“Powers above,” Krasta complained to Colonel Lurcanio. “You’d think the mansion would be big enough to shield me from the racket of a squalling brat, but it isn’t. Doesn’t she ever shut up?”
“She is in training to become a woman,” Krasta’s lover replied in Valmieran with only a slight trilling accent. She glared, which only made the Algarvian nobleman laugh. He said, “Perhaps we will go out to supper tonight. Then you will not have to listen to this noise that so distresses you.”
“Good,” Krasta said. “Anything to get away. And Bauska is just useless—useless, I tell you. If this is what having a baby does to a woman, I’m glad I haven’t had any.”
“Even so.” Lurcanio scratched at the new pink scar on his forehead, one of the souvenirs of the concealed egg that had burst at a Valmieran noble’s mansion. The redheads still hadn’t arrested anyone for that. Krasta wished they would. For one thing, the egg might have harmed her, too. For another, Lurcanio grew quite tediously dull when he tried to track the culprit, whoever he was.
“Where shall we go?” Krasta asked, trying to decide what she felt like eating.
“I had in mind the Imperial,” Lurcanio answered. “I’ve seen talk about that place in romances two hundred years old. It would be a shame not to get to know it while I am in Priekule.”
“All right,” Krasta said. “I’ve heard the service is slow there, though.” Normally, she hated anything that smacked of delay, but now she brightened. “So much the better. The longer I’m away from the baby, the better I’ll like it.”
“Babies are enjoyable—in moderation,” Lurcanio said.
Krasta thought babies were enjoyable, too—at a distance, preferably a distance of several miles. With the prospect of supper before her, her mind turned to more important things. “What shall I wear?” she murmured. She couldn’t make up her mind down here in Lurcanio’s office; she needed to see what was in her closet. Making her excuses to the Algarvian, she hurried back to her own wing of the mansion and upstairs to her bedchamber.
For a wonder, Malya wasn’t screeching her head off. That let Krasta go through her wardrobe in peace. But it didn’t make her any more decisive than she would have been otherwise. She had so many clothes, she needed help narrowing down her choices.
“Bauska!” she shouted. If the brat was taking a nap, Krasta’s serving woman could start earning her keep again. When Bauska didn’t come right away, Krasta called for her again, even louder.
Malya started to cry. Krasta cursed. Bauska came into her bedchamber a moment later, carrying her daughter and wearing a resentful expression. Reproach in her voice, she said, “She was asleep, milady.”
“If she was asleep, you should have come in here faster,” Krasta answered, a retort that made perfect sense to her. She glowered at Bauska. The serving woman was still doughy and fat, with a pale face marred by purple circles under her eyes. Malya woke her up all the time. Malya sometimes woke Krasta, too, which infuriated the marchioness.
“How may I serve you?” Bauska asked through clenched teeth. She rocked the baby back and forth in the cradle of her arms.
“Help me pick an outfit,” Krasta said. She’d given that order any number of times before. Bauska was efficient about obeying it. Once she’d got Krasta to choose a pair of dark green trousers, picking three tunics that went with them let her mistress decide which one she wanted: a coppery shade brighter than that of Lurcanio’s hair, which was going gray. As Bauska withdrew, Krasta pursued her with words: “There. That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
It was, in fact, easy enough that she could have done it herself. But what point to having servants if you didn’t use them?
When she came downstairs, Colonel Lurcanio beamed and kissed her hand. “Do you see?” he said. “You can, if you put your mind to it, look lovely even without making me wait.”
“I don’t want you to take me for granted,” Krasta answered. And that was true in ways she hoped Lurcanio didn’t fully grasp. If she began to bore him, all he had to do was crook a finger to get himself another mistress. That was how things were in occupied Valmiera these days. Of course, he might also crook his finger so if she angered him, a point that didn’t cross her mind.
He laughed now. “I may do many things,” he said, “but I would never be so rash as to do that. Let’s go.”
