Fortunately, it didn’t confuse Siuntio. His smile got broader. “Is that so? Were the natives friendly?”
“Everyone landed safe and happy.” Pekka cast about for a way to continue the improvised code, and found one: “He seems to have discovered the bigger part of the continent, not the smaller one.” That would tell Siuntio Ilmarinen’s more probable set of results looked to be true, not the less probable grouping.
In the crystal, Siuntio nodded. “And does the man who made the compass know what the navigator did with it?”
“Not yet,” Pekka said. “I wanted to tell you first.”
“You flatter me, but he should be the one to hear this news,” Siuntio said. With a wave of farewell, he broke the attunement between their crystals.
Pekka did call Ilmarinen then. She used the same phrases to get the news across to him as she had with Siuntio. He also understood them; she’d expected nothing less. But where Siuntio had seemed pleased with the news, Ilmarinen’s mobile features twisted into a scowl. “We’re so cursed good at finding answers these days,” he said morosely. “If only we could find the questions to go with them.”
“I don’t follow you, Master,” Pekka said.
Ilmarinen’s scowl got deeper. “Suppose I’m your grandfather,” he said, and put on a quavery old man’s voice nothing like his real one as he pointed to her: “Sweetheart, I’m running out of years. Can I take five from you? You won’t miss ‘em; you’ve got plenty left.” He resumed his natural tones to add, “We can do that now, you know. You’ve just shown us how. And will the rich start buying--or going out and stealing--years from the poor?”
Pekka stared in horror. All at once, she felt like burning her notebooks. But it was too late for that. What had been found once would be found again, sure as the sun would--briefly--rise tomorrow.
In the crystal, Ilmarinen pointed at her. “And I assume your spell used all convergent elements. It would have, with the setup you’d want to check things with your mice.” Before Pekka could correct him about the animals, he went on, “Try it with a divergent series--but calculate some of the possible energy releases before you start incanting. Powers above keep you safe.” He waved. His image disappeared from the crystal. Pekka began to wonder why she’d ever thirsted after abstract knowledge.
Cornelu was splitting lumber with an axe when he saw the Algarvian patrol trudging up the road from Tirgoviste town and its harbor. His grip tightened on the axe handle. What were King Mezentio’s men doing, coming up into the hilly heart of Tirgoviste island? Till now, they’d mostly been content to hold the harbor and let the rest of the island take care of itself.
He wasn’t the only one to have spotted them, either. “Algarvians!” Giurgiu called, and the rest of the woodcutters took up the warning.
“What do they want?” Cornelu demanded. “They can’t be looking for rebels.” He’d been looking for rebels ever since he splashed back up onto his home island. He’d found plenty of people who despised the Algarvian occupiers, but almost no one who despised them enough to want to pick up a stick and blaze at them.
King Mezentio’s soldiers seemed to feel the same way about that as he did. They tramped along in easy open order. Had irregulars been lurking in the woods, the Algarvians wouldn’t have lasted a heartbeat, but they had nothing to fear from woodcutters.
Their leader, a young lieutenant with mustaches waxed to sharp spikes, waved to Giurgiu. The big, burly lumberman took no notice of him. Cornelu snickered. Giurgiu didn’t love Algarvians; Cornelu knew that.
“You, there!” the lieutenant called. Giurgiu pretended to be deaf as well as blind. That was a dangerous game; Algarvians were famous for their short tempers. The lieutenant went on, “Aye, you, you great ugly lout!”
“Better answer him,” Cornelu said softly. “He’ll use that stick if you push him too far.”
Giurgiu looked up from his work. It was as if he were seeing and hearing the Algarvian officer for the first time. He made a better actor than Cornelu had thought he could. When he did answer, it was in upcountry dialect: “What you want, eh?” Even Cornelu, who’d grown up on Tirgoviste, had trouble following him. To the lieutenant, his words were likely gibberish, though most Algarvians and Sibians could understand one another with a little work.
“We’re looking for somebody,” the lieutenant said, speaking slowly and clearly.
“What say?” Giurgiu kept right on acting like a moron--an outsize and possibly dangerous moron, for he leaned on the handle of an axe bigger and heavier than those of the other woodcutters.
“We’re looking for someone,” the Algarvian repeated. He sounded as if his patience was wearing thin. Staring from one woodcutter to another, he asked, “Does anybody here speak Algarvian or even a civilized dialect of Sibian?”
No one admitted to that. Under other circumstances, Cornelu might have, but not now. He wondered which man in particular Mezentio’s soldiers were looking for. He didn’t think the Algarvians knew he was here, but. ..
“What say?” Giurgiu repeated, in dialect even broader than before. He didn’t crack a smile. He didn’t even come close. Cornelu admired his straight face.
“Bunch of bumpkins, sir,” one of the Algarvian troopers said. “Bunch of ugly, stupid bumpkins.”
Maybe he was just saying what he thought. Maybe he was trying to make the Sibians angry enough to show they understood Algarvian. Maybe he was doing both at once; Cornelu wouldn’t have put it past him.
Whatever the trooper was doing, the officer shook his head. “No,” he said in tones of cheerful unconcern. “They’re just lying. They can follow me well enough, or some of them can. Well, we’ll pay plenty of silver if they bring us this chap called Cornelu. And if they don’t, we’ll hunt him down sooner or later. Come on, boys.” He gathered up the soldiers by eye and headed up the track past the woodcutters.
We’ll hunt him down sooner or later. Cornelu fumed at the Algarvian’s arrogance. But the fellow was a pretty good officer. He’d sown the seeds of betrayal. He was probably doing that everywhere he went. Now he would wait to see where they ripened.
The woodcutters returned to work. Cornelu kept on splitting rounds of lumber. He didn’t look up from what he was doing. He seldom did, but now even less than usual. Whenever he straightened and looked around, he found other men’s eyes on him. Cornelu wasn’t the rarest Sibian name, but it was a long way from the most common.
At supper--a big bowl of oatmeal mush with a little salt pork stirred in--Giurgiu strode over and sat down beside him on a fallen pine. “You the fellow Mezentio’s hounds are sniffing after?”
“I don’t know.” Stolidly, Cornelu spooned up some more oatmeal. “I could be, I suppose, but maybe not, too.” He wished he’d given a false name when he joined this gang.
Giurgiu nodded. “Thought I’d ask. Fellow who fights like you likely learned how in the army or navy. Somebody who learned there might be somebody those loudmouthed fools’d want to work over.”
“Aye, that’s so.” Cornelu still didn’t look up from his oatmeal. He didn’t want to meet Giurgiu’s eyes--and he was hungry enough to make such bad manners seem nothing out of the ordinary. All the woodcutters ate like that; the work they did made them eat like that. Between a couple of mouthfuls, Cornelu added, “I’m not the only one who knows those tricks, though. There’s you, for instance.”
“Oh, aye, there’s me, all right.” Giurgiu’s big head bobbed up and down, almost as if he were once more making himself out to be more rustic than he really was. “But that Algarvian didn’t know my name. He knew yours.”
Anger flared in Cornelu. “Turn me in, then. If I’m the one they want, they’ll probably pay you plenty. They’d like us to be sweet. ‘Sibians are an Algarvic folk, too.’ “ With savage sarcasm, he quoted the broadsheet he’d seen down in Tirgoviste town.