Pekka gave him a severe look. It rolled off him the way water rolled off greasy wool. She said, “Whatwere you talking about?”
“Oh, I just wanted to let this Lagoan lecher know that, if I ever caught him sniffing around my Linna, I’d cut out his liver and eat it without salt,” Ilmarinen replied.
He was on the small and scrawny side, too, to say nothing of being an old man. That didn’t keep a small twinge of icy dread, like a detached bit of the savage winter outside, from sliding up Fernao’s back. However small and scrawny and old Ilmarinen was, he was also, with Master Siuntio dead at Algarvian hands, the leading theoretical sorcerer of his generation, and a formidable practical mage as well. He wouldn’t have to use a knife to make unfortunate things happen to Fernao’s liver.
Fernao said, “For about the fourth time, I was not sniffing around her.”
When he brought out a phrase like that in classical Kaunian, he sounded both pompous and preposterous. Ilmarinen, now, Ilmarinen sounded menacing.
Pekka snorted. “I have never seen Fernao behave at all strangely around Linna,” she said, “which is rather more than I can say for certain other people of my acquaintance.” Linna came back with Fernao’s omelette and Ilmarinen’s smoked salmon and onions before the elderly theoretical sorcerer could make any more snide comments. He might well not have let that stop him; the serving girl didn’t speak much classical Kaunian, and couldn’t have followed whatever he said. But Pekka asked her for a plate of bacon and eggs and sent her off again.
Ilmarinen let out a cackle, the laugh of an old man who made trouble and had fun doing it. “Which women have you seen Fernao behaving strangely around, then?” he asked, and cackled again.
Without the least hesitation, Fernao kicked him in the ankle. And that wasn’t the only small, dull thud from under the table. Pekka must have kicked him from the other side.
“Aii!” Ilmarinen said. That wasn’t a cackle-more like a yelp. “Between the two of you, you can carry me out of here. I don’t think I’ll be able to walk.”
“If you keep on being rude and obnoxious, someone will carry you out, sure enough: someone will carry you out feet first,” Pekka said. Her voice was quite mild. As far as Fernao was concerned, that made her more intimidating, not less.
Ilmarinen attacked his food with single-minded determination. Unlike the other theoretical sorcerers, it wouldn’t talk back-unless the onions did. He left an odorous trail behind as he got up and hurried out of the refectory.
“Both his ankles seem in good working order,” Pekka remarked.
“Aye,” Fernao said, and then, “Maybe I should have kicked him harder.”
“I was thinking the same thing,” Pekka said. “Hewill be difficult just for the sake of being difficult.” Linna brought her the bacon and eggs; she dropped back into Kuusaman to say, “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome,” the serving girl answered. She picked up Ilmarinen’s plate. “He got out of here in a hurry, didn’t he? Did you scare him away?”
Fernao understood every word of that, where he wouldn’t have understood any of it when new to the land of the Seven Princes. He spoke in Kuusaman, too: “We did our best.” That made Linna laugh as she went off, though he hadn’t been joking.
Pekka also stuck to her own language, saying, “You’re getting quite fluent. The only time we really need to use classical Kaunian these days is when we talk about the fine points of sorcery.”
“Thank you.” Fernao kept on using Kuusaman, not least because he plainly pleased Pekka by doing so. “You probably praise me too much, but thank you.”
“Not at all,” Pekka said seriously, which made Fernao glad he’d always had a good ear for languages. Then she dug into her breakfast, pausing only to tell him, “You should eat.” She might have been speaking to a little boy, not to a fellow theoretical sorcerer.
She has a little boy, Fernao reminded himself; Pekka would sometimes talk about Uto. She has a husband, too, a mage in his own right. When Fernao was newly come to Kuusamo, Pekka had talked a lot about Leino, too. She didn’t do that so much now. Fernao wondered why. Part of him hoped he knew the answer.
“Eat,” Pekka said again, this time in peremptory tones. Aye, she might have been talking to her son.
“I’m sorry,” Fernao answered, as contritely as if he were a boy. “I’m- how do you say, going slowly without any particular reason?” He used classical Kaunian where he lacked the Kuusaman word.
