Turtledove, Harry - Darkness 04 - Rulers Of The Darkness

by Rulers of the Darkness (lit)

  Sometimes the mages would stay in the dining hall after supper, arguing about what they had done or what they wanted to do or simply chatting. Not tonight. They drifted apart and went upstairs to their chambers as if sick of one another's company. There were times when Pekka was sick of her comrades' company, most often of Ilmarinen's, then of Fernao's, and occasionally even of Siuntio's. Tonight wasn't one of those angry times. She just didn't want to talk to anyone.

  Instead, she worked on two letters side by side. One was for her husband, the other for her son. Leino would be able to read his own, of course. Her sister Elimaki, who was taking care of Uto, would surely read aloud most of the one written to him, even though he was learning his letters.

  The letter to Uto went well. Pekka had no trouble writing the things any mother should say to her son. Those were easy, and flowed from her pen as easily as they flowed from her heart. She loved him, she missed him, she hoped he was being a good little boy (with Uto, often a forlorn hope). The words, the thoughts, were simple and straightforward and true.

  Writing to Leino was harder. She loved him and missed him, too, missed him with an ache that sometimes made her empty bed seem the loneliest place in the world. Those things were easy enough to say, even though she knew other eyes than his would also see them: functionaries serving the Seven Princes studied all outgoing correspondence to make sure no secrets were revealed.

  But she wanted to tell her husband more. She couldn't even name the mages with whom she was working, for fear that knowledge would fall into the Algarvians' hands and give them clues they shouldn't have. She had to talk about personalities in indirect terms, a surprisingly difficult exercise. She had to talk about the work in which they were engaged in even more indirect terms. She hadn't been able to tell Leino all that much about it even when they'd been together. He hadn't asked, either. He'd known when silence was important, and respected the need for it.

  We've had simply appalling weather lately, she wrote. If it were better, we could do more. That seemed safe enough. Most of Kuusamo had appalling weather through most of the winter. Hearing about it wouldn't tell an Algarvian spy where she was. And bad weather could interfere with any number of things, not all of them things in which a spy would be interested.

  I hope to be able to see you before long. She'd been told she might be able to leave for a little while in the not too indefinite future. But even if she did manage to get away, could Leino escape his training as a proper military mage at the same time? She thought he should have stayed in a sorcerous laboratory, improving the weapons Kuusaman soldiers would take into battle. But the Seven Princes thought otherwise, and their will counted for more than hers.

  Sighing, she stared down at the page. She wanted to tear it up and throw the pieces in the wastebasket. She had to be able to do better than the words she'd

  put down, the words that seemed so flat, so useless, even so stupid. What would Leino think when he saw them? That he'd married a halfwit?

  He'll understand, she thought. I'm sure he's learning plenty of things he can't tell me, too. Most of her believed that. Just enough had doubts, though, to leave all of her upset and worried.

  She jumped when someone knocked on the door. Springing away from her letters was something of a relief. Even arguing abstruse theoretical calculations with Ilmarinen seemed more appealing than trying to say things she couldn't say without having them cut out of her letter before Leino ever saw it.

  But when she opened the door, she found Fernao standing there, not Ilmarinen. The Lagoan mage leaned on his stick and had his crutch stuck under his other arm. "I hope I am not disturbing you," he said in careful classical Kaunian.

  "Not even a little bit," Pekka said in Kuusaman. She started to repeat that in the scholarly tongue, but Fernao's nod showed he'd followed her. "Come in," she went on, in Kaunian now. "Sit down. What can I do for you?"

  "I thank you," he said, and made his slow way into her chamber. She took a couple of steps back, not only to get out of his way but to keep him from looming over her quite so much: Lagoans were almost uncouthly tall.

  Maybe Fernao sensed what she felt, for he sank onto one of the stools in the room. Or maybe he's just glad to get off his feet, Pekka thought. Had she been injured as Fernao was, she knew she would have been. She turned the chair on which she'd been sitting to write away from the desk. "Shall I make you some tea?" she asked. She couldn't be much of a hostess here, but she could do that.

  Fernao shook his head. "No, thank you," he said. "If you do not mind, I can talk with you without thinking I am once more a student bearding a professor in his den."

  Pekka laughed. "I often have that feeling myself around Siuntio and Ilmarinen. I think even the Grandmaster of your kingdom's Guild of Mages would have it around them."

  "Grandmaster Pinhiero is not the most potent mage ever to come out of our universities," Fernao said, "but he would speak his mind to anyone, even to King Swemmel of Unkerlant."

  Lagoans had always had a reputation for speaking their minds, regardless of whether doing so was a good idea. Pekka asked, "Would that make Grandmaster Pinhiero a hero or a fool?"

  "Without a doubt," Fernao answered. Pekka chewed on that for a little while before deciding it was another joke and laughing again. Fernao continued, "Every time I see how far you Kuusamans have come, it amazes me."

  "Why is that?" Pekka knew her tone was tart, but couldn't help it. "Because you Lagoans do not think Kuusamo worth noticing at all most of the time?"

