forthwegians did. Why should she? A good part of the overwhelming Forthwegian majority would have been just as well pleased if she and all the Kaunians in the kingdom disappeared. And now a lot of the Kaunians in the kingdom were disappearing, thanks to the Algarvians- and thanks to Forthwegians not sorry to see them go.

  Those thoughts flashed through her mind in a moment. She hardly missed a beat in answering, "I hope you don't. You'd better not."

  "I won't. Truly." Ealstan sounded perfectly confident. He also sounded perfectly blockheaded.

  Vanai couldn't tell him that. It wouldn't have made him pay attention to her, and would have made her angry. What she did say was, "Remember, you've got a lot to live for here at the flat."

  She wondered if she ought to pull off her tunic and skin out of her drawers. That would remind him of what he had to live for if nothing else did. Patriot or no, he was wild for lovemaking- a good deal wilder than she was at the moment, with pregnancy making her desire fitful. But she shook her head, as if he'd asked her to strip herself naked. She had too much pride, too much dignity, for that. She'd been Major Spinello's plaything. She wouldn't make herself anyone else's, not that way.

  Ealstan pointed to her. For a moment, she thought he was going to ask her to do what she'd just rejected. She took a deep breath: she was ready to scorch him. But he said, "Your sorcery's slipped. You need to set it right. You especially need to keep it strong now. Mezentio's men have been taking a demon of a lot of people out of the Kaunian quarter lately."

  "Oh." Vanai's anger evaporated. "All right. Thank you." She always kept the golden yarn and the dark brown in her handbag. She got them, twisted them together, and chanted the spell she'd devised. When she was done, she turned to Ealstan and said, "Is it good?"

  "It's fine." Ealstan's smile was suddenly shy. "I'm sorry you can't look like yourself- the way you're supposed to look, I mean- all the time. You're very pretty when you look like a Forthwegian- don't get me wrong- but I think you're beautiful when you look like a Kaunian. I always have, from the day I first saw you."

  "Have you?" Vanai said. Ealstan's nod was shy, too. As few things did, that little show of embarrassment reminded her she was a year older than he. He'd been fifteen when they first met in the oak wood between Oyngestun and Gromheort, his beard only darkening fuzz on his cheeks. He looked like a man now, and acted like a man… and he wanted to fight like a man. Vanai didn't know what to do about that. She feared she couldn't do anything about it.

  She let him make love to her when they went to bed. It made him happy, and that made her happy, though she didn't kindle. One thing, she thought as she drifted toward sleep, I don't need to worry about whether I'm going to have a baby. Now I know.

  Her spell had slipped again by the time she woke the next morning. She hastily repaired it while Ealstan ate barley porridge and gulped a morning cup of wine. As it had the night before, his smile reassured her. She could cast the spell with no one checking her, but she'd find out the hard way if she made a mistake.

  Ealstan gave her an absentminded kiss and hurried out the door. By the way he hurried, Vanai was sure he was heading to Pybba's pottery works, though he didn't say so. She shook her head. She'd done everything she could to keep him safe. He would have to do something for himself, too.

  She also had to go out, to the market square. While she'd kept her Kaunian looks, Ealstan had done the shopping. Getting out of the flat still seemed a miracle: so much so that she didn't mind lugging food back. Beans? Olives? Cabbages? So what? Just the chance to be out on the streets of Eoforwic, to see more than she could from her grimy window, made up for the work she had to do.

  The apothecary's shop where she'd almost been caught out as a Kaunian, where the proprietor had killed himself rather than letting the Algarvians try to torment answers out of him, was open again. UNDER NEW OWNERSHIP, a sign in one window said. NEW LOWER PRICES, cried another sign, a bigger one, in the other window. I might get medicines there, Vanai thought. I'd never trust this new owner, whoever he is, with anything more. He might be in the redheads' belt pouch.

  For all she knew, the new owner might be a relative of the dead apothecary. She still wouldn't trust him, and he still might be in the Algarvians' pay.

  She didn't trust the butcher, either, but for different reasons: suspicion that he called mutton lamb, that he put grain in his sausages when he swore he didn't, that his scales worked in his favor. Writers had complained about such tricks in the days of the Kaunian Empire. Brivibas, no doubt, could have cited half a dozen examples, with appropriate citations. Vanai bit her lip. Her grandfather wouldn't be citing any more classical authors. Half the distress she felt was at not feeling more distress now that he was dead.

  Marrow bones would flavor soup. The butcher said they were beef. They might have been horse or donkey. Vanai couldn't have proved otherwise; there, for once, the lie, if it was one, was reassuring. The g
izzards he sold her probably did come from chickens- they were too big to belong to crows or pigeons. "I wouldn't have had 'em by this afternoon," he told her.

  "I know that," she answered, and took them away.

  When she got out on the street, people were nudging one another and pointing. "Look at him," somebody said. "Who does he think he is?" somebody else, a woman, added. "What does he think he is?" another woman said.

  Vanai didn't want to look. She was too afraid of what she'd see: a Kaunian whose magic had run out, most likely. If the fellow had dyed hair, he wouldn't look exactly like a Kaunian, but he wouldn't look like a Forthwegian, either. Before long, the cry for Algarvian constables would go up.

  Horrid fascination didn't take long to turn Vanai's eyes in the direction of the pointing fingers. The man at whom people were pointing didn't look just like a Forthwegian, but he wasn't an obvious Kaunian, either. Halfbreed, Vanai thought. Eoforwic held more than the rest of Forthweg put together. Her hand flattened on her belly. She held one herself.

  Then she gasped, because she recognized the man. "Ethelhelm!"

  The name slipped from her lips almost by accident. In a moment, it was in everyone's mouth. And the singer and drummer grinned at the crowd that had been so hostile and now paused, uncertain, waiting to hear what he would say. "Hello, folks." His voice was relaxed, easy. "I often use a little magic so I can go out and about without people bothering me. It must've worn off. Can I give you a song to make up for startling you?"

  He'd told a great, thumping lie, and Vanai knew it. The redheads were hungry for Ethelhelm. But the crowd didn't know that. With one voice, they shouted, "Aye!" They might have mobbed an ordinary Kaunian or halfbreed whose luck had run out with his magic. Ethelhelm wasn't ordinary. He might have lost his magic, but he still had some luck.