As always, Krasta missed the bright lights Priekule had shown before the war. Lurcanio’s driver, an Algarvian like his master, got lost a couple of times, and finally had to ask a patrolling Valmieran constable for directions to the Imperial. Even when he got there, Krasta wasn’t sure he had; the restaurant, like every other building in the capital, remained dark on the outside to make things difficult for Lagoan dragons.
The entry hall was dark, too. Only after a servitor closed the door did he open the black curtains at the other end of the hall. The sudden brilliance he revealed made Krasta’s eyes water, almost as if she’d looked up at the noonday sun.
Lurcanio blinked a couple of times, too. As a fawning waiter escorted Krasta and him to the table, he said, “Eateries with indifferent food keep things dark, so you don’t know exactly what you’re getting. The Imperial, now, the Imperial has confidence.”
“Yes, sir, we do,” the waiter said, drawing out Krasta’s chair so she could sit down. “I hope, sir, when your meal is done, you will be able to tell me our establishment deserves to have such confidence.”
“I hope so, too,” Lurcanio answered. “As a matter of fact, I had better be able to.” His smile had sharp edges, reminding the waiter who was occupier and who occupied. The fellow gulped, nodded, and fled.
When he returned, he brought menus and a list of potables. Krasta chose a dark ale, Lurcanio wine from the Marquisate of Rivaroli. “An excellent selection, sir,” the waiter said.
“I think so,” Lurcanio said. “Now that Algarve has taken Rivaroli back from Valmiera, the least I can do is take a bottle of her wine.” That sent the waiter away in a hurry again. Krasta stared across the table in some annoyance; she’d been ready to order supper, too, and now she couldn’t.
She looked around the Imperial. More than half of the men eating supper were Algarvians. The blond men with them had the sleek look of those who’d done well for themselves since Valmiera fell to King Mezentio’s men. Their yellow-haired lady friends were almost as elegant, almost as lovely, as those who accompanied the redheads.
Idly, Lurcanio asked, “Does the name Pavilosta mean anything to you?”
“Pavilosta?” Krasta shook her head. “It sounds like it ought to be a town. Is it? Out in the provinces somewhere, I suppose. Who cares where?” As far as she was concerned, the civilized world ended a few miles outside of Priekule. Oh, it had extensions in fashionable resorts, but she was certain Pavilosta wasn’t among them. She would have known more about it if it were.
“Aye, out in the provinces,” Lurcanio said. “You would not by any chance have got a letter from there lately?”
“Powers above, no!” Krasta exclaimed. She wasn’t clever in most senses of the word, but she did have a certain shrewdness to her. Pointing at her companion, she went on, “And if I had, you’d know about it before I did.”
Lurcanio chuckled. “Well, I hope I would, but you never can tell.”
He might have said more, but the waiter came back with his wine and Krasta’s ale. This time, Krasta got to order. She chose the pork chop stuffed with crayfish meat. “Ah, you’ll enjoy that, milady,” the waiter said. He turned to Lurcanio and dipped his head. “And for you, sir?”
“Roast chicken—dark meat, not white,” Lurcanio answered. “Very simple—just brush it with olive oil, garlic, and pepper. All the rich things you Valmierans eat, I marvel that you’re not round as footballs.”
“We’ll need a little time to prepare it that way, sir,” the waiter warned. Lurcanio nodded in acquiescence. The waiter departed once more.
“If you come to a place like this, you shouldn’t be simple,” Krasta said. S
implicity, to her mind, was anything but a virtue.
Lurcanio had different ideas. “Done well, simplicity makes for the highest art,” he said. Krasta shook her head again. No, that wasn’t how she looked at the world. With a whimsical shrug, Lurcanio changed the subject: “Shall we return to the uninteresting village of Pavilosta?”
“Why, if it’s so uninteresting?” Krasta asked, sipping her ale. “Let’s talk about interesting things instead. How many drops of poppy juice do you suppose I’d have to give Bauska’s little bastard to make her stop yowling so much?”
“I am a good many things, but an apothecary I am not,” Lurcanio replied. “You might silence the baby for good if you gave it too much. I do not think this a good idea.”
“That’s because you don’t have to listen to it—except when you’re up in my bedchamber, that is,” Krasta said. “When you’re over in the west wing, you probably don’t even know when it’s pitching a fit.”