Pekka supplied it: “Dawdling.” She took a big bite of bacon. “Don’t dawdle. We have no time for it. There’s no excuse for it. If we don’t get to the bottom of this sorcery, if we don’t get to the point where we can use it against the Algarvians, we’ll be in a world of trouble no matter how the Derlavaian War ends up. Am I right or am I wrong?”
“Oh, you’re right. Without a doubt, you’re right.” Fernao dutifully attacked his omelette. After a bit, though, he said, “It’s only that…” When he paused again, it wasn’t because he’d run out of words in Kuusaman.
“Only that what?” Pekka asked sharply. Fernao didn’t answer. He looked down at his plate, then glanced back up to her. Despite her golden skin, she’d flushed. “Never mind,” she said, and rose, and hurried away.
It’s only that, if I dawdle, I can sit here and be with you. He would have said that, or something like it. She had to understand it even if he hadn’t said it. And it had to be on her mind, too, or she would have joked about it.
Fernao sighed. He finished breakfast, then got to his feet and reached for his cane. He couldn’t hurry away, not after a bursting egg almost killed him and did ruin his leg down in the land of the Ice People. And he and Pekka had to go on working side by side as if they felt nothing toward each other but professional respect. He sighed again. It wasn’t easy, and got harder all the time.
Three
Back before the war, Garivald had visited Tolk only a handful of times, though the market town lay less than a day’s walk from Zossen, his home village. AfterKingSwemmel ’s armies drove the Algarvians out of the western portion of the Duchy of Grelz, he’d left the band of irregulars he’d led before Unkerlanter regulars and inspectors could reward him for his fight against the redheads by making something unfortunate happen to him.
And so he’d gone back to Zossen, only to find the war there before him. The village, his wife, his son, his little daughter… all gone as if they’d never been. He’d trudged on to Tolk, farther west still, not least because he had no idea what else to do.
Tolk survived. The Algarvians and their Grelzer puppets hadn’t made a stand there, as they must have at Zossen. Buildings were smashed. Only burnt-out rubble remained of a few whole blocks. But Tolk survived.
Sitting by the fire in a tavern there, Garivald turned to Obilot and said, “Powers above only know what we would have done if this place was gone, too.”
Like him, she had a thick earthenware mug of spirits in front of her. She shrugged as she took a swallow from it. “Gone somewhere else, that’s all. What difference does it make where we are? We haven’t got anything left but each other.”
Garivald still didn’t know exactly what the Algarvians had done to her, and to whatever family she’d had, to make her flee to the irregulars. She’d fought Mezentio’s men longer and harder than he had; she’d been in the band when Munderic, who’d led it before Garivald, rescued him before the redheads could take him to Herborn and boil him alive for making patriotic songs.
He said, “We might have starved before we got anywhere else.” Late winter was the hard time, the empty time, of the year in peasant villages in Grelz, as it doubtless was in peasant villages all over Unkerlant.
Obilot shook her head. She had to bring up a hand to brush dark curls back from her face. She wasn’t pretty, not in any conventional sense of the word: she was too thin, too fierce looking, for anything approaching beauty. But the energy that crackled through her made every other woman Garivald had known, including Annore who’d borne him two
children, pallid in comparison. She said, “Two desperate characters with sticks in their hands don’t starve.”
“Well, maybe not,” Garivald said, and drank from his own mug of spirits. In most winters, he’d have stayed drunk much of the time from harvest till planting. How else to while away the long winter with so much time in it and so little to fill that time? As an irregular, he’d found other ways. As a refugee, he was finding other ways still. But, when he put the mug down again, he said, “I don’t feel like a desperate character.”
“No?” Obilot’s laugh held little mirth. “What else are you? What else is anybody in Grelz?” She lowered her voice: “What will you be if the inspectors catch up with you?”
“Dead,” Garivald answered, and drained the mug. He waved it in the air to show the tapman he wanted it refilled. Obilot’s mug was empty, too.
“Let’s see some silver,” the fellow said when he brought a jar of spirits over to their table.