  "That probably has something to do with it," he said, which caught her by surprise. "We did notice you when it came to declare war against Algarve-I will say that. We would have done it sooner had we not feared you might take Mezentio's side and assail us from behind."

  "Ah." Pekka found herself nodding. "Aye, I knew people who wanted to do exactly that." She remembered a party at Elimaki's house. Some of the friends of Elimaki's husband, Olavin the banker, had been eager to take on Lagoas. Olavin

  was serving the Seven Princes these days. Pekka suspected most of those friends were doing the same thing.

  "Did you?" Fernao said, and Pekka nodded again. He shrugged. "Well, I can hardly say I am surprised. It would have been... unfortunate had that happened, though." Even as Pekka wondered how he meant the word, he explained: "Unfortunate for Lagoas, unfortunate for the whole world."

  "Aye, you are likely to be right." Pekka glanced over her shoulder at the letters to Leino and Uto, then back to Fernao. "May I ask you something?"

  As if he were a great noble, he inclined his head to her. "Of course."

  "How do you stand it here, cut off not just from your family but from your kingdom as well?"

  Fernao said, "For one thing, I have not got much in the way of family: no wife, no children, and I am not what you would call close to either of my sisters. They never have understood what being a mage means. And, for another, the work we are doing here matters. It matters so much, or may matter so much, I would sooner be here than anywhere else."

  That was a more thoughtful answer than Pekka had expected. She wondered how long Fernao had been waiting for someone to ask a question like hers. Quite a while, she guessed, which might also be a measure of his loneliness. "Why have you not got a wife?" she asked, and then, realizing she might have gone too far, she quickly added, "You need not answer that."

  But the Lagoan didn't take offense. Instead, he started to laugh. "Not because I would rather have a pretty boy, if that is what you mean," he said. "I like women fine, thank you very much. But I have never found one I liked enough and respected enough to want to marry her." After a moment, he held up his hand. "I take it back. I have found a couple like that, but they were already other men's wives."

  "Oh," Pekka said, and then, half a beat slower than she might have, "Aye, I can see how that would be hard." Was he looking at her? She didn't look over at him, not for a little while. She didn't want to know.

  "You have things you were doing, I see." Awkwardly
, Fernao levered himsel f to his feet. "I shall not keep you. May you have a pleasant evening." He made his slow way to the door.

  "And you," Pekka said. She had no trouble looking at his back. But, when he had gone, she found she couldn't continue the letter to Leino. She put it aside, hoping she'd have more luck with it in the morning.

  ***

  Ealstan enjoyed walking through the streets of Eoforwic much more these days than he had a few weeks before. True, the Algarvians still occupied what had been the capital of Forthweg. True, King Penda still remained in exile in Lagoas. True, a Kaunian whose sorcerous disguise as a Forthwegian was penetrated still had dreadful things happen to him. And yet...

  SULINGEN was scrawled in chalk or charcoal or whitewash or paint on one or two walls or fences in almost every block. Up till now, a lot of Forthwegians had been sullenly resigned to Algarvian occupation. King Mezentio's men looked like winning the war; most people-most people who weren't Kaunians, anyhow-had got on with their lives as best they could in spite of that ugly weight hanging over

  them. Now, even though the Algarvians still held every inch of their kingdom, some of them didn't.

  A couple of Algarvian constables strode past Ealstan. Their height and red hair separated them from the Forthwegians their kingdom had overcome. So did the pleated kilts they wore. And so did their swagger. No matter what had happened to their countrymen down in Sulingen, they showed no dismay.

  But a Forthwegian behind Ealstan shouted, "Get out of here, you whoresons! Go home!"

  Both Algarvians jerked as if stuck with pins. The shout had been in Forthwegian, but they'd understood. They whirled, one grabbing for his club, the other for his stick. For a dreadful moment, Ealstan thought they thought he'd yelled. Then, to his vast relief, he saw they were looking past him, not at him. One of them pointed toward a Forthwegian whose black beard was streaked with gray. They both strode purposefully by Ealstan and toward the older man. He stared this way and that, as if wondering whether flight or holding still was more dangerous.

  Before he had to find an answer, someone from farther up the street-someone behind the constables now, someone they couldn't see-cried out, "Aye, bugger off!"

  Again, the Algarvians spun. Again, they hurried past Ealstan. Again, they seized no one, for more insults rained down on them whenever they turned their backs. Algarvians often had tempers that burst like eggs. These redheads proved no exception. One of them shook his fist and shouted in pretty fluent Forthwegian: "You fornicating bigmouths, you yell much more, we treat you all like stinking Kaunians!" To leave no doubt about what he meant, his partner stuck his chin in the air and drew a forefinger across his throat.

  "Shame!" Ealstan yelled. That might have got him into trouble, but other Forthwegians were also yelling, and yelling worse things. As Ealstan knew too well, most of them cared little about what happened to the Kaunian minority in Forthweg, but they all cared about what happened to them.

  The constable who'd shouted the threat was the one who'd taken the stick off his belt. Cursing now in his own language, he blazed between a couple of Forthwegians standing not far from him. His beam missed them both, but bit into the wooden wall of the wineshop behind them. The wall began to smolder. The Forthwegians fled.