Instead of answering that, Lurcanio made a steeple of his fingertips. “If you brother the marquis were still alive, do you think he would have done his best to reach you and let you know his situation?”
“Skarnu?” Krasta raised an eyebrow. She didn’t think of her brother much these days—what point, when he hadn’t come home from Valmiera’s debacle? “Aye, I think so. I’m sure of it, in fact.”
Lurcanio eyed her, not as a man eyes a woman but more like a cat eyeing a mouse. She glared at him; she didn’t care for that. More often than not, he ignored her glares. This time, he looked away. “It could be,” he said at last. “The investigators in those parts do not know everything there is to know. They’ve proved that often enough—too often, in fact.”
“What are you talking about?” Krasta asked crossly.
“Nothing,” Lurcanio answered with another fine Algarvian shrug. “It might have been something, but it turns out to be nothing.” He sipped the golden wine he’d ordered, then nodded solemn approval.
“I’ll tell you what,” Krasta said. “If I ever get a letter from my brother—or from anyone else in this Pavilosta-in-the-wilderness place—you’ll be the first to know about it.”
“Oh, I expect I will, my dear—you said so yourself,” the Algarvian colonel answered with a laugh. Krasta took offense at its tone. They might have squabbled some more, but the waiter chose that moment to bring their suppers on a tray. Not even Krasta felt like quarreling when faced with that lovely food. And Lurcanio, having tasted his chicken, said, “Aye, simplicity is best.” He beamed at Krasta. “You prove that every day, my dear.” She smiled back, taking it for a compliment.
Pekka sat in her Kajaani City College office staring up at the ceiling, staring up through the ceiling. After a long stretch where the theoretical sorcerer scarcely moved, she bent to the paper in front of her and scribbled two quick lines and then, after a moment, another. A smile chased the abstracted expression she had worn from her broad, highcheekboned face.
This is real sorcery, she thought. The other part, the part that goes on in the laboratory, that hardly matters. Without this, laboratory experiments would be nothing but guesswork.
Plenty of mages would have disagreed with her. That bothered her not at all. Her husband was one of those mages. That bothered her only a little. Leino was good at what he did. And I, by the powers above, am good at what I do, too, Pekka thought.
Through her open window, she heard a mason’s trowel scraping across mortar as he set bricks in place to repair a wall damaged in a laboratory accident. That was all most people knew about what had happened here a few weeks before. Pekka devoutly hoped it was all the Algarvians knew about what had happened here. She, though, she knew better.
After looking up at the ceiling a while longer, she wrote another line and slowly nodded. One step at a time, she and Siuntio and Ilmarinen were learning more about the energy that lay at the heart of the relationship between the laws of contagion and similarity. The hole in the wall the mason was repairing was one of the lessons the master mages hadn’t learned quite so well as they thought they had.
“If we figure out how to release the energy where and when we need it, we can shake the world,” Pekka murmured.
Sometimes, thinking about what they might do terrified her and made her wish they’d never started down this ley line. But whenever she thought about what Mezentio’s wizards had done first against Unkerlant and then to Yliharma, the capital of her beloved Kuusamo, she hardened her heart. The Algarvians hadn’t needed the new sorcery to shake the world. Old-fashioned sorcery on a large and bloodthirsty scale had been plenty for that.
We won’t slaughter people to get what we want, Pekka thought. We won’t, no matter what. I would sooner see Kuusamo plunge into the Bothnian Ocean. And with this new sorcery, we won’t have to.
Kuusamo wouldn’t have to, if Pekka and her colleagues could gain the understanding they needed. If they didn’t, the land of the Seven Princes was liable to plunge into the sea. Pekka stared down at her latest sheet of calculations. If she couldn’t come up with answers fast enough . . . She’d never imagined that sort of pressure.
When someone knocked on the office door, she jumped in surprise. It was still light outside, but it would stay light outside the whole day through, or almost. Kajaani lay so far south, it made the most of summer.
Pekka opened the door. There stood Leino. “Another day done,” her husband said. He worked in neat chunks of time, not as mood and inspiration struck him.