Garivald dug a coin from his belt pouch and set it down on the scarred pine board. “Here. Fill us both up again.”
The tapman scooped it up, looked at it, and made it disappear. He filled both mugs. But then he said, “If you haven’t got the brains to be careful passing money withKingRaniero ’s face-Raniero the traitor’s face, I mean- you’ll land in more trouble than popskull can ever get you out of. You’re just lucky I know a jeweler who’ll give me weight for weight-well, almost-in silver. He’ll be able to melt it down and make earrings or something out of it.”
Nobody at the next table could have heard a word he said. He went back behind the bar. Obilot asked, “How long have you been carrying that silver bit around?”
“How should I know?” Garivald shrugged. “Maybe since beforeKingSwemmel ’s soldiers broke into Grelz. But maybe I got it yesterday, chopping firewood for that baker.”
“If you did, he was probably glad to palm it off on you,” Obilot said.
“I wouldn’t be surprised,” Garivald agreed. “But at least in a place like Tolk, I can find odd jobs to do and make a little money. In a peasant village, Iwould starve. Everybody hates strangers in a village. I ought to know. I did, back when people I hadn’t seen before came into Zossen. For all I knew, they were inspectors or impressers sneaking around.”
“It’s not right,” Obilot said savagely. “With your songs, you did as much as anybody to get the Algarvians out of Grelz. The redheads must’ve thought so, or they wouldn’t have wanted to boil you. But what thanks do you get from your own side? Back in the woods, they were going to arrest you or kill you.”
With another shrug, Garivald answered, “When have you seen a peasant win? Not with our own kings, not with the redheads, not ever.” He didn’t even sound bitter. What point, when he told simple truth?
A youngster who might have been the tapman’s little brother or son brought in more wood and threw it on the fire. A couple of people in the tavern clapped their hands. The young man grinned, taken by surprise. The wood, well-seasoned pine, burned hot and bright.
“We’ve got the right table,” Obilot said, and turned toward the flames. Their reflections danced in her eyes. Garivald was about to do the same when somebody new came in from outside.
“Close the door, curse you,” someone inside said. “You’re letting out the heat.”
Garivald started to chime in, but the words never passed his lips. Instead, he turned his back on the door and leaned toward the fire, as Obilot had done. In a whisper even he had trouble even he had trouble hearing above the crackling flames, he said, “That’s Tantris who just walked in.”
“Tantris! What’s he doing here?” Obilot’s face went hard and feral. “He’s supposed to be off in the woods seventy-five miles east of here. The only reason he’d come to Tolk…”
“Is because he knows what we look like,” Garivald finished for her.
“He knows whatyou look like, the whoreson,” Obilot said. “He’s got to be after you. I don’t count for anything, not to the likes of him.”
She was bound to be right. When Garivald had slipped out of the woods with her and headed back toward Zossen without pursuit, he’d thought the Unkerlanters were willing to let him alone. That seemed a mistake, a bad mistake.
“I led fighters who didn’t take orders straight fromKingSwemmel,” he said. “I made songs people liked, songs that made people want to fight the redheads. This is how my own kingdom pays me back.”
Mezentio’s men had been ready to kill him. Now Swemmel’s were, too. The knowledge tore at him, as if he’d set his foot in a trap. And maybe he had. He sipped spirits and watched Tantris out of the corner of his eye.
The soldier didn’t want to be recognized for what he was; he wore a dark blue tunic of civilian cut rather than the rock-gray uniform tunic in which Garivald had always seen him in the woods. He glanced Garivald and Obilot’s way, but gave no sign of knowing who they were. After a moment, Garivald realized the two of them were silhouetted against the flames in the fireplace. He stayed where he was. Tantris bought a beaker of ale and stood at the bar drinking it.
Obilot kept her voice very low. “Is it true,” she said, “that now there are irregulars-Grelzer irregulars, I mean-fighting for the Algarvians in the lands our armies have taken back from them?”
“I’ve heard it, the same as you have,” Garivald answered. “I don’t know whether it’s true… but I’ve heard it.”