  So did everyone else on the street. Ealstan wasted no time ducking around the first corner he came to. He kept on running after that, too, the hem of his long wool tunic flapping just below his knees. "Those bastards have gone daft!" another man making himself scarce said.

  "What's daft about it?" Ealstan returned bitterly. "They probably get a bonus for anybody they blaze."

  When the other fellow didn't argue with him, he decided he'd made his point. Having made it, he went right on trotting. He didn't know whether a new round of rioting was about to flare up in Eoforwic, and didn't care to stay around to find out. That was the trouble with people feeling feisty: no matter how much trouble they stirred up, they still couldn't get rid of the Algarvians.

  "One of these days, though," Ealstan murmured. "Aye, one of these days..." He heard the longing in his own voice. Mezentio's men had been sitting on Forthweg for three and a half years now. He smiled when he passed another scribbled SULINGEN. Surely they couldn't hold down his kingdom forever.

  His own block of flats lay in a poor part of town, one already scarred again and again by rioting. He wouldn't have minded seeing another round of that if it meant throwing Mezentio's men out of Eoforwic. Since he didn't think it would, he was glad things seemed quiet.

  The stairwell smelled of stale cabbage and staler piss. He sighed as he trudged up toward his flat. He'd been used to better in Gromheort before he had to flee the eastern town and come to the capital. As a matter of fact, he could afford better here. But staying in a district where no one cared about you or what you were and no one expected you to be anybody much had advantages, too.

  He walked down the hall and knocked on the door to his flat-once, twice, once. A scraping noise came from inside as Vanai lifted the bar that held the door closed. His wife worked the latch and let him in. He gave her a hug and kissed her. The magecraft that hid her Kaunianity and made her look Forthwegian made her look astonishingly like a particular Forthwegian: his older sister, Conberge. He'd needed a while before that stopped bothering him.

  "We could stop using the coded knock, you know," he said. "Now that you don't look Kaunian anymore, there's not much point to it."

  "I still like to know it's you at the door," she answered.

  That made Ealstan smile. "All right," he said, and sniffed. "What smells good?"

  "Nothing very exciting," Vanai told him. "Just barley porridge with a little cheese and some of those dried mushrooms I got from the grocer the other day."

  "Must be the mushrooms," Ealstan said, which made Vanai smile and nod in turn: both Forthwegians and the Kaunian minority in Forthweg were mad for mushrooms. Ealstan reached out and stroked her hair. "You must be glad to be able to go to the grocer's yourself."

  "You have no idea," Vanai said. Ealstan couldn't argue with her. Until she no longer looked like what she was, she'd had to stay holed up inside the flat. Had an Algarvian spotted her on the street, or had a Forthwegian betrayed her to the redheads, she would have been taken off to the Kaunian district-and then, all too likely, shipped west so her life energy could help power the sorceries the Algarvians used in their war against Unkerlant.

  Ealstan went into the kitchen, pulled the stopper from a jar of wine, and filled two cups. He carried one of them back to Vanai and raised the other in salute. "To freedom!" he said.

  "Or something close to it, anyhow," Vanai answered, but she did drink to the toast.

  "Aye, something close to it," Ealstan agreed. "Maybe something getting closer, too." He told her how the Forthwegians had given the Algarvian constables a hard time.

  "Good!" she said. "I wish I'd been there." After a moment, the fierce smile slipped from her face. "Of course, if I'd been there looking the way I really do, they'd have been just as happy to throw rocks at me and yell, 'Dirty Kaunian!'

  "

  Her eyes held Ealstan's, as if challenging him to deny it. He looked away. He had to look away. The most he could do was mumble, "We're not all like that."

  Vanai's gaze softened. "Of course not. If you were like that, I'd be dead now. But too many Forthwegians are." She shrugged. "Nothing to be done about it, or nothing I can see. Come on. Supper should be ready."

  After supper, Ealstan read a book while Vanai cleaned the dishes and silverware. He'd brought a lot of books home while she was trapped in the flat-reading was almost the only thing she'd been able to do while he went out and cast accounts and got them enough money to keep going. He read them, too. Some-the classics he'd had to study in his academy in Gromheort-proved much more interesting when he read them because he wanted to than when they were forced down his throat.

  When Vanai came out of the kitchen, she sat down on the sofa beside him. She had a book waiting on the rickety
table in front of the sofa. They read side by side for a while in companionable silence. Presently, Ealstan slipped his arm over Vanai's shoulder. If she'd gone on reading, he would have left it there for a while and then withdrawn it; one thing he'd learned was that she didn't care to have affection forced on her.

  But she smiled, set down her book-a Forthwegian history of the glory days of the Kaunian Empire-and snuggled against him. Before long, they went back to the bedchamber together. Making love was the other thing they'd been able to do freely when Vanai was trapped in the flat-and, because Ealstan was only eighteen even now, they'd been able to do it pretty often.

  Afterwards, they lay side by side, lazy and happy and soon to be ready to sleep. Ealstan reached out and ran his fingers through Vanai's hair. Some people, he'd heard, eventually grew bored with making love. Maybe that was true. He pitied those people if so.