“Let me pack up my things,” Pekka said. She didn’t leave calculations lying around the office, as she had in safer, happier, more innocent times.
“How’s it going?” Leino asked as they walked across the campus toward the caravan stop where they’d board the car that would take them close to their home.
“Pretty well,” Pekka answered. She gave her husband a wry grin. “I always seem to do my best thinking just before you come and get me.” The breeze, smelling of the sea, blew a lock of her coarse black hair across her face. She flipped it back with a toss of the head.
“Aye, that’s the way of it,” Leino agreed. “I hope I didn’t knock right in the middle of an inspiration, the way I have a few times.”
“No, it wasn’t too bad,” she said. “I’d just written something down, so I have a fair notion of where I ought to be going when I pick up in the morning.” She sighed. “Now I have to hope the ley line I’m traveling actually leads somewhere.”
“I don’t think you need to worry about that,” Leino said. “If it led anywhere more important, dear Professor Heikki would have to worry about a whole new laboratory wing, not just a chunk of wall.”
“Don’t say that.” Pekka looked around anxiously, though none of the other students and scholars on the walks was paying any attention to her husband and her. “Anyway, it’s not so much what we’re doing as controlling what we’re doing that’s turning into the biggest problem—aside from the department chairman, of course. And even she wouldn’t be so bad if she’d just leave me alone.”
“You’ll manage.” Leino sounded more confident than Pekka felt. A fair-sized crowd of people was waiting at the caravan stop. He fell silent. He didn’t worry about spilling secrets quite so much as she did, but he was no blabbermouth.
Somebody at the stop was waving a news sheet and exclaiming about what a splendid job Kuusaman dragons were doing against the Algarvians down in the land of the Ice People. “There’s good news,” Pekka said.
“Aye—for now,” Leino replied. “But if we poke the Algarvians down there, what will they do? Send more men across the Narrow Sea, most likely—they can do it easier than we can.” He paused. “Of course, everybody they send to the austral continent is somebody they can’t use against the Unkerlanters, so that might not be so bad after all.”
“Then again, it might,” Pekka said. “I know Swemmel’s an ally these days, but we’re mad if we fall in love with him. The only reason he’s better than Mezentio is that he wasn’t the one who started sla
ughtering people to make his magic stronger. But he didn’t wait very long before he started doing it, too, did he?”
“If he had waited, Cottbus probably would have fallen,” Leino said, and held up a hand before his wife could snap at him. “I know, he’s no great bargain. But we’d be worse off if the Algarvians weren’t fighting him, too, and you can’t tell me that isn’t so.”
Since Pekka, however much she wished she could, truly couldn’t tell him that, she pointed down the ley line and said, “Here comes the caravan.”
“I hope we’ll be able to get seats and not have to wait for the next one,” Leino said.
As things turned out, Pekka got a seat. Her husband stood beside her, hanging onto the overhead rail, till a good many people got out at the downtown stops and not so many came aboard. Then he sat down beside her. They rode together as the caravan glided along the energy line of the world’s grid to their stop. When they got out, they climbed the hill that led up to their house hand in hand.
Before they got home, they stopped next door to pick up their son from Elimaki. “And how was Uto today?” Pekka asked her sister.
“Not so bad,” Elimaki answered, which, given Uto, wasn’t the smallest praise she might have offered.
“Have you heard from Olavin lately?” Leino asked. Elimaki’s banker husband had gone into the service of the Seven Princes, to keep the army’s finances running smoothly.
“Aye—I got a letter from him in the afternoon post,” Elimaki said. “He’s complaining about the food, and he says they’re trying to work him to death.” She laughed a little. “You know Olavin. If he said everything was fine, I’d think someone had ensorceled him.”
Pekka took her son’s hand. “Come on, let’s get you home. I’m going to give you a bath after supper.” That produced as many piteous howls and groans and grimaces as she’d expected. Indifferent to all of them, she gave her sister relief from Uto and took charge of him herself.
“What’s for supper tonight?” Leino asked as they went into the house.
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