“Till that cursed Tantris walked thought the door, I wouldn’t’ve believed it,” Obilot said. “But now, do you know, I almost begin to understand.” Considering how she felt about the redheads, that was no small statement.
“A good many peasants fled east when Mezentio’s men had to retreat,” Garivald said. “I used to think they were the ones in bed with the Algarvians. I guess a lot of them were, but maybe not all.” If he hadn’t got in trouble with the redheads for his songs, his life in Zossen wouldn’t have been too very different under them from what it had been before the war. That was a judgment on Algarve and Unkerlant both, he supposed.
Obilot turned her head ever so slightly toward Tantris. “What are we going to do about him?”
“Hopehe goes away,” Garivald answered. Tantris drank his ale. He bought a chunk of chewy bread and dipped it into the bowl of coarse salt the tapman kept on the bar. Bite by bite, the bread disappeared. He washed down each bite with another swig of ale. Garivald might have done the same. He had done the same, many times.
The tavern door opened again. This newcomer, unlike Tantris, did not try to disguise what he was: a military mage. Two troopers tramped in behind him. He strode up to the tapman and snapped, “Let me see your cashbox, fellow.”
“Why should I?” the tapman asked. “Are you robbing me?”
“Why?” the mage echoed. “I’ll tell you why. Treason toKingSwemmel , that’s why.” He dropped a silver coin on the bar. It rang sweetly. “This is money of Raniero, the false king, the king of traitors. By the law of similarity, like calls to like. This foul coin calls to one in your box. Whoever harbors money of Raniero is a traitor to His Majesty.”
Garivald’s blood ran cold. The fellow behind the bar had to say no more than, I got it from him, and point, and he would find himself in more trouble than Tantris could give him. What the tapman did say was, “It’s here, under the bar.” He reached down. But what he came out with wasn’t the cashbox, but a stout bludgeon he doubtless used to break up tavern brawls. He didn’t break one up this time. With a shout, he brought the bludgeon down on the military mage’s head.
With another shout, somebody else threw his mug at one of the Unker-lanter troopers behind the mage. It shattered against the back of the soldier’s skull. He went down with a groan. Somebody shouted, “KingSwemmel!” and punched the man who’d thrown the mug. Somebody else shouted, “Powers below eatKingSwemmel!”-a shout nobody would have dared to raise before the Algarvian invasion-and kicked the fellow who’d yelled the king’s name.
In the blink of an eye, the desperate
struggle between the Grelzers who’d fought for Swemmel and those who hated him broke out anew in the tavern. The weapons weren’t so fancy as those of the great war still wracking Unkerlant, but that made the battle no less ferocious. People kicked and punched and grappled and bit. Knives flashed in the firelight.
And Garivald and Obilot made their way through the chaos toward the door as best they could. He punched whoever got in his way, regardless of which side the fellow was on. “Let’s see Tantris track us throughthis” he told Obilot, who’d just kicked a man where it did the most good. A savage grin on her face, she nodded.
A jar full of potent spirits flew into the fireplace and smashed. The spirits caught fire as they splashed out. Flames clung to an overturned chair close by. “Fire!” somebody shrieked. Then everybody was fleeing-everybody who could.
Garivald and Obilot weren’t the only ones who ran not just out of the tavern but away from it as fast as they could. “We got away,” she panted. “This time,” he answered, and ran harder.
The sun rose earlier and set later these days. Before long, the equinox would come to the Naantali district. In much of the world, that would mean spring, and so it would here-formally. Pekka was from Kajaani, which lay even farther south. She knew the snow and ice wouldn’t start melting for quite a while after that.
If anything, the weather here was worse than in Kajaani, a port city that had the ocean to soften its climate. In most circumstances, Pekka would have complained about that. Not now. As she rode in the sleigh from the hostel to the blockhouse, she turned to Fernao and said, “I dread the spring thaw.”
She’d spoken Kuusaman. The Lagoan mage nodded and answered in classical Kaunian: “I understand why-all this will turn to mud, and we shall have a demon of a time moving from where we stay to where we need to go to keep on with our experiments.”
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